Why we do what we do...

Why do we do what we do? We wake up, go to jobs, volunteer, work out, engage in relationships, but what drives us to act? Oftentimes life moves at a pace where it is easy to get sucked into a vortex of un-reflective, uncalculated, unfulfilling and undesired actions. There are a lot of seemingly predetermined paths which we end up on, and if we aren’t careful we end up far down a road which we never hoped for, only to be rattled awake by the fact that we are miserable and ineffective at everything we touch.

In any crime scene investigation, criminal drama, or detective movie one key element to solving the big mystery or getting a hold of a suspect and reaching a conviction is finding a motive. Forensically a motive attaches an action to a purpose, and links behavior to the underlying reasons of why a person decides or decided to do something. Motives are a powerful indicator for identifying a rationale, belief, or state of mind that generates action. Motives unlock the driving forces behind what we do, and can tell us much about the way we act and what we pursue.

Many of us perform periodic assessments of our actions, we carefully scrutinize our budgets, review business performance, assess our diets, look at our schedules, set goals and review our success rate at completing our targets; but what drives it all? Monitoring action is one thing, but scrutinizing action without considering the motive is an incomplete set of data which only provides limited insight in to the way we are living. It is not until we question the driving psychological and spiritual forces that spur us to action that we can have a complete and telling picture of whether or not our performance is on track.

Similar to a detective, we must regularly and without bias engage in a line of questioning whereby we seek out our motives. The line of question shifts from “what did I do?” to “why did I do what I did?” or “why am I doing what I am doing?” The shift from what to why, does not provide a hall pass us from scrutinizing our action, it simply changes the focus of our self reflection to probe deeper into our action to seek a deeper truth about how we’re performing. Most of our goals and pursuits are not inherently bad; however a bad motive can pervert even the noblest of undertakings. If we are financial diligent only out of an obsession of wealth, our financially conservative behavior is in vain. If we are careful to watch our diets and fitness plans only predicated upon insecurities about our image or an unhealthy preoccupation with physical appearance then we’ve taken a perfectly healthy action and allowed it to create an unhealthy foothold in our lives. Knowing the reasons why we do what we do, is an important barometer for understanding the condition of our hearts and minds, not just the performance of our hands. I think what we find is that the actions that are attached to good/healthy/pure motives are the things we do the best, and the things we enjoy doing the most.

I’m in the process of trying to become more disciplined in not simply questioning how I’m performing, but why I’m trying to perform at all. As I have started to look at the driving motivation for a lot of things in my life I have been forced to rebalance my life portfolio to protect myself from myself. There are numerous things that have historically appeared (from the outside) to be great pursuits, however, over time I’ve realized that many, if not all of my undertakings have been corrupted by my sinful nature. I have found that it is easy to allow an irrational pattern of thought to permeate a broad spectrum of behaviors, it is frighteningly simple to maintain the appearance of pure motive while truly living captive to pure psychosis.

We may haphazardly be better than average people, we may even end up being good people by popular opinion, but what is goodness devoid of motive or purpose. If you throw away a half eaten meal that feeds a bum, is your action different than someone who prepares food and goes out seeking to feed the hungry? We mustn’t coincidentally be and do good, we must live lives founded on intention. Living, loving, doing, going, being with purpose, and purpose is what our motives define. So as we move along in our pursuits, maybe it is time that we start taking some contemplative pause to ask “why?”. Is the way we act in relationships being motivated by fear or love? Is the way we perform being motivated out of a desire for acknowledgement and acceptance or by a spirit of reverence for our responsibilities and gifts? Are our desires founded on holiness, or are we simply masking the rottenness of our sin by doing and saying the right things, and trying to be the right kind of people for all the wrong reasons?

The beauty of it all is that as always, even the most tainted of hearts can become vessels for the work of God. Scripture is full of stories of the transformative power of Christ, not only in terms of what we do, but also, why we do. God has a vested interest in our hopes, dreams and desires, and it’s for good reason, our motives and motivation almost assuredly lead to action. If we truly desire changed lives, we have to start with changed hearts. If we truly want to be better people, spiritually, in work place, in homes, in relationships, in every arena, we must be people of purpose and intention, founded on and driven by love, seeking the glory of God not men, motivated, purposeful, effective.

