NYE - No Resolutions - Just Wisdom, Please

Yesterday I was in a small panic due to procrastination, then I realized I was not to be back at school until Wednesday.  Procrastination extended and granted.  I did manage to figure out what I will be doing with my high school students the rest of the week - much to their false hopes that I would not be productive. Although I have a plan, I have yet to grade those papers - that will be tomorrow.  I will not be partying in the New Year - as it is plain to see since I am on the computer - so I will be able to work throughout the day tomorrow if necessary.

NYE always has lots of well-wishing and statements of how so-and-so WILL do better or WILL NOT be doing something or other that is leading their lives to nothing productive.  I see it every year, yet about 10 days to a month, people are giving up, and waiting for the next "starting" point - Monday, on the first of the month, during this next break in work, etc.  I choose not to do that.

This year I choose to take a few risks (not many and nothing that would not be found on the 11 o'clock news) and get out of the house or showing any God-given talents I have to be to the joy or delight of our Lord.  Everything else is just bonus.  Keeping my eye on the cross rather than my own short-comings or valleys of life is the decision I choose for this NYE.  It will have no visual measures, but could very well be immeasurable.


Just because I am such a geek for tree photos, I had to put this picture up.  I year ago I found out I enjoyed driving with no purpose other than to lose myself and find new areas to photograph.  This one brought me to the Keystone Heights area.

Thinking about the Things Read or Heard today

“When it is darkest, men see the stars.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

"God is the Master of making miracles in the midst of messes" Joby Martin

During the Christmas break, teachers have that wonderful feeling that revolves around sleeping in, doing things(or not)  on their own schedule, actually HAVING lunch rather than inhaling lunch as well as a list of other things.  This break has be by far the least productive in my many years of teaching and the most hollow of vacations.  Not sure why the angst of the season is so prevalent but I am ready for a change.  Mind you, I am not ready to be back in my classroom just yet - and maybe that is the problem in and of itself - but also not ready to get my mind back in gear.

I would say on average, I have a good life.  I have a job, a great daughter who is much more ambitious than I have ever been, and  a house that is fine and knock on wood is not costing me an arm and a leg.  I am active in my church, yet I seem to be more about the busy-ness of working/serving than I am in seeking God's wisdom which probably is why me and people like me have a gaping hole about them.  Something is missing

"How's your prayer life?" is the question I get from those who also are active in my church.  "It's more active than it use to be" is always my answer, but is that really an answer?  Would I allow a student of mine to get away with an answer like that.  The resounding answer is NO. 

Today's sermon was about how Stephen is seen by the religious big wigs as being blasphemous against Moses and God.   Not only was he not doing this, but others were leading these religious leaders to believe it as true - who'd a thought, people lied back in biblical times!

But God was working amongst this mess - He was working a plan and allowing those who did not live back in the day to recall their own forefathers' history:

• Abraham - left his own homeland on the word of God to GO (though Abraham did not know to where)
• Abraham - belief that he would have many descendants - though at 80 years of age did not have one child
• Joseph (the one of the coat of many colors) - was put through the ringer - brothers hated him for be the one that daddy loved more so they sold him, he then was enslaved but because of his belief in God having a plan survived not only to live but to help his family live too even during a famine
• Moses - given up by his mother in hopes that he may live rather than being killed to be brought up in the Pharaoh's house, educated and possibly lead Egypt until he decides to visit his fellow Israelites and ends up leading them out of enslavement but to parts unknown and for a long time - in the end, God had a plan of action.  He needed all of this to occur for Moses to come face to face with him on the mountain.

This is all wonderful stuff, but geez, we are talking about big wigs of the bible.  My name doesn't even show up in the bible.  How is the mess that I have in my head any part of God's plan?  Then as I procrastinated one more day from lesson planning and I chose to read my various social network feeds I came across the Emerson quote.  Now I am wondering if I actually have fallen to the darkest part of my cognitive existence.  Will I actually be able to see/feel God?  How can I hit that fast forward button to see that everything will work out - at least for the glory of God rather than my own selfish wants or desires - at least I would know the end of the story and then not worry about the road I travel.

