Last Exit Before Oblivion

Dialogue

2010-09-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

Becky wrote (astoundingly soon after I posted!) "...I don't know and yet I do know companionship on the journey helps."

Companionship. What a nice dream. Millions of movies examine the topic in one way or another. Psychologic studies show that people do better with companions, even if the companion is a pet cat or dog.

You'd think Christians could get together and share their lives, their learnings of how to live with God. It rarely happens, from what I've seen; Balkanization works among the saints as well as it works anywhere else.

The person I've told most about my recent story isn't a professing Christian. She is a far better listener than most Christians I've met, and doesn't judge me or question my relationship with God or my sincerity. She does question things she doesn't understand, and it's purely because she just doesn't understand. She's not trying to show me the error of my ways and talk me into some form of correction. Elsewhere, I've met Christians who are all full of exhortation and "encouragement," based on knowing someone for a minute. I believe that you don't have community until you've known and done things together for years. Maybe I'm just slow.

I know I'm not very trusting. How could I be, given the way the world works? God doesn't mind, starting with where I am, and teaching me what I need to understand, not moving on until the understanding is there. I wonder if such a thing is possible in a church.

I'd like to find some Christians who want to understand.

"From the time that I could talk
I was ordered to listen." --Cat Stevens

"When everyone's talking
And no one is listening..." -Crosby, Stills and Nash

Dialogue takes work and concentration. The world is too busy to allow this... probably by design.

Be Prepared for the Truth

2010-09-14T14:18:00.000-07:00

Truth swims nearly unseen in the sparkly ocean of our lives. It's too fine for the meshy nets of logic and rules. Truth doesn't much care for traps and hammers, but it likes to come up and bask in the sunlight of an honest invitation. It also likes to surprise.

Seven years ago I was having lunch with a friend of the time at a Thai restaurant, and the fortune in my cookie said "Be prepared for the truth." Keith and I looked at each other, eyes big, and laughed, as this was exactly what we'd been talking about on the way to the restaurant.

Seven years later, I wonder how anyone can ever be prepared for truth. There are so many layers of honestly misguided help, purely self-serving help, institutional help, and pure lies in the service of economics that even recognizing the nibble of a tiny fish of truth amid the shoals of sharks calls for discrimination of a very high order.

Simplicity is easy to cloak in obfuscation to make it sound more important. From one simple historic fact, Jesus' choice to sacrifice himself for us, has grown a great thicket of industry and guilt. I'm prone to elegant misguidance also.

And yet... God has given us a guide, a comforter. His words yet whisper and echo in my soul, calling me on. If I were to try to describe what He is doing it would come out looking like any other self-indulgent modern-day avoider of real responsibility. Perhaps that's the truth. Probably is, partially, but we have to start somewhere. I believe God can provide guidance.

Change is, however, very hard. With all the voices we face each day, imploring us to go this way or that, buy this product but not another, it's good if we are resistant. This makes it harder to hear truth, and harder yet to respond; how do I know this isn't just another deception? Can I really hear the voice of God?

Still, it happens. Slowly, and with pain and confusion. Our culture teaches respect for the Big Event: blow everything up and start over. This hasn't worked very well. It's more like walking to Peoria, one step at a time. Eventually you'll get there.

This assumes some trusting of the guide. Are we really going to Peoria? Do I want to go there? Well, God has something in mind, but is pretty quiet about it. All he asks of me is not to quit, but I still wonder about where we're going. I guess it's good He doesn't tell me, because if He did I'd turn the journey into a set of rule for producing what I thought God desired.

I think, I feel, that living with God is more a relationship than a prescription. Rules don't work in relationships, and that may be one of the bigger truths for which I've been unprepared. Move over, Mind, the Heart has other ways that need to be included in the process.

Past Made of Salt

2010-04-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

Karen asked if I'm OK because I haven't posted anything here in over a year. Not sure about OK, but I am still here.

One question is: Why bother writing a blog? If it takes a year for anyone to notice the absence of news, what's the point? At the same time I do check Lu's blog now and then, hoping for news, so there may be some people interested in mine. This still doesn't answer the question of why write. For now, I'll write while the answer is still, perhaps, coming.

Life has changed. First, a few weeks after I wrote the previous post, I got to thinking about God and purpose. What might happen if I loosened the choke-hold I had on my life's path, and let God influence where I went? I figured it couldn't be worse than what I've done to myself. The result? No long journey. Just... I met someone.

A little while after that, May or so, I realized I'd about had it with work. The straitjacket was becoming increasingly onerous. I walked into the City of Los Angeles retirement office and talked with one of their people about early retirement options. I'd be eligible in December, at the end of a 2-year experiment turned into 25-year career. It looked to me as if it would work, so I decided I'd go in January.

The economy was already in trouble. The City's revenues were down and they were discussing several ways to save money: layoffs, furloughs, and even rumors of an early retirement incentive. All of this went on for the next few months. My boss and I talked about it. We were both ready to go, but figured it would never happen in that on-again, off-again dealmaking in City Hall.

It actually turned into a go. They told us in November: you have a month in which to sign up. I sent in my paperwork on the first day, which meant I had a month to wait. I figured... this is bureaucracy. It'll take months. I was thinking I'd actually retire sometime in the spring, if not early summer. But then we started hearing that the City was really keen to move things fast... and my date came up. January 2. I heard this in mid-December. There was the usual round of holiday things and then, suddenly, I'm on the street.

January was fun. Lots of sand sculpture in very cooperative weather. Then the weather internal and external went to pieces. No sculpture, and the internal landscape torn by brushfire war. Only God's hand kept this from turning into some kind of armageddon. Work, it turned out, had been a dandy distraction. Now, all of a sudden, the clock had rolled back 30-odd years. Questions I hadn't answered then and didn't need to because I could push them off into some nebulous future were suddenly in my face. The future was ... now.

I sometimes wonder about stories in the Bible. For example, why did Lots' wife turn into a pillar of salt? Is this metaphor or reality? We have no clue, other than by our own experience; those who live in their pasts don't do much. Salt doesn't do much. In small quantities it's great for flavor, but in great quantities it kills. Did Lot's wife die just because she looked back? No... she devoted herself to not wanting to leave the old ways.

Two points make a line. You can extrapolate from those past points infinitely far into the future... undeviating. Not much life in that, but there is survival. Life means experiment, wiggling, ups and downs... all things that tend to call attention to the one so involved. I've survived partly through just being consistently in the background.

Freedom means being free from the past. Free to make something new. And now I know why people are so afraid of freedom. Churches especially should be supporters of freedom because Jesus came to make us free, but they are the very fountainhead of conservatism because freedom is just too frightening. If you can't extrapolate from the past... what do you do? Figure things out on the fly? Perhaps fall down and scrape a knee... and then have to endure a lot of artificial sympathy from those around you whose worlds shake when yours falls?

So... three and a half months into retirement. Questions continue. Answers? Maybe. We're working on it, but I'm tired.

I'm still here.

Mulishly Rulish

2009-02-17T16:31:00.000-08:00

How can I talk about matters of spirit and emotion? I don't even know how to start. Musicians understand, at least to some degree, which is why I take so much solace in music. Currently it's Ooodoo played on a system more advanced than anything else I've owned. It's glorious.

I have no idea who else might understand so I don't bother trying. Attempts in the past have been greeted with "That's nice" or blank looks. So, I have long sessions in Guild Wars, wandering the electronic hills while Bach or Bruce Cockburn echoes in my head.

I should talk with God. I know He listens. We've had some very interesting conversations, some of which I've mentioned here. How can God be real, though? Logic says I'm just talking to myself.

Logic has its place. It's great for troubleshooting and designing. It utterly fails when questions about why one should bother designing or making anything. It also fails when looking into the abyss of the future, and spends inordinate amounts of time looking about for solid blocks with which to build a future.

In the past I kept logic in its place. Oh, the balance was uneasy most of the time and it certainly couldn't be explained. So, I used rules to cover my tracks in the external world so I'd appear normal enough to be left alone.

Ah, to be left alone. My fondest desire. Which sort of started falling apart when God reintroduced himself. Being left alone didn't help when looking into that abyss. Being left alone didn't help me find a reason to go on. So, I became somewhat more open to God's touch but there ensued a long battle.

Note that God Himself never cast this in terms of takeover or slavery. I did that. My slavish devotion to rules for getting along meant that God had to be quite creative so that he could surprise me; I'm good at survival-based prediction. No, what He wanted was a relationship.

Oh, yes, the big religious cliche. A personal relationship with God. Core of a million jokes and parodies. Logic asks how could God care about one broken-down useless man? Logic is what assigns the values. Yep, it's impossible.

Well, what can I say? Life is impossible. The words are about logic but if you read between the lines you begin to note that no one really knows why they go on. Everyone has a justification they talk about but they're all thin as tissue paper, which is quite likely why arguments about this tend to become so heated. Life is made of something invisible, delicate, magic, the interstices between logic and heart, synaptic connections bridged by belief.

Why write about this? Who will understand? I don't know. All I can say is that God has stayed true to the course He hinted at 5 years back while I've waffled and wandered and ignored him. I can draw the trail forward and see... weirdness. One thing a man who wants to be left along can't deal with is standing out. Not that God is calling me to any outstanding role, but just being near Him is enough. One can't change internally without some light getting out.

So, I go back to my attempts to build a solid structure of logic. Something I can understand, something I can design to maintain anonymity. Yet the need for anonymity kind of recedes when I look more to God than anything else. Rules and roles are the past. Relationship is the now and fighting that just leads ever deeper into death.

How many times do I have to repeat this cycle before I allow whatever God's presence in me to grow? Growth is what happens when life takes place. I use rules to make sure growth is comprehensible.

Life requires freedom. Oh, I understand the need for rules. We need to keep from running into each other, but rules are about as effective at bringing about life change as a coat of paint is in rebuilding a collapsing house. How do you rebuild? How do you make something beautiful? Can I trust that God is interested in beauty? I want beauty more than anything else in this world, and God is the most beautiful sight my inner eye has ever seen.

Sight is made of more than light. There are many dimension, many factors for the sensitive. While the world hammers at defenses, a thousand arguments trying to haul me into their camps, God sits and... invites. "Come to Me," He says. "We don't need to argue. I am called the Comforter." And yet... I use rules to wall all of that away. It can't be real. If it were real, everyone would be doing it.

Where did that idea come from? One of the first real things I learned in my life is that truth isn't often found amid a crowd. The herd defines its own kind of truth, but it's not the beautiful truth that I want, so I use my senses to track beauty. Or at least I used to.

In denying God I've denied the deeper truths of myself; I've dropped into survival mode. Ah, what a mistake. God is the inescapable threat. He's here, right here, all the time, like parents I can't hide from. Unlike them He doesn't use any of what he sees against me in ridicule or belittlement. Facts are what we work with, whether the facts are the insubstantial ones of belief and feeling or the incontrovertible few, such as gravity and momentum.

He respects me. I respond by running. It can't be real. How real is a rainbow?

Invisible Comfort

2008-11-15T04:29:00.000-08:00

What does a moth think about? Resting upon a leaf, under the wide blue sky. Does the leaf look like a leaf to those eyes? Is blue a valid concept? Can a nearly weightless, winged moth know anything of gravity?

The leaf grows from a twig, which joins a bigger twig. Twig to branch to limb, inward and downward from our gravity-centred point of view anyway, eventually to the trunk. Sun's fire reaches through essential, invisible air to leaves unconscious of their photosynthetic magic.

Everyone wants to feel good. Is there any more to feelings than a kind of bubble in a vacuum, or a kite with no string, or leaves without a tree?

All the limbs come together in a massive trunk, and then the tree spreads out again, roots dividing again and again until nothing is left but nearly invisible rootlets. This is where the real business of the tree is transacted, business between bacteria, fungi, minerals, an intimate embrace of earth and water.

Trees grow. From a microscopic embryo inside a tiny, hard-cased seed to a barely visible stem and, given time and space and beneficent environment, shade for picnics and bird nests. Each leaf connected firmly to the reality of stone and earth.

To one who feels bad most of the time, a moment or minute of feeling good comes as a gift or an incomprehensible miracle with no cause. Feelings are like cats: they don't like clingy people. When they are so rare, however, how can I keep from holding on? If I were a leaf I'd be in perpetual shade every once in a while being hit by a ray of sunlight. Hang on! Don't let it go.

