Tlation

Tlaiton may seem like he is just a regular old wooden ship. If we are to look for him we will find him in Boston harbor awaiting to carry a load back to Bristol. He primarily carries tea to Boston and tobacco back to Bristol. But Tlaiton is not just any ship, he has a story like no other wooden vessel this side of India. And this story all starts in Providence Rhode Island. Tlaiton was "born" in Providence. His maker was named Blake and he had a crew of about ten men. Tlaiton was hand crafted from the rosy red wood in Massachusetts. Blake put an incredible amount of time and dedication into Tlaiton. He wanted Tlaiton to live longer and stronger than other ship. Blake did not do this because he was afraid that the world would forget him unless he did something great. He made Tlaiton with all this dedication so that Tlation could see, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that his Maker cared about him. Sadly, Tlaiton has yet to see his Maker face to face, and he is not sure if he ever will. But he hopes that one day he can see the face of the One who cared enough to create him. After Tlaiton was finished and set off on his first voyage he could not but help overhear the captain and crew praising the workmanship of his very craft. This made Tlaiton very curious as to who his Maker was and why his Maker would bother to make him unique and beautiful. As time went on Tlaiton thought less and less about his Maker and more and more about himself. He started wondering if he really mattered. His crew started to take his intricate workmanship for granted and so did Tlaiton. He started to feel empty inside even though he knew he was packed full of tea for the thirsty colonists. He felt like nobody would truly care if he sunk into the dark depths and never flew his red and blue sails again. But one day he heard that Blake (his Maker) had sent a handmade rudder to Tlaitons crew. At that very moment Tlaiton knew that he was cared for. He knew that no matter what--Blake wanted him to succeed. Blake has a plan and purpose that Tlaiton could never dream up himself. He knew that his part in this life was so big that Blake had made him for a specific reason that he could do perfectly. Tlaiton from then on went from Boston to Bristol knowing that one day he would do something that other ships could but rot in wonder at. One day Tlaiton was going to change the world. But for now he is content to bring content to others one pound of tea at a time.

~TDH

Volumes of Joy

Change. It is something that happens to all of us. Sometimes we embrace it like a much needed relief, sometimes we try to reject it like a desease. No matter what we want, it still happens. It will happen quickly or slowly. But it still happens. Often we don't see how some actions reshape another person that happens to enter into our lives. For example a friend of mine has said in passing "I don't drink soda any more." And you know what? I haven't tasted a drop soda since. Just because of the fact that I thought it was a good idea. I have also said that books rework your thoughts. I have read so many books that I cannot tell you what I used to believe because it has changed so much in two years, that I am literally a different person. Even since the beginning of this year my thinking pattern has changed noticeably. People alter. People are modified by other people. A simple action that you perform without a passing thought can reshape someone's whole world. You might have ignored that one lonely little girl and now she hates everyone. Or you could have invested only one conversation in that sad boy in church and shown him that there is a God--a God of love. My actions matter. Your actions bring about influence. Wordless expressions are the tools of great, world-changing, leaders. How so? Your wordless expression--either a simple nod of approval or a sullen silence--can develop another person's whole world. You might have "told" them to do something and it happened to be the biggest life-changing decision of their whole life. Or you "told" them that it was not a wise investment and they missed out on what would have brought an embellishment into their story--their life. So next time you judgmentally speed past that guy holding a sign that says "Need $ anYthing HeLps God Bless", consider stoping and reaching out with love. Next time your head wipers in your ear "just walk past. It won't hurt a fly," don't believe it for a second. Because it's a lie. Live with a purpose--live with the thought "others matter. How can I show this person they matter to me?" and then do so with a joy that speaks volumes. Volumes that tend the change the world.

~TDH

People of My Past

To all you I will never know:

who were you and where'd you go?

What was your name?

And will this world be the same?

To where did you come and where'd you go?

Who'd you meet and who'd you know?

Could you write or read?

Did you even have a steed?

