Tid bits and Pieces

Some thoughts I want to share from this great speaker I heard a week ago.

"The art of disruption"
Suffering has within it all of these new possibilities. What we have planned and imagined for ourselves no longer exists.

Spectrum of Suffering:

Oppression <<------------------------->> No suffering
Severe pain <<------------------------->> No struggle
Overwhelmed <<------------------------->> Comfortably Numb

Three ways to encounter the "disruption"
* Your own disruption
* Seeking a disruption++
* Or stumbling upon someone else's disruption

++Example
A boy that lives in the suburbs drives his mother's SUV down the road. Windows rolled down and he's blasting a song that represents a life full of struggle, pain, and how someone went from the bottom to the top. It's about struggle to survive and making something out of nothing. Maybe the reason he listens, even when his parents have worked so hard to keep him out of a dangerous situation and neighborhoods like Compton, is because he is seeking someone else's disruption.

"The art of disruption has within it all sorts of seeds filled with creativity and imagination."

"Pain has a way of making us honest."
In the midst of suffering we discover this subterranean place of honesty. We say what we really want to say.++

++Example
Acquaintance: "How are you?"
You: "Crappy."
Acquaintance: "Oh, okay..."

My own aside: [They don't really want to know how you are! They just ask because it's the polite thing to do! Don't worry - I am just as guilty as the next person. BUT, suffering has a way of making you honest!]

"None get to God but through trouble."


"The art of elimination"
There is endless line, color, texture, form, etc. it is just knowing what to take away. Just like sculpture. You start with a block of stone and carve away at it to obtain the art. When you suffer, all that is trivial drifts out of focus and that which is truly important becomes clear.


"The art of solidarity"
I lovethe example used here.
Show me two mothers from two ends of town that visit their sons in jail and I will show you two women who have more in common than that which separates them.

"It all makes the difference to know there's someone else screaming alongside you."

"What every artist must learn is that even the failed pieces are essential."

"Nothing is wasted in the divine economy."

"The God Who Wastes Nothing"

Native American rug-making is such that the stray cloth at the corner needs to remain, we in Western culture, would want to trim the stray ends off, because they believe the Spirit enters through the blemish.

"This, too, will shape me." The only question is how?

Bitter or better.

Spoken by a sculptor character, Harriet March, in novel by Susan Howatch:

“That’s creation . . . you can’t create without waste and mess and sheer undiluted slog. You can’t create without pain. It’s all part of the process. It’s in the nature of things . . . So in the end every major disaster, every tiny error, every wrong turning, every fragment of discarded clay, all the blood, sweat, and tears – everything has meaning. I give it meaning. I reuse, reshape, recast all that goes wrong so that in the end nothing is wasted and nothing is without significance and nothing ceases to be precious to me.”

The speaker was Rob Bell. He is amazing.