When is a dream only a dream? 3/19/13

 Deep in the darkness of an evergreen wood I run down a dirt path.  Running?  Running towards what? Or worse from what?  I breathe heavily as my tired legs keep me moving somehow, it must be the pure numbness of my legs that allows me to keep running.  Some reason I have this unexplainable urgency to keep moving.  I look down at my finger and see a tiny hole in it that starts to expand larger and larger, but no blood seeps from it and I can feel no pain.  All I see is a growing void.  This must be a dream for there is no blood, but how could this be so real?  I keep running, moving forward never looking back.  In the distance, I hear screams for help and the howling of a wolf pack going in for the kill.  Am I supposed to save them?  Is that why I am running? There is a clearing ahead and a small village within. As I run into the village, breathing heavily, I hear screaming nearby.  I look and yet I can see no one.  I search frantically but I cannot find anyone, just hear their screams.  Gripped by fear I run into the nearest aluminum sided building looking for someone… anyone.  Silence, their screams become but a faint recollection of cries in some distant dream.  Inside I see nothing but a beat down bar with cobwebs everywhere.  Tables flipped on their side, empty bottle littering the floor, and a TV in the corner lit up and playing.  As I stare at the TV and watch what is playing I see a pack of wolves surrounding a group of people yelling for help, when one cries out "Matthew Ford come save us!!!" Me?  It couldn't possibly be me, I don’t even know where they are at.  I am so confused, how can I help them when I don’t know where they are at? How do they know my name? How can I save them single-handedly from a whole pack of wolves?  All I can do is stand there in shock as the people are devoured one by one until all are dead save one person whom screams out my name as they too are being devoured.  I look away disgusted...  Another scream! But was that the TV I heard or was that real life?  Suddenly the TV turns off and I hear someone scream, "Matthew Ford come save us!!!"  I run outside to see a group of people huddled together surrounded by a pack of wolves.  I see the people just as I had seen them on that TV screen… How is this even possible?  On instinct I grab a rake and run at the wolves yelling and screaming not knowing any other effective way in order to help these people.  The wolves take a step back more in shock than fear.  I take that short window of advantage to get the people to safety within a building.  Little did I know that the building I led them to had no floor, and one by one they mindlessly fell into a furnace, a torrid fire...  They trusted in me and thought that they were safe, yet they were unknowingly misled by me.  Helplessly I began to turn from the door when in the corner of my eye I saw the pack of wolves falling upon me... when suddenly I sat up in bed,  but this is not my bed, warm and comfy.  This bed is hard and cold.  My feet are touching the wall and my arms are against the sides of the room and I realize in the darkness that I am in a very small room on a rock hard slab.  I see light seeping through a vent in the wall right by the ceiling… I stand on the bed and look through the vent into a room with a robotic man working on a computer.  I peer through the vent wondering what he is doing.  He turns and looks me directly in the eye and says, "I am reprogramming you" astonished I reply, "what do you mean reprogramming?  I am no robot, how can one reprogram a human?"  He just looked at me with a cold look of disbelief, how could I be this naive.  "There is more to this world than what you can see, every experience you have is programmed to change you" he said.  I wondered what he meant by this, and out of curiosity I asked, "don’t I as a human have free will?"  It looked as if his robotic mouth almost formed a smile as he said, "You can choose, sure… but I know what you are going to choose already.  You think you can have lots of chosen experiences in life, but I already know what you will think and where you will go and what you will do.  I designed you and I programmed you… so yes you do have a choice, but I know what you will choose"  Troubled I stood there looking through the vent thinking what is the purpose of life if I am programmed to do a designated task and no matter the illusion of free will I think I might have, I ultimately will do what the programmer has programmed me to do.  "Ahh good question" he says "what is the purpose of life?"  He paused only for a second and says "do what you are programmed to do, and give credit where credit is due..."   "Matt!!!!!!!!  Matt what are you doing in my bed!!"  why is someone shaking me?  This is my warm bed not yours.  I opened my eyes to see one of my best friends shaking me, telling me that I was not supposed to be in his bed.  I sat up confused, wondering how I had got here in his bed when I realized that all my friends I've ever had were sitting in the room pointing and laughing at me.  They ridiculed me and said that I never belonged in this intimate place with my best friend.  I was never his friend, I was never any of their friends for none of them would want me in their bedrooms either.  That was too intimate, no friend that I looked at wanted me that close.  They told me that our friendships were a prank, an illusion, and that I should leave them alone.  I walked to the door as my "friends", filled with hate, ridiculed me, mocked me, and shared with each other any secret I had ever told them.  As I opened the door they shoved me out and I fell… Daylight! I sat up abruptly in a warm bed realizing that this was all just a very vivid dream.  What a very vivid dream… or was this just a dream?

