Dealing.

H,

The very idea of God or gods is an issue of much modern debate. They are all sorts of strong arguments for and against the idea of being, creation and evolution. Some claim science can prove God and others, a vast vocal majority it seems, claim science can make it work the other way.

I have never been interested in either, to be honest. It seems to me beyond science to explain all of nature to the point of eliminating wholly the idea of a unifying God. Conversely, the idea of God and what man thinks He is has seen the use of brutality to pursue His supposed aims through history and across religions.

I did not start believing in God and for a very long time religion did not speak to me on any level. I did not consider this odd because I was not rebelling against it. I had enough of it shoved down to the core of me that I was going to do the dance and collect the other prize that was not hell at the end of the day. There was fear but there was no love or real belief. A great what if, as if that could save, was put out to me: what if you are wrong about nothing being eternal? Is it not better to live a ‘good’ life and then die with a sense of purpose? That always seemed like a stupid response to me. Faith seemed intense and immersive. Passive worship was not going to work and I knew it.

Yet there was something inside. A question about the source of everything and the very meaning of life. I became a seeker of rules to live by. I consumed bite sized ideas of Aristotle, Voltaire, Wilde, Hemingway and a host of others about the sort of person I ought to be. I thought of being one thing and then another. I could not keep up with any of my personas because they did not fit into the large hole inquiry was digging in me. I knew I had a soul, there was something ethereal and immaterial about life, but I did not know where it fit.

When I finally arrived at the idea of God I had been speaking to Him all along. I had been having these conversations into thin air but there is no real vacuum in the time and space of which I speak. I was always hitting up against something. It was a soft landing because I had been descending all long. I was at ground level at the providential time and fell into the light with all my being ready to be explained.

Now, this should not conclude with the impression that I have found all the answers. The curious thing about science and faith is that they both need that sense of humility when looking up. We do not have all the answers. We are a family in search of what truth is. We have to be honest seekers or we are false prophets of both beliefs.

I still haven’t found what I am looking for, the crooner said. I heard it in the eighties or earlier nineties. I could not have been up to ten years old but it stuck in my mind long enough to come back when I had big questions. It is the soundtrack of my pilgrim’s progress and process. I sing it all the time from the deep reaches of my soul. I know the answer to the big question of my soul: there is a God at the centre of the universe. I once wished it wasn’t so. I wanted it all to be absurd and arbitrary. I wanted to write my own book. That did not work out. But I still haven’t found what I am looking for. I am still confounded by tragedy and holes in times and space and the very idea of love. I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. But I am still looking. Up. 

Dealing

H,

The easiest thing about the golden rule is saying it out loud. It is often said out loud and about others. It is quoted on stairs between two people, where one is the giver of wisdom and the bowing other the receiver of grand wisdom. It, however, belongs in the silence mostly. It belongs as a whisper, a prayer and a song in your own heart. You probably need it more than any of the others you keep pushing it on as wisdom when it is just avoidance. When I say you, I mean me. To be clear.

Dealing with others in love is the whole game of living out a godly life. There is nothing else that shows our devotion to God than the way we treat others. It is at the fulcrum of the whole machine of change, eternal life and what love truly is. This is the guiding light and the divider between sinner and saint. When the bible says: “if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven”, it means exactly that.

It seems harsh but community is what we are made for. To be joined to one another and not be alone. To do this and not be any less of an individual is the journey we are on.

There is no need deifying individuality. It is a thing but it is not everything. We are human in relation to each other. We exist in relation to each other. We make sense in relation to each other. The Kingdom is a family and if you love being alone then that is one more thing that will change when the trumpet sounds.

So we have this to deal with now. That we are not better than anyone else. That we all exist in the same flawed and broken down body of work that is fallen life on earth.

 We are equal. We are equal. We are equal. No one is a supporting character, an audience or a subordinate in this story of life. We are connected and should act that way. Kindness, patience, long suffering, forgiveness (and on and on and on) are not ancient ideas. When we reflect them in and on each other, we are creating a revolution. We are speaking timelessly. We are in a new heaven and on a new earth. 