Why do I write?,
CP
http://chrispanoff.blogspot.com

Critics & Creators

Disclaimer: this is a mixed bag of thoughts in regards to criticism I’ve been kicking around over the past weeks…probably a bit disorganized, but on my mind/heart nevertheless.

A few weeks back I got back to my hotel room and came across an interesting documentary that Jamie Kennedy put together on critics and hecklers. Regardless of your opinion of Jamie Kennedy and his work, he had a few profound points through his movie. Kennedy conducted a series of interviews with artists and critics to address the dynamics and impact that criticism can have on people, and the reason we feel the need to criticize. In a clear state of depression/defeatism as a result of the amount of abuse he had personally received over his work, it became clear that many artists held the same viewpoint that critics and being criticized can and often does becomes cripplingly destructive. Kennedy’s main point was that when we become critics we often fail to consider that we are in fact criticizing the creator as well as the creation…by irresponsibly taking on the role of critic, and recklessly doling out criticism we threaten not only the people, places, and things we criticize, but our ability to enjoy them.

Our culture and the internet has produced thousands of mediums for us to criticize and deconstruct most every facet of our daily lives. Restaurants, movies, music, art, actors, celebrities all have their online slaughterhouses where anyone with access to the world wide web, and the time and inclination can go pick to pieces anyone and anything they wish…and best of all, for those who are unable to find a specific forum to communicate all the world’s shortcomings, there is blogging to provide us with limitless possibilities of who/what we can deface.

I personally struggle greatly with being a critic. While I am a situational optimist, I can sometimes be a perfectionist (not proudly)… perfectionism amidst imperfection paves the way to a critical worldview (both in how we look at ourselves and how we look at everything else). I am very keen on my own shortcomings, and I often use self criticism to try to become a better person and better at the things I do. However, the process of being self critical often can slowly creep its way into the way we look at others and the world around us. Criticism in its very nature is deconstructive, it takes the whole and breaks it into pieces to figure out what works and what doesn’t…the problem is that most of the time criticism simply stops at the deconstruction and leaves the world fragmented and broken.

While criticism is deconstructive, creation in its nature is constructive. Creation and creativity takes pieces and puts them together, it puts color on a blank canvas, it breathes life where there was none. Critic and the creator are typically contrary in nature.

I am confident that when Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel he most certainly made one or two wayward brush strokes, yet like the great master painter he was, he worked even the unintentional slips of the wrist into his master design. The “mistakes” are certainly there…it is our choice whether we’ll focus our energy on enjoying the creation, or peering through the critic’s lens to try to find some miniscule flaw.

When we become critics, we attempt to take power from the creator and the process of creation and make it our own. Criticism is a power play; it is about trying to make something ours which is not. And when we enter the power struggle we end depreciating the value of other’s and ourselves.

It is interesting to me that God during creation played the role of both critic and creator, he spoke life into being, and deemed it good. He put it all together, looked at it carefully and said “This is good stuff!”, and he had the exclusive right to do so. Sin entered the world via a critic who did not have the authority to provide any commentary on creation, in the garden, the serpent was not enamored by the vastness and perfection of God’s work, rather, he fixated on a singular shortcoming, the fact that there were a few trees whose fruit was off limits. The power play worked, criticism took focus off the things that were significant and real to that which was insignificant and valueless…in doing so we ended up with less not more, a cheaper broken reality, a reality distracted from the glory of creation. (Luckily the creator didn’t stop creating and in our brokenness and deadness he breathed life a second time through the birth, death and resurrection of his son…the ultimate work of the final authority.)

So what are we to do in a world so rich in critical feedback, in a society that demands perfection, in a culture where “good enough” is never in fact “good enough”, how are we to respond in the face of the of this world’s cynicism? We mustn’t be so naïve to think the we are impervious to the critic’s snare, for criticism is virally contagious and a miserable affliction…just think if NOTHING were ever good enough to enjoy, how miserable EVERYTHING must be, this is the critics plight.

The reality is that we are only susceptible to the extent we believe that the critic does in fact hold some power to make a determination of our worth…the further detached we are from the creator, the more we will be detached from the source of our value, and the more subjected and beaten down we will become.

It’s amazing what can happen to the way you see the world when we depart from criticism and move to affirmation. We learn to love new friend’s, we learn to love old friends in better ways. Instead of dwelling on the ever so small things that divide us we can focus on the large things that unite us, the world is opened before us, and it is good. We embrace and emphasize the fact that we are imperfect, that we need grace. Most importantly, we keep the power and our definition of worth with the one to whom it belongs, the creator of all things.

