Faith | Tracks In The Dust

Archive for the tag “Faith”

21 Aug 2012

Dreaming of Magic Again

Some times it seems almost hard to believe. I am not really good at remembering dreams. I wake up and I can recall a dream for about 5 seconds, and then it starts to fade. But there are a few that keep coming back, like a late nite movie that keeps showing up every week and you can’t stop watching it.

There are a few things that are in black and white, and a few that are in color. I noticed that they seem to incorporate a lot of things in “real” life, but things that are not really connected that way. They are associated somehow in my sub conscious I guess, and so they get thrown into the soup of the dream.

What dreams do you have that keep coming back?

Okay so there is a huge psychological process to interpreting them and having them end up determining what kind of person you are. Not so into that, I think there is some merit to it, but really. Some of my dreams just come up because I have weird food before I go to sleep (like Frito-Lay products with spicy flavors-can you say “Doritos”?) or because I saw a strange movie (anything by Stanley Kubrick) or listened to some music (like Explosions In The Skyincredible music). Some are just there for whatever reason. But like I said they disappear in the morning fog of the first cup of coffee.

So this one dream. It has a soundtrack and a mysterious lady. The song (perhaps the inspiration after all) is Magic by Ben Folds Five written by Darren Jessee [see below]. It seems like a mysterious song on its own, perhaps about someone who has passed on, or who has lost their life or perhaps their life’s memory (through Alzheimer’s perhaps)… but it is always the sound track. I am watching it from above and it plays out with a lady dancing by the light of this huge moon (some times it looks like it is my wife, sometimes someone I don’t actually know). Along the way I the whole thing becomes distant, and then again really close. I am sad but happy at the same time. In the end it makes me calm that the world will continue and this person is in it somehow.

That’s it. All you dream interpreters can have a hey day on what that all means, and I guess I could spend a lot of time in analysis to discover my mom or something was at the root of all of it. But no matter what I do, it just pops up.

What dreams do you have that keep coming back? How do you deal with them? Where do they take you?

Magic by Ben Folds Five

From the back of your big brown eyes
I knew you’d be gone as soon as you could
And I hoped you would
We could see that you weren’t yourself
And the lines on your face did tell
It’s just as well
You’d never be yourself again

Saw you last night
Dance by the light of the moon
Stars in your eyes
Free from the life that you knew

You’re the magic that holds the sky up from the ground
You’re the breath that blows these cool winds ’round
Trading places with an angel now
Saw you last night
Dance by the light of the moon
Stars in your eyes
Free from the life that you knew
Saw you last night
Stars in your eyes
Smiled in my room

Posted in Life's Sound Track (Music) and tagged being remembered, Ben Folds, Change, Dreams, Explosions In The Sky, Faith, life is precious, Music, Psychology, Social Sciences, Sprituality, Who Are You

15 Aug 2012

3 Comments

“What Are People Thinking?”

Today a very wise man was talking about how often we get frustrated throughout our day because we are always wondering “What are people are thinking?”

What are they thinking when they are standing in the 15 item express line when they obviously have 20+ items in their cart?

What are they thinking when they pull out into traffic so quickly right in front of you and then drive 15 miles under the speed limit?

What could they possibly be thinking when they are standing in the middle of a public place and talk on their smartphone loudly and then stare at you when you stop and look at them?

What are they thinking when they drive with their head down because they are paying attention to their mobile phone and texting? (they need to be stopped!)

What the heck are they thinking when they stand in the middle of the public shopping mall and sneeze across the masses of people around them?

Sure in the end it is the small stuff. And like the saying goes “don’t sweat it”. Being preoccupied with life’s irritations will get you stuck in the muck and mire of frustration. Okay you could stop and say something to the people who are irritating you and they would likely wonder who they heck YOU think you are… We may not be able to influence a random stranger on the street. If the chance were there perhaps it could?

So the center of focus is to look for positive opportunities, and the time is now. Let the Spiritual focus fill in those blanks. Understand that you should enjoy the moment and know that it is YOURS to own. You can do with your moment what you will. When so much of humankind around the world are just wondering where their next bite of food or fresh water or shelter will come from, how can we let these things be our focus?

Stay positive. Stay focused on the tracks you are making right now. They are yours.

Posted in Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Acceptance, Critical Thinking, Doubt, Faith, Reality Check, Skeptical Inquiry, Slow Down, spiritual focus, Thought

10 Aug 2012

When You Are Angry

It’s very likely that everyone reacts to things differently when it come to being happy or angry. There are some so genuine universal things that seem to be so great when it comes to sharing emotions. Those are the things that make us human no matter where you live on this big spinning globe I guess.

But what makes you angry? I mean so angry that you are not focused on anything else but that anger? Does start with hate or frustration or end with it? Is it derived from fear? Is it founded in truth, or built on ignorance?

When you get angry, what do you do with that? How do you manage it? Do you ask yourself later: why did I end up getting angry? which in turn may make you angry again (ha)!

If you can answer these questions then, I would guess that you are more in-tune with your inner-self than others may be. When I look at the recent violence that has happened in the US, I know that I cannot imagine someone being that angry and distant from the human race as to wake up one day and intentionally kill people because of anger. That tragedy is beyond me. Yet there are probably scores of thousands of more angry people out there, who are living with themselves with no spiritual or moral guideposts to examine their emotional state.