Dealing.

H,

“Dealing.”

Most of our time goes in dealing with ourselves. This is always a unique problem because there is tunnel vision, the unreliable narrator and the master of good intentions (even on the surface) at work. We think in relation to our own selfish ends being altruistic. We cast ourselves, mostly, as the hero of the story of life, in which others are merely bit part players or supporting characters.

The “hero” in this sense could be tragic, meta-human, flawed or even, and mostly, just misunderstood. We have different variants of the same disease of self. One might think he is Kal-El and the other might think he is Damien Omen. In both cases we are at the centre of the forest and our tree bears fruit in all seasons; sometimes we think this fruit is good and sometimes we think this fruit is bad. Most of the time there is a broad hint that the fruit is salvageable.

It is possible that this is one of the main reasons God came down in human form. We need a measure outside the cycle of human effort and failure. We need a light out of self. We are dealing with the most intimate of sins and the most crushing of disasters that all add up to the tragedy of being human. We need an outside look at what it is to be full of light against the ensuing darkness.

The answer we get is not the one we thought up. He did not come in on a wave of glory. The term “Glory” in both Hebrew and Greek add up to the great revealing of the true nature of God. What we see in human form is not a tale spun of perfect teeth and pristine manners. It is not a story of a handsome meta-human standing aloft our condition and breathing the beauty of the uncommon life down to us from the vantage point of the stars. It is more HBO than CW. It is grime and sand and death and blood. The real person of Jesus Christ shatters our very idea of “hero” and puts in that spot a stirring reality. A passionate, sensitive, doubting and troubled soul weighed down with the sins of the world as we are but knowing it. The sin is not to know or believe. He avoided both. He took death in and came out in life. The eternal life of living in God. This was our destiny and God had to show us. This is our real life and it takes a cross to reach it. We face life and death with this great example: light above us all and new life in us all.

I am going too lofty again. This is the stirring truth: it is fine to be human and flawed. Strength is at the bedrock of intimacy with God. In giving over all of us we reach the truth about our state. We find pain unbearable and doubt unspeakable. Yet, somehow, these are the best points on our journey. Our faith tells us that the real self will show and bring us to our knees. Most of the time the only way to deal with this is to stay right there.

Till God rolls away our stone again.

Dealing.

H,

There is a certain reality to life that robs us of the luxury of dwelling too much on fantasy. The great poet Yeats put it best:

“We have fed fat on fantasies/the heart’s grown brutal from the fare”

There is no let up against truth. There are only placebos, fleeting moments of escape but no cure for what is true. You will have to face what is true about yourself, others and the nature of reality at some point. You will have to deal with it.

In large and small places, we have all already encountered these things. We have found the depths of our own depravity from liberty, we have seen the flaws of others exposed by intimacy and we have felt the call of the sublime speak to us about all we are in space and time. We know that we are broken but we are split on if we can be fixed. We are hurt by others and we struggle between the two daemons of forgiveness and vengeance. We believe there is a cosmic being or we believe there is nothingness after this present reality. We are joined by these bands of humanity, by the classic fleshy struggles of our age and we are one because we are all dealing with it.

My faith shows me a bold way to understand all three. It tells me I am flawed but redeemable and redeemed. It shows me that others are no better or no worse than me in general and forgiveness of others is how I learn to forgive myself. It speaks to me of love as the powerful person at the centre of the universe.

This is how I learn to deal.

12/5/2017

You,

“Day by Day”

We are servants and friends of the Lord but it is not a profitable venture. It is filled with terrifying words and situations like plunder and pillaging, surrender and martyrdom. It is being taken advantage of and often playing the fool when everything in you calls for vengeance. It is the fear of such things that makes it hard for us to commit to our relationship with God. After all, God can’t ask anything of us if we don’t get too close, right?