We’ve got a choice on how we let this world effect us, and it’s a hard line to draw. To be honest I don’t know how it’s all supposed to play out, I just realize that there are a lot of folks out there who try to steal our joy, to break us down, all for the purpose of making themselves feel more elevated and empowered. Our best weapon is love, our best defense is confidence in Christ, our hope is that we do not live for the approval of men…I’m trying my best these days to be in the camp of creative affirmation, the more I try the more good I find to affirm and enjoy around me.

Making lemonade,
CP
http://chrispanoff.blogspot.com/

Fragments

It goes without saying that life is full of surprises, I guess the reality is that life itself is one gigantic surprise. No man has any idea what a day may bring, we of course have our expectations, but nothing is for certain. Even if we were to confine ourselves in a room to try to seek shelter from the unexpectedness that lurks about in the real world, even still we cannot hide from the reality of illness and our nature. By making certain choices we may limit the magnitude and frequency of life’s little surprises, but the reality is that we are in control of a very small fragment of our own lives.

A coach of mine once told me you can only worry about the things you can control, this is a piece of wisdom I tap into and remind myself of on a regular basis. So many elements in life hinge on infinite variables that are beyond our influence and it is no doubt that this can be frustrating. Like running a race chained to 100 blindfolded strangers, you can try as hard as you want, but your progress will have much more to do with your ability to make something happen with the elements that you’ve been attached to than it will with your ability simply to do things.

Over the years I’ve found that my deepest moments of personal frustration, de-motivation, and futility have mostly come about when I’m trying to control the fragments of my life that really fall outside the scope of my influence. A tremendous amount of unproductive energy can be applied towards trying to change or control things that we have no ability or business changing and controlling.

The business world uses engagement letters to define the scope, or areas of responsibility, in agreements between a person providing a service and a person receiving a service. Each “engagement” sets boundaries to define where the sphere of influence, responsibility, and control stops; additionally there is often an objective, or purpose that is typically defined. One thing however is missing, that is the way in which the objective will be met while all the while staying within the scope of the agreement…purpose and power are defined, process is not.

It doesn’t really surprise me that Christ commissioned his followers in the same way. We were provided a boundary for what we control and influence and an objective to pursue…the way we operate within the constructs of those things is entirely up to us. Of course there are lots of guidelines to help optimize our pursuits and there is grace for when we wander beyond those guidelines.

The scope of our serviceh agreement to God is simple, direct, and unmistakable.

• Our purpose: Love God with all your heart, mind, and strength; love people like you love yourself
• Our Scope (what we control): the way we love and live to convey the purpose above.

Each day I’m reminded of how little I truly influence and control. I can’t control someone being rude, I can’t control my flight being delayed, despite my best efforts I can’t control really much of anything in my life. All I can control is the way I love people, the way I show people I love Christ, and the way people I love them…that’s it. When we simplify our scope in life we are empowered to do more, and to do it more effectively. Our approach to the uncontrollable wild world around us is changed not because we believe we can change it and make it something it is not, but because we accept it as it is and we don’t try to make it something that it will never be. In turn we are able to do great things because we learn to operate in the throes of reality as real people, making real change.

Often times in life we’re left with a lot of brokenness and a lot of fragments purely due to the fact that we live in a broken world, the brokenness and troubles of life are again outside of our contol. Our objective is neither to put the pieces back together, nor is it to try to change the pieces of our fragmented lives, but rather it is to take the pieces of our fragmented lives and do our best with what we have to convey LOVE. The objective is defined, the scope of control is narrow, the process of how we pursue those things is up to us.

A few weeks back I ended up watching part of the Para-Olympic games and was reminded that we are afforded a lot of choices as people when it comes to how we deal with this fragmented, broken world. A lot of the athletes I saw had pretty tragic stories, car accidents, birth defects, war related injuries, yet instead of dwelling on the brokenness of their lives and focusing on tragedy these people were focused on the fact that they have a life left to live.

It is the same in our lives, while we cannot control much of what happens to us, we can control the way we chose to deal with that which we cannot control.

Personally, I acknowledge that the more narrow my scope, the more effective I am. I am in the process of making sure I’m worried only about the simple things in my life that I control, and in doing that I’m learning to shift focus away from the infinite number of things that are outside of my realm of influence and towards the few that I do control.