This is a dream I had in March while at school, weird right?  So I pose the question again, When is a dream only a dream?

Rutception

Have you ever been stuck in a rut?  Of course you have, I know that I have many times in my life.  I know that often I find myself unusually bummed, the cup is not even half-empty, it has no water in it at all and there is no water for miles around.  Exhaustion and discouragement entangle me as I try to find any slice of light, any way to find optimism and meaning in life again.  Somehow in a rut everything is dark and desperate.  As hard as you try to escape, the walls are too steep, the climb too tough.  You sit in utter darkness at the bottom because the light is eclipsed by the sheer depth of the rut.  The worse part is that you don't find ruts, they often find you and that one unknowing misstep plunges you deep into darkness never to see the light of day.

Often times when I am in a rut I try to identify the source of this rut that I am in.  Asking myself, why am I in this rut?  What is wrong that I need to fix to help me out?  Here is the problem with ruts, often times when we think we have found a solution and fixed something and we feel good for a day or 2.  The "rutish" feelings come back, and sometimes stronger than before.  Meanwhile we just fought to get out of a rut and ended back up in one again.  Sometimes it is the same one and other times it is a different rut.  This is very discouraging for the average person, as you could imagine, and very troubling for the average thinker who thinks "how in the world am I in a rut after just getting out of one?"       One Word

Rutception.  All you who are following me give me a holler!!  You see I am convinced that many depressed, hurt, and unproductive people are stuck in rutception.  They may have started in a simple rut many years ago... Insecurity, low self-esteem, self-doubt, infidelity and pride.  Lets call this the emotional rut.  As this emotional rut continued to get deeper and deeper, deeper ruts began to grow within this emotional/foundational rut.  Things like negative thoughts about oneself, lack of positivity, Loss of dreams, death of idealism, and fear of success are thoughts found in this rut.  This second rut we'll call the cognitive rut.  As these ruts continue to deepen and widen a 3rd rut develops within the first 2 and that is the physical rut.  This is where we start to really notice that we are physically in a rut; sickness, depression, laziness, lack of motivation and unhealthy internalizing of emotion are behaviors of those stuck in the 3rd rut.  There is one final rut, this is the scariest one to find yourself in.  You literally have no motivation and the depth of the rut can be so deep that it would be overwhelming, its the comatose rut.  This is the deadliest rut to be stuck in, symptoms include; deep depression, no desire to live, being in a constant state of stasis, and ultimately premature death.

I ask the question, have you ever feel like that you have pulled yourself out of a rut and end some kind of bad habit but yet find yourself back in a rut again?  Well that is because you never really got out of the rut at all.  You got out of the rut of laziness, but you never climbed out of your fear of success rut.  That is why you still feel like you are in a rut... Because you are!  And if you never figure this out then you are going to eventually fall back into the laziness rut because you are stuck in fear of success.  And if you conquer those 2, you still have to confront your self-doubt in the emotional/foundational uppermost rut or else you will never truly be out of the ruts of your life.

Here is why it is cool to be a Christian.  God wants to guide you out of the ruts and show you the emotional/foundational rut that you need to confront in order to truly live a rutless life.  If you struggle with self doubt, then God can show you that you are more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus.  That you are truly valued by Him.  I am writing this, so that you could have help to identify 2 things. 1. That you aren't alone in the midst of the rut. 2 there is a loophole and escape out of the depths of even the deepest ruts, and that is through the guidance and validation of who you are in Christ.