As wrong as that sentiment is, it doesn’t change the fact that God does want to be close to you. So close in fact that daily bread goes from standardised, routine prayers to a fluid conversation. So close that He can call you friend. It is a light burden compared to the weight of daily sin.

You want to be close to God too. There is a space inside you longing to be filled, a hole that seems to grow wider the further you are away from him. It aches and it throbs and it keeps you up at night. And everything you try to fill it with falls through or washes over it, barely making a difference. You know what needs to be done. 

11/5/2017

You,

“Day by Day”

It is in the very nature of this world that it exhausts and drains you daily. It is in the very nature of Daily Bread to replenish you. This is the balance you have struck. You have chosen to stay with God, to not give up on the one who has never given up on you. You have chosen to keep seeking knowledge right from the fountain. This is your worship.

It is not an easy task you have taken upon yourself. It is the gruelling task of coming broken before The Throne each day and asking to be made whole again. It is complete surrender with unfaltering minds and imperfect hearts. It is openness and honesty. There is no hiding place, no shadows in the presence of this great light. There is no deceit that you can achieve before one who knows all. As terrifying as that seems, it is surprisingly freeing to be in the presence of such an entity, knowing that you need have no secrets or fears, that you will be accepted completely as you are if you simply surrender yourself. There is no judgement, only love. There is no need to keep up appearances or present a public face to the one who knows all that you are. 

10/5/2017

You,

“Day by Day”

To have such a consuming lust for life will do you no good in the end. It is a hunger for a world that you don’t belong to and does not belong to you. It is a thirst that cannot be quenched, a flame that cannot be put out. You would be looking in a temporary place for lasting satisfaction. There is no joy to be had there. Instead, you must remember who it is you ultimately belong to, and live a life that reflects your knowledge of Him.

In truth, this cannot be done without constantly searching within and without of yourself for the truth that you already know. It is an unchanging truth and your search can have no impact on that. Yet what you hope to achieve in so diligently looking, is to constantly remind yourself of it. It seems most simple, unnecessary even. Still you find that after periods of not seeking Him, it all begins to feel a bit lightweight. Again I say, the truth is unchanging. Your disregard does not mitigate its inherent nature nor does it make it a lie. All you are doing is leaving room in your heart for doubt where there should be no doubt. 

9/5/2017

You,

“Day by Day”

When we were taught how to pray, one of the things we are told to ask for is Daily Bread. Food, yes. But also daily sustenance of a spiritual nature. It isn’t however an invitation to complacency, laziness, or mindless followership of ritual. You must know by now that the heart matters more to who we serve than a well-kept routine.

So don’t worry about whether you are doing things ‘right’ and don’t bother about what anyone might have to say about your acts of worship. It isn’t meant for them and they have no way of knowing the intentions of your heart. Not even your prophets, priests, and pastors have that power. So they cannot tell you that your relationship with God is insubstantial because it does not meet their human measurements. Our faith is made possible by the sun setting on their supposedly infallible authority, and the Holy-of-Holies being made open to us all. They are not God.

Even as God seeks no routine or ritual, He seeks a relationship. Daily Bread gives us the opportunity for that. It sustains us, renews and revitalises us. It heals us of the inevitable wounds of simply being human, being far away from our true home, where our hearts reside with God.

8/5/2017

You,

“Day by Day”

And I’m an olive tree,

Growing green in God’s house.

I trusted in the generous mercy

Of God then and now.

We are built up strong by this our God. And how so? Not by any works of our hands or we would never grow at all. But by His grace and mercies on us. We are lazy and nonchalant with our salvation. We forget all about it until we want to cash in on it again.

We are called to daily fellowship. That is what this is supposed to be. It is supposed to be a relationship. We are convincing ourselves now that it is impossible to put into a relationship but what else are we called to do? Everyday a prayer, everyday a conversation, everyday a phone call, everyday an interaction until macrocosm seeps into microcosm and microcosm reflects macrosom. Until our relationship with God influences our relationship with people, and our relationship with people mirrors our relationship with God.

