{"id":1409,"date":"2007-07-26T14:13:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-26T14:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=1409"},"modified":"2007-07-26T14:13:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-26T14:13:00","slug":"everything-that-rises-must-converge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=1409","title":{"rendered":"everything that rises must converge"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s hard (for me) to believe how much I used to write. I was looking through old journal<\/a> entries last night and remembered my old quasi-rule of thumb: On its default journal page, LiveJournal displays the past 20 entries, and if the last entry on the page was dated more than a month prior, I wasn’t writing enough. In other words, I always tried for 20 entries in the past 30 days. Didn’t hold to it often, but I did get a nice sense of satisfaction from it when the criteria were met.<\/p>\n

I used to reflect a lot. Reading some of the entries definitely leaves me with the impression that I spent a good deal of thought time in the past. As if to confirm that notion, a few evenings ago I remember looking at myself in the bathroom mirror and thinking how my existence before the past year and a half seems very much like another life. The immediacy of life, the consideration of the future with not just my own but three other lives in the mix are the sensations that preside–as they should be. My life is more dense<\/i> now… Rather than jumping around from the future to the past to the present in my mind all the time, my consciousness is concentrated on the present. The days tick over inexorably, but at a slower rate than they really ever have. I’m grateful for that. And I am glad that I do have as much recorded as I do.<\/p>\n

Marriage and parenthood are arresting things. I was listening, as I often do during the workday, to Over the Rhine, and thinking of Diane and her beautiful singing voice that I have heard far too little of. My wife is a concert-quality singer, and a wonderful writer, public speaker, apologist, among so many other things. By the grace of God I can draw well, write well, organize my thoughts well, fly a plane, fix a car… And before all that we’re mommy and daddy to two little children. We get used to seeing each other only as parents sometimes, and that certainly is our highest role in this season, but when I take a moment to step back and see my wife for all that she is… We put these abilities on hold, sometimes indefinitely, with the hope that we will someday pick them up again, but with the realization that we may never. I know God allowed me to acquire those abilities for a purpose, possibly unseen, and I hope I will be able to use them again, but… After all’s said and done it’s really a matter of changing the paradigm from either\/or to yes\/and when it comes to integrating parenting and our talents. I have a feeling this is something I’ll be reflecting on for years to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s hard (for me) to believe how much I used to write. I was looking through old journal entries last night and remembered my old quasi-rule of thumb: On its default journal page, LiveJournal displays the past 20 entries, and if the last entry on the page was dated more than a month prior, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}