How old were you when you died?

And who'd your family confide?

Could you play an instrument?

What did make you content?

Who was your best friend?

And when did that friendship end?

Where you short or were you tall?

Did you even care at all?

Did you have a pet?

And who have you met?

But I suppose I'll never know,

who you were and where you did go.

So I guess I'll just wonder,

what you did when you were younger.

~TDH

This is a poem I wrote quite awhile ago. Hope you like it.

A Simple Mystery

Awhile ago I was reading through 1 Timothy and ran into a word that I felt was out of place. Let me give you the verse and see if you can catch the word that caught me off guard. "They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience" (1 Timothy 3:9). The word is mystery. Did it catch you a little mid stride like it did me? If you are like me you have kind of feel like you "know" what the Christian faith is. Like it was something tangible--it was concreate. Like I can prove it with "evidence." So I did what I thought was smart and jumped up from the couch and scrambled around our house for every translation of the Bible we owned. I snatched up a KJV from the bookshelf behind our couch, a NKJV from our other bookshelf in our living room, and a purple ESV from my sister's school work drawers. You know what I found? In every single translation the word was still mystery. Go look for yourself. But, there was one translation that was different: the NIV. The NIV reads "They must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience." While the wording is the different the concept is the same. Deep truths and mystery, the first means something not easily (or quickly) found and not quite concreate. (think about it: truth is not an "idea" but an "ideal."--in essence anyway.*) The second is something that is difficult or "impossible" to understand: a mystery. Now I hate to admit this, but I thought Paul was wrong for calling the faith a mystery. I thought to myself that "it has to make since. Hasen't Christianity always made since? Maybe Paul was trying to say something different" but no matter how hard I tried I came up with nothing else that made since. Zilch. Nada. A big fat zero that was eating me up. At the same time that 1 Timothy 3:9 was having lunch on my mind, I was reading through C.S. Lewis' book A Grief Observed. And it just hit me. It all made since. I was out wandering in my backyard and thinking and meditating (Meditating on something is like chewing on food: you are tasting it and making it ready to be digested) on how much pain Lewis was expressing in his hurt-filled words. And it smacked me full in the face. Our faith is not physical, that is, it is not something that you can grasp in your hands and observe with a quizzical eye. It's like poetry. "Wait, what?" you might ask. Well let me use an example: poetry. Awhile ago I watched this movie called The Dead Poets Society. It is a movie about students that are attending an ivy-league collage somewhere in England. The whole story is centered around their poetry teacher and poetry. Well, near the beginning of the movie one of the students is reading the preface to their poetry textbook (which is talking about how if you take different elements of a poem and graph--yes graph--them that is how you should judge a poem) and the teacher interrupts the student mid-sentence and telles all of them to rip out the preface to their textbook and throw it away. Our faith is like poetry: you cannot just simple read a textbook about systematic theology and "graph" it and stick it in your little box labeled "faith" and just keep going on with life as if nothing has changed. You have to memorize it and think about it from different angles. You have to realize that it cannot be completely grasped at any time: you are always finding out a new asset of your faith that you never considered. You must realize that it is called a faith for a reason--you cannot use reason to explain it into something simple. You have to have faith in a mystery. You just have to believe.

~TDH

*Note on truth: Truth is not just black and white. Truth is a person--God. So yes there is a right and wrong--God is right and anything against Him is wrong. There is a such thing as truth and truth will always exist. But no mere man can indefinitely know truth, simply, because he is flawed to the core. God has to show us to truth, then we can know it.