Simplifying Daily,

CP

http://chrispanoff.blogspot.com

People Shaped Spaces

I am a huge fan of Birthdays, not necessarily my own, but I love the idea of celebrating the uniqueness of an individual, the fact that though they personally had little to do directly with their birth, that the fact that they were born, is actually a truly remarkable thing. Of all the spiritual/theological concepts that are hard to swallow, I think many would claim that creation or the age old question of “How did we get here?” is a big one, if not one of the biggest. While I am fully aware the wide disparity of opinions on the origins of life, I would ask that for a moment, regardless of where you stand on the topic that you could briefly consider the implications of being created. I am not asking for anyone to abandon a scientific viewpoint on the topic, for I feel that there are many scholars who have breached the topic at length and far greater depth than I would ever, however, if we could for only a moment consider the deeper implications of life, and life created with purpose, or life as a part of a design and our part in it, we might take a new and refreshed viewpoint on what it is that we’re all really doing here on earth.

Back to birthdays…one of the things that I’ve become increasingly aware of over the years is how amazing the mosaic of situations, locations, relationships, and circumstances of our lives truly are. If we were even remotely able to understand even a portion of the expanses of creation I think we’d all be utterly dumbfounded, and I do not mean creation in a natural or elemental standpoint, I mean creation personally and relationally.

To think that prior to the creation of time and place, there was a purpose, a plan. In the plan, everything was crafted out, every detail, every moment. Like a puzzle, it was all placed together perfectly, each little piece contributing to the larger whole. In that puzzle, in the plan, was us, people…individuals who from the beginning, and even before the beginning, were a part of the bigger story.

When the foundations of time were laid, regardless of what you believe about yourself and your circumstances, the Lord above thought it best that YOU, and only YOU, an individual, be placed into the puzzle, exactly as you are, exactly where you are. There was a YOU shaped vacancy that needed to be filled, distinctly and uniquely by YOU.

There were relationships that from the beginning needed a YOU. There were people who distinctly needed a smile that would only work if it came from YOU. There were jokes that needed YOUR laugh. There were tough moments that needed YOUR tears. There were friends that would need YOUR shoulder to cry on, and only YOUR shoulder that would do. There were children that needed YOU as parents; there were parents that needed YOU as children. There were bosses and jobs, which needed YOU as an employee. There were songs that needed YOU to sing them. There were sunrises, and sunsets, that needed to be savored by YOU, and YOU alone. There were congregations and communities that had YOU shaped spaces that needed to be filled by YOU.

Friends, the uniqueness and purposefulness of US as people is something that we must not overlook. While the world would have us believe that we as individuals are nothing special, God above couldn’t feel more differently, and to think that we’re not special, and that the people around us are not of equal and dire importance is an insult and a tragedy. Both the trivial and extraordinary moments of our lives, were distinctly made for us, and us for them. To ignore the gravity of US, is to disregard the gravity of our creator, our design, our purpose…

Now there is one other important thing to remember, and that is that our uniqueness, our individuality is a part of that great mosaic. When the pieces come together they create a picture of God’s great love, his sovereign divinity, is perfect plan…his grace, his creation, his redemption, and his invitation to be a part of it all. It is us in the context of him, and not the other way around. If we take the fundamental concept of self, and strip it of the context of the greater significance of the plan to which we were placed in, we become hedonists, egotists, self-worshiping, self-indulging hopeless swine. When we extract ourselves from the greater picture, we cheapen life…though some would have us believe the opposite.

From the beginning, there was a YOU shaped space that needed filling…and it needed to be filled as a part of a plan for the ultimate glory of God. After all, happiness and enjoyment are not real until they are shared. The creator has carefully kept this in mind, as he wanted to share his mosaic, his purpose with YOU. The spaces we fill are an invitation to get in on the action, to enjoy God, his purpose, his plan, his beautiful creation work. Of course many of our daily spaces are far from sexy, but they are our spaces none the less, and they need filling, so whether we’re gas station attendants in Sandusky, OH, or Presidents in Washington, DC…there is work to be done filling the spaces of our lives.