Which brings me back to that nagging question:  How's your prayer life?  Do you even choose to talk with God?  The answer has been "No, I live in quiet solitude."  The only time I talk to people is when I force myself to go out to the market or got shoot pictures.  I seem to have lost (or misplaced) my gift of gab that I had oh so many years ago.  I don't know how to get my mojo back.

How's your prayer life?  Mine has been one of avoidance, but it is getting better.  I think.

Today's photo shoot

Procrastination

My middle name, my arch nemesis, my guilt creator.  I have had some great ideas over the years yet because of that devil Mr. P, I have limited follow through.  I can start things but without a long term plan, things vaporize pretty quickly.

I have had two weeks to complete the grading of papers, yet I am now down to two days and haven't even gotten those papers out of my car.  Between that and my lesson plans that I thought I would attack during the Christmas break, my New Years Eve will probably be spent at my desk at home - don't get me wrong, I know it is my own undoing.  I have found the luxury of sleeping in and going for photography jaunts more appealing than doing the things that actually help to pay my bills.  I have always known that I would be a teacher, but not to do it for life.  I want to do something that gives me more joy - rather than being the task master/policing agent of all things "standardized".

Maybe that is the thing.  I just get no joy out of teaching the way I use to and I have become a processor with a warped sense of humor and the ability to make students laugh at times.  I wish I didn't teach something that was "standardized" with testing and benchmarks.  I just want to teach.

Hmm, maybe I need to think about doing something I more readily enjoy.  In the mean time, maybe one more photographic jaunt......C'mon Mr. P.

Has it been an entire year since I visited/wrote on this blog?

Okay, so maybe it has been more than a year but in my defense, I have a few others - ones that reflect the hipster-wannabe that my alter ego would like to entertain. I was just wondering if this was still on the radar and if so, what should I do with it?

Since know one knows me on the interwebz here as a blogger, maybe this can my "thinking" blog.  Which brings me to today's thought.

While driving mindlessly around my city (meaning I just was out and about with no planned destination, not that I was out of my mind while driving) I was listening to the radio.  No, I do not have satellite radio so I am at the mercy of whatever is available.  Good thing I am an NPR nerd.  But I digress.

On this particular radio show, the speaker quoted a  Leonard Cohen's song with the lyrics:
                                   "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." 

As I drove, things that floated in and out of my mind resembled the traffic of random cars I could see (I happened to be driving in the evening going home traffic full of people who were going to begin their NYE weekend by hitting happy hour or getting ready for the Gator Bowl game that will be here this weekend).  Random and off the wall things were bulleting in and around my brain: 
            I wish I had taken a pottery class,
            Jars of Clay - they have a few songs I like but I can't remember which ones at the moment,     
            What good does the light do getting into a crack?
            Wonder what I could grow in a cracked pot?

Then it hit me.... I am a freaking cracked pot!  The light has been going in and out of me for years yet it doesn't hit the thing inside me that starts the spark that allows that same kind of light to EXIT the vessel for all the world to see.

I have been a Christian for a long while and although have not been a great prayer or reader of the bible, I do seek podcasts of Gospel-driven pastors and put these on my iPod as I walk (literally, not figuratively) and I am an active behind the scenes participant at my church that has gotten off to a running start.  This Cracked Pot idea got me thinking not only in words but in picture form.  Imagine this video - something on an Indiana Jones motif:

There is a huge clay pot/vessel (about the size of me) that has been in the dark for so long that it doesn't even seem to be annoyed by the fact it is not being used for good.  It has been hidden for so long, no one even remembers seeing it.  But then there is an unearthing of darkness and a sliver of light is able to get to the vessel.  That light is coming from a surveyor (or savior if you will) who knows that something exists on this land yet can't see it just yet due to the darkness that surrounds it, yet He knows it is there and He is wanting to find it.

A light makes its way through the darkness and there in this cavern of darkness and numbness is the clay vessel with cracks throughout.  Light is allowed through those cracks.  The surveyor realizes there is something inside the vessel.  It is a very unique object that if heated to just the right temperature, will ignite a flame that burns for an inordinate amount of time.  And that flame allows others to see as well.

So the surveyor digs to open the light from the sun to shine down on it.  As the sun moves across this opening, it manages to cast shadows on the inside of the  vessel, but not ignite the precious object found inside.  It is not the right angle of the sun to hit the vessel.  It is not the vessels time to create light - not yet, but in time.  Give it time.