Beren and Luthien . . .

I think when most people think of Tolkien and Love, something like this pops into their head

But really, after reading The Silmarillion (yes, I will even make plugs for it here guys), the image I have now is this :

The story of their romance is best told in their biographies, I am sure, but even a cursory glance at either J.R.R. or Edith's wikipedia page tells the story of a forbidden love that could not be conquered, of a young married couple separated by the horrors of WWI, of their frustrations with each other, and how their joy in their family was greater than that.

Tolkien never called his wife "Luthien", but she inspired his tale of Luthien, the immortal elf, and the mortal warrior Beren. Long before Aragorn and Arwen ever graced Middle Earth, and long before the sacrifices they both made and the war that separated them, and long before Sauron was the Dark Lord, there was Beren, and Luthien, and Morgoth. I'll spare the details here, but the thing I love so much about their story is that Luthien fights with and for Beren . . .

She's described as the most beautiful of all the Children of Iluvatar (Children of God - the men and elves). And yet she is far from a porcelain doll, more than a model posing eternally - she is fierce and strong, valiant and courageous. She does not sit idly by while Beren embarks on a mission of suicidal proportions - she leaves the bliss of her father's kingdom and fights with him, and even death is not enough to conquer their love.

It's the great romance, the story we have with God, played out in the romances all around us. And for all my longing to be united (re-united?) with my Luthien, in every good romance there is a time of separation, a time of both persons learning intimately who they are so they can in turn share that intimacy with another, and share in the intimacy of the other.

One thing I do know - I will not have a happily ever after - that just sounds too final. No, the romance I have in mind has no end, as I will always be wanting to know more about the infinity of my wife, and want to teach her more of my own.

And like the Greatest Love Story Ever Told, it will take an eternity to live out.


G


PS - Listening to We are Man and Wife, Your Hand in Mine, For the Longest Time, Unchained Melody & The Giving while blogging WILL influence what you write - not that it's bad.

Smashing Pumpkins

I've got today stuck in my head as I prepare for bed tonight - I've also got on the roof again in there, for which Mike Swalm is entirely responsible.

And yes, I am going to bed at 8 pm tonight - so tired today. But a good tired.

I love my job. I love the people I meet, the way I get to interact with them . . . I even like that it's downtown, which is wild. I usually hate urban areas. But as I walked out the door after my little (emphasis on little) workout, there was this wonderful sense of contentedness.

I love where I'm at in life right now. I love the good things in my life, because they daily give me things to be thankful for, and I love the bad things, because they daily remind me I can't do any of this on my own. I love that I'm not perfect, I love that life is not inherently safe, and I love that risks pay off.

Today was the greatest day I've ever known . . . and I love that everything in life will be and can be redeemed, even lyrics meant to express suicidal thoughts.

Don't get me wrong - my life is far from perfect. It's not even ideal. If I was interested in doing so, I could list 20 things off the top of my head that could stress me out about my life right now. But why? There was so many little things that happened today to make it great, that tonight I go to bed anticipating tomorrow.

La vita e bella :)

Be Inspired . . . by a TV show?

Yes.

Nothing long, nothing eloquent tonight, but if you get a chance to watch The Buried Life ever, do it. You won't regret it. It's rare that I would encourage someone to watch TV, but trust me, this show almost makes up for the over the top hedonism and indulgence of most other reality shows single handedly. For everything these four boys do on their list, they help someone else cross something off their own list . . .

http://theburiedlife.com/thelist/

Now, I'm not gonna endorse everything on here, and obviously my own list would look different. But I love the spirit behind it, of not settling, but CHASING dreams and inspiring people along the way.

And I want to do this. Not in a "I'm bored and sitting on my couch with nothing to do so this sounds good " kind of way. But f'real. Maybe not the whole bucket list idea, but a cross country road trip that positively affects the people I meet?

I'm in.

Course, here's where I'm at now - there's no way I can afford to do that. So, let's shrink it down a little and let me live recklessly in pursuit of one of my huge goals in life - to make a new person smile each day. Not only is this pushing me to interact with people, but to interact with them POSITIVELY and to be a blessing to them . . . try it, wherever you are. Make a new person smile every day. Just one person. And a different one each day. Even people in the smallest towns are near enough people to make it to the end of the year without overlap.

Rando thoughts on a Monday Night

Valentine's Day

Just want to thank some very special people to me toady, for loving me so much today - Trev and Rach, Asher and Dayna, Mike and Trish,Bella, Elena and Eden, Ruel and Anna and Dita (not suer on the spelling), and Jay and Dan . . . thank you. It may not seem big to you at all, but you made my heart full today just by being you and letting me be a part of your lives.

Papa, thank you for love, for being love, for showing us how to love, and for being humble enough to let us love you through the love we have for each other. I love you :)

Avatar

Hey - didn't feel like writing, so you get to see my face and hear my voice for a little post Avatar monolouge. Enjoy.