A Cardboard-less Life

A favorite pastime of mine is defining words. Yeah I admit that is pretty nerdy, but I really don't care. I'd prefer to be nerdy than not be myself. (Anyway! That was totally digressing from the topic . . .  now where was I?) Oh yes: Defining words is a kind of hobby for me. Words quickly--and easily--lose their meanings when they are tossed around like a wilting salad. For example, the word love is thrown at everything from pizza to our best friends (or spouse) it almost loses its complete meaning. Another word that we have nearly lost the meaning of is God. People say things like "oh my g-d!" (I did not capitalize or completely write God in that example for a reason: it is using God's name in vain) Or some have said "I am g-d." It just drives me up the wall when people use the Creator's name for their own end--and lies. (And a pet peeve of mine is when people don't capitalize the word God) But--and I say but--something that is just as bad as using God's name in vain is giving a concrete meaning to the word God. "Now wait," you might say, "God can't be abstract!!!!!" And the truth is that God is NOT an abstract concept. Yet God is not a person that you can really define. Let me use an example: say you have a friend named Edward. Now if I asked you to define Edward how would you define him? You might say that he is funny, or fair, or a jerk. But I would not really know the definition of Edward unless I met him and got to know him, would I? My friend Joe once said that trying to describe a person is "like trying to sing a song to someone: you know exactly what it sounds like in your head, but the person hearing it for the first time from your mouth will not know what it really sounds like at all." You cannot describe a song. You cannot explain a person. You cannot define God. God is just too big, too mighty, too awesome. God created all that you see, touch, feel, smell, taste, know, think, and hope for. He is outside of time. He created it all for crying out loud! When we try to put God in a box we are taking the real God and replacing Him with a God that can fit into something that we can touch. We take the One who can do anything--within and beyond our imagination--and make Him small enough to fit into pieces of cardboard. God canNOT be defined. He just doesn't fit into the box that we call words. He is. He was. He alway will be. God. When you think you have God figured out--He changes. The only way God and boxes relate is that God will always be outside any box. And any box you find is just a boundary you created for yourself. So do me a favor and stomp the next box (or impossibility) you find into pieces of wet cardboard. Because when you have God, boxes are just places to put your stuff you don't ever use. If we lived like God was greater than this world, we would never steep into another box ever again.

~TDH

Investing In Paper

      I really enjoy books. No, I devour books. If I ever find a good book you will not find me on this planet for a few hours; because I'll be in a world made up of pages, words, and letters. A good story will captavate me and not let me go without a feeling of regret until I find out how that story ends. When that story's tale has run its course, I can finally breath easy knowing that those contained inside that book have finished their plight. All that to say, books are my favorite means of "entertainment." Why? I'll let Joseph Conrad explain, "One writes only half the book; the other half is with the reader." There is an enchanting quality in a book that envelopes your mind and your mind's imagination. When you read of the world contained on a page it expands to the horizons of your mind and takes on a vivid life. You see it as clearly as if you could touch it, yet there is a distant feeling that won't quite leave your side. You might laugh or even cry at the struggles the characters encounter. The story captures your heart and leaves your mind lingering on it when it has long been put back on the shelf. You were there when it seemed as if there was no escape and when they laid down to rest, you let out an easy breath knowing that they would make it to the end. You were there. 

      Whenever I find a good book I go on a journey. It is just an experience that is not worth passing up.  But it must not be taken as just a journey. Like my brother says, "books change you." That is why I don't take books lightly. They matter. And books either make you better or worse. They remind me that when you "entertain" yourself you are planting seeds. Seeds of change. Don't believe me? Think about the last time you imitated a movie or TV show. . . yeah about two hours ago right? Yes I'm guilty too. They effect us in ways that are to big to understand and ways that are too small to see. I--all too often--forget that when I journey through the world made of paper my mind is drinking it in like a man who just escaped from a vast desert. I am taking it to heart. Accepting it as my own. But is it my own? Should I accept it? More importantly: should I let it? Sometimes yes, oftentimes no. Either way it usually does. So just remember that when you do something you are investing your time, and mind, in it. By spending time doing something you are (by default) giving it value. Just remember that. When you watch a movie five times you are saying, loud and clear, "this matters to me!!" When you elapse into a book you are saying "this is how valuable I think my time is." Just remember that. We are all guilty. But, we all can become innocent. Just turn it off, or put it down, and show someone that they matter to you. By spending time with them. Believe me. You will be speaking loud and clear saying something that will last. You are simply saying "I love you."

