Live with no regrets

This past week I stumbled across the following qoute by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

"Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some
blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day.
You shall begin it serenely and with too high a
spirit
to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

I feel like this qoute relates very closely to how I feel about being a
Christian. I've never considered if it is neccessarily biblical to "live with no
regrets," as is the common phrase, but I've done a bit of looking up and I have
a hunch that this mentality does merge somewhere along the line with Christian
beliefs and convictions.

First, I think it is important to look at what the word regret means and actually refers too. The dictionary gives the following synonyms for regret: affliction, bitterness, concern, disappointment, grief, sorrow.

Now, how does this concept apply to our lives? Well, we are to have concern, ie, "regret" for our sins. Of course we are! When we sin, which we all surely will no matter how hard we try not to because we are far from perfect (read 1 John if your interested in hearing more about how sin plays into our lives), we should hope for what is called "Godly sorrow" which can help us to rightly feel bad for our sins and seek God's grace for forgiveness. Now this "Godly sorrow" term I heard for the first time in January when I was the Passion Conference. Beth Moore was explaining how when we sin, we should feel guilty about it in order to truly feel sorrow and genuinely want to seek forgiveness. She explained how sometimes we don't feel bad about or regret our sins, and in this cases we should continually seek and ask the Lord to give us Godly sorrow.

In 2 Corinthians chapter 7 it says:

"Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret,
but worldly sorrow brings death. See what this godly sorrow has produced in you:
what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what
alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every
point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter."

I think this is a beautiful passion, that gives us so much hope as believers and as people who walk by faith and try our hardest to live like Christ.

I searched Blue Letter Bible (an awesome reference tool for diving deeper into the word) for the word "forgive" and it was completely humbling and just truly amazing how many search results came back and how many times it comes up in the bible, literally HUNDREDS of times!! Here are just a few example of the greatness and power of God's forgiveness:

"Then hear from heaven, your dwelling place. Forgive, and deal with each man
according to all he does, since you know his heart, for you alone know the
hearts of men." - 2 Chronicles 6:30

The Lord declares, "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." -Jeremiah 31:34

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins
and purify us from all unrighteousness." - 1 John 1:9

To wrap it up, in Isaih 43 it says:

"Forget the former things. Do not dwell on the past."

The entire chapter (it's not long, so I highly suggest you go find your Bible and read it or just google Isaiah 43 online and read it, you won't regret it!) is truly amazing. It talks about how God, the God of the universe who also created us, is always with us through no matter what we experience. It beautifully describes God's mercy and how great it is. My final thought is this: the reason God wants us to "forget the past", so to say, is because once we recognize our sins, repent and sincerely desire forgiveness for our sins after experiencing Godly sorrow for what we did, then it dosn't matter anymore, becuase that sin was forgiven when Christ hung on the cross 2,000 years ago. We have been forgiven and redeemed, thus we should go live and be joyful.

Body

In the shady alleyway
the figures bend
and end their days
hugging those they love
and shrugging those they loathe.
In these gray moments
you can only see
only feel
silhouettes
black
against the zest of life and light
that burns behind their figures.
Some figures lean against the cool brick wall
scratching their bodies and their clothes
but keeping their inner skin from being touched.
Other bodies lean against each other
lightly
slightly
making contact with each other’s hearts
each other’s souls.
Still others
stand with space the size of Antarctica between them
so far away
each other’s facial intricacies
smiles
eyes
freckles
become invisible.
Twinkling lights flash between bodies
regardless.
In these dark alleys
between mountains of buildings and rivers of sidewalks
among putrid dumpsters
rats
and cats
amid shops and homes and dreams and things
feelings and wishes and words and desires and fears
also float through the air
and drift between bodies.
And out of the darkness comes mystery
comes new days
emerges enemies
friendships
lovers.
The figures bend around the darkness to find the light
their light
the light each shares with the other body.