Like the bubble in vacuum, or the stringless kite, it can't happen. Feelings come from somewhere. Something holds them up, and they grow from one's own roots.

For a Christian to talk about this is very close to blasphemy. As soon as the topic comes up people become uncomfortable and the talk soon turns to duty. Jesus himself, however, calls the Holy Spirit the Comforter. For me the logic is simple: why do we have feelings if they are to be ruthlessly suppressed?

It could very well be that I'm the only person who needs to look into this. Jesus is the one who leaves the 99 sheep to go fetch back the one that got lost. No matter what, he will, if allowed, rescue that sheep. We celebrate the story but are pretty hard on the lost sheep themselves. What is involved in the rescue? What would you expect from One who died for His sheep? He doesn't work by halves. No whitewash over rust and decay.

To rescue a leaf, Jesus starts working at the roots. His light reaches everywhere to show the connections I'd given up on understanding. His hands hold me together as I try to stop the changes. Change is a problem for one with limited resources and stability.

It turns out, though, that most of the instability comes from inside me. Anything that looks different is a threat, so it gets town down. Repeatedly through the years I have turned the hydraulic hose of intellect upon the foundations of new, pretty structures to reduce their foundations to rubble. The life can't stand on such tumbled earth; there is no chance for roots to grow and become stronger.

Comfort is essential when change comes knocking at the door. Change is essential if I'm to continue living as anything other than an automatic eel in the world's cracks. Substantive change that really sticks around for longer than the time it takes my intellectual sun to rise is something that has never happened.

Jesus' light is both gentle and powerful. He is never vindictive, never says "I told you so," never loses patience as I require being taught the same thing again and again. How does one who has never known faith learn to believe? Like a leaf on a tree, faith is connected to experience and everything else. It doesn't exist on its own. Faith is essential. After all, if you believe you can't climb a tree you'll never try but one probably shouldn't start with an elm whose first branches are 40 feet up. Jesus knows where the beginning is, where the tiny dying roots meet the stony dry ground.

Even the memory of water is gone. If faith is to grow, there must be water. Rain falls and new ideas grow. That starts the process of destruction. How many cycles before I learn, or die? Which choice? Patience leads to living.

God places his hands gently around the warring aspects of myself. Always before, to have them in the same room leads to destruction as one tries desperately to solve the problem of warfare by outrunning or killing off the others. One voice leads to stability. It leads to sterility, too, and doesn't last long. God wants everyone to live together. Unanimity isn't needed, but it can't be like a meeting of porcupines either.

It has taken years to bring this about. I've asked the question before: what would happen if all the different voices at least quit fighting? I'm tired, bone-deep tired right down to my dry roots, of fighting. How much difference can invisible comfort make?

This morning, right now, I'm still here. I attribute this to Jesus' work over the last 30-odd years and particularly in the last 5. I've been ready to give up for the last two of them, sick to death of the fighting and running away from God's kindness. Kindness burns in the soul of one who hasn't experienced much of it. I don't even really believe in it but that's not really much of an impediment to God. What stops him is a determination not to believe. God sees the tiniest cracks, and encourages even tinier rootlets to grow in there. Nearly imperceptible to a person but these rootlets are where life starts.

And then He holds the new plant as life grows and... changes things.

Dying to Self

2008-10-21T03:57:00.000-07:00

"Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.' " (Matthew 16:25,26, from Biblegateway.com)

Barbara wrote "I sometimes wonder what the purpose of life is. Does anyone know? If so please tell me. I never used to feel this way. I used to see the future as full of hope and possibilities, now I just wonder WHY life has to be so damn difficult so much of the time."

It's simple. Just die to yourself, as the church vernacular has it. We've all heard it said. Nobody ever explains what it means in the real world. I can understand that; it's a difficult concept to explain in words. I wonder if God feels frustration with the limited means of communication that most people allow. We're never taught to go any deeper, so people spin off onto their own mystic paths, trying desperately to put some living flesh on the dead bones of logical words.

How do you tell a modern person to listen to God? I have no idea, so I don't talk about it. But for the last couple of nights I've been intensively discussing-feeling-thinking-listening with God these concepts of life, trying to find a way through the intellectual tyranny of words. Still, words are an anchor; we've all seen what happens when people become too detached.

So, it seems to be that denying the self, or soul (the Greek word can be translated as either), means allowing all of my different voices to be heard. I can't speak for others but perhaps it's a route worth exploring.

No one likes tyranny. It's simple, though, and easy to enforce, so we end up with a lot of it. Intellect has always been the iron boot on top of me, but it has also been the steel frame that has allowed me to stand against hostile hot winds. What goes on for years becomes truth to the exclusion of anything else. Now it seems I need to deny that operational truth and become open to a more flexible way of building. Who holds those soft joints together? Who makes sense of all the different voices? The same One who quieted the clamor one night five years ago and let me out of the confusion.

It wasn't what I'd consider self-denial. It was a denial of my hard-edged management, but other parts of me were allowed to speak. For a time they gained confidence and were able to speak up, and life was more balanced, but then I got scared and tried to reimpose logic. Who could trust God? Didn't he always play tricks on people, and leave them stranded at critical moments? Aren't we all supposed to be independent? Where is the truth? I tried, much as I had in the late 1970s, to find the truth on my own terms. It's hard to trust anyone when they usually perpetuate, if not lies, at least the same old tired answers that even I know don't work.

God is different. Some of the most deeply buried voices in me turned to God as a sunflower does to the sun, and enjoyed his light and life. This was incomprehensible. What did it mean? Logic! We must understand!

Well, understanding comes, but it's not just words. That still small voice speaks in many ways, and my own quiet parts, once I deny logic complete control, resonate. Rain the desert, quietly penetrating the dust.

Setting the Captive Free

2008-10-07T03:29:00.001-07:00

Jesus told people he had come to make the captives free. Who is captive? To what? The idea of freedom is intensely attractive to me but it also repels me, or impels me to build intellectual walls against it.

I used to do better. My life was an uneasy, dynamic balance between impossible and daily hiding of what's important. It's easy to hide from people, especially when they're as willfully self-deluded as I am.

Five years ago God showed himself to me again. Hiding would never be the same; how do you hide from someone who lives inside the walls? We played hide and seek amid the ruins and I ceded ever more territory to no-man's land as I burrowed deeper.

Love is a bludgeon. I have seen the word used to wrap people in ever tighter bands of rules. "If you love God you will want to..." and there comes a long list of practices. If Jesus came to set the captive free, then what's with all the rules? Framing of reference, for one thing.

Five years ago I asked God to show me the truth. I expected rules, as rules are how I frame reality. Rules are like bricks that can be used to build just about anything. They're comprehensible and can be held and looked at. They don't change. Put one down today it'll still be there in a year or so. What I got instead was love, given by example.

This wasn't comprehensible to me so I translated it into rules. God became very creative in avoiding the traps I built of rules. He never did what I expected so after a while I started avoiding him. He'd answer any question I asked except those that led anywhere near containment.

Five years ago God promised rain in the desert, a feast for the prodigal, a celebration. I don't believe in love even when it's demonstrated, mainly because most of my experience of love is as a way of cloaking selfish lies whose ultimate design is to reduce me to a pale copy of someone else. I'd like to be loved, but even more I want to be myself. I have given up love in order to remain free.

God is love... and he came to make me free, five years ago. I've spent roughly four years of that time dodging, and getting tired. Is it possible to be both loved, and free? Words on one side, reality on the other. God Himself doesn't fit inside the words so I work to ignore everything that I can't comprehend. That's a lot of work. No wonder I'm tired.

The alternative seems worse. If I really leave myself open to God's thoughts, what horrible things might happen? What might I get dragged into? There was a time when I didn't worry so much about these things; I drifted along and life just sort of worked itself out. Life worked better then than it did after I put my hand on the tiller and started trying to steer. Perhaps
God had been at the helm before then.

Where did my directing lead? To the last place on earth I ever wanted to live: Los Angeles. Freedom comes in different flavors, and at least now I'm free of needing to worry about where the rent will come from. Freedom can be made, too, and in that I've just pretty much given up. It's just too wild an idea that God is really interested in freedom. Church history is not at all kind to this idea, but I think it's essential for me.

How does a rule-bound 56 year old bureaucrat learn freedom? The same way a pianist learns to play: practice, with a very patient teacher. God never gives up. A day, a year, a decade after the last contact, if I turn back in His direction He is there to continue the lesson where we left off, or to step back a few ideas and go over the ground again. This is the reality I have experienced many times. I'm not a trusting soul. I have been burned far too many times to be anything but closely guarded. God doesn't take advantage of my naivete, but waits, impossibly, sitting there in the desert waiting for me to put away the umbrella.

Status, for Becky

2008-08-29T15:42:00.000-07:00

Telling a true story is much like shooting rapids in a small open boat. The process exposes one to much ridicule and doubt, and how much of that kind of heavy water can one take before going down? And how many times can you be sunk before you just decide not to bother floating where everyone can take a shot? Even deciding to tell the story... who would believe it? Beyond that, what difference does it make? Words go out and are usually met with silence, perhaps because I tend to toss them out there and then disavow them. A tail already cut off is one that can't be pulled by someone else.

So, I've not had much to say to anyone recently. I've largely quit trying. I do my job, come home and read or play Guild Wars. Every once in a while, in the quiet of 2AM or thereabouts, God whispers clearly, a few words before I close the fatigue-opened doors.

I'm mostly a failure as a Christian, as a human being. This doesn't seem to matter very much to God. He keeps believing He can do anything, and communicates that belief to me without rancor, without judgment. Even when I tell him how reality works he just waits for me to run the skein to its end and then I look back up to him and see forgiveness again.

I follow Jesus because He is irresistibly attractive. I can't put it into words. Picture a cat lying in a sunbeam on a cool morning: no understanding of what the sun is nor how nuclear fusion creates light visible and invisible but sensible on sensitive fur. The cat simply makes a choice: it feels good.

Following Jesus because He makes me feel good is about as shameful a statement as a modern Christian can make. Still... what else is there? To talk about the reasons for following Jesus is, I think, to exchange lies to make other people feel better. Human beings are motivated by things beyond and below logic, and logic never tells the whole story. The attempt to fit human experience into the strictures of logic leaves far too much reality on the cutting room floor.

Note that I'm not saying logic is useless. It's essential. Feelings are equally essential but much less accepted. One can, I believe, cuddle in God's lap and feel the sun of His being while also being within the stated limits of forgiveness coming from Jesus' actions. Why should there be the polarity? I read the Mosaic of Pain Blog* and links therefrom every now and then, and the discussions rapidly go from what's needed to an argument over who is more scripturally based.

We see through a glass, not very clearly. Each of us takes a guess and tries. One more reason to keep quiet: how do I know I'm right in anything that I put here? Even if if I am right, how are you to follow? No, I think it's better to think of writing as merely a way to show, not signposts on the route to be travelled, but a presentation of the fact that the journey is possible, and continues.

I'm still here. In the last two years I've ruined a number of potential relationships so have pretty much given up on that whole idea. Work is tolerable, most of the time, although recently politics has made things much more difficult. So, I come home and go to bed. On the weekends I bash imaginary monsters with imaginary heroes that are surprisingly interesting to work with. I can win the battles in Guild Wars. If I lose there's the potential for a new approach that will win. Victory may be imaginary but it's better than imaginary defeat.

How does one who grew up with defeat grow into victory? Five years ago I thought it was simple but since then things have gotten complicated. What constitutes victory, and how does one learn? No matter how basic the need, God doesn't mind teaching and the answer, unlike those offered by people, are never forced. They come in their own time. Who knows his own mind? None of us. There are aspects buried in there that, in my case, are just sick to death of being manipulated and manipulation is the name of our society. Even the church. It's an earnest attempt to present truth, but the model comes from our corrupt society.

I want something different. I want to be a whole person. I don't know how this will be done, or if. I don't even know what it will look like.

--------------------------------

*This is a site supposedly calling for repentance of Mosaic church management. While I too think Mosaic has problems... I think the Blog is overly polarized, and polarizing.