Rutception, the perpetual loop of  ruts that one finds their self in unless they find whom they are and whose they are, and find their confidence in Him.

Primitive?

Two sides of an argument in which the former views the latter as primitive while the latter views the former as immoral and inhumane. Primitive, according to Dictionary.com, in an Anthropological context is defined as, "of or pertaining to a preliterate or tribal people having cultural or physical similarities with their early ancestors: no longer in technical use." Something that was useful in a bygone age but is now technically irrelevant. Something that was good for then and those people, but not for us and the people of today. The latter are considered old-fashioned, obsolete, and against progress. But what is progress to the former argument? Natural selection? Only the strongest should survive? Only the brightest, fastest, smartest, and most adaptable should survive. In nature, only those ones are the ones who survive, so naturally that should be true of the human race as well. In nature, the sick, the handicapped, the runts, and the weak are the ones who are preyed upon and killed. The weak ones are exploited to reach the greatness of the stronger ones. Instinct for survival is what drives survival of the fittest, an animal is driven by the instinct to survive at all costs above all others. Should humans too hold themselves to the standards of nature? The former would argue so. The latter says that we should love our neighbor, that we should take care of the sick and the hurting and the handicapped. They do this because they believe that every person has value and every person is created with purpose by God. Therefore if everyone was created with purpose, every person (despite any defects or handicaps) has value and should be given the right to enjoy a full life. Which view is actually primitive? Is the belief in God a crutch for people who don't want to believe in science? Is He a crutch for ignorant people to never observe the world objectively or scientifically? Was He just good to satisfy a superstitious people of a bygone age in who they had no science to explain the phenomenons they were experiencing? Is God obsolete? The former would say so, they would say that nothing in this earth cannot be explained by observation of natural means, so why would we need God. Mankind can be perfectly functional on their own without on outside force to tell them what to do. Which worldview is primitive? A worldview that believes that not everything can be explained in nature, and that ethics is based on God and His value of man's life over nature, and that man should be loved above all else on earth, or a worldview based on only the observable ethics of nature in which human and animal have the same value as cohabitators of this planet in which we define life by the survival and advancement of the species by killing the weak to make the species stronger? Which worldview is really more primitive?

To dream or not to dream...

...Is never the question.  I've heard many quotes that refer to dreams, dreaming or the idea of dreams.  what is a dream, how big is too big, what is impossible, and 10 easy steps to dream your way to a fortune.  Everyone has tried to define a dream.  Dreams have also been commonly seen in a negative light, some "realists" or "reality-ists" say that dreamers only dream because they could never accomplish anything on Earth.  The "dreamer" lives in a fantasy world of ideas and of endless possibilities and opportunity, but never doing anything good for the Earth.  The Earth that is here, the one that is tangible, and the one that thus said "dreamer" is actually living and functioning in.  Have you ever experienced the "reality-ist" person?  "Well, unicorns and witchcraft is all fine and dandy but what about the real life and the needs of day-to-day living?" they will ask the dreamer.  "What have you done lately to improve society?" they will also say.  The dreamer will be exiled, ostracized, and made a pariah of society if he simply lives within an ideal world in his mind.  On the inverse, how does a "reality-ist" really help the Earth any more?  They simply make sure the world continues to function in such a way that nothing new could ever be done because why fix what works. And yes the world continues to turn, but in such a way that the "reality-ist" is mindlessly caught in the depths of detail that all sign of vision is lost and they become helplessly enslaved to the  impossibility of a world functioning and looking as it always has.  The dreamers lack progress because they have no follow through on reality, and the reality-ist lacks progress because they have no dreams to direct them.  The question is how does an earth full of people dream?  But not just dream, but also see those dreams come into fruition?  There are few people in the history of man whom dreamed of a world better than this one, AND did something in the world today that brought that change to the world.  These are the people who you read about in your history books, the tales of old, and in your Bible.  These are the people that are remembered for what they have done.  These are the people who decided to create the new future and in the same breath made history.  From Martin Luther Jr.'s famous I have a dream speech, to Martin Luther's nailing of the 95 thesis in opposition to the misuse and interpretation of the Bible.  The men who dared to challenge the "reality-ists" for a new way of life are the ones whom are remembered.  One man reformed the Christian faith, and the other man reformed our faith in each other as human beings.  From Moses who dreamed of a promised  land for God's people while they were enslaved in Egypt, to Mother Teresa who believed that every human being is of value despite health, age, or wealth they possess.  The dreams we dream are useless if we do not take any action to fulfill them, in the same breath no dream worth chasing is one that you can attain on your own.  The world is not changed  by small thoughts, but the big "I have a dream" dreams are dreams that are worth dreaming.  So where do we find inspiration for dreams so large that they are unattainable, but worth chasing because others will see the benefit of a better life?  I say call upon God and ask Him for His dreams and His vision for the Earth, and chase what dream He places in your heart.  For God's dreams are always bigger than what we can achieve on our own, and His dreams fulfilled are the ones that change not only history, but every person, every soul for eternity.

