Redefining "Productivity"

I have confessed my work-a-holism before. I have a compulsion to think about and do work related things most of the time, even when I am supposed to be concentrating on other things or attempting recreation. I've had to rethink that lately. Why? It's simple: Li'l MoJo.

Since she has come into my life I have had to rethink and reprioritize a lot of things. Just this weekend a friend said to me, "Alright, you're going to HAVE to post something new on your blog." Truth is, I have a long list of posts that I would love to write. I have been jotting down notes and thoughts and ideas that has been brewing in my brain. But over the last several months I have chosen to leave them imprisoned by paper, while I play with and love my little girl. My thoughts have been held captive and I have not intervened, not broken in to rescue or save. I have been redefining productivity. It's funny how this little ball of smiles, energy, and coos can do that to me.

Quick thought from Sunday: As I stood up front to help serve around the Table of the Lord, I watched Melaina staring at the fan. She was captivated by the spinning blades, lost in their whirling motion. The same thing happens when I spin the little three-bear mobile on her p-n-p. She is caught by the movement. But when the spinning stops and the bears come back into focus her eyes light up, she gets a huge grin on her face, and she cries out with these brilliant and beautiful giggles.

I think that describes life with God. Most of the time in the world we see only the distorted, spinning blades. Our vision of God is limited, cloudy, as if we were seeing through a glass darkly or in a clouded mirror (2 Cor 3:17-18). It is as though we see God three or four times removed, "the appearance of the likeness of the glory of YHWH" (Eze 1:28). But there are moments when the spinning stops, instances of revelation or encounter when we catch a glimpse of God working in the world.

A lot of things happens in those times, some are liberating, some overwhelming; some are empowering, some purgative. All are hard to define, difficult to describe in our limited human language. But true experience makes a command on one's life. It demands a reordering of life around the experience of God. In his tour de force Faith's Freedom Luke Johnson would say that this encounter with God demands and commands a total restructuring of life around itself and in response to the experience of power.

Today, I tend to hear two kinds of Christian God-talk. One the one hand, there are those people who always seem to encounter God, to know what God is doing, and which parking place God saved for them. I think this is far too flippant a view of God. There is no command with these little encounters, no recognition that God is the mysterious Other, whose actions are more often hidden, unclear, and blurred, like the bears on MoJo's mobile. On the other hand there are folks like me, cynics, skeptics who struggle to find the language to talk about God doing anything. the danger is that at times the mobile does stop, God does invade the world and life in powerful ways that demand a reordering and restructuring of life. I feel like I have been blessed to see some of those moments in the recent past. They've challenged me to continue the struggle to discern what god is doing in my life, in community, and in the world around me.

I don't have much more to say than that. No great wisdom to share. But, my little girl is trying to pull a translucent, green sea horse into her mouth and I want to watch, so that wisdom will have to remain hidden until we are done and I can try to redefine productivity again. (NC, Hopefully this will suffice until I can find some real wisdom to share.)