~TDH

* Disclaimer: this is about good books/movies. Bad books/movies usually are the opposite.*

Day of "Love"

Valentine's Day is today. It seems like you either hate it with a burning passion or love it with an overcoming joy. If you are the first, I don't judge you. If you are the second, I am not with you. I am rather neutral to Valentine's Day. But I detest what our culture has transformed it into--a day to celebrate "couples" and to depress "singles." I feel as if we don't have any meaning attached to it anymore. (Well if you are married there is meaning... celebrating your love for each other) But still even if you are married we should ask "Why is Valentine's Day celebrated the way it is today?" Why the hearts? Why the poor little boys who would rather eat a worm that express "effection" to a girl? (No. I have sisters so I was never totally there.) Well how about a history lesson? So there is really no good answer to why Valentine's Day is celebrated the way it is. History is vague as to what happened to the original Valentine. But there is a legend. A legend that Claudius II outlawed mirage so that his army would not be "pulled away" from the front lines by their wives and children. So Valentine married couples that wanted to be married (and who just might have been Christians) illegally. He was then thrown into prison. While in prison he befriended the blind daughter of the guard, and healed her with God's help. (And she had been beseeching Roman "gods" for healing. This converted her into a Christian.) In fact legend has said that the blind daughter off the guard received the very first Valentine--from Valentine himself. After he gave the first Valentine, Valentine tried to escape to get married but was quickly recaptured. In the end Valentine was martyred. Pretty amazing legend isn't it? Well honestly even if it is just a legend, that's a good explanation for why Valentine's Day is even celebrated. Why don't people know this instead of blindly following a "holiday"? Life needs meaning. Life's celebrations need--they need I cannot express how important this is--meaning, and a reason to be celebrated. We must remember that holidays are an excellent occasion to express God's love to others. What better excuse that Valentine's Day? Go out and show God's love--and maybe, just maybe, it will be the daughter of a guard, who is blind.

~TDH

I must give all-most all the credit of the legend of Valentine to an Adventures In Odyssey episode I listened to a few years back. I don't remember the name of the episode but I highly suggest finding it and listing to it for yourself. The rest of the credit goes to Wikipedia.

p.s. an excellent place to find the "meaning" of love is 1 Corinthians 13

The Shattered World

Something is wrong. Wrong with the world and wrong with the world's people. This is a broken and dying world. And you know what? It's our fault. No . . . we are not causing global warming. I mean way back when Eve took the Serpent's lie--hook line and sinker. That moment. That is when everything went wrong. Man--who is the image of the very Creator of the universe--became broken. Our image of God cracked, and now it is broken beyond repair. "Wait, wait," you might say, "What about . . . you know, Jesus?" Well Jesus reminded us that we are broken. This world is so broken that He knew it could never be fixed all the way. (Yes He is God but He lets us have free will) When we cracked we lost something vital and gained something vicious. We lost our agape love (that is the word for selfless love in greek) and gained selfishness. We turned from looking out for each other--no matter the cost to ourselves--to looking in at ourselves and away from others. We were shattered away from togetherness to the broken shards of selfishness. The "something" that is wrong with the world is not him or her but it is me and you. We all too often forget that vital fact. We need to stop blaming and shaming everyone. We need to start loving and giving--of ourselves--to everyone. So now what about Jesus? Well Jesus came to "seek and save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10) with his perfectness. He came down from all His glory and became a broken man. But instead of becoming another broken shard, He lived a perfect unbroken life. So now when God looks at our mess He can say "it is good" once again. How? Instead of your broken shards He sees the stained-glass picture that makes Jesus unbroken. He forgets it all and just loves you like no shattered person ever could fathom. He slowly mends our broken lives and deliberately makes them a selfless masterpiece. But since this whole world is broken He can never finish the job He started. (Remember free will? Yeah that stops Him) So He decided that after we can no longer inhale, He will bring us to an un broken place. He will bring us to His palace. He will bring us into endless joy. So for now when you feel short of breath or when you simply cannot love your enemies, remember that one day you will journey to an unbroken place. A Palace that you can finally call Home.