Why? Because it isn’t just about the 5 friends and family we bother to give our time of day but having a heart big enough for the world. A heart big enough to connect with each individual like a long lost friend, a brother, a lover. Amen. Amen.

So Empty, So Estranged

H,

The feeling of emptiness is what so easily leads us astray. It comes to me in the morning, mostly. I get out of bed with some effort. I need to arrange my thoughts, still my heart and remember myself. I need to write stuff down. If I do not then I am in the thrall of my own doubts and fears and wants and weaknesses.

In the end, there is no one day cure for feeling cut off from the divine. The truth is made manifest over the many days of a full life. You do not need the closeness of God on the first day you give your life over to Him. You need it for every day after.

The tide changes. The presence seems to fade but the deeper you go, the closer He is with no physical signs to support it. The early days of sweetness and spirit give in to tedium and the weight of living.

The thing to always remember is to do whatever you can daily to remind yourself that you are not empty and are not estranged from your father anymore. The great book gives us some solid advice: prayer, study, fellowship and the expression of our oft declared love for God in being kind, patient, gentle, forgiving of others like us, stuck on this plane till Kingdom come. You cannot take these things as rules to follow though. That will always trip you up. Worse still, you must not make a check list of the life in God.

It all must come from the spirit. We must always connect. We pray so we can connect. We pray so we can become all the things He knows we can be. We pray to talk, to say we do not understand, to strip off weights and take on strength. There is no other way. Proximity to the rising sun will chase away the dark. There is no other way.

And oh, you will fall many times. This is not a perfect trajectory. The thing you will struggle with the most is dealing with your own failure. Yet, this the trick. This is the whole thing. There is no shortcut to glory. Your struggle in the dark is necessary. It makes it possible for you to let go of the fiction you have about your own basic goodness. The light comes to end the dark. It always starts with your own. Come back to it when you fall. Dust off the floor and kneel again. This is the power of the blood of Christ. Guard your heart. Do not let anything in that tells you it is better to give in and die than to live forever. Love is eternal, sin is not. We shall overcome. He already has. We are His disciples. When we speak His word, we are His apostles. We are His, so we cannot fail.  

The light has come to end the dark.

So empty, So estranged

H,

There is an almost full devotion to faith that is an answer to everything. The reverse of this is the great disconnect we feel because we do not get what we want even though we may already have what we need.

It is like this: when we believe that a lover will make us more complete we might go all “Christian” on it and pray, attend mixers, listen to sermons all the while believing a lover is around the corner. Four unfulfilled situations later we give up the ghost and spirit because it has not come through. This sense of inertia sets in and we feel we have been left behind by the loving, happy world. Now, this can apply to almost any pursuit. The quest for a certain end is not legitimized by putting a Christian flavour in the mix. Yet, the hurt feelings are real and the discouragement is almost crippling. We have not reached our expected end.

I am tempted to say, the other way to look at this is…but I will not. It is enough that we feel out of sync with the things that matter to us. It is enough that we are struggling with overt and covert issues that need answers and not heckling. There is nothing to be ashamed about when we feel less than ourselves and when we cannot connect with anything real within or without.

In the light, the darkness surrounds. This does not mean that all our problems come from being so good the bad comes to find us for fun or sport. It means that any direction into the light reveals how gross the darkness is. This existential angst may just be the call from that other country.

We bear on our bodies the marks of truth personified. We are not perfect but we will get there in time and space. Eternity beckons. If we are detached from earth it is because of that and probably nothing else. If we feel empty and estranged it is the weight of that truth bearing down on us and everything else. We want more than the casual journey through a material earth. Being empty and feeling estranged are just the marks of a higher reality bearing down on us.

There is still the filling up and the connection to come. 

so empty, so estranged

H,

Prayer is one of those conundrums that must be simplified. It is not a puzzle. It is a path. It has been cleared of all obstacles. It is a small trip from the point of us to the point of God and we are there once we take the first step. We rarely take the first step though.

