Motion In and Out

[Photo Credit: Google Search Pictures]

I spent 23 days of this month of May in a foreign land.

This has been the longest time that I have been away from home in a space that I’m not familiar with. Though it was a totally new experience, somehow it felt really familiar, probably because I was concurrently following a story that occurred in antiquity; the story of  two spies that Joshua sent in to view Jericho, only that I did not encounter any prostitutes woke enough to cut a redemption deal with [Joshua chapter 2].

I ALWAYS enter every new space as a learner, which means I exaggeratingly open myself up to anyone and anything that considers itself as a tutor. That has worked for me ever since I realised that being labelled a wise-acre is something that I passionately detest. I would rather ask you the most stupid question just so that I cure my ignorance or at times just to affirm what I already know than take the risk of failing after succumbing to the temptation of glory.

“You got 5 years to make all the moves, experiments and big risks that you want then after that it will look like confusion’’ – my Uncle

My Uncle spoke those wise words to me at an annual Kids Camp that I was directing after I had told him what I was planning for the next phase of my life. I had set out to go survey a space that I want to occupy for a while en route a certain destination that has been on my heart for over a decade. I needed to be physically present so that I imprint images in my heart of what would be my home for the next phase. I had to intentionally be detached from the familiar so that I could flirt with the new. I had to master how to be out of control. I had to maneuver uncertain situations against a sure certainty placed in my heart. I learnt lessons.

I learnt that:

• True friends are important.
• Family is irreplaceable.
• Brothers are loyal and ought to be.
• Strangers are a blessing.
• Life offers to you what you want; you have to decide what you want out of it.
• Dare to chase after that which is stupid for it just might not be.
• Forward is the only way forward.
• Seagulls are cute.
• The Sun is always there and giving off warmth, only under the clouds is it cold, so the goal is to consistently live above them.
• There exist no limits in this life, except the ones that we create.

It’s not like I didn’t know these lessons before, it’s just that this time round there were an experience than they were information. Experience is truly the practicality of information.

Coming back to native land, I have found out that Stacie Orrico was right, there has got to be more to life! Hillsong just reiterated it with their newest album and above it all Lecrae was spot on with Going In, for that is the only sure way to embrace what life is all about.

It seems that at every juncture in our lives we are either processing a going in or a going out, an exit or enter or both at times. We are constantly dealing with intrinsic dilemmas that we have to work to resolve a clear direction and after we do, we become helpless to the outcome of that which we would have decided on. Sometimes we actually have to motion in a physical going out/in to experience the realness of life and many times we just have to make a mind movement. Whichever is necessary at any juncture, the crucial thing is to move. It’s no wonder that we are just strangers and pilgrims on this planet.

At times I have often pondered on the question:  “Why do creatures’ move, why can’t they remain still?”

Now I have the answer:  “That is the only way to experience life!”

“And Nathanael said unto him, can there any good thing COME OUT of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see”. – John 1:46 KJV

Tudor Bismarck then says, it’s NOT about the GOOD or even about NAZARETH, it’s about the COMING OUT!

At some point, we all have to come out of our comfort zones, familiar places, patterned patterns, systemic participation, expected orbitals, logical existences to a perpetual reality of uncertainties and disorder for that is the only realm of fulfilled existence. Normal is annoying.

Be bold to GO OUT of your familiar space so as to COME IN your destined DESTINY!

 

 

 

 

 

BR-EXIT.

[Photo Credit: Brexit series for FT. (Pinterest)]

The United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) are leaving the European Union!

In simple terms it is divorcing itself from the relationship it has shared with the rest of the European Union for the past 45 years, which is a coalition of 28 European countries bound by a single market to allow free movement of goods, capital, services and labor.I recommend you visit the BBC Website to get a detailed and simple to understand read up on the whole process and its current update

I have been following the process ever since its commencement in 2016 after citizens voted to leave the Union and it has been forming into an intriguing reality to say the least. I have discovered a lot of parallel insights that are rather personal and I awkwardly feel like the process is directly linked to me.

For starters, the process has been coined the term BREXIT, which is a merge of BRITAIN and EXIT. That sounded a tad familiar for me, I’m BRADLEY and I have been EXITING a lot of familiar spheres and associations that I have become so accustomed to. The personal link was even strengthened with the now set date of exit; 29 March 2019. I was born 29 March. Call it what you may, silly me, but for me that was rather a cool coincidence!

“When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don’t, they don’t” – William Temple

So I chose to attach Mr Temple’s quote to validate my naivety and I took it as an answered prayer from my Father in heaven to give me a physical outworking of a spiritual reality that I have been finding myself having to deal with.

Believe it or not but I have learnt tremendous insights on how to maneuver detachments, exits, transitions and a general breaking free from familiar spaces. Odd as it may strike people around me or even you my dear reader, I truly have been enriched and have been finding wisdom in the most rather ‘’foolish” thing of UK leaving the EU.

I will be turning 29 on the 29^th of March 2018 that is 17 days away, that is 1 year short from the 3 decades of existence. I feel old but I’m young as I have ever been and honestly I feel like I’m just about to hit self-actualization, I do not subscribe to Abraham Maslow’s needs of hierarchy but I credit him with some truth to his theory.

Teaching Sunday school class 2 weeks ago however did not help my-feeling-old state, I had the children asking “Uncle, what is a Walk-Man?’’.

At the first ask of that question I thought the little boy was joking but I soon came to the grips that he wasn’t when another little girl came up to ask me the same question. It was a worksheet they had to complete and they had to tick off things that they would need from a list that was given there and how God is able to provide what we need. I had to settle to describe that a Walk- Man was an iPod for old people! In that moment I had an epiphany…… “BRADLEY YOU ARE OLD” Laugh Out Loud!!!

Go back to BREXIT Bradley!

I have gained 5 generalized insights from BREXIT to apply to where I’m at in my life:

• Take your sweet time to consider any attachment to something because if and when there should be a detachment, there are costly consequences.
• In the process of detachment, the structures that would have sustained you will fail you and disappoint you that include the people who will run the systems that will remain.
• Exiting any association or familiar space that you have occupied, you will automatically become a resource to those you will then embrace but a nuisance to those you will leave.
• Never take break ups personal, take them with a pinch of salt, it’s all part of life and living in the ever occurring quest to find balance and fluidity, which is a call of destiny.
• Exits and Entries of relationships are constant happenings that we need to master so that we relate advantageously at every turn so as to maximise our energies.
• It takes time, just as about the same time it took to stay in it, to undo the memories, benefits, disadvantages of a relationship, so be sober minded always, focus on the objective and do not get blinded by the subject.

 

 

We all will experience exits from familiar spaces in this life, it’s in how we will navigate the LEAVING that will determine how well we will grow in the place of our STAYING.