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The Other Side of Gratitude

God, I am honestly trying my best to be grateful

But my soul is bitterly consumed by a poison not my own

I am standing in the threshold of land unknown to me

A place that many have travelled

I am ensnared with a horrible feeling of guilt

I hate that I feel this way

Especially, in light of all that you bestow

I am pressed between two ways of thinking

The first is the way in which I truly feel at this moment

The second is the way that I wish I felt

It is the way I that I ought to feel

In the former I exercise the most precious of gifts you have given me:

Freedom

You allow me to plead my case

And render my feelings as true and valid

You confirm the plight of all plights

The truth that the spirit of all of humanity shares

We suffer

You suffer

(sigh)

Yet there is tear in the fabric of my soul

Our souls

Both a rip and a drop

I cannot live the duration of my days in the first of my feelings

Yes the pain is unbearable

Yes the shame leaves me perpetually naked

Yes the tears run a torrent river in my soul

And yes You are with me through it all

And yes I sometimes feel this is not true at all

(selah)

The latter is just as equal as the first

It is just as necessary

There is not an ought to that should bridge the elements

Each element needs to run its due course

But the second beckons me to examine the whole

I am shaken in my core as depression seeks to consume me

I must see beyond the veil of this particular lense of time

All of eternity does not rest here

It rests within Him

The One in whom I will rest in

Even when I do not understand the ways of his workings

So it is

We must have the former and the latter of the two

Acknowledge the suffering

Acknowledge the blessing

The two make the story complete

And someday the two will prove worthy of their lengthy collaboration

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Friarfrancis12@gmail.com

What is Beautiful Tension?

What is Beautiful Tension?

A Home for the Homeless

Beautiful Tension is a place and a space of refuge and restoration for those experiencing homelessness. In particular this community aims to walk alongside individuals who are in destitute situations. These are individuals who have no known family, limited family, and/or no extended relational networks. It is a home that seeks to extend kinship to persons who have no readily available connections to family, friends, love ones, networks or socio-relational resources.

This community seeks to be a place of transformation for all who are involved. Beautiful Tension seeks to create homes, not houses. A house provides essential but minimal needs. A home, however, attends to holistic needs- especially needs and wants that are intangible. Providing housing to people experiencing homelessness attends to one dynamic of persons being. In this construct a person’s sense of wellbeing is relegated only to the physical realm. However, wholeness occurs at every dimension of persons being. This would include a persons, physical, emotional, psychological, mental, social, and spiritual being.

Our home is a place where we grow together, share life together, and encourage each other to be all that God has intended us to be. Our home is place of safety. Our home is place for people to live as their true selves, having their identity revealed by God. Home is a place to be alive. Our home is not intrinsically tied to the physical residence that we live in but rather it is found in the relationships we have with God and with each other.

Beautiful Tension also serves as a place of refuge to marginalized people. These are people who have been rejected by their families and society as well as ostrasized by the Church. The primary objective is to walk alongside people who are in destitute situations and are expereincing homelessness. Nevertheless, we lend ourselves to be a home for those who are homeless in the sense that they have no place in society and the church. These are people cut from main streams life due to their handicaps, weaknesses, sexual-orientation, skin color, gender, age, social status, and the like.

Why is this community called Beautiful Tension?

Our commuity is named Beautiful Tension because it describes the angst that each person has experienced and is experiencing in our home, in their own lives, in our surrounding community, and in our world.  Beautiful Tension is a realization that following Jesus means following Him into a mileu that is filled with both great joy and great pain. It is to embrace the messiness that one faces in trusting God for everything. It is believing that all good things come from Him and we are best benefitted in life when we fully dependant upon Him.

It is a place and space that allows people to:

1. Experience following Jesus
2. Inquire and seek the ways and teachings of Jesus
3. And/or share spirituality of varied backgrounds without the baggage of polarization.

It is a place and space to share life others with the full purview that life is multilayered. We live in a society and culture is that very polarized. We live uncomfortably comfortable in a world of either and either (said with different stresses of sound). Either we are democrat or republican. We are either rich or poor. We are either for abortion or against it. We are either for same sex marriage or against. We never like to embrace the tension of living in both or embrace others with different thinking. We think it easier to subscribe to one position and make that bane of our existence.

In Beautiful Tension we understand that there are complexities in living our lives. But we make Jesus and His ways of living our one and only focus. We understand that the possibility of two states of thinking or being can happen at the same time. It is the idea the while we are moving toward greater degrees of transformation, we are also moving towards greater degrees of messiness. The more you grow and love, the more you realize how helpless and incapable you are on your own. We have made a commitment to Jesus and allow Holy Spirit to guide us on our collective journey.

THE CREATURE, THE CREATOR, AND CREATIVITY

The Creature Speaks:

When will my creativity be released?

When will it blast through the one-layer canvass of mundane life?

Was I only meant for the two dimensional plateau?

Likewise was the semblance of my personhood relegated to three-dimensional realm?

For what I seek to express cannot bind itself to the natural order as we know it

In defiance it bursts forth from the typical boundaries of time

Its cries, stretches, and strains towards its Source

Its origin comes from You

It cries for release

Release me

Why won’t You let me go?

Set me free

Set me free to speak

Set me free to dance

Set me free to live

Set me free to breathe

Set me free to give

Set me free to receive

Set me free

The Creator Responds:

You are free

You are free to receive

You are free to give

You are free to breathe

You are free to live

You are free to dance

You are free to speak

Release Me from blame

Why won’t you let go?

Fear holds you back

It’s the origin of your predicament

I hear your cries. I see you stretch. I see you strain.

Together, we are not relegated to the boundaries of time

For what you seek to express, my Spirit gives you utterance to speak

You were created in my image

You are not fixed to the three-dimensional realm

You were meant to live beyond the two-dimensional plateau

You will blast through the one-layer canvass of mundane life

Your creativity will be released when you let go of fear

Creativity Breathes:

Amen.