Leading Comments

2008-06-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

Karen quoted her son as saying:
"Do not walk in front of me, for I may not follow.
Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead.
Do not walk beside me, either, just pretty much leave me alone."

This reminds me of my first experience in jury duty. One of the questions prospective jurors were asked was "Do you consider yourself a leader or a follower?" Every one of them responded with leader. Got to keep up those appearances.

It got me to thinking, and my conclusion was much like Karen's quote. If one is to be considered a leader there must be people following. Nope. No one behind me. There's usually no one in front of me, either, more through unusual approaches to things than to being a die-hard nonconformist. You know, one of those people who is so determined to be different that they look just like everyone else.

I've done a lot of off-trail hiking in the mountains. Using trails is easier; the path is smoother and the down trees, rocks, holes and streams are removed, cut through or bridged. When you find your own path you're on your own to get past the obstacles. This worked fine in Colorado but in California making your own path is, um, a problem. Ever heard of ceanothus? There are many kinds, ranging from resistant to downright hostile, and forcing your way through these miniature forests is painful. I very soon learned to stay on the trail. This was very frustrating.

Basically, I just want to get to where I'm going. I'll make my own trail if needed, but following another is easier. Very rarely is there anyone going the same way, so I just walk. If there's an existing trail I'll use it until it no longer goes the direction I need, and then I'll sigh and take off across the wild country of wherever, hoping I won't get lost.

There's a major fault with this approach... and the fault can also be seen as an advantage. I look ahead to where I want to go and choose the most direct path, and simply concentrate on that. Things that are outside my light of sight tend to get ignored. Distractions, or delights. I've probably missed a lot this way, but there are times when it's good. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of getting somewhere and realize I've not seen much along the way.

Leader, follower, who cares. Just do what comes to hand. Following can be just another way of leading, and leading as demonstrated by politicians is just being led around by perceived public opinion and money. There are few real leaders; the real ones are fairly quiet, and usually villified. No one wants a truly original person in charge.

I wonder if there's a way to walk an individual path with one or more companions. There'd probably be some compromise involved, and I'm not averse to that. Most of the time, though, the compromise is made by the weaker person in a relationship, after the leader finds out which buttons to press to get the responses desired. Yes, I'm cynical. I've seen and been involved in too much of this.

One could do an interesting study of how Jesus leads. He leads because he's qualified; there is no ego involved.

No Fun

2008-06-24T14:06:00.000-07:00

Layla said there were actually some people asking her what happened to me. It's easy to feel forgotten in this world. Events move fast and it's easy to just let the days go by.

How can words be assembled to represent events in a life? Why bother? Does anyone care? If they did care... would I care?

Relationships are, to me, a sign of failure. All those years of being in school and at home, situations in which being left alone was the best option. "If you don't behave we'll send you to see the principal." "Wait until your father gets home." Yah... meeting with people means I've failed. Not too much of a problem for one who can choose when to relate to people, but a huge problem for one who has the Holy Spirit living within: a judge all built in and inescapable.

A constant reminder of failure, of need. This is a problem for long-term living. What's the point? Everything I do is wrong.

Old habits, as Lu wrote about recently, die very hard. We both know that God is NOT watching over our shoulders waiting for the slightest infraction so he can jump on us. Jesus didn't die to judge people. I have God's voice working gently to overwrite the past, but the past looms large and in strength.

I was thinking about this years ago. My life has been pretty much just waiting for the failure I knew would come. Inevitable. That I've made it this far is due more to luck than anything else. God asked me, "Why not wait for success?" I thought it was a neat idea. Then we got into the process, and that has been no fun.

If relationships are the key to life I'm still looking for the lock. I tried to overwrite my social backwardness with rational processes, basically telling myself what to do. Relationships aren't rational, not completely, and much runs under a surface that to the rational mind is opaque. Only the heart can see through the horizon.

Ah, the heart... much is written, much is sung, much is assumed. Jesus was the exemplar of a man with a heart, and he was killed for his efforts. Hearts have a hard time in this world. The process of transforming a child into an adult is in large part the process of the child learning to put ever tighter constraints upon the heart; if this is not done, the person is said to be odd, or to wear their heart on their sleeve.

I've always thought that in a contest between a sensitive man and a ravaging world, the world is wrong. This is why I've spent the better part of my time alone. Now, the big question is, what does God think of a sensitive man? I have no place to hide from him.

Love and Fear

2008-03-01T08:26:00.000-08:00

In the soul of the embattled man, love balances fear and fear balances love. Find the place in the middle that's tolerable.

Perfect love is supposed to cast out fear. I can believe that but the gap between belief and practice is wide.

What is belief, anyway? Is it reasonable to think that belief in Jesus can really make a difference in a person's life? I think so; look at all the artifacts of belief: dogs cowering under a friendly pat because of what they've been taught, people staying in abusive relationships because they believe that's all they're good for.

I grew up in a system that rewarded action regardless of belief, so I learned to run over whatever I believed so as to produce the actions expected. This is not what God wants. He wants my active, open-eyed, aware participation in the process of living with Him. There is a difference between mechanical action and action from belief. I think love is one of the latter.

How do I get there? It starts with the assumption that God is real, alive, and wants to work in me. That he wants my company. This is hard for me to believe because it's such a nice fantasy. How could it be real? As soon as I get close I'm sure he will drop me, run off and laugh at my naivete, or just get bored with how long it takes. Nothing he has done has supported this belief of mine. It's all history.

History can't be overrun by assumed belief. It also won't go away, and it's no good just being resigned to fate. I run away and hide from God in the deepest places I know and expect him to reach in there and haul me out into His light. That's the way our world and our churches would do it. We're all about force and producing activity.

God knows it doesn't work. Force of any kind is the psychic equivalent of rape and always produces bad results. The signs of a forced soul are clear to see, at least for the sensitive. What He does instead is take every invitation as if offered honestly and then wait.

I have to walk to Him. I have to choose to walk to Him. By light, by scent, by feeling the path is clearly indicated. I know the way to go: toward God. It's no good turning the castle over to him; he wants more than the stone shell. He wants my fragile fragmented soul, not to laugh nor to enlist but to heal.

I'm still afraid. Extrapolating, I can see what might come of this. Where might a healed soul end up? Outside the obscure, that's for sure. Do I want that?

Well, how much do I trust God? Do I really believe that He cares about me as myself more than as a subunit in some holy machinery? Do I believe that He knows me? Loves me? Ideally, love would want the best for another person, but is that my best or His best? Perhaps the two tracks are the same. Maybe I'm being attracted to something I truly want.

Yes, I've been stuck in this for some time. This post is similar to others I've made. Similar, not identical. Am I really getting someplace? I think so but it's like walking to the Rocky Mountains: from one day to the next there seems to be no movement. For someone who grew up with cars and airplanes the progress of spiritual development seems glacial. Truth takes time to grow under God's light and then he has to encourage me to to walk away from what's familiar to what's new... based only on what I believe about God Himself. Belief seems weak when compared to history.

It is not belief in the power of belief. Yes, belief has power but it's not the belief that works. It's
God doing the work and helping me work. My belief is in a person, not myself nor a principle. God holds my fragility against a hostile world that cares not for understanding. His love was first, then healing and belief waltzing in time with God's heart.

Manipulation

2008-02-22T05:37:00.000-08:00

It's me against the whole damned world. I look out from my embattled cave and... just want to lie down and die. I'm tired. Fighting the world isn't that much of a problem but fighting the Living God takes some effort.

Kindness leads to change, inevitably, calling like a siren from the sharp rocks. How does one change while still surviving? Cat Stevens sang "From the time that I could talk, I was ordered to listen." Any discussion of events and ideas with God proceeds with the understanding that He is always right.

Except that God isn't interested in being Right. He has no axe to grind. Still, being with him means change. Who am I, if not the same person I am right now? How is God's work different from all those in the past who have tried to change me to suit their own motives, their own plans?

The main difference I see right now is that God isn't interested in manipulating me. He wants me to go into it open-eyed, making a real decision. Look at the alternatives, discuss it with all of my fragmented selves and go. God will wait.

A decision made under duress isn't a decision. A decision that forces one side to knuckle under also isn't a decision, and you have only to look at the boundaries of nations to understand the truth. Intellectual tyrrany isn't a decision. It's a dictatorship and the arrangement tends to come apart under stress. A whole soul can't be made from parts that are forced to be buddies; they have to mutually agree.

How in the world can that happen? I have no idea.

Being Lovéd

2008-01-04T07:02:00.000-08:00

Larry said "Well, it is different in that God is involved. Fine, so far as that goes... but why do so many people hate God? Why do so few find out how kind he is?"

Layla replied "I don't know. That's a good question; you should do a post on it. I think some of hate comes from fear and the ultimate fear is kind of what you described above, fear of losing love. And hate also comes from misunderstanding, from differences, like someone may fear something because they have this idea about it, but the idea is wrong, but they have no way of knowing it's wrong because they fear it too much to get close to it and see for themselves.

Smitty added "God does let us walk on our own two feet until we realize that we can't do it on our own. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just being stubborn in continuing to try and do it myself, knowing that God has so much better places to take me."

Layla said "I know God will never grow impatient of teaching you, showing you, holding you…. but what if he wants something for you that is really wonderful and you keep the guard up and never let it happen?"

Something in the human soul refuses to be conquered. It rises against attempts to do so and no amount of beating from the perceived enemy will succeed unless the whole organism fails.

Oh, it might put on the appearance of being conquered but anger seethes under the surface. Force begets more force whether it's on a national or personal level. Christians are taught to look conquered and then they wonder why some years down the road the whole edifice of faith comes apart like a cheap mobile home in a tornado.

Jesus said to build on foundation of rock, rather than sand. Wrapping bands of applied steel around an unruly spirit is the psychological equivalent of sand construction. Trust a sand sculptor to know what happens to sand when storms show up. The soul seeks the gaps and grows like weeds through concrete, leading the desperate Christian to apply ever greater force until some day they just decide to give the whole mess up. Unless they're strong. Leaders tend to be the strong ones, the exemplars of imposed force. Why can't everyone be like them?

Well, gee. Not everyone is like them. Duh.

The storms are real. The problems of life are real and usually show up at inconvenient times. The strong swim like hell and get through, wondering why the followers get hammered.

Jesus said "The meek shall inherit the earth." This is a hint that our worldview has some problems. Another hint comes from the fact that the current system just doesn't work, if you look at humanity and our potential from a broader point of view. What might happen if we quit trying to force ourselves to conform to someone else's idea of what a Christian is?

Larry wrote "Yet God just keeps walking with me, repeating lessons as needed. Slowly I become more confident, but I hope I never have to try to explain any of this to a real Christian."

Layla quite naturally asked "What's your definition of a real Christian?"

In my mind these are the leaders, the strong ones, the ones who go out to change the world. They're the ones who take others aside and speak to them of obedience. I'm certainly not among those august ranks, me, just trying to get through another day without exploding or giving up.

All I know is that stuff won't work for me. I've tried it. I have contained my soul in ever thicker bands of restraint and intellect. If that's the real potential of human life you can keep it. When God brought me back to himself I decided not to repeat other people's mistakes. I had nothing to lose, but still expected to gain nothing. Christianity has 2000 years of history that seems to indicate that one small man is just so much grain to be ground in service of the Kingdom. Yet the Kingdom doesn't seem to be well served right now. A lot of energy seems to go into internecine wrangling. What can be done?

How about... being loved? God is love. Jesus is the Word of God. The Holy Spirit lives within us. The call is to high places. We know that. Why do we climb on our own power? Why does it seem so shameful to ask for the help that has already been given? What might happen to me specifically if I were to allow God to hold me?

What kinds of wonders might God have planned for me, if he could just get it through my resistant soul that he loves me? We were discussing this last night. My usual model for my relationship with God is as master and slave. He suggested that father and son was a better model, so I followed that.

If I had a son what would I wish for him? I'd wish for him to grow up strong and healthy, able to think for himself, creative, sensitive, kind. At that point I realized I was getting out into territory I know nothing of. What is reasonable to ask of a son? How can I dictate to him the qualities I wish I myself had? So, I kept thinking about it until I fell asleep and had really weird dreams about the roof leaking and the house falling in. Somewhere in there was butter lost in the kitchen.

