Just My Imagination



Five Days A Week In Latin

 I am notorious for living in daydreams. During college and high school, I would often take knitting needles to class in an effort to occupy my hands and focus my mind on the lecture at hand. Doodles on the side of the page, knitting, shredding little gum wrappers-these were signs that I was soaking up the information presented before me. If you ever saw me sitting still, eyes foreword, you could guarantee I was already gone.

This is part of the reason I love the show Scrubs so much. The lead character, J.D., is continuously drifting off into an imagination sidebar of ludicrous situations, living in his own fantasies.



As cute and funny as kittens being an appropriate substitute for CPR is, it bothers me how much that represents my day to day. That I allow my mind to circle ideas and topics of things that aren't challenging, aren't changing me. How self centered my thoughts are.

"Slow Dancing In A Burning Room" is just fantastic, John.

No matter what you think of John Mayer or his music or the girls he's dated, there's no denying that he's a very, very bright guy. He was quoted last year as saying the following and this excerpt from it eloquently shows the dangers of continually living in a safe but self centered mind set:

"I grew up in my own head. As soon as I lose that control, once I have to deal with someone else’s desires, I cut and run. I’m pretty culpable about being hard to live with. I have had a good run of imagining things into reality. I’ve got a huge streak of successes based on my own inventions. If you tell me I’m wrong or that I’m overthinking something, well, overthinking has given me everything in my career. I have a hard time not looking at anxiety disorder as being like an ATM. I can invent things really well. When I meet somebody, I’m in a situation in which I can’t run it because another person is involved. That means letting someone else talk, not waiting for them to remind you of something interesting you had in mind....What that explains is that I’m more comfortable in my imagination than I am in actual human discovery." John Mayer,  February 2010

It costs us something to think of others-it's a gamble living in community and the first step towards that risk is acknowledging others. Donald Miller said it well in his book Blue Like Jazz, "But the trouble with deep belief is that it costs something. And there is something inside me, some selfish beast of a subtle thing that doesn't like the truth at all because it carries responsibility, and if I actually believe these things I have to do something about them. It is so, so cumbersome to believe anything."

I've been spending a lot of time on the website Wrecked, a website for social action for spiritual misfits. I read an article that asked the question "what wrecks you? what can't you stand?" This question is supposed to be a compass towards your passions and your called ministry. Sometimes I think the more appropriate question would be "does anything wreck you? does anything break your heart?"

For me, it is much easier to remain insulated in my thoughts, in my fantasies than to think about ugly things. There is no guilt or cumbersome belief in thinking about bridesmaids dresses at potential weddings, or how cool it would be to play at the Ryman one day, or writing a novel that would be shelved next to The Great Gatsby in homes everywhere. How selfish I am with the mind that God has given me, a mind designed to think and grow and love and serve Him. How wasteful for me to give away precious storage space to these trite thoughts instead of thinking about the people in Japan suffering apocalyptic events, the malaria ridden children in Africa or the millions of children being trafficked in India right now. If only I loved my neighbor as much as I loved myself-I'd probably think of them more often.

This is one of my favorite quotes of all time:

"I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind." Emily Bronte

Here's to hoping that we can dwell on things that change us, challenge us. Ideas that run through us and alter the color of our minds. Here's to being wrecked for something.

Blessings,

KB

P.S. Mat Kearney's "City of Black & White" is bringing the sunshine today.