Last Exit Before Oblivion

A friend wrote:

You really are quite an amazing amalgam ---- You have the mind of an engineer, the heart of a warrior and the soul of an artist. It's no wonder you have been flummoxed at times, especially in this last year as God weaves them together. The world -- heck, even the church most times -- works hard to convince us that those three things just cannot coexist in one person. Obviously they've never really met Jesus.

We were both Temple Slaves at Mosaic in Beverly Hills. She mixed the sound, I helped set it up and took care of problems. It was quite a pressure cooker at times: 12 minutes to showtime, and why doesn't monitor 3 work?

I went to work for them even before I had any idea what my relationship with God was. Work is something I know how to do, and working with people is a good way to find out what they're like. Every week we'd meet, open the place up and make it into a church where hundreds could come and celebrate.

At the start I had nothing to celebrate other than a sort of suggestion of a reason to hope for something better. After all, all these people act as if God is real, so maybe He is.

One of the big problems was that I knew churches. Big organizations just don't like odd-shaped parts. They want everyone to fit their definition of order. I learned that too much order is just as deadly as too much chaos, and my life at the time was suffering an excess of order.

So, what's all this about wrapping an artist, an engineer and a warrior into one person? Wholeness. If that's the way God made me, that's the way I want to be. I don't really know. Walking with God is a process of discovery.

Much of that discovery is worrisome. I've made my compromises and have set up a stable life. But, remember what I said about order? I wasn't having much fun, and yet I resist God's changes. My life has been a delicate balance of factions, all competing for the same internal resources.

We hear a lot of talk about "releasing the inner child," but there isn't much said about how to really do it, or how to find that child, or what to do with him when you find him. Get in touch with him and everything will be fine. That's the New Age line. Reality is different: I stuffed that inner child down into a crack in the ground because I didn't want him around. That crack became a weak point in my foundation. Not much can be built on a cracked foundation.

So, naturally, when God started reacquainting me with that inner child--I have called him the "cowering child" for his perpetual stance of readiness for beating--I ran. But running from God purely frustrating. He knows everything. He also runs faster than I do. And he cares more. He has also pretty much convinced me that his way is the best, so I sort of slowed down to take another look.

Inner child. Outer adult. Neither complete. Both stuck in the same room, and the best way I've been able to handle this is by keeping the lights turned off. God, however, brings light to everything he touches. God-stuff rubs off onto us. The light comes on and these two long-separated aspects look daggers at each other.

The cowering child has learned to love God because God never beats him up. Unlike me. And I have learned to trust God. That has led to an internal detente; we can at least look at each other without reaching for knives.

So, perhaps a warrior is one who can tolerate a certain amount of chaos in order to learn.