Bamboo Songs

In Autumn of 2007, I posted here about us being more like bamboo than ferns. In that post I referenced that it might be 18 months or more until we had any official meetings. It is now Summer 2010 and, while we've had a couple brief seasons of meeting with a few folks, at this writing we have no "official meetings". This past weekend I had some time to ponder and pray about things and was comforted by some perspective I gained.

As I ran and then later as I rode my motorcycle two songs kept running through my head. The first was Power of Love by Huey Lewis & The News:

The Power of love is a curious thing
Make'a one man weep, make another man sing
Change a hawk to a little white Dove
More than a feelin'
That's the Power of Love

You'll be glad baby when you've found
that's the power makes the world go 'round

These lyrics were freeing to me, remembering that The Spirit of The Master is in charge of what we are doing here, and there are no results we can work up, or hype. Instead, everything rests on God's promises of love.

And as I reflected on this, that's when lyrics from Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow by Fleetwood Mac came to my mind, as if God were encouraging me to relax, enjoy myself in the now, and quit worrying about stuff that I don't need to hang onto -- that I can just look forward, and trust The Love that empowers and directs us:

All I want is to see you smile,
If it takes just a little while,
Open your eyes and look at the day,
You'll see things in a different way.

Don't stop, thinking about tomorrow,
Don't stop, it'll soon be here,
It'll be, better than before,
Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone.

This was all very encouraging to me as I pondered the "not yet-ness" of what we are doing. You see, it is sometimes tempting to think "nothing is happening -- we've got to do something!" but the truth is, there is phenomenal work going on...it is just not visible work.

And as I re-read the above referenced post while writing this one, I was even further encouraged by reading on Wikipedia that bamboo grows in 3-7 year cycles of harvesting, so in our analogue, it is OK that now, at the 2-3 year point, there is nothing viable which is visible to anyone else.

So, there is no rush for us. We do not have to make anything happen. We couldn't if we tried, and wouldn't want to even if we could...

It is very stabilizing to remember that one of the founding ideas of what we are doing here in the first place is that we don't believe our calling has anything to do with trying to make anything happen.

So here we are, continuing to rest and cultivate roots.

~ Keith