I have no experience with this kind of thing. What is a human being? What can a human being be? I have a very strong conviction that the world around us acts as chains of lead so heavy that it's a wonder any of us manages to move at all. Daily living is so much work that I get tired just thinking about it. What might be possible as a Son of God? He does call me his son. Most of the weight I carry around is self-generated. I learned my lessons well, to stay in my niche, not to stick my head out where it will be noticed.

I do have experience of God's love. I know experience as a guide is denigrated in today's Christianity. I know that experience can lie if taken by itself. With God's guidance alongside, however, it works. How else do children learn than by following, trying, making mistakes and being taught a better way by example?

It's not an easy path. Why bother following it? Certainly not to impress anyone else, nor to get a reputation for running the race.

Something in the soul senses the scent of Jesus, following his light through times bright and dark. It's too good to be true, however, so we get involved in rules. What might happen if I were able to shake off the leaden chains and walk with a spring in my step? It's certainly not what I expected but it seems to be what we're walking toward.

I encourage everyone who reads this to ask God directly. What can life be? Who are You, God?

Soul Held Whole and Round

2007-12-30T15:47:00.000-08:00

Smitty wrote in a comment:
"Do you ever find yourself scared to let God hold you? Or perhaps, resisting the prompting of the Spirit to let God hold you because you want to stand on your own yet knowing that you would never survive if you got what you wanted?"

The holding itself isn't that frightening. I wonder what John was thinking about as he reclined, head on Jesus' chest. Was he thinking of the future, when Jesus would be gone? Was he thinking of the ramifications of such intimate contact with his Savior?

The question is, I think, more complex than most Christians are familiar with. We have no end of books and preachers giving one-line answers to life's questions. "You want to stand on your own two feet? Can't be done. Forget about it. God will beat that out of you."

Well, yes, I can't stand alone... once I've started walking with Jesus. This causes problems for me. The standard answer would be the "on your own feet," pride-oriented answer. Pride may be involved but as an answer it's not very useful; how do you get rid of pride? I don't know. Judging from the failures I see around me I doubt that anyone else has a handle on this.

I'm pragmatic. Give me something that works regardless of the terms or how explainable it is. So, yes, I do want to stand on my own. I want nothing to come into my life that I can't keep going by myself because I've learned that I can't count on anyone else for help. When push comes to shove, they've shoved off. God's answer? Let me walk on my own two feet until I've come to the end of my resources or the point of choosing to end the walk.

One day on the bus home I closed my eyes and talked with God. The idea of holding was still pretty new and we were exploring the ramifications of that. What is the shape of a soul? I got this image of something like a dandelion seed head combined with the dendritic end of a nerve, finely divided and oh so delicate. Who could I trust to carry such a thing? Certainly not myself, as I've shown a strong tendency--before God interposed his hands--to trim things to fit what I saw as my acceptable, quiet place in the world.

Would God care about this delicate thing? I had an image of His hands around it... and that was about the end of that line of thought. It's just silly to believe such a thing. I got very crabby after that, which is typical of times when I'm arguing cross-threaded with God. Why? After a few days I began to see. If I come to depend upon God to hold and protect my soul he'll end up just like all the others and drop me somewhere in the desert.

That wasn't the only problem. I mean, I know God won't drop me. The argument is a kind of echo of old protective schemes. No, the bigger problem is about the effects of a whole soul. If all of me gets going in the same direction, a dream I've talked about here before but never really believed, what might happen? I like my quiet invisible life. I don't want to draw a whole lot of attention and I can see a soul whole shining brightly in this darkened world.

In simplest terms God isn't calling me to do anything but hold his hand and keep walking. I can do that. I can also extrapolate. I have a brain.

The effect of believing what I decide is true is the loss of contact with God. My reality or his? The truth is that he has always respected my soul far more than I have. He makes no effort to make me fit into old ideas. He skips ahead, laughing, calling. I plod, suspicious, looking for threats. He shows me his hands.

This is very hard for me to believe. I'm supposed to be beyond the wishful thinking stage of life.

God asks "What do you want to do?"
"I don't know. Other than finding a place to live and be left alone."
"Is that really what you want?"
"Yes. No. Maybe? It was. Might still be... I guess. Ummm... Lord... do you know what I want?"

I translate "What do I want?" into "What is possible?" and lose a lot thereby. So, I'm not a good judge of future possibilities. How much does God care about me as me, all those tiny soul-tendrils intact? Or am I about to get shaved? I doubt the latter. Would have been far easier to shave me a few years back before I even know any of this stuff.

The logical conclusion to reach from my experience is that God cares about me, about all of us, far more than we can realize. God has to teach me every little step. How do I know what I want? My answers were made of learnings from years ago. I'm not the person now that I was back when those plans were made, and with the Holy Spirit I have a walker-alongside and protector. All I have to do is believe. Interesting thing, belief. It's discounted but it's also the most powerful thing in our world.

Kindly Cockleburr

2007-12-21T08:46:00.000-08:00

I was praying one night. "Please hold her."

Prayer is an interesting mirror. God said "You ask me to hold her, but you won't let me hold you?"

I didn't have much to say. He was right.

Everything God does leads to something else. He wanted to hold me because... I need His holding. His holding makes possible other necessary things, just as His direct help with some thinking a while back got me through a difficult night.

He holds me against my well-trained tendency for centripetal activity: everyone heads for the weeds to hide when conflicts come along. Wait for the storm to pass. This approach does nothing to solve the problem that led to the storm.

Who am I to challenge a storm? I stand up, shake my fist, and get knocked flatter than last week's sand sculpture. It's a battle I've never won. Never.

God started working on this years ago. The path to today's solutions started in times and places far away. Faith seems to be optional and belief is just kind of a challenge for God. What seems to matter more is wanting, and more than that perhaps is just being too damned stubborn to give up before I fall farther behind.

What do I want? I can't fit it into words. The Holy Spirit does his praying with groaning too deep for words. I think I understand some of that now.

Glue and Effects

2007-12-21T07:58:00.000-08:00

A friend asked me "How'd you get to be so danged wise?" in response to an Email.
Assuming that the assessment is in any respect true, the answer is quite simple. I cheat. I walk into every test with the answers written on my mind by the Holy Spirit.

Even giving that oblique reference makes me nervous. I think of cults, suicide pacts, congregations erupting into flame, people doing their best to hew to someone else's crazy line. What is left of me if God is that deeply involved? Why should I care about life? I've always been defined by my separation: I walk my own path. Right or wrong, I prefer making my own mistakes. This isn't so much an issue of pride as of necessity: there's so much bullshit out there, advice, catchphrases, endlessly repeated mind-memes and principles, that no one ever questions them. I guess there's even a chance they work for some. They don't work for me.

The truth is that if God weren't holding me right now, this second and all the succeeding seconds, I would myself erupt into flames of civil war. There are factions within me determined never to knuckle under to anyone and they will sink the ship rather than give up an inch or a compartment. I'm serious. I've lived with this for most of my adult life and have had to walk a very narrow path between the factions. Emotions, intellect, ideas, stability, reliability, principles, acceptance, invisibility waiting like a bunch of hair-trigger aunts and uncles to start a war if I stray too far into someone else's territory.

It is, I believe, about survival. Better to be a fragmented approximation of myself than to be wholly under some one idea's sway. Thinking for myself seems to require the multiple viewpoints, and so long as no one gains the upper hand there's some kind of balance. The problem has been the sacrifices required to maintain the balance. I live a lowest common denominator kind of life because I know that the displays of passion needed to push a course up the hills to accomplishment excite the parts of me that depend upon invisibility, and war breaks out. Don't even try it, because sooner or later the explosion will come and I'll be not only unable to complete what I started (as has been proven three times with colleges) but I'll get knocked back to someplace lower than the starting point was.

Now, none of this is really a problem. I live a decent life. The small gaps between territories do allow for some maneuvering. Sand sculpture occupies one such interstice, and is also aided by the impermanence. Sand sculpture leaves no tracks except for a few pictures, and anyone who has seen both the real sculpture and the images knows that the image is just a small clue. My secrets are safe hidden in plain sight, wrapped in sand. I have learned how to live this way. I am competent.

Life seems to want more than competence. There is within me a badly battered and yet still intact impulse toward... something. It wouldn't let me give up. It gave me nothing to really look forward to, either.

What does a fractured desert know of growing wholeness? What does a long-dry land feel as new plants start to grow through the hardened clay? I've learned how to live there; all of my skills are built in this assumption of minimum standards and any change, any crack, seems to announce impending failure.

So sanguine was I when I set out on this journey with God four years ago. I expected nothing but also had nothing to lose; if God turned out to be just another phantom solution, well, I'd bridged a few more months and maybe some other answer would come along just in time to pluck me up from the brink.

From what I've seen of religion, the good things that happen are attributable to God. The bad things are my fault, and it's up to me to keep God from becoming upset. This is why I have little to do with religion, the collection of code and tradition and principle that is wrapped around God, perhaps with the express intent of insulating everyone from His touch. Now that I've experienced His touch I understand the impulse. After I started feeling this touch I did what I always do: run. If God weren't real I'd still be running or I'd be dead. If God were the touchy, easily upset Tetchy Grandfather in the Sky that seems to be the Standard Model, I'd have been abandoned along the path years ago, left in the ditch with the other failures.

What does God want of me? He speaks to me every day, and holds me together. That seems to be enough for now. It's exhausting, living in an arrested war zone. Through trust, however, I'm learning to live with this.

What do I want of life? I still don't know. Beyond the miracle of still being here is another miracle for which still being here is a necessary precondition. This is the miracle of trusting God to teach me what I want. Wanting is, for me, a real problem because I know that as soon as I express a wish for something I will be ridiculed and effort will be put into keeping me away from it. I have to sneak up on things. I learned to live on the overlooked crumbs falling from the table. Wanting isn't safe at all, so God has to teach me how. That starts with the trust: Trusting God to keep the civil war damped so that the longer thoughts necessary to figuring things out can take place.

I discuss things with God. I cheat. He holds me and we uncover truth together. I'm still here.

Lying to Obey

2007-12-07T06:30:00.000-08:00

God said "If you eat of this fruit you shall surely die."
Satan said "Go ahead and eat. You will not surely die."
They ate. They died... and they didn't die. Satan tells the part of truth that results in the actions he wants. God tells the truth, period, and lets us make the choice. Learning truth is predicated on asking questions.

The truth is that we can live without God. I can live without him. Life would certainly be simpler. The physical process go on and the years pass.

What is life? Physical continuity? Lots of people deny God's existence and prosper. Lots of people try to live within God's direction and have a hard time. What is this about?

There are people who can accept God's rules and live within them. Simple obedience. There are others, such as myself, who question everything. Having been raised without trust it's hard for me to trust anyone, especially God because he is often portrayed as vindictive, absent-minded, uncaring at best. "Don't draw his attention or you'll regret it."

Those who obey easily are unlikely to understand people like me, for whom obedience isn't even a second language. I've been lied to too many times, manipulated in the name of acceptance or encouragement or pure selfishness. How do I know God is different?

Jesus talks of leavening, that invisible stuff that gives bread its bubbly lightness. You don't see it nor taste it, but you know if it doesn't work. I've baked a few bricks. If someone had asked me for bread I'd have handed them a stone, honestly. With the aid of a microscope we can find out what leavening is but it's still something of an act of faith: put the dough into the warm place and wait an hour. Come back and it is much bigger. Amazing. It has its own way, too. Things must be in balance: temperature, sugar, spices. You get a feel for it.

The Way of Obedience and the Way of Questioning seem to lead to the same place. Ultimately we're all God's creatures. Why do I bother? Questions are hard and living with the answers even harder. Which hurts more? Living with God or living without him? Different classes of pain. Living with God is confusing and intense, always running into sharp angles. Living without him is more a pain of absence, a tire without air, bread without yeast. The object is still there but something hard to describe is missing. Ultimately I end up obeying.

I'd hope that I've learned something in the process. I'd hope not to need that lesson again. Move on to something new. But the something new is just a step to the next, painful, something new. I see people running on treadmills in gyms and think hamster. Is there really such a thing as progress? It all looks like an endless climb to me, sharp stones and steep grades.

