Monday, July 23, 2007

the purpose of storks

I won't get too artful about it today. I've been struggling with depression for the last week or so. It's been growing. The pain of it hit a pinnacle this last Thursday where I had the day off work. That's definitely a blessing, but for anyone who's ever worked an hourly job you understand it's got a downside too.

I'm not getting paid for that.

Being depressed I've gone through the status of -- in my head (thankfully only in my head) -- figuring out who to blame and how everything is being screwed up by someone. That is of course after blaming myself for screwing up by taking a job that doesn't really contribute to my purpose in life.

As if somehow believing that one or two decisions keep everything from being perfect.

That doesn't help.

What also doesn't help is Oreo cookies. Being roughly 105.3% processed sugar they seem to up the levels of Candida in my stomach and adversely affect the various hormones in my body that allow my brain to be relatively free of insanity and rage.

What does help is standing in the ocean. At least it did today. I also suggest going places where there aren't people unless you want to talk to them. Today I didn't. Well, I sort of did, but I didn't want to say some of the very mean things that were in my head. So instead I ended up standing in the ocean watching the sky glow and fade over the West Maui mountains. I didn't even see the actual sunset, but it still helped.

Why?

Another thing that I'm trying is reading my old blog posts. That San Diego one was kinda fun to write and reading it reminded me of that. It also reminded me that I wrote that entry seven weeks ago which a long time for me to not write, especially since I like to be creative as much as possible.

As I mentioned I have a job now and that job has kept me pretty busy. Before that looking for said job kept me pretty busy. Writing didn't help that nor did a number of other creative, joyful things so I stopped doing them. When my job was design it was pretty easy because you have a sense that creativity is accomplishing good in the world. But when it stopped paying the bills (which I had looked forward to for some time) I guess I let it seem less important.

But now in my renewed pursuit of mental health I listened to a Rob Bell sermon. It was actually about how God cares about the environment simply because He made it. In the book of Job God sarcastically yet powerfully points all over His creation to Job. Rob makes note that God doesn't talk about what the animals do -- what purpose they serve for man -- but simply that they are and that's good enough. And to do so he mentions the stork.

I didn't realize it but there are a lot of storks around here. At least there are where I went today.

I can't say that I've been in a very "meditative" mood lately unless you count all that thinking about what's wrong with my life. So the fact that I saw five storks today (note that I saw NONE until the day after I heard that message) makes me think I might have been getting a little bit of a hint. When I was thinking about what was going wrong with my life, I believed I was doing it to try to reconnect with Him and over and over I was asking Him to help me and heal me.

But now that I've started to write and process some of these thoughts I feel like maybe He's been saying all day "Alright. I love you. I get it. You want meaning in your life.

"[ahem] Have you noticed the storks?"

Several months ago, when I decided that I needed to come here, the reason was to know God better. As I got here and began to get concerned about jobs there was a subconscious switch from being here to know God to being here to live my purpose for God. Friday night there was a sermon about how second place things like purpose get in the way of the first place thing of being in a relationship with God. It was a "religion vs. relationship" talk but this time I realized that instead of the religion being evangelical theology it was social justice. In that talk Ben Prangnel pointed out how religion becomes about what it can do for us. I.e. the buttons we try to push on God so that He'll give us what we're looking for.

What does my writing accomplish for the world?

What good is a day off?

Am I getting paid for this?

Is it OK if I don't know what the purpose of my life is today?

What if I know my purpose, but I'm not really active in it right now?

What does a stork do for the good of man?

Well, they're great reminders.

posted by Scott # 2:30 AM 0 comments