Blueberry Fields Forever

I have adopted a term from the math/networking/fractal world to describe a certain mindset that is quintessentially me. The term is "scale-free" and it means that, amidst all the things swirling inside me, there tends to be no over-ruling sense of SCALE and proportionality guiding my thinking--I am "free" of the considerations of small versus large, it seems! This makes for some humorous moments, (as my good friends, Brian Houston pointed out one night), such as when throwing a little after-concert soiree (and I'm clearly just using that word to appear cultured :) ), my thought processes went like this while shopping : "I have no fruit. There are some blueberries. Blueberries are a fruit, but they seem small. Buy three packages of them!" So, when my guests arrived, there were smatterings of cheese, crackers, beverages, etc. and a HUGE salad bowl FULL of hundreds of blueberries, which I remember placing on the table with complete joy and fulfillment! Everyone partook of all the food, but each small removal of a spoonful of blueberries barely made a dent in the mountain of purple that still rose from the large salad bowl. Finally, Brian, with typical Irish wit, declared, "Perrianne, why don't we have some blueberries with our meal?" And, henceforth, blueberries have become a symbol of my SCALE-FREE mind and the odd combinations it produces! (There are other stories, but I'll save them, and just suffice to say that sometimes those in my immediate circle of friends have to say, "Perrianne....scale-free.....!" and this reminder USUALLY clicks me back down a notch to realize that not every moment necessarily has to bear out the lessons of the ages and illustrate the grand meta-narrative stretching across time and eternity--lol! HOWEVER...... I do celebrate the other side of the coin! I would like to proclaim for just a moment that being SCALE FREE can help beyond measure! For, you see, TRUTH IS "SCALE-FREE"! When God reveals Himself to us (and that IS truth), the view of reality we are given stretches itself out from the macro to the micro, including everything in between. There is no dichotomy, "no variableness or shadow of turning" (as James said) and we don't have to be on guard in case there is a variance not covered by our God (no loopholes exist in the land of the heart). Truth fills every layer of existence, whether or not our small minds can make out the tracings! In our model of "seen" and "unseen", how often we forget that there really is only ONE universe where Truth reigns un-challenged! God is good--the cross was/is all-encompassing--Jesus' victory is absolute--these things ARE scale-free even beyond what our imagination can project on its most dreamy day! Right in the midst of surrounding opposition, when we pause to go scale-free and thank God for the truth that transcends, we find ourselves once again intoxicated by the ride, waiting with bated breath to see how our Father will show up, applying His truth to our current situation--delivered from the frantic notions of our own fearful human "responsibility" once again! And guess what the opposite of scale-free turns out to be? In networking theory (which is a "thing" now--think internet), it turns out that if you're not scale-free, you are instead RANDOM! I can think of no greater torture as a human being than to live in utter randomness--thinking that you are at the whim of whatever pops into your life--drifting in a sea of meaningless events with no path or plan or compass (or meaningful fractal zoom)! Life is NOT random--it may be tumbling, twirling, chaotic, over-stimulating, even disorienting at times, but we can ALWAYS run back to the safe place of TRUTH that transcends it all, EVEN when can't work out how at the moment! So here's wishing you a SCALE-FREE moment today--a laugh with your Father, a spoonful of blueberries, if you will, the reminder that He actually does have a meta-narrative, an over-arching truth and purpose for your life that far exceeds whatever you are tumbling through at the current moment! Zoom out--the view is useful and REAL!