Filling my Space,
CP
http://Chrispanoff.blogspot.com

Memorials

I am a huge believer in living life in the right tense, the present, I know I have touched on the topic in various points in my writings and it’s a consistent theme no doubt. I guess I’ve come to realize that there are huge risks to neglecting to live life where we are. Our realm of influence is small, and we lack the ability to dictate much control over even the minutest areas in our world which we deem significant. That being said, the present tense requires a proper context of history.

One universal cultural phenomenon is the creation of memorials, or things to help us remember the weighty foundations upon which our world was build. For our nation, its is our flag that memorializes our freedom, our capital buildings that memorialize the principles in which our forefathers built this country, it is walls and burial sites that memorialize the price that has been paid to protect the freedoms which were so desperately sought long ago. For the Christian faith, it is the cross that singularly memorializes the price that was paid in Christ’s redemptive work and it is creation as a whole that cries out to remember the creator. Memorials give our present tense an adequate sense of our history, a history which if we are attentive to can give us a context for which today exists, and a reminder of the faithfulness of God’s promise to us as his people (if we so choose to accept).


Memorials are like mile markers in our lives, they give us a sense of not only where we are but also how far we’ve come, and often times how far we are yet to travel. History is a GPS of sorts, in that it can help us to navigate our current circumstances much more efficiently and effectively. After all, how am I to trust in the faithfulness of Christ if I have no context for the good and patient work he is performing in my life? Relationships are built on history, they are not formed instantly, they do not bud overnight, but rather they are proven through time and trials; a relationship with Christ is no exception to this rule.


A few years ago I took some time to construct some memorials in my life, to remember all that God had done, and all that God was doing. At the time I was at a crossroads, one of those, “what’s next in life?” moments, I realized that in order to get my bearings and ready my heart for whatever it was that God was in the process of doing, I needed to look back and see his work to remind myself that he is in fact faithful but looking what he has already done. A lot of people confuse faith for certainty, when in fact I believe that doubt is a healthy component of faith, and real faith is defined by action despite our doubts and fears. At the end of the process I had a long list of times where God had come through and delivered me in the truest sense of the word; his fingerprints were all over circumstances which I could not have survived on my own and on outcomes that I never could have dreamed of, let alone hoped for.


Recently I’ve been reminded of how blessed I am, both in the context of my past and my present, God is good. Many people seek firm “proof” of the Christian faith, what better proving ground than life itself. Salvation cannot be tested in a laboratory, nor can it be worked out in the sterile environments of the hypothetical, salvation is and must be proved in our lives. As I look back and see the landscape of my life scattered with Ebenezer stones, I am humbled, blessed, and reaffirmed. While I may not understand what is happening in the present tense, my history, my memorials give me context with which to confidently place my trust in the hands of my Father above. I am blessed, simply and completely, I have been taken care of in ways I could never have fathomed.


Regardless of what you believe, it’s impossible to strip where you are today from where you’ve been. It’s worth the time to set up stones of remembrance in your life, if they don’t come in handy today, they will soon. Furthermore, if all you see in your life is despair, hopelessness, and emptiness, maybe there is an opportunity for Christ to help you literally and figuratively reconstruct somethings.


So as I look back, I eagerly approach today, hoping to build more monuments for Christ, places for all men to look, see, and know that “here is the work of the Almighty”… and while I’m certain I fall short each day, a memorial life is what I seek for Christ’s glory, and it is yet another opportunity to be rebuilt in him.


Humbly yours,

CP

http://chrispanoff.blogspot.com/

Joy

Joy is neither a state of mind nor a feeling. Joy is not a result of the things around us. Joy is not a product of its conditions nor does it attempt to change the conditions in which it is subject to. Joy is not about wanting anything more, but it is also not about selling ourselves short. Joy is not pleasure, joy is not happiness. Joy is not self reliant, because real joy cannot be found in one’s self.

Joy is unmistakable, un-disguisable, and uncontainable.

Joy is not a verb, it’s not something we can do, joy is a reinvention of the way we see the world. Joy sees the world for all that the world truly is, but does not attempt to evade the brokenness and suffering that accompany this life. Joy, like love, endures and outlasts all things.

Joy is knowing that no matter what “today” looks like, “today” is a good day because today is an opportunity to know Christ more deeply, to love him more, and to share the good news with our friends.

Joy knows that no matter how bad today, this week, this month, this year…or even this lifetime may be…that Christ has redeemed this life completely. Joy constantly measures the world in the context of the great work that Christ completed on the cross.

