working title: Trust

Dear Reader - May God bless and love you

I was driving to work a couple days ago and realized I don't know how to fully trust God to guide my life. It's been a dream of mine for a long time that I'd be a writer, I've prayed to God about it but deep down I know now it's been only half-hearted.

Honestly I feel a bit confused about my desire to want to write, my lack of inspiration, my lack of work ethic or laziness to actually commit thoughts to paper, pangs of selfishness for wanting more from life, fear of rejection (or is it fear of success?), uncertainty of turning this wishful talent into something worth the time of God and loved ones.

It's easy to talk myself out of the effort of writing and exchange it for a moment's dream of already having written a beautiful piece that others would love always or a while. I'd like to write a novel, but for a long time I've only been able to write bits of verse. I believe now I have enough notebooks and loose papers to make a small book. How amazing would that be! I've made a small step to piece it together, these disjointed phrases of imagination and imagery.

I pray and must pray deeply that I trust God with this dream of mine. I must learn to let enough of my pride go and gain enough wisdom to know to listen when God is speaking to me. It sounds like easy conjecture, but it's not easy for me!

Anyway, thank you for taking the time to read this. Maybe with this new blog I can exercise enough writing muscle to get in shape :-)

Down about Lost

I feel a bit depressed right now since the TV series LOST is over. The finale was last night. The writers did a beautiful job ending this season and the entire six year series. I actually got teary-eyed at the very end. It was a very compelling show, mixing drama, suspense, and mystery with delicate swathes of differing religions, mythology, and history into a unified story which created its own unique mythology along the way.

I was a late follower to Lost, just starting watching last Fall (around September or October of 2010). My friend was a watcher and had mentioned it to me a couple times but I'm not usually interested in many television shows. I started checking out Hulu and Lost kept popping up on the front page and I would think about my friend's interest in the show. He and I have been friends since 4th grade (over 25 years) so we share a lot in common. Anyway, this might have been the way The Island was drawing me to it. LOL - a little Lost humor there. I got caught up just before the final season started and watched the entire sixth season on Tuesday nights with my wife, often re-watching the latest episode online later in the week. I inadvertently turned my wife into a Lostie and now my kids are interested to watch to know what the big deal is.

The finale had a part at the end where the hero Jack Shepard, recently commissioned to be the protector of the island, has to put a capstone back onto the heart of the island to stop it from sinking and restore the life-giving Light. The source of the power of the island. The scene reminded me of a book I read (I can't recall where I got it) by Bruce Feiler called Abraham.

As a side-note - one of the notable things about Lost is how many literary references and books and authors are mentioned. Since the writers wanted to employ a mishmash of real world beliefs in order to create an encompassing spirituality within the show, it's no surprise that they [the writers] would borrow from as many sources as possible.

Anyway, the book entitled Abraham is about the biblical patriarch Abraham, the father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The book covers the authors search for who this man was and is; exploring Scripture and legend; fact and fiction.

The book the following passages:

Before there was time , there was water, and a darkness covered the deep. A piece of land emerged out of the water. That land is the Rock, and rock is here. Adam was buried here. Solomon built here. Jesus prayed here. Muhammed ascended here.

...

And Abraham came here to sacrifice his son. Today that rock is a magnet of montheism, an etched, worn mask of limestone, viewed by few alive today, touched by even fewer, hidden under a golden dome, and made more powerful by the incandescense that seems to surround it at every hour. The legends say God issued the first ray of light from the Rock. The ray pierced the darkness and filled his glorious land. The light in Jerusalem seems to fit that description perfectly. Washed by winter rains, as it is this morning, the air is the color of candlelight: pink, saffron, rose; turquoise, ruby, and bronze.

...

The Rock is considered the navel of the world, and the world, it often seems, wants to crawl through that breach and reenter the womb of the Lord.

...

Stand here [in Jerusalem], you can see eternity. Stand here, you can touch the source.

...

The legends say that wisdom and pain are the twin pillars of life. God pours these qualities into two symmetrical cones, then adjoins them at thier tips, so that the abyss of pain meets the body of knowledge. The point where the two cones touch is the center of the cosmos. That point is the Rock, and its where King David ached to build a Palace of Peace. But David made a mistake: He moved the Rock and in so doing unleashed the Waters of the Deep.

"You cannot move me," the Rock announced. "I was put here to hold back the abyss."

"Since when?" David asked.

"Since God announced, 'I am the Lord thy God.' "

David inscribed God's name on the Rock and pushed it back into place. The deluge subsided. The touchstone is actually a capstone: remove it and death rushes forth.

I thought this imagery from the 2002 book I read before watching Lost was poignent and I recalled it when I watched the finale last night. I'm going to miss watching Lost because I will miss the characters, the mystery, and the way the show stirred me. I invested a lot of emotion into the show and now that it is done I feel... well, it's cheesy but I feel lost.