1st of February, 2016

Proverbs 4

H,

There is something truly substantial about following the narrow path. I mean, there has to be. It cannot simply be a moral victory. It has to be an actual one. We are giving up something fake and fleeting for something much more. There are all these things that lose their taste because we have stumbled into a great light, and that must point to something more edible to the human soul. It is not like we have a set of instructions that are about having a different set of instructions. Nothing tells us this is just smoke and mirrors with a balding magician behind the curtain pushing buttons to make himself appear dreadful and wise. There is something far more superior on offer. A chance for something really complete, for once.

When you think about it, we are called with a promise of reward. It is inherent right that leads to actual righteousness. I always get the sense in my head that all of this up and down I experience is a lack of something real to get my teeth into. I think, like the great actor once said, “boredom is just a lack of imagination”. There are wonders ahead that none of us have the imagination for. There are glories that the heart can only guess at. There is a kingdom rising that will make all our haggling, all our devious negotiating, all our dreams of grandeur seem like a poor script to a terrible snuff film. We are not promised less in God but much more. We are not promised a smaller piece but the key to everything. It is too bad that we read into this that glory is a car and revelation is the name of a villa. This is not what it means. It is too bad we think we will somehow give God glory if we had a position or if our bank account proved the point that a Christian can “make it”. It is not about proving points. It never has been. And if we had to that make that argument, it would not be material reality that showed spiritual truth. Nothing in our basic text tells us that. Nothing in the life of Christ tells us that. We have simply made that up.

The road of wisdom starts with a dispelling of many myths. We live in myth. We are told things that have no eternal value and we believe them all the time. We sample four or five friends and decide, even in the most basic of ways, what is real and what is not. A small sampling of the experiences of others, a few heartaches here and there or one or two other disappointments and we are able to believe that one gender or the other is always after something off, that money will solve everything and that one tribe or skill is superior to the other. We do not know a thousand stories but we use what little we know to access seven billion people and “what the world is really like.”  None of this is really true and if some of it approaches any sort of honesty it is not of the eternal stuff that wisdom is trying to tell us all about. All things fade, wisdom says. All things will fall down, wisdom cries. Except this. Embrace this.

29th of January, 2016

Proverbs 3

H,       

If there is anything we can take from these years spent “in the wilderness” of God, it is that there is nothing to the present human heart that can remain. There is no value in the ambition to be seen, heard or represented other than the temporal feeling of purpose. He is not into that sort of thing and when we think He is that is when actions of the divine begin to look vindictive when they really are not. If we take our need to be heard, He will bring up a need to listen. If we feel we deserve to lead, He will ask us to follow love. If we complain about the scars others have left on us, He will say it is idolatry to let anything other than the light lead us in our pursuit of meaningful lives. He corrects, He instructs, He leads and He fulfills. It is wisdom to know this. It is wisdom to live with this sort of awareness.

On the road with God, disappointment in this life is not fatal but instructive. Once in a while we begin to get cosy with the idea of consolation. Wine or sex or position or money or the praise of friends and foes make us look at the softer side of life. We may carve out a little oasis for ourselves through good fortune and hard work. We may even begin to think that this is all there is; a material reality and the rest was just poverty and want and hunger that can now be numbed. But it is all just a numbing. We know it does not work. The truth about living in these bodies is that everything will eventual disappoint. Without the right vantage point, all the things we think we want will let us down once we receive the curse of actually getting it. There is an anti-climax to the human experience. Even in our deepest spiritual moments there is a feeling of wanting more than one moment or twenty five. I do not think that the human soul or spirit is insatiable. I think it just has not been filled yet.

These things we think of as vital are just parts of an unfolding journey. There is much more to come but that does not erase the immediacy of the now. We are not here to sit and wait till that crown of glory falls. There is stuff to do. That is indisputable. What stuff we are to do has an individual answer because the call of God is that specific. It is not about a voice and fire-bush or smoke and mirrors. There is a knowing God that comes from simply wanting to know and follow God. And that should be the aim. To know and to follow.

Above it all, lies the almighty truth that the stuff we do is just part of the road too. It is not the vital part. The vital part is knowing the PERSON beyond the voice, the fire-bush, the smoke and mirrors others throw up in your way claiming they are ‘mentoring’ you into God. True wisdom comes from a relationship with wisdom, Herself.

28th of January, 2016

Proverbs 3

H,

Well, yes we do have another blueprint for the existence of everything else. We did not make it up. We were made within it. The first thing wisdom tells us is to know the true scope of our role in creation: nothing at all. We do not know how we got here and we do not know where we are going. We speculate, interpret, feel it by ear or heart but we are not in any certainty as to the true nature of present reality or true eternity. We see marks and signs and symbols and live by faith but not sight. If we start here then we are on safe ground. We are not wrestling with creationism versus evolution because our aim is slightly higher than both. We want to know about the yearning inside the human heart and the hungers of our very soul. We want to know what fills it all up. We do not merely want to point a finger at being right, in fact that is not what we want at all, but to live in the very river of truth.

A long time ago, this fell for you and I as light across a certain path. We set out to find the riches it promised. It is not an easy road but it is the road so that makes it simple. We are learning every day that wisdom is to look at the whole picture with an open heart and a packed bag. It is the pilgrim who makes progress. We will not know it all the beginning. The thing we believe tells us not to play the numbers game. There are no prodigies in living a life of truth and wisdom. It is not about linear time at all. You get it when you get it and there is no need to skip any step. We are walking a narrow road but it leads to only one place. It is not a sprint to the finish. We have to feel every mile in our legs.

 And you know how I hate walking.

So, we beat on. How can we give the thing up now? It has gotten to the point where there is nothing else really going on. We may get the details wrong but the heart of it is absolutely true. You sort of lose the taste for anything else. You chase your consolations but that game soon grows into gripes. And back on the road we are. I know I make it sound all bleak but it is really not. It is like the daily death of any marriage or any real friendship. It is feels like compromise but it is really old nature against new nature or it does not really work. If you listen beyond your pride you will know when you must admit you are wrong and stop doing things because you think you are always right. On this road to God, we do not even have that dilemma. We know we are already wrong. We are being made right. The highs and the lows, the feeling inept and unfulfilled, the seeming failure and the shame or guilt of constant trips to the dark side only speak of one thing: the wisdom to sit and rest and replenish for the road under the beautiful tree of life that is God. That too is walking.