rearranging

henri nouwen said: "discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up... that somewhere you're not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied." he also said, "in the spiritual life, the word 'discipline' means 'the effort to create some space in which God can act'".

this is good stuff, guys.

i can't even begin to tell you how much i love living in new york city. nothing has ever made me feel more confident, alive, right, peaceful, etc... but also nothing has ever made me feel so rushed. and a lot of times it's a good rush - like when you get off one of the yeller trains at 23rd at night and have such a big beautiful clear shot of the empire all lit up and 3D like, and you can't help but go, "dang this city is beautiful!" but most times it's this unnecessary rush of "gotta get there, gotta get there" and lots of times you don't actually have to get anywhere.

the thing i disliked most about living in the south (besides the accents that i still can't understand) was the slooooow pace. the way the people talked, the way they drove, the way they went about doing things. i felt like saying, "c'mon, c'mon, c'mon" like i was robbing a bank all the time. so you can guess that one of my favorite things about living here is the speediness of everything.

but it's a double edged sword. that unnecessary rush i was talking about can sometimes make you feel like you're in a hurry to do nothing and i find myself walking by situations with strangers or things i'd love to just sit and stare at, all in an effort to get to the next place efficiently.

last summer i spent a good bit of my weekends away in this beautiful bummy beach town called sag harbor and found it so easy to create a great amount of space for discipline. so simple to do when you're outside of your element and the only things to do are relaxing in nature. this summer will be a repeat, only in a town called millbrook in the hudson river valley with a big house built in 1780 on 30 acres of green grass. basically my dream come true, and i've already envisioned the season being filled with great dates with Jesus, writing, music, etc..

today it's 70 degrees outside and my friend and i are just going to go outside to lay and look at the sky.

but what do i do when space/time like that isn't available? what do i do when i walk out of my front door to people walking fast to walk fast and running up and down stairs and squeezing themselves onto trains holocaust style - like they truthfully think another train will not be coming?

i can learn a lot from my friend stelly, who will let trains pass so she can sit next to the homeless man rubbing robitussin on his feet. she always has good stories and i have never met a person who is so interested in a stranger's well being than she. she is good at creating space to let God work, even though i know she would probably argue that a little bit.

so i guess i need to do a little rearranging in my monday through sunday. opening some more time slots to allow God to work in an otherwise busy signal of a week.