How does one live as a long-term Christian? Current systems don't seem to work very well. Churches, emergent or otherwise, seem to follow the lowest-common-denominator route rather than encouraging individuals to make choices. Following Jesus is hard enough and organizations make it harder by adding their own rules and principles to the process. It'd be like asking a hamster to make sand sculpture with leaden boots on his feet.

Oh, I understand the impulse. I feel it too: make Christianity comprehensible. I'm not sure it can be done. Books, preachers, 10-step plans, seminars, intellect. Perhaps these can be a stepping stone or two along the way but the truth of life and death is, I think, something that takes personal quirks and effort to, dare I say it, feel your way through?

That day in the Garden of Eden the intellect and body went on. The heart and soul died and we barely feel their lack. God tries to bring them back to life and I cower away in fear. Unknown, out there, and why bother? I've lived without them. Lived? I'm not sure.

We're like plants living inside a dark box: yes, there's growth but it's pallid and short. God reaches in to take me, as gently as he can, out of the box and I wail. I may make this harder than it need be. Always expecting the worst I just hope the whole thing will blow over, disappear like a bad dream. Jesus promised, however: "I will never leave you nor forsake you." My belief in that is in inverse proportion to how exposed I feel.

Perhaps it's a good thing that so few other people seem to understand any of this. We'd get together, make a Church of the Holy Question, codify things and then die. The corpse would keep walking through the centuries, dragging more people away from God.

To be known by God is to be surprised. He knows us well.

Prince of My Pieces

2007-11-30T06:17:00.000-08:00

Well, sometimes my life
Just don't make sense at all
When the mountains look so big
And my faith just seems so small

1. On Becoming a Christian
When I received that cassette-letter from Craig, on the edge of begging me to turn to Jesus, I didn't know what to do. I'd been to church but no one around me turned to God for anything but judgment and a sort of distant comfort. Craig was different, one for whom Jesus was a real person. How could I get across that divide? Was God really real?

I thought about it for two or three weeks and got nowhere. I wasn't much good at work during that period, being heavily distracted.

I'd never made a real decision before. Oh, I designed and made things, but all the big stuff was like rolling downhill. My parents did all that and I didn't care very much. No one seemed to be very happy so what's the use of making decisions? Life dictates, I respond. How was I to respond to this invitation from God through Craig?

I imagined that this had to be decided once for all, and complete. God would expect that; the books told me so and I always read instruction manuals. It's amazing what you can learn from the manual; one counterintuitive line from the car manual enabled me to start cars at 8000 feet after they'd been flooded. (By the way... this comes from a misunderstanding of what the "gas pedal" does: it actually opens the air control in the carburetor, and the vacuum then draws in more fuel. In this fuel-injected age this information is of no further use.) There is no real manual for God, however, and most of what I'd been taught seemed to come from the standpoint that God is a nice comforting idea but no more real than Ahuramazda or any one of thousands of abstract ideas.

What was I to do? I didn't have enough information to make a real decision. Well, OK, when the rules don't work, break them. You'll never understand wetness by standing on the pool's edge. Jump in and let God figure out the details. On October 18, 1971, I stepped in.

So hold me Jesus, 'cause I'm shaking like a leaf
You have been King of my glory
Won't You be my Prince of Peace

2. Becoming Intellect
36 years later... well, I've learned, piece by piece. Change has to start somewhere even if it's not the best place to start. God takes his opportunities when they're offered and doesn't worry about perfection. Life's slope is slippery and it's a lot easier to fall away than to be drawn upward, so He offers any bit of traction that He can. It's a good thing God isn't as sensitive about heresy as people are, as this incomplete and misunderstood partial decision started me on the path that would save my life.

What becomes of the intuitive man in an intellectual world? In my case... I kept reading the manual and edged more and more into the intellectual realm, leaving emotion behind. The balance was always shaky but so long as there was little pressure it wasn't a problem. I could take the time to work out a balance that did no violence to myself and still allowed me to get along in this world. Now, however, I was taking a more direct role in managing my walk. Isn't this what God expected?

It's no wonder things blew up with regularity. Jesus says "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I knew no better way.

And I wake up in the night and feel the dark
It's so hot inside my soul
I swear there must be blisters on my heart

So hold me Jesus, 'cause I'm shaking like a leaf
You have been King of my glory
Won't You be my Prince of Peace

3. Becoming Desperate
When all roads lead to defeat there's little use in continuing. I never asked for much, just a bridge over the day at hand. String enough daily bridges together and you get a year, more years, a life. After a while the bridges seemed shorter and shakier, and I wondered why I should build them at all. If life was just a forever race against the oblivion gaining on me, why not quit now and save some time?

The sun shone on southern California beaches and their unlimited supply of borrowed sand and water. An interesting metaphor: life built on a foundation of sand sculpture. Building was fun and planning a way to keep going until the next one.

Still... there just didn't seem much point. Intellect still dogging my path, looking for a permanent solution and not finding it. So, what was the point?

Surrender don't come natural to me
I'd rather fight You for something
I don't really want
Than to take what You give that I need
And I've beat my head against so many walls
Now I'm falling down, I'm falling on my knees

And this Salvation Army band
Is playing this hymn
And Your grace rings out so deep
It makes my resistance seem so thin

4. Becoming Grace
Jack Fox asked "Can you at least consider the idea that God is real?"
I'd pretty well grown beyond that; God had long since resumed his mythical distant possibility. I was alone, and would always be alone. Jack's honest question--when was the last time you saw an evangelical be so open?--was as much of a shock as the social worker saying I should consider psychoanalysis. I went that route for a number of years and all that happened was that I got tougher. As with any other disease, if you don't kill it it comes back stronger.

So, how does real change happen? How does someone living on the edge of self-immolation turn away from that edge and make more life-oriented decisions? It doesn't happen by force; at various times, I've thought I'd solved the problems by becoming intellectual but then emotions would come back and crack the concrete. Even I knew that intellect wasn't the whole answer but I had ways no better than the child's well-learned drifting so as to avoid conflict. As long as my mind and feelings stayed in their prescribed areas things were OK, which is why sand sculpture worked so well. Intellect got its jollies from the engineering but there was no point to that if there weren't something to design and that was emotion. They didn't have to talk to each other. Kind of like two armies looking at each other across no-man's land.

I know this probably doesn't seem very real. Perhaps it does. Perhaps you know this kind of conflict but have never mentioned it because it sounds so absurd. How can a person be so badly divided? Our culture encourages half-people.

So, God laid a new path, away from the abyss, and asked "Remember Me?" Well, yes, I did. Rather freeing, this was: if God is still here after all those mistakes, then there must be something to this forgiveness stuff. I didn't put it in those terms in 2003 but the idea was close. I scrapped everything I "knew" about God and started over. It started with an invitation to help me understand something. Only desperation could have moved me to ask God to intervene in the sanctuary of my own mind and once knowledge caught up with events the arguments started. Who am I? Cheap copy of God or a real person?

What is a real person? The answer depends on who you ask. Everyone has an answer all polished up for you. Their common element is that the answer is never designed with your qualities in mind, but is designed for the comfort of the other. Perhaps they even mean well, as did Jack Fox.

I'm naive. Others have much more experience in life than I have; what I'm good at is being invisible. I don't have the resilience to deal with external conflict when the internal conflict is just waiting for a trigger to break out again.

So hold me Jesus, 'cause I'm shaking like a leaf
You have been King of my glory
Won't You be my Prince of Peace

You have been King of my glory
Won't You be my Prince of Peace

5. Becoming One
So, God had himself a task. How to reunite the parts of a shattered soul when those parts not only wanted nothing to do with each other but had learned through bitter experience that reunion was impossible?

First, he had to convince me that he was serious. Lots of people offer help but don't stick around longer than it takes to get the credit. I'm rightfully very suspicious. God probably was just going to trick me: as soon as I turned things over to him he'd turn me into a drone, some kind of mechanism to express his will. Although I had nothing to lose that path was unattractive. Naturally, I fought.

Fighting God, no matter what we're taught now, has a long history. Just ask Jacob. If you want to know truth you're going to end up fighting with God somewhere along the line, but fighting is just the first step. If you want to know the water you're going to have to get into the pool and float.

God made the universe and holds every atom together. At the same time, He is humble. The mix is fascinating: he's the One who serves and his only purpose is to make people whole. He knows how to do it, too. Fighting, and then not fighting. He camps in the castle courtyard, sitting there quietly. Every once in a while he extends a hand to prevent an internal explosion, with the clear knowledge that He's intervening. There's nothing sneaky. Well, there is, but the sneakiness has to be. I'm hard to trick so sneakiness is sometimes the only way to the larger goal: the saving of a life. This is God's goal: saving every life.

"Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: 'Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall.'" This appears in three of the four gospels. Julius Caesar knew the concept: "Divide and conquer." World, nation, house, soul. I could never win the war, one side over the other. Jesus says "That's good."

There are attendant concepts. We need comfort. It's a hard walk. The Holy Spirit is called the Comforter for good reason. We need guidance. The Holy Spirit is called one who walks alongside.

Nothing good is easy. Seeking truth goes against the spirit of our age and there's a lot more fog out there than sunshine. The corollary is that we've not learned how to live with or even identify truth so God has to teach the whole thing from scratch. His patience knows no limits.

So, I'm held long enough that intellect and feelings can look at each other and not instantly start shooting. The final corollary is: where do we go from here? What can a unified man do that a divided one can't? I'm scared.

"Hold Me Jesus" by Rich Mullins

Retaking the Land

2007-11-20T06:31:00.001-08:00

The best defense is invisible: turn the enemy aside before they know they got close to the citadel. Do it gently. All they know is that... somehow they missed.

It takes a lot of space to set up that defensive perimeter, and a lot of energy to maintain and monitor it. The alternatives seemed enough worse to me that I've been willing to adopt the lifestyle necessary to live within the invisible boundaries for, of course, defenses can be breached from the inside as well as outside.

I've continued thinking about the topic of my last post: why are so many people dissatisfied with their contact with God? Why does God seem to be so interested in me? This morning I was following the Holy Spirit along some thought-trails. A good guide leads to discovery without telling people what they are seeing. God is very good at this.

I set up the invisible defenses years ago, arriving at various compromises by experimentation. I'm good at that: try something, compare the results to the desired outcome, change something, try again. I kept my soul but lost much else. Was it a good trade? I can't know "what if;" all I can know is what is. Deal with things as they are. The defenses worked but had a nasty side effect: The attempt to build bridges to the outside world was seen as an attack, and the same automatic defenses that worked outside were turned on me. No choice, no control.

The land was still out there, still the buffer zone. People got caught in there and became confused. What's good for a 10-year-old isn't so good for an adult, but I build good defenses that resist everything that looks like an attack.

I've often perceived God's attention as an attack. This comes from the inside, so it has involved some truly nasty warfare turned upon myself. Attacking God is... futile, in some ways. In other ways it's highly effective because God is easily hurt. He feels the resistance. He knows what I need and knows how to bring it about and I prefer to live in the pain of fighting him. An intelligent man ought to see that if you have two painful choices it's best to take the one that leads somewhere better, but I generally choose stasis.

How does a soul grow? Is that what we're about here? All that land outside the citadel is... mine?

This does explain why God has been direct with me: once some of that territory has been cleaned out it must be protected or else bad things will move in again. So God reminds me when I'm being inattentive, or trying to drive him away.

I wish I had words to describe this relationship. It's not like anything else I've participated in. God's presence in my life should be that of the conqueror and ruler but that's not the way it's working. He invites me to walk forward into myself, land that's mine, and he promises to walk with me, teach me, comfort me.

Teaching has always been a loaded concept to me. It's usually a more or less veiled mind control project. Learn this or else. This is the right way and everything else is wrong. It may be innocent, choices made to fit material within limited time, or it may be deliberately one-sided. Any time someone sets himself up as a teacher I'm wondering what has been left out. Such one-legged learning is unstable, which means it has to be defended so it won't be pushed over. God is supposed to be the ultimate in one-legged ideas but I find this isn't so. He answers my questions. We walk the trail of question and answer until we get someplace, and that place leads to more questions. I have much to learn.

See here the human being. He is made of many cunning parts, fitted precisely, each working together through time to produce continuity. See here the human being fighting himself, putting divisions between the parts so that the machinery runs as if sand were in the gears. The human being learns to accept this as normal life. Now, see here God, cleaning, dissolving the divisions... and see the human being fight back. Putting sand into the gears again because it's familiar. Pain is familiar. God knows it too, but goes on cleaning as he's allowed. And eventually... see here a human being who finally learns to accept God's humble ministry.

