From
Psalm 139:1-16
H,
It is
hard to describe what it feels like to believe in God. It is not understood by
one look at one part of the human psyche. It is not empty superstition. As you
well know I take a liberal view to most things and so the ‘moral’ side of the
thing would never appeal to me. I struggle with the very idea that God is so
intimately concerned with our sex lives that we need books, concerts, sermons,
wicked looks of judgement, seminars and self help (wrong words?) gurus to keep
ourselves in line. I do not think any man has the right to tell another man how
to live so the idea of the all-knowing pastor is a constant headache. I am not
typically disposed to the look and smell and feel of what a church going Christian
ought to be and when I look like I am then I am frankly faking it.
I do
not come to God as conclusion because of these things but in spite of them. I know
I bore you with the details of my constant conversion but this is my letter, I will
do so again.
It was an idea to me at first. A feeling that
there was something larger seeking my attention and I heard that voice clearly.
I say “He” but I do not think this being is male or female. We suffer a lack of
pronouns here so I stick with the male since we, the church, are female and
there is a divine marriage of beings afoot. I felt this being in my everyday
life and though the moral compunctions of His presence were clear that was just
a small part of the whole machine. I felt He wanted my attention and my life. I
did not give either easily. I fought because I did not want the constant burden
of looking up. The turning point was when those spots in me occurred that I could
not explain. Gaps and holes and mysteries and propensities toward dreaming and
being to the point that I could no longer deny that parts of me where
undiscovered. He soon linked both things for me: the idea that I had more to me that even met
my own eye and the truth that He was that more. I was missing something and it
was not a woman to love (though that has its high points) but a part of a
person only known in the dark of God.
So,
it has been that ever since. Even though I seek human community and stumble to
conform, it falls back to that first moment of clarity: I am known completely
by some other. Known and loved and expected and welcomed and imbued with a
divine purpose and a unique spark of life. In Greek mythology Zeus has a
penchant for mixing the divine and the human to birth heroes like Hercules and
Jason and Perseus. In Christian reality, that is every single human being, the
thunder of God hidden within every soul, and the goal of all talk about
relating to God is to bring out the manifestation of these lofty, but mostly
asleep, beings.
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