"In the midst of it all”

H,

It never feels like we thought it would. It never has the same zest or the same vivid colouring. Our dreams come true with certain realities we are unprepared for. A sudden love turns into the everyday habit of patience, kindness and forbearance.  A certain job becomes tedious and time consuming. Leadership has many pitfalls and we are not sure where to turn to when we need to be led ourselves. There is a masked difference between being at a distance, on the fence or in the midst of it all.

We were promised an all-cure. What we have now is daily medicine against despair.

I think all of this is by design. Our dreams are figments and reality is something more coarse and real. Our dreams can keep us going or slow us down, but they only serve the imaginative context of our lives. We may remember them when we are in the thick of things, and they may well be some comfort there, but they are not the reason we live or move or have our being. When we stand in the light, we need a whole other compass.

That fear we feel, the idea that this was not the plan, the “forty year” syndrome and all we use to describe our present ennui, are just signs of waking up. We are becoming more alive in each mark and scar and piece of failure or success we encounter. I think this is the whole point of this experiment or adventure on the blue planet: to wake up.

“Awake my soul, for you were made to meet your maker”

“The scary heights of true ambition”

H,

This is the time when the rubber hits the road. It is all good when we live in the ideas of the things we believe in and follow, but it is another thing entirely to know the scary heights of the true ambition God has for us.  It is not the sandy reality that we have concocted for ourselves. We have seen too many films, been entranced by the hero with many faces and have fallen for those things which flatter to fill up but leave the soul on empty.

The difference comes when the picture He draws begins to add up. When we not only see the general wave but the specific move. And what a terrible and wonderful light it is upon the earth. We are all scheduled for death on this plane. It is how we live that matters.

In our recent conversations we have been sturdier than in times past. There is a peace that comes with constant dealings with God. We know what we should do, and we know where we should go. The process is the dark, you said the other day. That process comes with the cost of time here but time here is such a fickle thing. We must remember this. Time here is a morbid adulteration of eternity. Time keeps trying to tell us to hurry and to run and that we will soon be out of it. Lies. We have all the time in the world to learn things correctly.

And so, we need not fear the depth and height of the grand ambition of all making all things right. We will only need to learn and grow and be alive.

“At leisure with God”

H, 

You have always known that I am a hurried soul. I am always trying to get things over with or to get over things. I do not try to “suck the marrow out of life”. I just want to survive and get quickly away from everything. This is true even when it is more beneficial to take my time, enjoy the look of everything and learn slowly. I am never able to find my leisure in God.

We are all in a sense, unable to do so. We have been told this is the great unravelling punishment. We are here to die to live with no joy in-between. The idea of enjoying God is foreign. One of the most challenging sentences I have ever read is: “Joy is the serious business of heaven.” When I did get it, I put it all on the side of that we call “suffering and smiling”. The idea that there is a greater thing up there that makes the lesser thing of down here, more palatable, in retrospect.

Yet, all my suppositions and explanations hold no sway to the very idea of real joy. The joy of salvation. The joy of fellowship. The joy of intimacy. The joy of eternity. The joy inherent in all true love. We have felt this before; on those parched Kaduna sands, in that house we called a pillow, and even, further back, in that thrill that the voices may not be unfriendly and the mind may be unfettered from actual, physical reality, to be more, see more and live more. We have felt it and known it and been afraid of it and gone back to the fake homes of pre-destined reason over eternal destination. We know this furious joy in God. We just let it slip away.

But, brother, to find it again. To not be too attached to the idea of what we do and why we do it, to not see purpose as the will of God separate from the pleasure of His people. To not be afraid to imagine that in the wideness of God there is more than is “thought of in all our philosophy”, that there is space to always be on fire and to always be enraptured. And, none of this, in that placebo way of faking it. We will not always smile. It will not always be pleasant. But, to know there is joy there, that the body may die but the spirit will live on, that death is only a door and that we are all part of a larger plot for all the universe. To not carry the heavy-laden burden of the hero but the sweet, tiny weights of love and character. To know that all of this is just a phase, a plan, an uneven road interrupted. To agree that this will pass. But in the now, we have God, in heart and in truth. As father, as friend, as mother, as sister and as everything else thrown in. We can take our time. Like Sam, of quantum leap mythology, we can stop worrying about what the next thing to solve is. We can sit on that stool, ask for anything on tap and sit in the leisure of God.

“The end of all Competition”

H, 

It is funny how the human heart works. Remember how we used to speak of schadenfreude, that evil feeling we would get when that other football team got their dreams taken from them. It was all fun and games but, to be honest, we frequently get that sense in real life. Even more, we get it, when we think of those who stand in our way or have no regard for our beliefs or do what we term, a greater evil. We get a sense that their comeuppance is justice and our elusive punishment is grace.

The truth is we are actively in competition with others. It may not always manifest itself in material things. We may not care how much money a person has or how far along they are on their career path. What we compete in is specific to us. We think ourselves superior to those who live in darkness, who are not ‘deep’, who cannot follow our virtues and even those who do not share our vices. Our sense of worth keeps being strung along by an external source and so we keep up with those rules that promote self above the real needs of love. We do this without thought. It is an automatic response to living in the dirt of present earth. Every day is a reminder that we must put some purpose and power to ourselves. The beauty of the Church experience does not diminish this myth. Even there we are valuing ourselves in terms of giving and not in terms of being.

Two final thoughts: first, the end of this competitive spirit is to hate. When it has had its full day, you will hate the person you compete against. It will not happen fast, in many cases. It is a subtle slide into the dark. There is no telling what your hate will make you do.

Second, and finally, the end of all competition should be what our faith represents. This light tells us that value does not lie in doing but in being. No one is more valued because of what they bring or what they do but because of who they are. We must let this sink in. Our inherent value is made manifest in the Love of God. Love is the only thing that gives real value. And that love from above must be our watchword in going forward. We must love more and compete less. We must love more and do everything else less.