How does a soft and sensitive man live in today's world? I don't know. I do know that the answers I've worked out in the past are self-destructive. The last year has been bad but it finally looks as if I won't need to repeat those mistakes. I understand that the frontal assault, either from inside or outside, just doesn't work. The battle for the citadel is won by a humble man who started by giving himself up on a cross and will stop at nothing else, not to win the war, but to win the person, whole. Neither he nor I cares what anyone else thinks. He has promised to save my soul and he will do anything necessary to that end.

Incomprehensible Gift

2007-11-18T18:23:00.000-08:00

Folks are talking about broken faith, broken dreams, wondering where God is. The topic engenders many comments, leading to more discussion.

Layla

Gary

Gary, again

The common note is "Where is God in my life?" As I read these all I could do was look around at the signs of God's presence in my life. An embarrassment of riches, a rain I didn't ask for but needed, a problem that I've tried to solve and am finally reaching some accommodation with.

It's hard to write about this. Some will think I'm showing off, taking pride in God's fingerprints on me. Others won't understand any of it. "Where's the fruit," they'll ask. And some might think that I'm special.

Well, we're all special. I'm convinced that God gives every one of us as much as He's allowed to. I make no claim to anything special other than need: without God's fingers on me I wouldn't still be here. And that is my only claim as to the quality of my witness: I'm still here.

So, why are so many dissatisfied with the quality of their walk with Jesus? Many of them, following what they've been taught, have good reason to be dissatisfied. I've never been in a church that taught people to reach out, as that bleeding woman did, to Jesus for healing from the depth of desperation. No one is encouraged to wrestle with God as Jacob did. God is treated as the ultimate houseguest around whom you don't want to make any mistakes. Self-judgment runs deep in us and we certainly wouldn't want to upset the Judge of the Universe.

Well, His judgment is reserved to those who haven't trusted Jesus to cover them with his white raiment. Those of us who've acknowledged need and turned to Jesus have nothing to fear. I believe that God is far more interested in an honest cry from the heart, either curses or praise, than He is in any number of fancy worded prayers-as-preachment.

It is an awesome thing. The One who will judge this world lives in each of us, like the elephant in the living room that everyone tries to ignore. He's not going away. How do you live with Him? Some put curtains around Him. Some distract themselves with all kinds of work. Some take the route of self-pity or self-abnegation, trying to stoop lower than God will reach. I have tried to simply ignore Him, map out His presence so I can just walk around Him. I'm quite adept at reducing paths to habit, which is why God has to be so creative in finding ways to get my attention again. It's a good thing Jesus took my judgment.

Rules don't make followers of Jesus. You can't walk this path alone. If you're terrified and just can't face God, fine. Just don't close the door. If you're angry, go ahead and yell at him. Just don't close the door. If your heart is torn in half, cry. Don't close the door. How to get close to God? Keep the door open. You don't have to go out there where He is, and you can tell him to stay out of your room, but don't close off His light.

He's calling us to do something impossible: Live with Him. Each of us is special in His sight and He knows our names, every one. He has counted the number of hairs on our heads.

How did I get here? As usual, by looking for something else. I wanted relationships with other people. That didn't happen.

God starts at the beginning. We all tend to want to skip the foundation and build the fancy stuff. Castles in the air. God starts with the roots, and naturally I resist. That stuff is confusing and different. Naturally I resist, which makes the process more painful than it might be. I doubt there's any way to make the walk easy but it is possible. Most of my problem is fear. I am, in some ways, extremely conservative. I don't like things that rattle the principles I live by, which is why the last few months have been very difficult.

When I got saved I had no idea what I was getting into. Soon after that I ran into the idea that God thinks human relationships are important. This idea connected to something deep in me and I took off after it. God was, at the time, trying to introduce me to Himself. That seemed crazy to me, irrational, so I didn't pay attention but retained the idea that relationships are important. Well, this was a sort of self-rape so it's no wonder I couldn't force my solitary self in that direction. The result has been years of conflict: force met by stronger force. It turns out that I'm very strong in self-defense. I'll dig in and not be moved. Attacks by people, by psychologists, by any perceived enemy: I know how to keep from being crushed. The response was automatic. People would get close, I'd perceive the attack, and defend myself in the way that seemed best.

This year several people got caught in this process; I've set a new record for screwing up relationships. No surprise, as I know very little about reality here. Hopeless.

Not exactly. I do have an example. I'm trying to give it all up, but God still lives in the courtyard of the castle I've defended so staunchly all these years. He doesn't attack, although He has stepped in when I've been about to do something really stupid and has gotten downright snarky when I've worked at not believing Him.

Right now... I still attempt to force myself to feel in organized ways. I attempt to fit life into a rational process so that I can comprehend it all, so that I can know what's coming and be safe. God is preached as the one who will tear down everything and bring about change. This is true, but the process by which He does it is, at least in my experience, as gentle as such a radical act can be. It is not God's intent to cause pain. We do that quite well all by ourselves.

So, what can anyone else get from this ramble? That we all start from forgiveness. And, when everything turns to shit go ahead and quit. Just keep the door open.

Permanent Houseguest

2007-11-15T16:52:00.000-08:00

I wonder how families stand each other over the long haul. If I didn't have my solitary apartment to go home to, frazzled from an unending series of crises at work and dealing with the people who are supposed to help solve them, I'd just become even more likely to spit nails. Yet such living is a luxury in most of the world, where economic reality dictates that people have to live with each other. I need a place to just get away from them all.

It's commonly said that fish and houseguests both start to smell after three days. There are many tales of people wearing out their welcome. I'm a lousy host and it's very easy for me to imagine people getting tired of me being around, so I keep to myself.

Part of this is due to life experience of no one wanting to hear my side of any story. I've never had anyone to tell about deeper issues. or to ask for help. I either figure it out for myself or abandon the idea. It's just very hard to be around people, putting on the smiling face, when they have no idea and less interest in who I am. But then, how would I know? You get good at what you do, and I do a lot of things alone.

Four years ago when God brought me back to himself I thought it was really neat that he wanted a relationship with me. He put a lot more effort into finding and redeeming me than I ever did in looking for and understanding Him. Then when I started to learn about the Holy Spirit I thought it was even neater: God Himself, living in me, to comfort, help, teach. From the first night I had the idea: help in sorting out things too complicated and messy for me.

If I'd have been more perceptive I might have predicted the coming trouble. Houseguests eventually leave. No matter how painful the failure of hosting the sun makes its rounds, time winds on and things end. Jesus said "I will never leave you nor forsake you." In the early days of this renaissance I didn't think I'd want him to leave, but after a while I was at the point of trying to drive him away. What happens when the solitary man, described by one psychologist as the closest to Spock he'd ever known in the flesh, meets the One who will never leave? Jacob got his wrestling done in a night. It has taken me longer.

The truce is somewhat delicate, but it's interesting to look at because of how my experience contradicts everything we're taught about God. God is supposed to win by breaking the soul, as the Army is said to do. For every force the wailing soul brings against the Visitor, He meets with enough to force his will. Maybe this idea isn't so broadly applied as I think it is, as it's also a familial trait: you don't want to do this? Fine. We'll force you. I learned helplessness a long time ago and learned to hide in order to keep from being overwhelmed. I lost the encounters but the flip side of no one caring is that so long as I was out of sight they didn't mind, so I just didn't have very many encounters. I'd managed to preserve most of my soul into adulthood.

I think that's largely God's work. The story could have gone differently at any one of many points in the long timeline. He'd nudge almost imperceptibly and I'd follow along the track.

Still, it's quite a way from that invisible working to knowing what's going on and still accepting it. When hiding has been a way of life, having God's bright light around the house shows lots of things that I'd never shown anyone.

It seems that God's major goal for me right now is awareness. Awareness of Him, for one, and then of the world. I've pretty much turned all that off in trying to remain invisible to Him. Not caring solves many problems but leaves one with a life that's just a long wait for the end. What do I look forward to? Good question. I don't know. I'm still trying to deal with this appalling invader, whose gaze looks upon me with great fondness but is translated by me into THREAT!

If He really wanted to disassemble my soul it would be no problem. I'm less than a candle flame. If He wanted to play the conqueror, how could I resist? I'm less that clay in a potter's hands, less will than a blade of grass in the wind. Yet I tried to hide, putting effort into that until I was perpetually exhausted.

There were always cracks in the citadel wall, and a few windows, and one door. Truth draws me irresistibly. It's the last place I expected to find God, but there he was at the door for truth. My own requirements demanded that I look into this question again. Is God real? Hard to say "No" when He's right there and asking "Do you remember me?" Once in, or returned, God is hard to eject, especially for one as tired as I. Besides, what did I have to lose?

Well, I found out. God wasn't content to camp in the courtyard. Well, really, He is, but His light works its way into every other place. Trying to keep the doors and windows closed takes a lot of effort, and is kind of like sitting there eating sawdust in the dark when there's ice cream and light outside. Yet I had that invader image in my mind, a Riever just waiting for the chance to cut me down as so many others have done.

One way to subvert a soul is emotional manipulation. Brainwashers do it, cults do it. I wondered if God did this; were His expressions of happiness with something I did just some sort of Pavlovian operant conditioning? I became sensitive to this and put up a kind of umbrella to keep that rain from falling onto me.

Why didn't I ask the obvious question? "God, are you trying to manipulate me?" He has answered all of my other questions graciously. This one never occurred to me.

He never quit, never left his post in the courtyard. Waiting. Not a sword in sight. Just patience. Questions of honor finally came up, fairly recently. God does what He says he will do and won't break the locks on the doors. He has nothing against working Himself into the finest cracks--if it's open, I can come in, right?--but won't force anything. It took three years or so, and I doubt it's over yet, but I'm finally seeing that there will be no force.

Force never conquered anything. Oh, force can destroy. Read history and you'll find plenty of that. I wonder what our world would look like if all the energy and resources that have been devoted to conquering and destroying had been turned to cooperation and building. There's no physical reason why no moon landing was made until 1969. Why not 1,000 years earlier? There were lots of starts on science but they disappeared into conflagrations like the library of Alexandria.

Force can't make people cooperate. They'll appear to cooperate but as soon as the pressure is off the situation explodes again, and again. God's way is something completely other. He waits.

Sui Generis

2007-11-09T05:42:00.000-08:00

One day a co-worker called me "sui generis." I'd heard the term before but saw only the "generis" part and assumed it meant generic. Feeling insulted I looked it up. Turns out it actually means unique, prototype, one-0ff. Good. The last thing I want is to be one of a herd, any herd. If I can't be unique then what's the point of living?

Of course, society has other ideas. It's easier to deal with people in herds. I wonder what a whole culture of mavericks would be like. Perhaps we'd come up with systems more accepting of individual differences. We do have common causes, but how much do they cost? Why should everyone be alike? We're not even made that way. Each person, each living creature, has its own set of DNA and experiences.

Four years ago I had a little lunch meeting with Eric Bryant. I'd recently been reintroduced to God and we sort of picked up where we'd left off in the late 1970s. Practicing God's presence, hearing His voice, not necessarily obeying. It seemed a radical concept at the time. Eric just smiled his little smile.

Maybe he really did know more than I did. To me, hearing God was about as far as thing went. How do you top that? It's like believing that sunlight on a leaf has no effect because we can't see what's going on. Give it some time, and assuming that the little nut holds its ground, eventually you get a tree. It will be like other trees, but unique.

So, I'm still here. The last months have been continuous arguments and dodges and digging in of heels. Turns out that in protecting my right to be myself I will throw everything into the fire. As I thought about my psychoanalyst near the end of that story "I'd rather die than tell you anything." I don't get even. I just leave.

I never could leave God, though. I did that years ago, blocked out awareness of him, and fooled myself. He stayed right there, though, parked in my blind spot until the time was right.

Now I'm aware enough of the effect of light on the leaf. Without light the story is short. God's voice...

