I only have a moment here, but allow me to direct your attention to a dear friend of mine:
http://luckysevencatranch.blogspot.com/2007/07/forty-years-to-getting-it-part-three_26.html
Fish is...well...effusive in this post but if you don’t have the time to read it her point is so fresh, and so ancient and so incredibly important I just had to pick it up for a moment.
God loves me.
I’m amazed at how much time and energy we (as regular ol’ people) spend avoiding, fighting, doubting, dismissing and disregarding this wonderful fact. Please understand, I’m not trying to criticize anybody who wrestles with this. Lord knows it’s my daily bread as often as not. But in the good days I see that my best, most profound epiphanies all settle down into one of two things.
A: God is good.
B: God loves me.
Reading Fish talk about the overwhelming sense of being loved by her friends and family, and by immediate extension – loved by her Creator...man that is no small thing. And there is a part of me that almost snipes at her with a kind of ‘well duh’ expression. But another (and I think more holy) part of me says to that first part ‘Shut the hell up!’
If I could get to that point where I no longer had any doubt about God’s love I’d be half way to paradise. If I could really call my Lord Papa without feeling like I was somehow presuming upon his patience, or pray without the myriad of affectations I employ to try and move his hand...if I could only accept that he isn’t disappointed in me somehow...
Perhaps the thing we most need from Jesus’ example, and perhaps the thing we almost entirely miss, is the way he lets others love Him, particularly his dad. I think more and more about how easily Jesus received love totally without pretense, or shame, or desire to earn it.
God loves me.
God loves me.
God loves me.
26 July 2007
11 July 2007
Denial
I heard something on the radio the other day and it got me thinking.
How much is my life with Christ hindered by fear of living in denial?
How much is it hindered by my fear of other people thinking I’m living in denial?
I remember an entry a while back that I wrote that fear had suddenly appeared to me as the mother of all Christian hang-ups. In Dune they say ‘fear is the mind killer’ but even more, fear is the faith killer.
What if I’m wrong? What if it isn’t God talking to me at all? I mean we are talking about ‘hearing voices’ aren’t we...what if I’m going absolutely mad and I can’t tell the difference between straight-jacket grade crackerdom and a spiritual nudge...if indeed there is a difference.
Ever since I read all those Lovecraft stories in high school with Jeremy O’Kelly I’ve felt like insanity would be perhaps the most frightening thing I could imagine. And yet, my last several years with God have been characterized by an increasing sensitivity (and conforming) to invisible things. Without equivocation, I am moving farther and farther away from the rational, materialistic worldview that is supposed to be my birthright as a child of the Enlightenment and approaching...no, not just approaching – racing, longing, reaching for a worldview that could easily be assailed as superstitous at best, or flat out bonkers at worst. Demons? C’mon now Really. Angels? Miracles? God TOLD you to do that? You know they have pills for that sort of thing now (since electro-therapy is out of style).
But that said, I still am dragging a very heavy ball and chain called denial. It’s this little, unobtrusive word that sort of haunts me whenever I ponder another leap of faith. There is a ‘nontrivial’ fear in me still that I’ve bought some bill of goods with all this God stuff. I fear the possibility that reality is one way, and I am imagining it to be another...in other words, that I’m living in denial.
Even more scary is the thought of sharing my crazy processes with others. It’s one thing to wonder in my own little brain if I’m losing it. It’s quite another to have that fact pointed out by somebody else. And as painful as it might be for Slusser to say to me, “Dude...are you holding it together?” it would particularly distressing for some random passerby to speak up. As if the dreadful and obvious nature of my psychosis was so compelling that the milk of human kindness insisted they offer assistance to whatever shred of sanity remain in my noxiously rotting melon.
...and I realize that it is also at exactly that moment that I recognize the ploy for what it is.
When I lay it all out like that I can see how exactly backwards it is. What could possibly motivate me to care for the opinion of a stranger more than for the heartfelt and contextualized feedback of a friend? A friend knows my story and sees my current step as only one step in a longer journey. A friend knows my past and is far more likely to know what deeper motivations (crazy or sane) lay under my actions. In short, to care more what ‘they’ think than what you think is simply inaccurate thinking. Even more so, and no offense to my friends, but nobody knows every nook and cranny of my psyche like I do and if Shakespeare's best advice is “Know thyself” and “To thine own self be true” then I am compelled to be true to my own heart, regardless of what even best friend's concerns might be. (Which is not to discount good counsel...I’m making a point here).