Also it would seem that fear has just fueled that anger more. Fear of people who are different in some way, fear of the unknown. The Internet has let loose a firestorm of opportunity for people to share their fears and their ignorance, but not in a productive way, rather in a destructive one. And it adds more fuel when those ramblings become so massive that even our politicians, celebrities, and leaders in the world just help to further reinforce what some of these very angry people believe to be true.

So angry people run to the Internet or some other place to find their false sense of need to gain the confidence, in turn it leads them to take out a gun and go to a public place and kill their fellow human beings. They cannot reason with themselves, and they have not allowed themselves to reach to the Words that would provide the answers they need. They are willing to even build their anger on untruth’s.

Finding your inner peace and not letting anger consume you can be found simply in the Spiritual things that God can provide. I say a prayer for these lonely souls who have let anger consume them, and have in directed that anger through their fear to innocent people who have been in the way of their wrath.

I have asked my family to pause when they get angry, and ask themselves “what am I angry about?” “How does it control me?” Life here on Earth is short in the scene of things, spending it in anger is such a sad way to spend it.

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger. Ephesians 4:26

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged Anger, Change, Emotion, Faith, Fear, Forgiveness, God, life is precious, People, Self-Awareness, spirituality

07 Aug 2012

2 Comments

Looking for Life’s GPS

The other day I was driving to some places I had never been before and taking some guests around our huge metro area. So I brought out the GPS device. Global satellite positioning means that this little screen can always tell where you are on the face of the Earth, and help you by providing the directions needed to reach your final destination. It’s amazing that so many years ago that concept would have been some sort of “space age” future miracle you would see in sci-fi movies.

Now it is a reality that is entirely possible and can show up on your handheld smartphone or sit neatly on your dashboard wherever you go. And announce what turns and lanes you should be in. Wow.

It would be nice if our lives had a device for reaching our goals and destinations in life. We could just type in where we wanted to end up, and let the life-GPS just program it. It would talk to you, just like the GPS’s do today. Part of the features of the GPS lets you know when you get “off course” by announcing “recalculating your route” adjusting your course and helping you get turned around the right way.

Often in life we get off course, and there just isn’t that convenient GPS in our pocket to turn our lives back on course. The course corrections are ours to make, sometimes with guidance from others around us. The people we trust, the people we admire or sometimes from those who have alternative motivations that may not be the best course. We may get lost because we get distracted. In my GPS for the car, you can program “attractions” along the way, but in our lives some of those are more interesting than others, and in other cases they are indeed “distractions” rather than attractions, although we may be drawn to them.

So what course do we program into our life’s GPS? How well would we listen to the instructions it would speak out to us. Would we ignore it? It could sit on our dashboard and tell us when we made a wrong turn to our final goal. Of course we could end up with detours, and construction or accidents that may slow our lives course down. But the GPS would just recalculate. Funny.

But we don’t have a GPS for our lives here on Earth. There is nothing we can program. We have to rely on our family and friends and importantly our spiritual leaders that will provide us the feedback we need to make corrections when things go astray. Sure we can just wander like nomads on the map, in hope of getting where we think we want to be, but in the end we have to keep our eyes and ears open to where we are going and who we are listening to.

But we also have to keep our hearts and minds open to God and his plan. Without it we may be recalcuating in circles that eventually get us lost. For many of us, we so much want to stay “on the map” and headed in the proper direction. In the end it will lead to the best destination we could all want. It starts by programming it in… go ahead. You can do it.

Posted in Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Change, Doubt, Eternity, Faith, God, GPS, Life, Reality Check, Self-Awareness, Sprituality

24 Jul 2012

3 Comments

Faith In Trust and Hope

Trust. There’s something so mystical about TRUST. Who you should trust, why should you trust them, and how do you continue to trust someone. There is a very fine line between love and hate, there is another one between trust and the lack of it.

I have noticed that for some people it is very easy for them to take that step over the line and start trusting. They have the ultimate faith in the world and humankind that most people have a purpose that is ultimately good for all. Everyone starts out trustworthy and then it is up to them to break that trust, it is a fragile thing indeed but it starts with the “glass half full” I suppose. Maybe even more than half perhaps. That kind of openness comes with a lot of risk for hurt and wounds that don’t heal very well in the emotional sense. It requires a lot of resilience and may mean some added hard work to maintain the proper frame of mind. But happiness is just in the next step just as much as the hurt, and we have to have faith.

There are others that seem to trust no one. It can be so drastic that is sad. Sort of like functional paranoia that everyone is out to get you and that anyone who wants to have a relationship of trust better damn well start earning it. It goes…those who want trust need to explain themselves, then show that they are what they say they are. It is a safer place for these people with lack of trust. After all, trust no one- then there is no chance of getting the injury from trusting someone and then having them let you down or even belay that trust with denial or worse. But that safe place comes with a price. The price can be loneliness, isolation, lack of connection with anyone on anything other than a surface level.

Sadly the world today seems to perpetuate the lack of trust. There are so many examples that get laid out in the news, politics, social networks, and even religion. People who cross that fine line of trust to become human monsters, trusted people who have taken a path of destruction and evil that make us want to run the other way. Stay locked away.

Make sure you have an understanding that even with all the evil and hate in the world, in all the immediate places that surround our lives each day there is hope. Hope is a partner with trust that allows us to make it through each day. We want to be at peace with ourselves, we need to be at peace with the trust in what we know to be right. Trust in the Lord. Don’t run away. Be mindful that there is a purpose to all things under heaven. You are part of it.