What Dreams May Come . . .

So, here I am, Thursday night, laundry's done, place looks good . . . did a little bit of handy man junk around the house today (emphasis on little bit), and I was thinking about what I should blog about, cuz I felt like I wanted to . . . .


I have a lot of dreams. I'm not gonna make a bucket list here or update my current one - God only knows how many lists I make A DAY, so I don't feel the need to make another. But in one of my journals / writing pads, I decided to scrawl the words REAWAKEN IMAGINATION across the top, and then think of all the things I've always wanted to do that I didn't need someone else with me to accomplish.

Keep in mind, I think it would be uber sweet and romantic to do most of these with my girlfriend/wife/significant other, but that's been my problem for the last little while - limiting myself in what I seek to do by deciding to forego certain experiences until someone special is in the picture . . .

Screw that. We're not promised tomorrow, so I'm not gonna wait till I'm in a "relationship space" or with someone to try and do some of these things.

I'm going to go to, in no particular order, Holland, England, Scotland, Iceland (which I was kinda picturing as a honeymoon spot, but what the hell - it's still beautiful there), Uganda, Thailand (both of those for much different reasons than the previous countries), to school to get a master's, to Lulu.com to publish my novel, to any cave anywhere once I take up spelunking, to every ocean and surf, to somewhere for surf lessons . . . .

Sure, some of my really big dreams (havign kids, being a husband and father, Saturday morning walks around the backyard in search of worms / frogs / leaves / snowmen, depending on the season) are gonna have to wait for Her. And that's cool. But I'm not going to be idle while I wait for that day.

So . . . just a little glimpse into where I'm at in this particular season of life. What I've shared is by no means everything I plan to do, but it's a good start. And I'm giving myself the rest of my life to complete it.

Pilgrims

Hello . . .

A lot of the things Peggy says to me resonate deeply, and sometimes those things are found in the most unlikely of places. Who would have thought a simple benediction would inspire a host of imagery, a deeper understanding of the nature of this life we all live.

"From one pilgrim on this journey to another" is how she signed off on her last email to me.

And it got me thinking.

Now, I've loved the picture of life as a journey for as long as I can remember - I read a children's version of The Pilgrim's Progress when I was 6 or 7, and became captivated by it. And most fables that capture my heart have as their central point this quest - a physical quest, an actual moving about on the face of the earth in search of something (though I like quests of self as well, I've loved geography since around the same age, when I was looking at a globe and wondering how Australians stayed on the planet and didn't fall off).

We are all pilgrims . . . and I think we like to operate from an "us" vs "them" mentality too often in regards to our fellow man. There is no "them" . . . don't let Fox pull the wool over your eyes on that one. There is only "we" . . . WE are all on this journey, you, me, the people we've met - that homeless guy who smells of his own piss and the single mother who has yet to hit 20 and the suit who looks like he has his shit together and the housewife who sings her kids to sleep every night and the guy above me who snores too loud every night and your neighbour with the loud fights and your other neighbour with the stupid little dog . . . and every member of Al-Qaeda, every member of Hamas and Hezbollah, and the men and women in the Mossad and the CIA, and the leaders of the EU, and the ambassadors to the UN, and the heads of the WTO, and the people in Greenpeace and the people in Shell and Exxon and OPEC . . . the communists and fascists, the liberals and conservatives, the tree-huggers and the planet-rapers, vegetarians and factory farm operators, evolutionists and creationists, Habs fans and Leaf fans and Sox fans and Yankee fans and those who hate sports altogether . . .

We're all on the same journey.

Everyone you meet today, no matter how pleasant or rude they are to you or you may be to them, is on a journey home. Ecclesiastes tells us that God has put eternity in our hearts, and we feel it as the sun sets, as we say good bye to loved ones till next time, as we watch our children get married, as we learn about a dear one's death, we feel this tug of eternity. Things weren't meant to end. Death was not a part of the original plan, and good bye was not a part of the original language. I don't know about you, but there seems to be this tension in my life between trusting that God will be faithful like He has been in the past and wanting to do my best to ensure that the future is as bright as the present has been . . .

We are all on this journey, all have this tug on our hearts for something greater than what we can set our eyes on here, and we've all experienced opposition in our journey. Some have bought into lies along the way, and have journeyed back to a "safer" place . . . they've built a fortress along the way and vowed to stay behind it, all the while denying the call deep within themselves that says a better life is found behind these self made walls. Some allow themselves to be used by the enemy to delay or if possible stop others on their journey, and more than likely think they are doing good. Still others deny the journey altogether, if not with their words, than with their lives. And occasionally, you meet someone who embraces that journey, not worrying about the cost, because nothing compares to the glory of pressing on and encouraging others to as well.

