It is Thanksgiving day,

And I just wanted to take a moment to express how grateful I am.

Last night I felt as if I had crossed a finish line. But don't ask me what that means.

And since life is one long race, the end of one race is the beginning of another, and then another, until the end.

Nonetheless, I feel so grateful to be the thing I am today. And perhaps that is the race that I have finished: the race of becoming.

And surely that race will go on and on for thousands of tomorrows.

But today feels like the culmination of many yesterdays

And something to be thankful for.

How grateful I am for the chance to exist in this world!

I pray that God will bless you on this Thanksgiving Day in all that you're becoming. And I thank God for what you are today.

As Always,

Jonathan

​​How does the man of God grow rich?
In the same way that the deer, and the elk,
And the moose grow rich,
By natural process,
And by unexplainable divine intent.
What else can explain the growth
Of the glory of the males
Of these species.
And every year their rack grows larger.
But unlike the worldly man
Who hordes his cache of fame and wealth,
These kings of the forest shed, each year,
The symbol of their age, and power, and wisdom.
So, the man of God is much the same.
Through natural process
And by unexplainable divine intent
He grows great through the bestowal of divine gifts
Only to shed these gifts
To the betterment of his fellow man,
Until he reaches that poverty
In which lies the seeds of wealth.
And the process starts all over again.
And every time he lets go of his worldly possessions
And allows himself to become empty,
There arises renewed faith
In God's ability to do it all again.

​He is going to allow us to suffer
Because he wants us to know Him.
We have worshipped
But we have not fully known
And we cannot fully know
Until we have suffered with Him
The loss of all.

Ruin is a gift.
Within the context of ruin,
One can reassess and recalibrate.
But the unrepentant will not do that.
And I cannot help them here.
I do not speak to them.
But for those who've always known
That something wasn't quite right
With all their self-made glory,
Ruin opens the portal
To transcendence.
It breaks down in preparation
For that which God will build up.
It kills and strips to the bare bone.
In preparation for a more glorious resurrection
When sinews and flesh will come up upon them
And we will live and not die.
But the path to such things
Does not lead down roads of glory.
It leads through the valley of dry bones,
Through the valley of ruin.

​People make choices to avoid pain.
Some avoid immediate pain
Through pleasure-seeking
And mind-numbing choices.
Others make choices
To avoid future pain
By being responsible
And looking out for their future selves.
But if we choose to follow God into the trackless path,
We will discover that inevitably,
He will lead us to embrace
Not only the sweet but the bitter.
And it is only in this way
That we can be freed from our aversion to pain.
Only then can we come to be pained
By that which causes God pain.  

You cannot hack the flow state without undesirable repercussions.  

A fruit tree does not set a goal.  It lives according to its nature and suffers well the pruning, and thereby, in due season, gives forth fruit.