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A Champion of Compromise:


If it weren't for that one night when I was 15...one 15 minute period really...my life would look totally different. I suppose we could all see that on the way to that moment and since there is a dizzying array of events that could have changed everything too...but they didn't and this did. There are little bends in life, different footfalls on the same path, but then there are other paths, paths almost completely untraveled covered my moss and lichen. These paths change everything.

I often feel isolated because of my path, but I wouldn't be who I am without it.

I think what it comes down to for me is that the best moments of my life, when I find myself most complete, most known both by someone else and in understanding myself is when I find myself in the presence of the maker of that path...when I again sit in the moments where everything changed. Even still today 14 years later, when I meet him again all else faded to insignificance and the greatest moments of my life before or since fade to vague blips on my emotional radar, they are nothing by comparison.

I believe when I know Him, when I remember Him, I know myself. I believe I find myself and my reason for my existence in the often read quote by St. Augustine that states, “God has made us for Himself, (and) our hearts are restless until they rest in Him ”

As you have read, I often find myself restless, I find myself so, almost anytime something matters to me more than my creation relationship to the creator, anytime something temporal is worshiped over the eternal...and this is most of the time...thus the back and forth swing of my emotions, self identity, and spiritual life...the continual bringing under the control of God that which belongs to God, and finds it's meaning therein.

This I believe true as the most foundational truth of humanity...True Happiness is not found in any other reward than that of being united with God. If I seek any other reward besides God Himself, I may get my reward, but I cannot truly be happy.

If it were not for those 15 minutes at age 15...I would not know such happiness exists...I would not know such fulfillment could soak through soul and spirit, mind and body. I would not know what happiness was....everything else I have ever felt, love and loss, beauty and pain, triumph and failure....all pail in the encompassing moments I spent with my Father.

“A pure intention sees that the will of God is always good. An impure intention, without doubting in theory that God wills what is universally best, practically doubts that He can always will what is best for me in willing what is best for all. And so the man whose intention is not pure in compelled by his own weakness and imprudence to pass judgment on the will of God before he obeys it. He is not free to do the will of God with perfect generosity. He diminishes his love and his obedience by making an adjustment between God's will and his own, and so the will of God comes to have for him , a variety of values; richer when it is more pleasing to him, poorer when it offers less immediate satisfaction, valueless when it demands a sacrifice of his own selfish interests.” (Thomas Merton, No man is an Island, p. 57)

Many of you may not enjoy or understand those statements...maybe they are scary to you or different...or compelling...I don't know. I don't need them to be any of those things. All I am saying is I am familiar with my own compromise...my own failure to live, love and hope in that which I know to be good. I fail at loving God as I fail at loving people. I am a selfish douche what can I say...

but I am a selfish douche that wishes to love better, live better, and love my God better, because I know true happiness, in my heart, comes from knowing that which is beyond me....the person of Love, the author and perfecter of my faith and life ...to know and trust in His faithfulness and given life and love... that is all I truly want...

Thanks for reading...

JS

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