You go along for years holding onto hope. There isn't much out there, but at the same time if you want to find it you have to be there. Survive. Surviving on one's own resources is a balancing game, profit and loss, expense and income, and knowing how much to abandon. So, God's voice whispers of hope and I dare not believe. He'll leave and I'll be the cartoon character suddenly realizing that there's nothing but air under his feet.

He didn't leave Jacob after their overnight battle. He didn't leave me during the years when I denied him. Once I realized just where we were headed I started trying to force God to abandon me. I discovered that it is possible but it's difficult and very frightening. I backed off from that but was still holding the fort against Him.

What's beyond the voice? Touch.

You know how sensitive a tiny sliver is in your hand: one quick touch is pain and flinch. In me it's worse as touch has always been the precursor to a lie. Its purpose was always to manipulate me so I'd acquiesce to things I didn't want to do. Touch overrides sense, logic, hardwired to something else. Needing comfort one night I was talking with God and the subject of touch came up and before I knew what had happened I was running, doors closed, head down, bolt. Looking back I saw God standing in the courtyard, inside the castle walls, but just standing there. I hid behind the stone. He didn't move.

How does one learn to trust? To me it's a logical process: if what I might gain outweighs what I will lose, then trust can happen. Or if the trust leads to having a grip on something I can fairly easily abandon, then trust of a sort is possible. Anything deep is a problem. What can be deeper than God's touch? He's always there, and knows everything. The game is under his complete control; I'm a candle flame centered in a tornado.

Solve the problem, we say. Force the issue. Force trust? It can't happen, as thousands of years of human history teaches anyone with eyes to see. How can it happen? Well, how patient are you? Most of us... not very. Solve it now. Life is short. Do things before you burn out.

What God wants, needs, is a real decision. Not a default, not a desperation move, but me choosing from real options to allow him to do what he needs to. A friend asked a while back, "Larry, what do you want?" I couldn't answer her question. It's a question I've never asked, never been allowed to ask, and to have God ask it of me is a problem and a surprise. What? I'm just supposed to latch on and follow, like a sheep.

Sui generis. Maverick. Berean. Questions. Live with the answers.

God waited. Where does trust come from? Certainly not from forcing the doors. I knew he was there, that indefinable glow or something, standing quietly in the courtyard. Waiting. I know he can smash the doors any time he wants. People pray "Jesus, break me." Maybe that's what some need but it's not the answer for everyone and I'd bet that the real answer looks much different from the people's assumptions.

I grew up surrounded with ritual and thought there had to be a better way. Ritual was a way to paint everyone the same color but I could see below the paint, inside that artificial and maintenance-intensive skin, and saw people trying to find the way out. The better way never had a chance as I'd acquired my own rituals that biased my answers. Kind of surprising, then, that God is the anti-ritual voice in my life and I so tightly hold onto the rituals that I trust more than I trust Him.

How do you out-maverick a maverick? Be the one who invented categories and is himself sui generis, the model for the concept. And you wait. The Soul Whisperer stands in the courtyard. We start talking about trust through the closed door.

Touch. It's the first step of a betrayal.
How can I comfort you without touch?
Comfort? That's a laugh.

I see where that path leads: crowds of people. Love the unlovely. I can't even stand myself. I just want to be alone.

Would God create a loner? I've always assumed that I'm a loner for various external reasons, but I've never been easy with other people. I've overlaid that with some social competence but it's always work. Might it be that if God had wanted someone to deal with crowds he'd have made me that way?

What happens when one loves God? How much of a person's nature is left after dying to self and following Jesus? Sheep, or human heart? I don't know, and as with anything else there's only one way to find out.

How do we allay the fear?
How about leaving the door open?
Are you honorable?
Tie a string across the door. That's enough to keep me out.
Really?
Really.
In the end I don't bother with the string. The door stands open, and God stands still in the courtyard.

In a world of big things and big pushes this isn't much. It seems that one step toward trust is learning that God isn't a raider from the northern steppes come through to level every city in the new land. What starts with an open door? Well, good enough to have it open, and leave it open even as I tremble ten feet down the hallway, wondering.

It has been a really bad year. I've set a record for ruining relationships and have no idea what will come of that. I am, however, still here.

Intuition and Language

2007-10-06T06:39:00.000-07:00

Maybe this was sparked by Layla's post about atheists. I left a comment describing some of my experiences with dogmatic atheists, which is kind of funny. They disallow me the right to believe in God and argue, as passionately as any missionary, for their belief that there is no God.

This naturally leads to coming up with reasons to believe God is real. Being a believer in the scientific method I've tried very hard to come up with good solid reasons for believing that God is real and that he loves me. Jesus often says things like "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." Vision and hearing. There is a surface beneath what we see that holds everything up.

Jesus said that if he were silenced, the very stones would cry out in worship. I've spent a lot of time walking and riding around. Stones, dirt, trees, flowers. All speak of something beyond daily efficiency. Why would nature be so profligate? If it were up to men to design the world there would be one organism per ecological niche instead of the complex and seemingly inefficient ways in which niches overlap in the real world. And why is there beauty? Why is there an appreciation of beauty? Why are there people building cyclotrons to understand atoms, and why are there people building sculptures from sand?

In my mind this all adds up to a picture of something deeper than words can carry. I've always wanted whole answers. Intuition says there has to be more, an intuition long trained to look between the words and underneath the facile expression of stories.

God isn't an easy answer. People often say He is. "Oh, you just believe that because you want everything tied up neatly." Saying that God made the universe may tell me where it started, but there's still all that messy complexity to understand; we still have the ability to ask questions even if the answers are too fine to be retained by the sieve of the scientific method. Then there's the effect of God on the human soul: rub shoulders with Him and you are changed, which quite neatly explains why people so often keep Him in a book.

So, why me? I recognize the limits of building-block truth. Sometimes you have to look at the mortar too. I have a deeply buried intuitive side. Few people see this unless they watch me make a sculpture. There is no reason to make sculpture other than expressing things I don't understand in a way that is comprehensible but technically useless.

It's not safe to be an intuitive person in this world. I can't explain the decisions I make. So, I keep people at a distance so they won't see the tissue of intuition that holds my conceptual world. Gossamer and moonbeams won't hold up under the hot analytic stare with which most people greet the world. Long ago I made the decision to retain the gossamer, preferring that to the hard-edged inflexible way I lived amid.

When God came along and picked me up I had given up. I expected the moonbeams to be torn away, replaced with something else. Who knows? I was at the end of the line anyway.

Giving up isn't that easy. When push came to shove I fought back. Intuition is right, dammit, even if the God of the Universe disagrees. Like Jacob, I fought. I fought myself right into an irrational sweet spot, like Br'er Rabbit and his briar patch. Who do you think made irrational people? Eyes to see, and it takes time for God to liberate my senses so I can see beyond my own assumptions.

This is actually quite safe. God is never vindictive. He's never like the atheists who need to convince others. He never tramples on my senses. He waits, hints, suggests, guides, and waits some more while I make up what's left of my mind. That I'm rather tattered at the moment is due to my own fighting than anything He has done. He gently holds my loose bits, gossamer, moonbeams and all, providing the water that this dynamic sculpture needs in order not to collapse.

What human being can tolerate being around such? I'm either a challenge to their way of being, or deluded, or a problem to be solved. Add to that my desire for protective coloration, which means I tend to become like what I think the other person wants to see. All to protect something more important to me than life: moonbeams, dewdrops, reality beyond the reality. Beauty. I'd rather live alone than give those things up, and it seems that people are like politicians in wanting to put their stamp on everyone they know. I don't want to change anyone. Nor do I want to be changed to suit someone else, no matter how well intentioned.

It's quite a knot. Obedience, freedom, intuition, knowledge, survival, logic, construction, desire, faith, intellect. In this we see the difference between what Jesus did and every other religion: God offers help. Without the Holy Spirit I would give up. The mountain is too steep, too tall. The knot is far too complicated and unlike Alexander I can't just get out my sword and cut the thing in half. To do so would be to kill myself. I need to get into that cosmic furball and find out where the threads lead. Only God can keep me from destroying the whole thing.

Obedience and Language

2007-10-05T09:08:00.000-07:00

Not much has changed. The hole seems deeper, the thicket darker. In October 2003 I wrote "The Language of Obedience" hardly knowing what I was doing. That hasn't changed very much either. Maybe that's a good thing, as it forces me to figure things out on the fly instead of relying on ritual.

I don't care for obedience. Too many times people are obedient and all that happens is they all go over the cliff together. Think Gallipoli, buffalo stampeded by Sioux, the charge of the Light Brigade and swords against emplaced rifles. I'd rather make my own mistakes.

What future has a disobedient iconoclast in God's world? Paul talks about obedience and he went smiling into jails. I wonder how he got there. Does God really want unquestioning obedience?

I've read that the key to effective command is never to command people to do things they wouldn't do anyway. I've not seen many examples in real life, and that leads me to wonder if this is a real principle or just someone's idea. It has appeared in enough different contexts that the idea must have some validity.

It's just that I'm so strongly affected by survival training. Appear to follow the herd. It's hard for me to accept anything else; there is danger is setting off on unknown paths if only for the attention that walking alone draws. For all my iconoclasm I'm more comfortable blending in.

The idea that God waits for me to accept his way of command is radical. What I've been taught is that God gives the commands and we just go. No questions, no backtalk.
"Frog."
"How high?"
Experience is to be put firmly into the back seat.

My experience indicates that God is patient. He knows what he wants but seems to be very careful in never letting me find out what it is. One night we were talking about this.
"Why don't you tell me?"
"What? You want to turn me into a ritual?"
He had a point. I learn what needs to be done, figure out how to do it and then put the whole process on automatic. God has to surprise me in order to get me to truly see.

I always figured obedience would be a problem. Obedience in some things isn't a problem. I know the discipline of sand sculpture and obey the engineering so that I can express art that can't be done any other way. Obeying street signs is simple survival: we all agree, more or less. God's demands seem to be more subtle. What does he really want?

What do I really want? I used to think I knew. Creativity and obedience don't seem to go together but maybe that's just because of my damaged perception. Still, the question is difficult. I can't help feeling that I'm being set up for a big fall sometime, that all of God's apparent kindness is just the velvet glove around the steel fist. Why do I think that? History. Too many times I've trusted people and then gotten smacked. I guess it happens to everyone but I have a strong desire to prevent repetitions, and I'm clever enough to figure out ways to make that happen. God has to trump my cleverness with kindness and his gentle call.

It never seems to bother him. I sort of sense a smile, as if he likes the challenge.

Bringing Peace, Making Peace

2007-09-28T08:39:00.000-07:00

Weeds always come back from the roots. There's a tree in my back yard that the neighbors have cut down many times. The last time they even dug up what they could find of the roots. The tree doesn't know it's beaten, and this year it came up in three different places.

Oppress anyone and they fight back. It's natural. How else do we keep ourselves safe in this hostile world? If we don't fight we get run over. It has happened to all of us.

So, how do you bring about peace between opposed factions? The classic actions of warfare just act as oppression or cutting the tree out. The roots of the opposition are still there and will come back to the surface after they've gathered some strength, on down the years.

Jesus is known as the Prince of Peace. It'd be hard to tell from Christian history. The U.S. government is now beating on people who have themselves been beaten on through thousands of years. There is no win in wars of ideology. How can Jesus do it?

He took our beating. With that out of the way the serious business of peace can be approached, starting with the internal warfare that I suspect is waged inside each person. We all learn ways to damp the fighting well enough to get along, but the price is sensitivity. There's always the danger of a sensitive person following the signs down among the roots and finally touching the wrong thing. I've had enough situations blow up in my face to know this really happens. So, we all stand around and talk about the weather.

Jesus already knows the weather. Stormy. Big waves. Visible wind. Overwhelming. "Hold my hand," He says. One part of me reaches out, another part holds back, and yet another part judges the whole process. Jesus illuminates the process but doesn't judge. He took the judgment. Everyone else in here is justified. They can look at each other and lose the daggers and bombs. Emotions, intellect, judgment, creativity, whatever whoever else is sharing the physical premises. We're all tired of war but know nothing else. And can we trust God to not do what the British did to the Arabs in 1918 and sell the whole lot of us down the river? His ways are not my ways. Does this mean I will forever hate the way we go? Always being dragged into situations I can't stand? This seems to be prevailing Christian opinion: if you don't like it, it must be right.