When you meet someone like that, you pray that you can journey for as long as possible with them, and I believe the best marriages are those between two people fully aware of their own journey and dedicated to encouraging their partner on their own. The deepest friendships, the best family relationships, stem from an awareness of where we are on the journey and how we can help others even while learning from them.

It takes a kind of humility I'm still developing, and a kind of love that keeps growing in me, to look at others wherever they may be on their path and to love them for it, to push them further while loving so very much how far they have already come. I've been far too harsh in the past, and though it was out of love, it had the opposite effect at times. I'm learning to go easy on myself, and in turn, go easy on others - there is so much happening beneath the surface, in that inexpressible part of ourselves that only God really knows and understands - sometimes even we don't . . .

I hope every day from here on out to embrace this journey consistently, to love more freely, and to be open with expectancy to whatever delights the day might hold . . .

Forgive me for this, but . . .

. . . I'm gonna bring us back to a familiar topic - hope.

Thank you if you are still reading :)

And I would gladly switch topics, but the truth is I'm so blown away by hope. I love how stubborn it is, this impulse and deep rooted desire to not only SEE a place where things are redeemed and made right, but to dare to believe that that vision WILL BE a reality.

I'm writing a paper for NBBI, the school I went to from 2004-2007, in order to get my Bachelor's from them. And going through my class notes from 3-6 years ago, it blows my mind how much I've grown. Not just in my awareness of who God is, though that definitely hit me as I looked through my Systematic Theology notes. But grown as a person, grown into a man, grown in the sense of my view of life, myself, the people around me.

And there have been people along the way who have helped me see things in a way my imagination had never tried to before - Tamara helping me see the "Jesus inside everyone", Mike helping me flesh out some crazy ideas that started making a lot of sense, Asher and Dayna and Trish helping me realize the value of letting people just be themselves in a relationship, my mom and sisters proving the strength of family bonds, my dad providing an example of how it's better to forgive than maintain anger . . . and a host of others.

If you were to tell me that this is where I would be, at 26 (almost 27!) years of age, having let go of most of my ridiculous claims about myself and God, and being free to just contentedly dwell in the present while looking expectantly to the future . . . if you were to tell me this at 23 years of age, fresh outta NBBI, a new youth pastor . . . well, I would have laughed. I had all the answers I thought I needed, my life was perfect AND getting better, and I had no desire to change anything.

Growth, though, is change. And so without even consciously acknowledging it, I was closed off to growth . . . and growth, it would seem, is painful at times, especially when we try to fight against it . . .

Part of this growing is realizing my own limitations, especially when I want nothing more than to convey something to someone, and find I hit an obstacle - be it the very nature of words themselves - or the limitations imposed by others, their own walls, that I may not always understand but do my best to respect. And another part is realizing that I am also limited by my own impositions on my imagination - for instance, it's hard for me to accept praise, especially if I don't feel I've done anything praiseworthy . . . but that's only because I lack the imagination that says that it's possible this person is seeing something I'm missing, or that my actions touched them in a way beyond my ability to imagine . . .

We're our own worst enemy so very often, eh?

So here is the hope - that the same God who hasn't given up yet, who has continued to open up my mind these past 6 years, and the previous 7 before that when I began this journey at 16, will and IS going to be continuing to redeem me every day . . . and that excites me to think about where I might be in the next 6 years, the next 20, the next 50 . . .

And that last statement is especially wild for Greg French to make, because for so long I have dreaded growing old . . . but hope changes you like that, I suppose.

Drumming

'Sup?

K, I don't think I've ever attempted to put down in writing just how much I love drumming, or why I do. SO here goes . . .

• Other than drum notation (which I don't use), you don't have to worry about notes or chords or harmonics or things I don't readily understand too well.
• It is one of the most perfect musical cardio workouts
• Every song everyhwere EVER has a beat, and so you can play some kind of percussion to it.
• It's such a great release of any kind of pent up energy - without the hassle of jogging for a few miles in the rain / snow / heat / outdoors in general
• It's uber cool
• K, don't laugh . . . but I kinda picture myself as the little drummer boy sometimes at church, like . . . I don't have a lot, but I CAN do this , and so I want to do it for You. And it makes me think God is smiling when I drum - either out of delight or humour, both of which are aight with me.

So . . . little window into the soul of Greg. If you've ever wanted to take up drums, I'm going to Nike you and say Just Do It. So much fun. F'real.

Messages

How many times do I hear one thing

And never hear what's really said

Pointless to hear what isn't conveyed

pointless to respond to it - I dread

your misunderstanding, yet it would seem

both you and I misunderstand th'other

I guess some humility is needed

respecting our limits, ourselves, one another

though it'd be hard to open our eyes

hard to accept what we can't imagine yet

doubtless worth it this task would be

ah! i can see the scene before me set

yawning wide with all that ever might be

tomorrow's maybes todays present dream

and still, in the present, there is much light

moreso, perhaps, than at first it did seem