Move & Time

Two abstract and seemingly unrelated words that many have defined. Webster has defined them as, "to go or pass to another place or in a certain direction with a continuous motion" and "the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues" respectively.

Some would say that they are on time, out of time, just in time, and here all the time. Somehow time is also money, time waits for no one, and yet its time to leave. Time and time again I have been told that there is a time for everything, a time to plant and a time to harvest, a time to cry and a time to celebrate, a time to be serious and a time to have fun. So half the time I spend my time trying to figure out what time is that "right time" that I am supposed to be doing that which i have been told there is a time for. Also, I, as well as you, have overused the idea of move. Move in, move out, move along, move over, get on the move, and i quote "I like to move it, move it". Are just some of the many ways that we as English speakers use abstract and beautiful words in common useless ways. These words are even harder to comprehend when we mix in our own preconceived meanings of the words. I would like to propose to you that the understanding of Move is impossible without Time, and that Time in itself is impossible to measure without something to Move. You see if time truly is the measurable period in which an action , process, or condition exists or continues, the only logical conclusion is that where there is no action, process, or condition that exists there is no time. Without something moving, something changing, or something even existing there is no time. You see, time, requires movement. For us as humans to measure time we must observe something that has moved or is moving or has the potential to move or change. The sun moves from the east to the west and we perceive that time has passed We see a snail crawl across the yard and we see that time is passing as it moves (although very very slowly). Our perception of time is based on movement. Even to the simplest analogy of looking at a clock on the wall. You ask the time, and a person tells you where the hands on the clock have moved to. Even the clock moves to tell time. If nothing moves or changes then it is our assumption that no time has passed (or the clock is broken). The same could be said true of move. You would never move if you didn't have time. It takes time to move, whether a few seconds to the other side of the room or a few days to the other side of the world. Every move requires time. So to better understand both move and time we must understand that we don't have time without movement, and if we don't move we will never have time. Movement and Time are unarguably intertwined and are the essence of life.

So for all of you who are confused, lost, or just wondering why the heck i just spent 10min reading this blog let me apply this to our lives a little bit. Time is a process, an action, a way of living; time is all you have because when time runs out there is no longer movement. So from the beginning of your movement on earth to when you cease to move any longer, is all the time you have, Is all the time I have, and Is all the time that any person on Earth at this moment will ever have. What will you do with this time? Most certainly you will move, most certainly you should improve through process, and most certainly you must move others in time to improve. Good or bad our time is filled with every move. we can not go back and change time, we can only move forward moving to do good. But what is ultimate good? Well many disagree, but i say ultimate good is being in close relationship with God and moving in His will for your time. Therefore the movement of your time should be based in the product of His will and the arms of God our Father who created time and calls us to move and change a world full of people running out of time.

Here is an old poem of mine that reflects about the time we have:

One Time

The creation of the universe
The birth of human life
Man’s fall into sin
Each only happened one time

The Persians and Mongols
The Greeks and Romans
The Germans and Russians
Civilization fought civilization only at one time

One man’s death on a cross
One man’s resurrection from the grave
One man’s promised return to earth
Changed the world with only one time

Every event
Every nation
Every person
Only gets one time

You’re born
You live
You die
What will you do with your one time?