So suddenly, ‘Denial’ shows itself to be a kind of shadow monster, cast on the wall by hands trying to manipulate me. As Lewis puts it in Peralandra – it’s the empirical boogey. This unfocused anxiety about facts and numbers and the implied pressure to conform in thought and deed to what the Bible calls the World.
Going forward: I declare here today that I don’t give one flying fig what the world has to say about my life. They can all go to hell.
Second: I will not let fear of men, especially not the men and women I hold precious, to check my willingness to share my life with them.
Third: I would much prefer the uncomfortable uncertainty of a mystery than to force a ‘rational’ filter onto a transcendent lifestyle.
So with that, I’m reminded of something Jesus says: “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, drive out demons – full stop.” Mat 10:8
I’ve spent some significant energy in the last couple of years in learning to drive out demons. I’m working on healing the sick next.
How much is my life with Christ hindered by fear of living in denial?
How much is it hindered by my fear of other people thinking I’m living in denial?
I remember an entry a while back that I wrote that fear had suddenly appeared to me as the mother of all Christian hang-ups. In Dune they say ‘fear is the mind killer’ but even more, fear is the faith killer.
What if I’m wrong? What if it isn’t God talking to me at all? I mean we are talking about ‘hearing voices’ aren’t we...what if I’m going absolutely mad and I can’t tell the difference between straight-jacket grade crackerdom and a spiritual nudge...if indeed there is a difference.
Ever since I read all those Lovecraft stories in high school with Jeremy O’Kelly I’ve felt like insanity would be perhaps the most frightening thing I could imagine. And yet, my last several years with God have been characterized by an increasing sensitivity (and conforming) to invisible things. Without equivocation, I am moving farther and farther away from the rational, materialistic worldview that is supposed to be my birthright as a child of the Enlightenment and approaching...no, not just approaching – racing, longing, reaching for a worldview that could easily be assailed as superstitous at best, or flat out bonkers at worst. Demons? C’mon now Really. Angels? Miracles? God TOLD you to do that? You know they have pills for that sort of thing now (since electro-therapy is out of style).
But that said, I still am dragging a very heavy ball and chain called denial. It’s this little, unobtrusive word that sort of haunts me whenever I ponder another leap of faith. There is a ‘nontrivial’ fear in me still that I’ve bought some bill of goods with all this God stuff. I fear the possibility that reality is one way, and I am imagining it to be another...in other words, that I’m living in denial.
Even more scary is the thought of sharing my crazy processes with others. It’s one thing to wonder in my own little brain if I’m losing it. It’s quite another to have that fact pointed out by somebody else. And as painful as it might be for Slusser to say to me, “Dude...are you holding it together?” it would particularly distressing for some random passerby to speak up. As if the dreadful and obvious nature of my psychosis was so compelling that the milk of human kindness insisted they offer assistance to whatever shred of sanity remain in my noxiously rotting melon.
...and I realize that it is also at exactly that moment that I recognize the ploy for what it is.
When I lay it all out like that I can see how exactly backwards it is. What could possibly motivate me to care for the opinion of a stranger more than for the heartfelt and contextualized feedback of a friend? A friend knows my story and sees my current step as only one step in a longer journey. A friend knows my past and is far more likely to know what deeper motivations (crazy or sane) lay under my actions. In short, to care more what ‘they’ think than what you think is simply inaccurate thinking. Even more so, and no offense to my friends, but nobody knows every nook and cranny of my psyche like I do and if Shakespeare's best advice is “Know thyself” and “To thine own self be true” then I am compelled to be true to my own heart, regardless of what even best friend's concerns might be. (Which is not to discount good counsel...I’m making a point here).
So suddenly, ‘Denial’ shows itself to be a kind of shadow monster, cast on the wall by hands trying to manipulate me. As Lewis puts it in Peralandra – it’s the empirical boogey. This unfocused anxiety about facts and numbers and the implied pressure to conform in thought and deed to what the Bible calls the World.
Going forward: I declare here today that I don’t give one flying fig what the world has to say about my life. They can all go to hell.
Second: I will not let fear of men, especially not the men and women I hold precious, to check my willingness to share my life with them.
Third: I would much prefer the uncomfortable uncertainty of a mystery than to force a ‘rational’ filter onto a transcendent lifestyle.
So with that, I’m reminded of something Jesus says: “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, drive out demons – full stop.” Mat 10:8
I’ve spent some significant energy in the last couple of years in learning to drive out demons. I’m working on healing the sick next.
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