The Way That Seems Right

Life is nothing if not a series of windows. You mean doors, right? No, I prefer the idea of windows because I don't think we're as blind as we make ourselves out to be.

In any choice---right, wrong, or "neutral"---we have something to work with: before-our-eyes data, past experience, or merely conscience. If each choice is a window, our field of vision is limited but not non-existent. Although we can't predict the ultimate outcome until we've clambered over the sill and felt the ground beneath our soles, we can make some determination based on what we can see.

Been some time since I've written and I suppose it's because I've been in a bit of a fog. Mental real estate has been more abundant this year than it has in perhaps the last five years. You'd think making decisions and distilling experiences would be easier than ever, but I'd venture to say it's actually been more challenging because, whether or not I feel equipped to meet them, I suddenly see more possibilities.

With all this "wide open space", I've read seventeen books---plus the three or four I have going---since January (a record for a slow reader like me), discovered and created new music, and researched and made plans for a career change. Yet somehow reviewing the books and sharing the music and getting the plans off the ground have felt like trying to yank out my own teeth.

And in the foggy, unsure patches, how often we choose the only way that seems clear: the "easy" path of mindless distraction or hobbies that are good but not what we should be doing right now.

Question I've been pondering lately: does not wrong become wrong when chosen often enough over right?

What a nuanced question.

...At least that was my immediate reaction to its little wrap at the door of my brain. In actuality, its answer is quite simple: yes. When chosen often enough over right, "neutral" things don't just toe the line. They full on vault over the border. More and more I realize how much it's about stewardship:

So then, be careful how you walk, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. ~ Ephesian 5:15-17

I'll be honest. That reference found its way onto this page via a google search for "verses about time-management." Not from regular Bible study. Hence the question on my mind. Of course leisure and hobbies and non-Biblical study of topics that intrigue are good, even necessary. As is seeking a better and more fulfilling vocation. But when these things consume our minds and very lives, where does God fit in? Is that even the right question?

While choices are generally not binary, imagine for a moment that every decision you make is a Door Number One vs. Door Number Two situation---windows one and two, for the sake of continuity. In that sense, life is a bit like moving up your family tree. Decision one turns into two more "binary" decisions and you end up with a branching, intertwined choice-network with the flourish of your signature in the bottom right-hand corner.

Frankly, the trees we grow aren't all that healthy or attractive. Regret rots some of the foundational boughs and threatens the integrity of their offshoots. Gnarly and knotted in places, their beauty is often more akin to the silver-skinned but skeletal birch. Or unassailable but solitary oak. Or weeping willow.

Yet there are a lot of branches, aren't there? Few leads into many. Small leads into large. Cliche, but it's true that life is made up primarily of the diminutive mundane. But it's our dealings with the diminutive mundane that rock the world. Because our dealings with the diminutive mundane rock us. When decisions loom large, when they paralyze, when they feel like nothing more than a toss up between the lesser of two evils---that's when those moments matter.

He felt as though he had from now on only two choices: to forbear the Ring, though it would torment him; or to claim it, and challenge the Power that sat in its dark hold beyond the valley of shadows. Already the Ring tempted him, gnawing at his will and reason. Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-dur. And then all the clouds rolled away, and the white sun shone, and at his command the **vale of Gorgoroth became a garden of flowers and trees and brought forth fruit. He had only to put on the Ring and claim it for his own, and all this could be.

In that hour of trial it was the love of his master that helped most to hold him firm; but also deep down in him lived still unconquered his plain hobbit-sense: he knew in the core of his heart that he was not large enough to bear such a burden, even if such visions were not a mere cheat to betray him. The small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command."

~ J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

^One of the seventeen, after roughly four years on again-off again LOTR reading. Fellowship 17', Towers 19', King '21. Compelling to say the least, books and movies both. While we probably won't be called upon to make life or death decisions amidst a trek across the world with a mesmerizingly destructive object, the internal struggles that we face are not too dissimilar.

Here's to adopting some plain hobbit-sense. And to the love of the Master.

This world needs both.

[**Thank you, autocorrect. Now I can't stop thinking about what flavor the "cake of Gorgoroth" would be. Triple dark chocolate, I suspect. Like Lindt's 99% cocoa "Ultimate Dark" bar. Lava cake maybe? Definitely a cloak-and-dagger file buried beneath the frosting.]