Why?

Well, we have been told folk tales about being worthy. We are supposed to have done most of the work before we open our mouth to address the unfathomable depths of love we call God. This is silly. If we could sort it all out then we would be God.

Why?

Once we asked for something and we did not get it. It was so desperately needed and it could have saved a life. This is a hard one. It cannot be easily dismissed and there is so much pain just underneath the surface. The thing I would say is the answer does not always match the request. We live in finite time while looking up to infinite deity. We do not know what His answers may be. It is possible our answer was not for the question we asked of Him but for something deeper, further along, more primal than our mouths could utter and more everlasting than the pain of the moment would allow us see.

Why?

There is this disconnect. We feel like we are talking to air. Unless we deal in ritual, the simple act of prayer means nothing. How we can we simply talk to the utter being? How do we think we can approach holiness without the jump and the scream and the hours and the pain? Well, because we were once told we pray amiss. Then we were told how to pray. It was simple. It was short. It was general but not cold or detached. It reminded us that we pray for Kingdom come and faith means believing the omniscient knows more. It told us to ask for the daily nutrition to live right. We live in the day to day and not the big picture. The big picture is merely the collection of days. This was not a blueprint for how we must always pray but a guide on how simple and deep and effective prayer can be.

Then, we have the Holy Spirit. Much misunderstood but perhaps too simply here defined as the urging of God within us all to keep walking the narrow way. We pray in the Holy Spirit most effectively. Groaning that comes deep from our own soul and spirit. Things we cannot dare say. Without words, without form, reaching past all the things we think we need into the infinite itself. It is not the garble of unknown words but a heart set to look up. Your words may say one thing but the Spirit is what is read. It knows that beyond the job you are asking for it is security and worth you seek. It sees beyond the person you desire to the hunger for companionship and love that pushed you to your knees. I should not say “it” but it is neither male nor female. It is they. They see that all your anger is unresolved because you feel misunderstood, put down, unappreciated and unfulfilled. They resolve all these things in prayer.

Yet, always remember. You do not get the answer you want but the one you need. 

So empty, so estranged.

H,

 When we say everything is God, we must clarify. Too many placebo like experiences of God exist. There are too many visitations that are based in us, relevant to only us and consisting of only us. There are false prophets, true prophets gone false and false things that come about in honesty that we must, of necessity untangle the web and bring our hopes home.

When we say everything is God we first mean that everything will end in God. There is a perfect symmetry in life that things come into being and then they are gone from the scene. We look behind the scenes and fathom that there is a transcendence that happens. We do not just disappear.

This does not answer every question we have. There are so many pointless tragedies and innocent deaths that the ideas of original sin and eventual transcendence cannot speak to every broken heart. Faith tells us that we must not only believe that God is good but He also rewards all followers with His presence. Reward is bad word here because it becomes competitive. There is no competition in God. All the tales about running a race happen on an individual basis. There are no runners beside you. And the analogy is stretched to breaking point when we realize that if your co-runner, who does not exist on your own race track, should fall down, you are obligated to pick him or her up to continue the race. The final picture is a linked hand in hand family race with individuals making up the family and not the other way around. It is not who gets there first, as the other son in the prodigal story found out, but that we all get there. This is the father’s heartbeat. That all connect.

We might also mean that the origin of everything is God. That we do not truly see anything unless we see it through Him. The world is tainted, flawed, broken and in grey. The colour is in His eyes. Wisdom is connecting so we can first see ourselves, love others and then act in ways that speak of another country that is built without borders and in dimensions surpassing our present definitions of home. In this analogy, God is home.

If we are alive in any way at all, we often wake up in despair. The first thought before we put on the cloak of positive thinking and induced hysteria we mistake for faith, is a reflection of our own broken nature, dreams, appetites, systems and love. We are in pieces. The second thought, the first act, should be prayer. We must connect. If we do not the day seems grey. We must live in colour. We must live in God.