In Bali, a tiny Hindu Indonesian island, the people live with achieving what we would call "balance" as their utmost goal in life. This sense of balance is found not only by organizing and celebrating and ceremonially arranging their outward experiences, but by remaining in sync with the divinity they seek inward with their God. Their balance is found by finding the center of north, south, east, and west in all that they do and their culture is heavily and beautifully influenced by rich customs, such as the creative Balinese dancing (it reminds me a bit of a mix of the Macarenna, the Twist, and Yoga) and rituals of prayer and meditation.

I tell you all of this background information to prelude the observation that the two most important questions in Balinese culture when interacting with someone you don't know are "Where are you going?" and "Where are you coming from?".

When I read this, I was surprised at my own answers to these simply worded questions:

"Where are you going?"

The future.

"Where are you coming from?"

The past.

...... well duh. So is everyone else.

Really, Michelle, where ARE you going? Although it is frighteningly unknown, I am trying my hardest to go toward my hopes and my dreams, toward happiness and fulfillment and joy, to many days of good health and smiles and laughs shared with people whom I love. I am going toward knowledge, to places and peoples unknown to me thus far, to new experiences, to love, to discovery.

And where AM I coming from? I am sure of this. I am coming from a family that loves me beyond what I can comprehend until I have my own and a southern town that will always welcome me home no matter how far away I stray. I come from groups of friendly memories with both old and new, lost and found and re-found acquaintances. I come from years of growing pains, terrible mistakes, nights of tears and mornings of prayers, and many many lessons learned.

But I must add one more question that I deem crucial to finding this balance we all so desperately seek. Where am I NOW?

Now. I am seeking, learning, recovering, growing, hurting, loving, trying, believing. Right now I am in entangled in so many webs, it all seems to far from balance. But I know I have many people to help me untangle these threads that hold me back and many more helpful ways to further weave my world so that it connects the mysteriously serene present to the thoughtful past with the hopeful future.

In all my tired ways
I continually exhaust these tired days.
By breath, my thoughts, my heartbeat,
it all remains the same.
The same stagnant boredom of tomorrow and yesterday
tied together in the meaningless function of today.
What is a day?
What is a day but just one empty and slow space of simple time
in relation to the imensity of the complexity of life itself.
What is life?
What it life but a shallow crack in the fortified wall of all eternity.
A radiant heaven hovers above and a burning he'll rests below.
The green and blue spaces here, though beautiful in thier humanly colors,
lack the luster of an alternate reality.
So, to resolve in order to fall into a deep restless sleep, where one can hide from all realities known and unkown to man,
this hazy inbetween, where there is no black or white,
no gold or crimson,
where there is only a grayness brought on by the bleeding greens and blues,
this crying space is where our yearning lives seek ingenuity.

work in progress:

In the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth.
But when did this beginning begin?
When did the Maker step down from his perch
to make stars bigger than we could ever comprehend,
seemingly bigger than any possible sin.

If we begin to sway

For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man—when theories changes and crash, when schools philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back.
--Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

photo: couresty of Life; photographer: Alfred Eisenstaedt

It baffles my mind everytime I think about how small and insignificant my life is in the great span of things. Yet still, in my lifetime, so much is going to happen. I also am always fascinated by what Eleanor Roosevelt said, "Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be." This is so true, and although I enjoy those days where I sit around the living room reading and sipping tea and occaisonaly staring out the window to remind me that the world still goes on, quickly, as I sit there doing nothing, I have come to realize that my best days, when I feel most productive at the end of the day, are the days that I interact, communicate, and conversate with the most people.

At the end of my schooling, I gurantee you that it will not by the grade on my first statistics test of the semester or the week or so of very little sleep I got that I will remember. It is going to be the people I meet, the laughs I share, the hugs (and maybe if I'm lucky, even the kisses) that I give that will remain etched and engraved in my memory for years to come.

Going back to Steinbeck's qoute above, I think that it is beautifully constructed, but I also believe that it is because of others, because of man's intimate and emotional relations with other humans, that enable man to be all he can be. Yes, at times we are all going to fall and stumble, but when we have people around us to encourage us and to pick us back up when we fall, it makes the fall much shorter and the stumbling even humurous. It is our friends and families and loved ones that cause us to only take half a step back instead of a full one, because they are there right there with us, stepping side by side, and catching us if we begin to sway.