Lightkeeper's Journal

Thriving in the Midst of Chaos

 

A rather frightening storm cloud just minutes before a rainstorm in Statesboro, Georgia...

 

Photography and Article by Curtis Beaird

 

A shrill voice, always loud, always assaulting, can tear away at the fabric of our soul. Shouting has become the order of the day. From the news media to politicians, the soft answer that turns away wrath is a voice seldom heard. Instead, harsh words that stir up anger are everywhere, read and heard.

Insults abound. Accusations fly freely. Barbed speech that “tells it like it is” is welcomed and applauded. The more absurd the attacks, the better we like it.

We are an angry people betrayed by the idols of our day.

Bring out the wrecking ball, we are mad.

But, there is a price we pay for indulging our rage. A soul-numbing withdrawal that leads us into our version of anger and calculated retaliation, even if the urge to slap back is never acted out. We seethe in silence.

The most serious loss, especially to a believer, is the knowledge and awareness of what the Apostle Paul called a “good work” begun by God in us. Paul put it this way to his Philippian friends, "Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ..." Philippians 1:6

If we allow ourselves to follow the ways of a world bent on retaliation and aggression, we risk forgetting to attend to the “good work" that the spirit of God began in us. Anger, rage and wrath silences the Spirit of God. Our own frustration, aggravation and irritation can overwhelm the knowledge of the good that God has placed in us. The world is seductive. It gleefully and gladly leads us away from the highest and best work that God has for us to do.

Basically, God has a habit of speaking to us in the same way He spoke to Elijah “in a still small voice”. Allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed by the blaring sounds of constant conflict, both within our spirit and from the colliding worlds outside of us, can insulate us from God’s longing to perform the work He began in us.

While there is no escaping the conflict that rages about us; nor should we want to, we do have the choice of focus. We do have the choice of the voice we listen to. We do have the capacity to determine our response. It is not a matter of avoiding the fray, it is a matter of following Paul’s example; and in generosity, speaking the truth into the darkness generated by a noisy world that knows only how to consume.

The Knox Bible translates the “good work in us” as a God-inspired generosity. Paying attention to the good that God seeks to develop in us, we are free to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a world that knows only wars and rumors of wars until Christ’s return.

 

 

 

Copyright 2015, Curtis and Norma Beaird. All rights reserved. 

 

The Threat to a Sound Mind

Article by: Curtis Beaird

Photography by:  Norma W. Beaird

 

I Timothy 1:7

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear;

but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

 

Fear Arrives

Regardless of Paul’s list of spiritual gifts …..…"love, power and a sound mind,” an ugly fear was visited on us on September 11, 2001.  It hasn’t been the same since.   Fear and its cousin anxiety are at all times just below the surface.

But wait, there is more.  The economic meltdown of 2008 pushed us to a new edge.  If the threat of them over there coming over here wasn’t enough, now we have the economic threat of the disappearing 401k, brought to us by a financial system we built and believed in. 

Oh no!  What to do?  Where to turn?

Fear Grows

Today, fear is the emotion of choice.  We continue to choose fear and its primary expression of anger as the engine that moves us.  We prefer emotional spasms to informed decisions.   Paul’s gift of a “sound mind” seems way too passive in the face of the hurricane of anxiety that faces us every day. Given the choice of thought or feeling, all we need is a word or two, and we can start ourselves a flash fire.  Say “Communism” or “Communist” out loud in a mixed group and check the level of tension.

The Problem of a Sound Mind

Thought takes time.  Developing the capacity to consider and decide requires a steady effort that an anxiety-driven anger can’t wait for.  Patience may be a virtue.  Today, it is considered a weakness, if not a liability.  Quick, something has to be done!  Panic, oddly enough, competes with boredom for the upper hand.  Boredom in itself is a low-grade anger.

The little train that could now wears, not the face of courage, but the mask of grim determination.   Shrill voices dominate.  Rage, not reason, is offered as a guide.  The power, love and sound mind that Paul thought were gifts of God have been driven underground by a fear that he implied was not sourced in God.

The Threat to a Sound Mind

Like it or not, and we don’t, there is no way back to the days of our pre 9-11 innocence.  The days when we believed the illusion that we were safe and secure from all alarms are gone.  Those were the good ‘ole days.  Now, it’s a daily struggle over gun rights and the TSA.  The burning question whispered here and there, “Whose house did the drone fly over today?”  Conspiracy theories once laughed at as political fiction have fallen into the “where there is smoke, there is fire” category.

Jesus’ statement, “there shall be wars and rumors of wars” has become more than a statement of reality, it is a business model.  By the way, not all drones are snoops.  The one built by Kratos Defense and Security is described with some wonderful abstract and cool language.  They state that these unmanned fliers are “…utilized as high fidelity enemy threat surrogates.”  Yeah baby.

And, who wouldn’t want to cut a winged “surrogate” out of the sky with a 50 Cal.   For a picture with substance, imagine shooting down a model airplane.  Dirty Hairy never had it so good.

The High Cost of a Fear-Driven Anger

When rage replaces reason, it is easy to demonize would-be leaders.  Romney and Obama have been demonized, and as long as fear and anger remain the emotion of choice, they will continue to be.   We the angry believe that power lies in the strength of that emotion.  Its heat generates such a sense of self, that for a fleeting moment, it dominates our feelings of helplessness.  Never mind that it blinds us to the forward look.  

