ronnie martin

Ready To Start.

The rumors are true, my favorite TV show of all time is Little House on the Prairie. No apologies….I mean…I think you should probably apologise if it was The Dukes of Hazzard, The Cosby Show, 90210, Dancing With the Stars or Jersey Shore, but that’s a whole other convo.

The fact is that I completely idealized the image that was portrayed of the Ingalls family: simple, hard working, virtuous people who had an incredible impact on their small community of Walnut Grove because of the fact that their faith in God and each other almost never wavered, and when it did, they were right back on track after only 60 minutes. Charles Ingalls (Pa) was the sensitive but sturdy, hard working patriarch, intensely devoted to his family, with not a lot of aspirations other than raising a good crop, a good family, and attending to most of the moral dilemmas that seemed to arise in town on every given week. Yes, we’re still talking about TV here.

Nevertheless, I loved Charles Ingalls expectations of life. I loved that he identified himself as being a husband, father and farmer, and lived well within those parameters. A lot of us don’t know how to do that well, my hand being raised as high as I can raise it right now. We’ve been taught to constantly “push our parameters” out as far as possible because, well, that’s how we reach our potential. But how do we do a good job with what we currently have if we don’t have our eyes on any of it, or more importantly, cultivating a thankful heart for any of it?

I guess it means we’re more like the people that Pa Ingalls was helping every week.

Under Cover of Darkness.

How claustrophobic is your life? Do you ever spend time with someone and feel the weight and burden of overcommittment just hovering over them, waiting to bear down and crush them? Too many tasks, too many activities, too many committments, too much volunteer work, too many ministries, too many sports, too many hobbies…too many too many’s. Sure, we’ve probably all been at different levels of that, and some of us would do well to maybe add a few activities to our non-committal, mundane, minimalist lifestyles, but that’s probably the exception. I admire people who have this thing called “balance” down, who aren’t trying to prove their net worth by how many things they can do in a week, and who understand that doing good with much less is always better than doing bad with much more.

A tongue twister, kind of like our busy lives.

A Man Called Sun.

Summer is a strange time here in my newly adopted hometown of Ashland, Ohio. It can feel like a bit of a ghostown at times, people coming in and out, some leaving on vacation, moving into different schedules, keeping to themselves and their families a bit more, seasonal things opening for the summer, activities changing because there is now this thing called sunshine available, etc. It was different in California in that it was always the same. Schedules never slowed, people never stopped moving, things never closed down, nothing was seasonal and the sun never stopped shining. I have to say that I like the slower pace, although my pace hasn’t slowed down much at all, probably because I can’t completely push back the influence of where I lived most of my life after only one year. Or maybe it’s because the season of life I find myself in requires much work, much building, and much more establishing. As long as God is drawing the blueprints, I’ll do it.

And I hope to be content to change course when it’s time, too. 

Brilliant Trees.

I searched for weeks trying to find a theatre in either Columbus or Cleveland that was showing “Tree of Life”, and finally found it playing at The Cedar Lee in Cleveland Heights. A charming, older theatre in a refurbished part of town, right up the street from a great restaurant called Melt, Beth and I could hardly contain our enthusiasm. Three hours later we looked a little quizzical, and yes, maybe I’ve been waiting a long time to use that rather nifty word, but it really does sum up our mixed emotions about the film. It would do nobody any good for me to try and explain or conceptualize any part of “Tree of Life”, but it was definitely a subtle, beautifully shot, artistic masterpiece of a film. It felt like art for art’s sake in a lot of places, which I actually love when it comes to music, but not nearly as much when applied to movie making. There was a feeling of incompleteness more than anything else, and although I certainly don’t mind impressionistic art, this left me with too little substantive impressions. Nevertheless, I appreciate the artistic vision of the film’s creator Terrence Malick, as I appreciate anyone who disregards commercial potential over artistic persuasion.

Although I appreciate it even more when I can have both.

Procession.

Routines can sometimes feel like madness. We like to think that time somehow stops every night for 8 hours when we sleep, providing a reset/restart when we wake up, but in reality, the motion of life never ceases. This morning it’s Sunday, so I wake up early and start contemplating church services in front of a window looking out at grey skies with coffee, a Bible and a computer screen before me. It’s like this every Sunday morning for me, and right now I feel tired. But I also feel refreshed, knowing that God has a way of reawakening my heart and mind with his mercies.  

There is newness every morning.