Joy is the knowledge and true understanding that we were prisoners once, but we have been set free. Joy is the absolution of sin, guilt, and shame in our lives. Joy knows the cost that was paid, and knows the cost has been paid in full.

Joy is one of our first taste’s of heaven here on earth.

I’m glad to know the Joy that Christ affords; I miss it sometimes because I get caught up with “me” a whole lot, but it doesn’t take long to notice the vacancy left by Joy.

Joy has one source, and one source alone…he’s my rock and redeemer.

Joyful,

CP

http://chrispanoff.blogspot.com

Embracing the Great Adventure

When you strip life down to its core, it doesn’t seem to be all we expect does it? As children we idolize superheroes and princesses, and aspire to a life of world-saving, dragon slaying, and hopeless romancing. Yet it doesn’t take long for the glitter to fade, and eventually we’re all dealt realities cruel hand. We are quick to learn that this world is quite not the place that we as children expected it to be. But is the reality we are given all that different than the reality we hoped would be? Is our world truly empty of the adventures to which we aspired?

Life certainly isn’t fair, but neither is it boring, I think the reality of life just might take a little adjusting to. Part of our internal conflict as people (speaking personally) is entrenched in the fact that while we love adventure and the risk associated with it, yet we also desire stability and safety. Our human desires for excitement and variety are so often held in tension with our desires to be on stable ground, and being the uncompromising people that we are (or for certain that I am) we desire complete adventure to pair with safety…if the risk wasn’t risky it wouldn’t be exciting, but if risk presents certain death it then becomes foolish…finding the balance is quite paradoxical.

While we desire to summit the peaks of this life, we often fear the treacherous routes we must traverse. And while everyone’s “summits” may be different they are summits nonetheless and they are a part of our inner groaning for something beyond what this world has to offer.
It’s interesting as I am going through the process which may be described as “growing up”, how much I realize that life’s greatest adventures are seldom set in the exotic and extreme backdrops that the arts so adequately depict, but rather they are set in a reality far more ordinary, in a locale far simpler. Life’s constructs, for most of us, are built more often in the settings of work and home than they are in sports arenas, royal courts, and glorious battle. Instead of battling Goliath, we are fighting traffic in our morning commutes. Instead of a life driven by of capturing love and beauty, we are flung into jobs and workplaces that on the surface appear to be lacking even a thread of excitement contained in the stories we were read as children.

So what are we to do?

I would pose that the issues is not reality itself, but the way in which we perceive the real reality that we live. Even in life’s banal ordinary conditions are truly some great adventures, we mustn’t lose sight of this fact, for if we do, we will be cast into a plot where we’re nothing more than lemmings living lives devoid of passion, desire, and purpose.

There is a reason that Christ came to this world in humble circumstance, and lived a life that was very truly human. As it is said, Jesus made no compromise of his divinity while on earth, but also no compromise of humanity, he was fully God and fully man. Had Christ come and lived a life simply hovering above the realities of life as a human, how would we be able to follow his model for living? If the God of the universe’s ultimate act of love was to come to reality, shouldn’t we take this into consideration when viewing our own reality?

Through a variety of conversations and introspection, I’ve come to realize that the ordinary can be largely unappealing. However, the model that Christ sets forth is to be deeply extraordinary, while living in the astonishingly ordinary world. When we begin to embrace our lives and our work as embarking on a great adventure for Christ’s sake, the script takes new shape and the stories of our 9 to 5 lives are transformed into an adventure in a brave new world.

For me, I’m realizing all the more that my life is in fact a great adventure; I just need to be reminded of such with frightening regularity. While sometimes my circumstances feel a lot more like an episode of “Leave it to Beaver” than it does a bout with Apollo Creed, I need to remember that humanity and reality were Christ’s great adventure, so why should it not be mine. In embracing reality we may just find that our lives are quite amazing. Instead of romanticizing about all the summits we could be out conquering, we make diligent steps to summit the mountains we’re on.

I feel that a life of extraordinary-ordinariness is quite an aspiration, and I’m trying to be diligent in finding and thriving in all the simple adventures that are in front of me…which is proving to be quite an adventure in and of its self. We have the opportunity for a great reality, we simply must emerge ourselves deeper in it, as opposed to attempting to escape from it.

Embracing Today and all the adventure it brings,

CP

Chrispanoff.blogspot.com