We never realized that living on the outskirts of rage is debilitating.  It robs us of thought.  It reduces choice to what is put before us.  Read that again.  Anger reduces our choices to what is put before us.  Like it or not, and we don’t, our fear-driven anger blinds us to possibilities that we could otherwise see if we settled, blinked twice and thought past the chaos that surrounds us….. and that is manufactured for us.   Paul again…... 

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear;

but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

The Final Loss

All of the above said to say this.......anticipation is buried.  God’s gift of power is eclipsed.

Being a baby boomer, born in 1945, I knew the experience as a teenager of working construction alongside men who won their war.   They were different animals.  I was thirteen.  They, to include my father, were in their early to mid thirties.  Do you get the picture?  There was nothing they thought they couldn’t do.  I grew up in that atmosphere.

Super-charged anticipation is the best way to describe it.  The Cold War?   The Russian Missile Crisis?   The hinky little bomb shelter built in front of the fire station a few blocks from our home?  None of that applied.  Today was what it was, good, bad or indifferent…… but we were on the way to tomorrow.  Tomorrow was always on the way to better.

A friend of mine in his forties said to me a couple days ago, “I hope I can keep my job so I can retire. Maybe we can get the country headed in the right direction.”  If you saw him, you would think you were seeing a professional in mid-career.  He sees himself as a tired man with a job he hopes to keep.  A man looking for a way out of the fray.  At forty-something?  The spirit of the line, “I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul,” has long departed the building.  

As for me and my house, we trust God and His Word.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear;

but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

 

Bring it on.  The best is yet to be.

 

Copyright 2012, Curtis Beaird.  All rights reserved. 

 

Manna or Manipulation

 

Article by:  Curtis Beaird

Photography by:

Curtis and Norma Beaird

 

The first thing I heard this morning was Blue Jays announcing their arrival at the feeder. They are big birds. They are loud birds. They are birds that love peanuts.  As soon as we feed them, they fall silent. 

I guess it is difficult to screech, screech, screech, with a beak full of your favorite food.   Those big blues never fail to bring a smile. 

Manna from heaven is fresh every morning.

Now, it is assault time.  Turn on the TV.  The manna offered by the antics of the Jays is replaced by another loud pair.  This time, a couple of talking heads doing voiceovers while outdated file footage documents what went wrong while I slept.  If something didn’t slip, break or get blown up in the world, someone somewhere did something wrong.  That too is eagerly reported.

There is nothing quite like the quick trip from heavenly manna to an emotional mauling served up by news outlets specializing in commercialized chaos.  If sex sells, these folks have discovered that human tragedy is equally as lucrative.  What would the evening news be without at least one tight shot of yellow crime tape?  Cashing sorrow has become a business strategy. 

Other than flipping the off button and risking the guilt of not caring, what can we do to manage the constant barrage of “it went wrong,”  “it’s going wrong”, or “they did it wrong”?   This message keeps us off balance and weighed down with a low-grade fatigue and a not-so-low-grade anger.

You are right; I would not have raised the question if I didn’t have a proposed answer ready.  Well actually, I don’t, but the Apostle Paul does.   In the face of the wrangling chaos at Ephesus, Paul allows Timothy in on the secret of how to handle it with what I call the Big Six. 

I Timothy 6:11

“…follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.”

Whew.   O.K.    Let’s go ahead and say it.  Of those Big Six that Paul listed, to think of godliness as a goal, much less a strategy for living, seems borderline impossible, if not absurd.   My guess, when we hear the word godliness, we imagine a life pure as the driven snow, one zipped up so tight that we can’t breath…....or both.  We give up even before we start.  While that conclusion is natural, it will leave us vulnerable to the insanity that surrounds us.   So, stay with me through a few more words.

For Paul, godliness is a way to a productive future.  It is a conscious choice we can make to avoid the downward pull we feel each time that we are assaulted by a media bent on exhausting us with perpetual and contrived tension.  Yelling the news at me is counterproductive.  I refuse to listen.

I’ve figured it out.  They have no interest in me being informed; they want me angry.  They will gladly fake their anger in order to give me an excuse to express and experience mine.  Angry people are easier to manipulate.  Godliness offers the way to see beyond and seek the better way.  Stewing in our own aggravation is a waste of the spiritual energy that God gives to us.

Godliness invigorates, energizes and generates possibilities.  Godliness puts us in touch with a power that speaks worlds into existence.  "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."

Let there be Blue Jays? 

Let there be bird houses we build.  Let there be children we love.  Let there be vision and dreams of tomorrow when tomorrow means next Thursday.  Think about it, Paul did tell Timothy to “lay hold on eternal life….”  

I believe that taking hold begins in the here and now with the choices we make today.  I believe that taking hold begins with imagining something other than the destruction of my presumed enemies.  I believe that taking hold means there is more in this moment than the pathetic view that the narrow minded media offers me.

Godliness, which is the pulling of eternal life toward us, has other benefits.  It recreates our fear as healthy caution and converts anger into creative energy. Godliness means we are not alone with the mess.

Maybe the best news about godliness is that it enables us to think.  If we suspend our minds and use only the emotions of fear and anger to feel our way along, problems are neither defined nor solved; they are only complained about and railed against.  With our head and hearts engaged, we are free to invest ourselves in the purpose of our lives.

The first thing I heard this morning was Blue Jays announcing their arrival at the feeder.  The second thing I heard was the Apostle Paul giving me a choice between the lead subject of the Big Six or the channel changer.  

What should I do?