Ready, Fire, Aim

Ready
Life wants to be fashioned through us. If we are made in the image of God—that which is essentially creative—we are also creative. We need to be prepared for when the force of becoming has something to become. A writer must have her pen and paper, her laptop or tablet, always available. A painter needs a blank canvas, paints, charcoal, and brushes. A musician needs to have at the ready a keyboard, a guitar, a recording device. An accountant needs his calculator. A mother needs her wits, humor, and patience. These are the possessions your soul requires for your work here in the body. This is a material world, manifesting through materiality.Fire
An idea comes like a struck match, a spark—an inkling, a color, a note, a title. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.                         Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!
Goethe
Let the fire burn through you and your instruments, the possessions of your soul. Let it brighten your life and the lives around you.
Keep walking though there is no place to get to.
Move within but don’t move the way fear makes you move.
Rumi

Aim
Now there is light and you can see where you are going. The voice has begun to speak, keep listening; The rhythm is in motion and taking hold of your feet, keep dancing; The palette emerges on the canvas, push those colors. They speak to you of their desire to be. They show you where you are going, keep following. A genius, an idea has taken aim and you are the fire it’s shooting through. Let the creative force use you.

What of free will? What of Good and evil (what if the idea that wants to come into being is destructive)? What of personal character—what about me? You can choose to allow the good, the beautiful to move through you. You can choose to snuff the bad, the harmful, and the ugly. Don’t move the way fear makes you move.

There was a grandfather teaching his grandson. “There are two wolves who live within me,” he told the boy, “and they are at war with each other. A white wolf moves toward helpfulness, beauty, lovingkindness and light. A dark wolf snarls with sharp teeth, impatience, cruelty, meanness, and death.”

“Which one wins the war,” the grandson asks. “The one that I feed,” says the grandfather.

P.S. Two days after I originally posted this I found out there are a few books of this same title. I wasn’t just remembering a dream. There’s a marketing book by Michael Masterson, a novel about Skinheads by Kevin Trigg, The Bill Cook Story: Ready, Fire, Aim by Bob Hammel and Ready, Fire, Aim: the Mainfreight Story by Keith Davies. I guess it’s an idea shared by several.