~TDH

p.s.
An explanation of why my blog has the name A Thought Observed can be found at the bottom of the page under the title "Why A Thought Observed?"

A Still Magic

I enjoy thinking. I know people are always adding "new" dimensions to life but you could almost call thinking yet another dimension. I notice that when I truly think about something it usually gives the task more meaning, or I accomplish that task differently. That's a fifth of the reason why my blog has the name A Thought Observed. But I'll get to that later... So why the picture of a guitar? Well oddly enough I noticed that whenever I play my guitar I start to think. Not just mindless wandering through the expanse that has made up my life but very rational thinking that--it's hard to describe--almost flows. I remember events with almost a reverence--yet that is still the wrong word. I can be sitting there with my guitar in hand and my mind will not be with me but I will still be with my mind. It is truly a beautiful moment in my life when I can just stop, pull our my guitar, and lapse back in to the past with a clarity of a smooth stream that you can make out each the scales on every fish. I am almost in, in, in......--I'll call it Stream--Stream even when I am focused on singing while playing the guitar. But not quite. Stream is a place that I have also achieved elsewhere. Specifically when I went out side during a snow storm and was enveloped into the silence. I suppose there is almost a magic that has to bring you to a place like the Stream. You almost have to have your heart stilled to follow the insistent beckoning of your mind to the place of clarity. There are very few things that can compare to deep thought and the knowledge that God is right here. Always. So the next snow storm or clear night (The stars can have the same effect), I'm not going to be here: I'm going to be silently staring at that magic that will bring me to my Stream.

~TDH

p.s.
I'm not going to post every day. But I'll post often.

A Story of The Light

Jesse was born in the darkness. All he ever knew was the night. He thought that was all that there ever was. He had never seen the sun or the blue sky. He had never felt rain. He thought there was only a black sky filled with a moon and stars in the far distance. Then one day a man came to Jesse and told him there was something better than the dark and the moon. He told Jesse that there is something called day. This thing that was called day has a bright light source called the sun, and a phenomenon called rain. The man tried to explain all this to Jesse. But since Jesse had never heard of day or rain he was wary and afraid. He did not want to trust the man who told him that it was so much better that the dark. The man knew that Jesse was made for the light and that he belonged where there was a sun and rain. Jesse told the man that he would think about going to a place that did not have a moon and stars. But he still had doubts. It was totally different from what he knew that he doubted that it was even possible. Then the man left. Before he left he told Jesse he would return soon and that he hoped Jesse would join him when he returned. The man told Jesse he wanted him to come to the place where it rained and the son shone. There was not a moment that passed where Jesse did not think about this absurd place where water fell from a blue sky where a yellow ball gave light for all to see. He did not know when the man would return but he finally decided that he would go unto the place called day. Not long after he decided he would journey to day the man returned. Jesse told him he would follow him into the day. But not everyone else had listened to the man and they did not want to go. They became shadows in the darkness and the moon and stars were never seen again by anyone--shadow or man. The man then took his hand and led him unto the land of the sun. Jesse was surprised that the man was right--the day was even better than night. He loved the rain and could finally see what a world drenched in light looked like. He now knew what it meant to truly belong. He was finally home.

~TDH

Welcome.

Ever notice how blogs usually have longer posts than Facebook? Yeah me too. Well I'm a fan of that and I hope you (Mr./Mrs. reader) are as well. Welcome to my blog. My next post will be a story I wrote some time the last quarter of last year. Hope you enjoy it.

Tim. TDH

p.s.
my grammar is not always correct so if you notice that I'm sorry. But I'm getting better. It would help it you would point that out and I might not do it next time.