Just When You Thought The Best Was Through

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT THE BEST WAS THROUGH
-On a cold January the sky fell down
The bricks were crumbling and the stones toppled out
On an old typewriter I spelled it there , my soul out loud
Then you put them all together glue gun spine and paper bound
You said hey there brother, don’t let yourself drown
Your world is so much bigger than this beggar’s town
----Friend you’ve never found it out
All this Treasure you’ve hid within yourself
Friend I dug out all the gold from you
All the words inside you never knew
They’ve been building a better world for you
Just when you thought the best was through
Just when you though the best was through
-On a warm November it turned all round
The girl came back and the accounts blacked out
On a brand new podium I spoke it there, my soul out loud
Then you put them all together bringing smiles from frowns and getting videos out
You said hey there brother, don’t let yourself get proud
Your world was once so much smaller than this empire now
----Friend you’ve never found it out
All this Treasure you’ve hid within yourself
Friend I dug out all the gold from you
All the words inside you never knew
They’ve been building a better world for you
Just when you thought the best was through
Just when you though the best was through

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT THE BEST WAS THROUGH was written for my book editor Rauna Human.
She has been a true God-Send throughout this entire writing process, as well as other friends too numerous to count. An editor’s duty is more than just arranging fonts and paragraphs, a great editor is a friend, a coach, a mentor, a motivator and sometimes even a mother or father to us meandering poets who can no more stay on task than an unattended sailboat in a storm or a kindergartner can do his homework in a toy store full of fantastic ideas and possibilities. Sometimes our editors and our friends are our anchors in the storm to hold us on path, sometimes the rudder to redirect us to shore when nothing is going as planned in our daydreams about better tomorrows, and sometimes they are wind in our sails when inspiration isn’t coming to push us along. Without an editor, a writer is simply that strange guy sitting in the corner with a laptop making unusual expressions during conversations with the sentences and syllables bouncing around his brain, all trapped inside boxes of obscurity in the warehouse of his mind. Alongside an editor though, the writer becomes a source of dreams and hopes and ideas that can change lives, and the editor helps deliver the art and the thought to the world in a way that the world can unwrap it and appreciate it and turn sparks into hearts on fire in a generation.
Rauna’s husband Jason Human has also been a God-Send to us both, he encourages us both to be better than we thought we were, in our crafts and in our lives. The weight of creativity can be contagious in a sense, the heights of creative joy and the depths of artistic depression seep over onto the editors and well and these in turn carry over into their home life, so a book is a sacrifice for so many people other than just the writer, which includes Jason as well. Just as any athlete needs a coach that coach also needs a support system or the game is never won, Jason has been this for us both this year.
I met my editor in an INFJ Group of Facebook (we share a personality type that is only 1% of the population on the MBTI, a very misunderstood personality type with a natural bent to counseling and writing). That was nearly two years ago and neither of us had any idea that we would be writing a book together, or hopefully counselling and ministering together alongside my ministry partner Melissa Collins and our friend Jodi Ervin and Rauna’s husband Jason Human. We had no idea the struggles we would all face together, or the victories, but the Creator is also a Connector and He gives us family even when we have given up on the concept, even when we didn’t realize how much we needed family. A “Hello” can be a powerful force in the lives of two people that carries blessing over into the lives of dozens or hundreds or even thousands of people, as the Creator takes a seed of life and multiplies it, as long as that seed came from Him, and we turn its care over to Him to make it grow in His time not ours. All of us hope and honestly pray that this book brings life to you in every way there is possible to live.
We all have those places in our lives where we have given up hope. Sometimes this places are left desolate because we don’t have the knowledge or the skills or the equipment needed to cultivate the seeds inside us so they can grow into something that would give life to others. We all have a seed of something to present as a gift to the world, it may be a business that finances other people’s seeds, it may a heart that nurtures the seeds in other hearts or a song or a book or a painting or a video that does the same, or it may be hands that build a safe home for the next generation. The problem is that we are a generation which has been given the foolhardy expectation of cultivating our lives on our own, without the nuclear and extended family and community and mentors and friends that all who came before us naturally understood to be necessary to survive, much less thrive and teach others the same.
The Japanese understood people to be vessels, and each person is whatever they have chosen to fill themselves within or whatever they have chosen to cultivate in their lives that was inside them when they were born. Their word for person is “Sha” or “Ja” like “Gei-Sha” and “Nin-Ja”. A Geisha (Cultivated Person) was a woman who had trained for years in the art of conversation, which would include etiquette and poetry and philosophy and art and history and current events and how to make others feel at home, in addition to flower arranging and other arts, so essentially they were experts in the sacred art of hospitality. What made them such a pleasure to be near (and inspired all the funds spent to simply enjoy an after dinner conversation with a Geisha over tea) was how they had cultivated to perfection everything that was inside them. This is actually what makes any person a pleasure and an inspiration to be near, those who have turned the seeds into them into a full garden in bloom. The Kanji (Japanese symbol) for a Geisha is in fact, a Blooming Garden inside a Vessel. Geisha’s were also a completely different class of women than prostitutes, as a Geisha also tied her Obi (sash) in the back of her Kimono and in fact needed assistance just to get dressed and undressed, opposite of a prostitute. David Lowry’s book “Sword and Brush, the Essence of the Martial Arts” has pages on each of these.
The Kanji for Nin-Ja is also one of my concepts from the Japanese culture. Nin-Ja means “Person that Perseveres ” and the Kanji is the Symbol for Vessel of course but also “Nin” for “Perseverance”. The “Nin” symbol is a Blade over a Heart, as persevering is having a heart that cuts through all obstacles like a blade. The symbol for Heart is a boat with a rudder, as the heart is the pilot for the rest of the body. As the Scriptures say “Out of the Abundance of the Heart the Mouth Speaks”. In Hebraic thought are Jars of Clay that are filled with one “Ruach” that is (Wind or Spirit) or the other, and we live out of the Spirit that we have allowed to come in and fill our Earthly Vessel, from the Creator or the Destroyer. “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” 2 Corinthians 4:7

Prayer For Those Who Thought The Best Was Through

To The God who Raises Up The Lowly

We ask that you help us see others with our Spirits and not just our Eyes

We ask that you help others see us with their Spirits and not just their Eyes

We ask that we all Wear our White Stones Proud

We ask that we all toss our Black Stones Out

We ask that your Raise up the Lowly from the Pit

We ask that your Bring the Prideful down from the Pedistool

We ask that you mold us into Who we are made to Be

We ask that you Break of us the 

Desire to be Someone Else Instead

“For  you see your calling, brothers and sisters, that not many are wise according to human standards, not many are powerful, and not many are born well. Yet God chose the foolish things of the world so He might put to shame the wise; and God chose the weak things of the world so He might put to shame the strong; and God chose the lowly and despised things of the world, the things that are as nothing, so He might bring to nothing the things that are— 

so that no human might boast before God.”

1st Corinthians Chapter 1 Verse 28

Resource: “The Hope Line” Radio with Dawson McAllister www.thehopeline.com