The first night that nips on your nose...

It is my first night of a few in the mountains with some friends. It is late, or early, depending on your perspective of the sunrise and thoughts have suddenly rushed into my head as the tide rushes onto a shallow shore. The waves of thought crashing and hopefully leaving the marks that can only be seen in the daylight when the tide has subsided. These are the waves that truly make in impact. There are many that wash ashore and leave minuscule changes in the landscape but every now and then there is one or two that crashes so hard that the shore will never quite be the same. The beach itself has changed. And yet, most often it isn't the large waves that make the change. It is the small waves being persistent over time. I think that is the key to change. It isn't in the big thoughts that overtake you and suddenly change your ways completely. Every now and then there will be a tidal wave of enlightenment which completely changes your very existence but most often we change by the small thoughts that we have daily. And over time we see these small thought that at one time weren't of much value changing our very core,  our very landscape of person. We put too much focus on the epic and not enough on time in our society. The epic is, in all actuality, very rare. But the small, with time, happens daily. If we can only hold on to them.

Nudity. I can probably have as many different reactions to the word nudity as I have friends. But at one point we were meant to be naked. I glanced at an article tonight that talked about our original nude nature. I have often thought how the first recognition of our unworthiness of the presence of the holy was our nudity. One thing that has never occurred to me though was what this actually meant. There were no body image issues, there was no trying to look like everyone else, or being physically to a standard that was set up by a society. These, are merely by-products of the sinful society that we live in. In the presence of the holy there is security. So to my female friends, who struggle with body image. I say that you are beautiful in every way that you are. You are worthy of love in every way that you appear and in every way that you exist. Cause you were once loved while you were naked. Nothing hiding anything except exactly who you are.