Jesus & Tea

Lately I have been overflowing with appreciation for the small things. I I have been finding beauty in almost everything. There’s beauty in the sad departure of a friend you’d imagine would become an aunt to all of your unborn offspring. There’s beauty in the way the seasons change, and even in the irony of the way leaves have a tendency to look more beautiful in the Fall as they are dying than in the Spring as they are blooming. Quite beautiful.

Sometimes I simply cannot choose. I guess you could call it mood swings, the way one moment I feel my life is in shambles and the whole world loves nothing but it’s damn self, and the next moment I consider it a gift to inhale another breath of oxygen and to be a partaker in this beautiful thing we call life. I would venture to say it’s even beautiful that I’m not 100% certain where I stand on the spectrum between an optimist and a cynic. Perhaps I am mad! But if so, I am beautifully mad. I exist to do the will of God and inspire those within my reach. It’s not about me however, it’s about the fact of the matter:

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse”

Romans 1:20

In essence, we can see God in everything because He has made everything so intricately, and divinely beautiful beyond explanation. I am sometimes annoyed with the way that science sometimes proudly seeks to prove or disprove the existence of a creator by way of excessive scientific explanations. Sometimes I’d rather just take a hike or write a poem. With that I’ve had enough of God and He doesn’t need to tell me why I feel him. I feel Him because I am in him.

“For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.”

Acts 17: 28

Paradoxically Beautiful

When I was a teenager, I fantasized about living in New York because I was infatuated by the concept that so much trial and triumph can exist in one city. The city I’ve heard is filthy and over-saturated with every kind of evil hustle, but at the same time is one of the primary places to go in the country to give your self a chance at making all of your unrealistic dreams come true. In addition, the state itself is a staple of the United States as a whole, as Lady Liberty who stands tall in New York is a symbol of the freedom and opportunity that exists on this soil. Other than Hollywood, it’s where people go to take their shot a becoming something great. I’ve heard it said, that if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. I’ve never been though.

I’ve found few things more beautiful than the way that Brooklyn stoops have long been a premium place for spending time with people and even the place where in the early days of Hip- Hop, street rappers would rendezvous to beatbox, and draw crowds that would observe rhyme battles. No harm was ever intended. At least not in theory. It’s where one of my favorite movies is set , called “Crooklyn”. Produced by Spike Lee, it soulfully depicts what it meant to be Black in a city like Brooklyn, in the 70s. Boy was there so much crime, and fellas running the streets that were just plain ol’ up to no good. But there’s just something beautiful about those stoops.

God makes no mistakes. Please do not read this and think it was written so that I could create a space to preach at people. No. I am writing this because I have asked an endless list of unanswerable questions about things that go on under the sun which make me feel like there is no God. If there was a God then why this, and why that? How could He allow me such suffering? I still don’t know how He could, but I also don’t know how He seems so endlessly faithful and how with each passing year everything tends to arrange it self into grander piece of art , which over time, starts to make so much sense.

All things are working together for good for those who love him.

I’m currently struggling pretty badly financially because I have been hospitalized so much for mental health concerns. It is painful to feel like you are depending so heavily on the next check to get by. It hurts to feel like you are just counting the days until payday and in the meantime depriving yourself of basic things that you are accustomed to having. On the flip-side, I have come to really appreciate that I’ve had enough money to adopt a cat recently, and together he and I have delighted so much in just each other. I did not expect it to be half as interesting to adopt a kitten as it would be to have roommates for example, but God has surprised me and my heart is satisfied. There is beauty on beauty on beauty. I cannot even contain it all…

Today I’m going to challenge myself to find beauty in more things and seek less explanations about things that happen which I find it hard to accept. I am going to seek more simplicity, and value those precious moments scattered throughout each day where beauty can be found in little nuances like the pitter patter of rain tapping against my windowsill, or in the way my failed attempt at making the perfect biscuits seem to be a blessing to my guests who find no flaw in them. It is these little moments which collect into a plethora of events, and combined result in a life worth living. Thank you Lord, for all that is beautiful. Only your hands could have arranged it all.