If I like the path it must be wrong. And yet logic is on the side of enjoying the walk, except that happy people tend to be suspected of other problems. Happiness acts as a beacon. "Let your light shine." Do I want to be shiny? As peace spreads within me and everyone starts learning to work together, what will happen? Maybe that's when I'll get sold.

How did Paul accede to becoming a slave of Jesus? He didn't act the slave's part. I doubt that this happened by following 40 days of forgotten purpose or some such imposed by well-meaning leaders. I suspect that his path started with the sudden bringing of peace to a ravaged soul: he wanted reality and worked at following the rules he'd been told would take him there. Then he encountered the Maker of Rules and suddenly was blinded and freed. Would I give up my sight to become free? That would make it hard to go my separate way, which is one reason I always think God's about to lower the boom on me.

But everyone's story is different. God reaches people as he is permitted. What would a life of peace be like? Peace is different from suppressed war. I only know by experience the latter and don't much trust anything else. I've been disappointed too many times. Jesus has his ways, however, of reaching gently all the way down to the farthest end of the most delicate and scared roots, and... protecting them.

What is Prayer? (besides weird)

2007-09-28T07:17:00.001-07:00

This is an outgrowth of Erin's "Synchroblog" on prayer from a few weeks ago. I've been continuing to think about it.

One could wonder why I should bother thinking about anything like this. Of what use is an intellectual Christian? We're just supposed to follow Jesus, right? "Stop thinking. Go out and do something." I could also ask "Of what use is an introverted Christian?" but I don't know the answer. I don't know the use of an intellectual, either, but that's the way I'm made. I can go against what I know of my nature and become angry, or I can follow this murky path behind God and see where we end up.

How much do I trust God? When He says "My burden is light" does he really mean it? Is the whole objective of niceness to put me off-guard so that the citadel of my soul will fall from the inside? Am I supposed to quit thinking about things and just believe? That has never been my way; those occasions where I've simply gone with the prevailing flow, I've been screwed. Whose responsibility is that?

God could have prevented such things. He could have painted a big sign on the car keys before I loaned them to my ex-neighbor before he smacked up the car and left me with a bunch of unpaid parking tickets. But He didn't offer a sign. I was nice and got the shaft. My fault. So, if it's up to me, it's up to me. How am I supposed to figure out which things are up to me and which are up to God?

Those who pray for world peace... what are they doing to bring it about? Those who pray for their friends... is God the Cosmic Computer and prayer the input program and if done just right or repeated often enough will produce just the desired results?

It seems to me the whole thing is more complicated than generally accepted. So, recycle the count to zero and start over. Who is God? We all thrown the phrases around: "God is Love." "Maker of heaven and earth." Etc, etc. Creeds, statements, fences built of brick and stone, containment structures. God is this and nothing else.

What if He is something else? What if He is someONE else? This is where I started four years ago: scrap the beliefs and ask God to teach. If He's real then teaching shouldn't be a problem. I prayed that he would help me understand. At the time I thought it was kind of a one-shot deal. Instead it was opening the first of a series of doors, one leading to the next and each less probable than the one that was opened last. If God were contained in creeds this would be impossible. If God is a person then what else could one expect? Especially a person who sees everything ahead.

So, God knows. He could bring about world peace. He could heal every sick person and heal our sick planet while he's at it. Why doesn't he? Perhaps we haven't asked in the right way. Perhaps we haven't treated God in the right way. The Cosmic Computer idea really doesn't fit. At least for me. Perhaps repetitions of the Prayer of Jabez really do help some people but I'd bet that it has little to do with God and much to do with placebos and self-hypnosis.

Psychologists call such cures "transference." The problem has been transferred to someone else and control goes with it. That person says "Everything is OK." and it's believed through authority. What if you no longer trust nor believe in authority? By standard Christian models you're in trouble. In God's terms, what else is new? All of my life I've looked for answers that work after the sun goes down. An answer isn't much use if it collapses the first time it's used; I've simply had my fill of transference even as I crave the easy way out. Especially now when everything seems like work.

So, prayer as I see it is a way of discovering who God is. Finding answers. Of course, those answers change perception. Answers move me along the path. I assume certain things about that path and get concerned: will I like where this ends up?

If I pray for God to remake my soul, what kind of soul will I end up with? Is introspection an externally applied veil? Do I want to find out? I resist, which makes the journey harder. I argue. I think about things, trying to make sure the way ahead is safe and reasonably comfortable. Others throw themselves into the challenge. All I want is peace and quiet. What am I doing in Los Angeles, capital of the police chase and helicopter-borne news crews? Paths lead in odd ways. God is interested in the whole person and I just want peace. Yes, there is some strain there.

Most of the thicket that blinds me is made of assumptions. Even I, long-time iconoclast, have beliefs about God and the rest of the world that may not match objective reality. Even I resist learning the reality as the foundation stones I've trusted begin to shake and move. I wonder how much of the trouble is self-made as I work to understand and control what we do. Yet, that's the way I work. Self-protection imposed over the years, or more basic? I don't know.

Understanding is basic to me because every time I do something without understanding, something breaks and I'm left lost. This works with electronic hardware. Does it work with spiritual vaporware? Can life really be made of moonbeams and dreams? Without dreams where does one go? Who leads? Does God really want to share the tiller with my hands? If I'm just a passenger then why am I there? Could it be that God gradually loosens his hold on the tiller as I gain skill in steering and seeing the course ahead?

Perhaps prayer is a unique personal response to God's presence in one's life. Perhaps God, rather than working to impose a one-plan-fits-all Purpose, is working to turn the monoculture of Earth into a garden of unique flowers. Getting there won't be easy. Our world is big on standardization. Reminds me the song about wildflowers... "I uprooted myself and left the garden..."

Ah, who knows. I think God wants to celebrate His people. I think we don't know how to celebrate, and, having been brought up in a world that denies the very possibility of celebration, how could we even think about it? And how to explain celebration to those whose lives are unremitting pain and toil? I don't know. I doubt that standardization is any kind of answer, and I also doubt rote prayers will make much difference. I think God wants people to dig in and ask deep questions. But then I'm biased. My guess--well, more than a guess--is there's a path for everyone, and that God if given the chance will teach us all how to ask and perceive.

Celebrating Rain

2007-09-22T14:59:00.000-07:00

They said it would rain this weekend. I said "I'll believe it when I see it. Well, here it is. Arrived last night. I smelled rain on the wind and went outside and stood under the magic sky. Lightning and thunder arrived later, and what I heard later was about an inch of rain.

Laurel leaf sumac A week ago this was all covered with dust.

This is what I found when I came out from the PCH pedestrian tunnel.

Conquest vs Consensus

2007-09-21T06:17:00.000-07:00

God stands alone in the castle courtyard. Around him are silent stones. Nothing, no one stirs.

That, at least, is the initial image. Further perusal of the scene reveals betrayal: the castellan standing, guarding a door that is already open and the castle's gentle residents clustered around God where he stands. How could they?

How could they not? Who has betrayed whom? God found the unguarded door the castellan thought no one would ever use. Who, after all, would expect to meet truth in this world? After that, against whom has the defense been necessary?

God makes not a move against anyone. The gentle soul-fragments feel safe. They look over their shoulders, keeping a wary eye upon the castellan who has ever been as lightning and thunder in their lives, merely carrying on what was started years ago.

Conquest. Force. Beating. If you won't do this, well, do it anyway or we'll make you. No matter how big you are, we're bigger and you really have no choice.

Is God any different? He made the Universe and could certainly overwrite any soul He encountered. He has the power.

A lifetime's war is transferred to Him. "Here. You take it." Problem solved. Peace starts to break out. Then the real war starts, as the ancient foundation starts to crack.

No problem conquered is ever conquered. Conquering isn't the same as solving. You can beat them into submission but what happens afterward? Same war, new generation and new generation and new generation.

How do you really solve a problem? God humbled himself to start the process, incarnating as a man no one would look at who then gave up his life as a common criminal. After He did that, would he stop at anything else? There is no defense against that kind of truth except for pure obdurate stubbornness powered by fear. The traditional way to handle fear is to just toss the fearful one into the situation. "Sink or swim, Bud." Defeat after defeat, until accommodation is reached. I simply won't go there.

We're taught to pray for this and that. Trinkets. It's a layer of paint over the deeper idea that prayer is like pulling the "On" handle of a huge machine, or like crawling into the lap of a favored grandfather. Jesus didn't die just so he could give us goodies; what he really wants is to walk with us in the cool of the garden. Us. You. Me. All.

After I dreamed of God in that bare castle courtyard I dreamed "Justification." That brought up memories of Don Neilson's Bible studies in 1972. He talked about justification. It seemed a nice theory but what's that to me? After the dream I still had no real idea, but over the next few days, when I in an unguarded moment actually let God speak, He continued the theme.

I've lived with war all my life. The world seemed determined to stamp out as much of my soul as it could get ahold of, and none of the people I knew cared. "Oh, you'll learn eventually. It's not important. You're too sensitive anyway." I could have become like them. I could have become a screaming rebel. I could see far enough ahead to predict the outcome of both paths, and chose a third. Fake it when with others, be true when alone. I spent a lot of time alone. Even so... the suit changes the man. Get used to living underground and eventually light is just too much. Sensitivity is a burden when one lives in a big city. I got screwed regularly until I finally figured out what door that was using and closed it.

Defense is necessary. God comes along with new ideas, upsetting the long-achieved but delicate balance and things start coming apart. I can't live this way. God continues to call and I can't resist that, but inside I'm ever more strongly polarized. The castellan is trying his best to defend the place, but God is already there. And then the tender, sensitive parts of me just abandon the rest of the castle and cluster around God. Betrayal. They slip under the flails and guns.

What use has God for intellect? Justified, Larry. Why would He care? Long tradition, here. Thinking is always equated with trouble. Why should God be any different? Justified. I am just in God's eyes, as I am, fragments and all. No one has ever respected me for thinking, unless the thought is turned to the solution of an immediate problem. Maybe this is the common experience of people who think deeply about things. Well, part of the problem is always putting the thoughts into words: fleeting images, moving, trying to escape the trap of immobile verbiage.

Anyway, God declares me just. I can stand anywhere with no apology. I need not apologize for emotions, nor for intellect. Each side gained ascendancy for a time but there was never victory. Victory, for God, is something else. Both sides win.

How does one get there? It's not even necessary to believe in the idea of victory. Just keep walking. Well, yes, but I also need to be aware, and that's the really hard part. Most of the time I just don't want to know. I expect the worst. I know what's coming. God always surprises me.

In some ways the surprise is worse than the expectation. In other ways it's not nearly so bad; the fear makes it worse. I've always seen emotions as undermining intellect, like soft bricks in a stone foundation. But intellect is awfully hard on emotion, requiring justification that can't be made. Emotion is its own thing. God says all are justified. God says the lion castellan and the lamb emotions can look at each other, eye to eye, and neither quail nor lash out. What a dreamer He is.

Desert Wind, Desert Rain

2007-09-03T04:31:00.000-07:00

Four years ago this experiment with God began. How I could have so many wrong ideas and still end up in the right place is very funny. Or maybe I had the right ideas but got to the wrong place and then God made it right.

Four years. Time enough to have changed the world? All I really have to show for it is that I'm still here.

Water beads up from dry ground and runs off. A little remains. Keep watering it and eventually it becomes less hydrophobic. It still takes time for the new water to seep slowly in among the dusty soil where nothing has grown for years. Who has patience to water dirt? People stand by their gardens thinking "Grow! You've had three days."

I decided at the outset that I wasn't going to repeat the Christian rituals that didn't seem to work; there was little point in throwing off one set of chains and then wrapping myself in another. I decided to be honest, and took Jacob's overnight wrestling match as my model. What did I have to lose? If God got angry and ended my life it wouldn't have mattered. I looked at it as a lottery ticket kind of thing: probably nothing will happen but if you don't try there's zero chance.

It's odd how the words "In God We Trust" are on the money we handle every day but those who expect God to do something are looked upon as being weird. I was more open-minded than that but still didn't see much evidence that God had anything to do with the running of the world, but this is a lot like trying to collect air samples with a fishnet. You look in the net, see nothing, and therefore air doesn't exist.

Change your mind, change your eyes, change your heart. The evidence is scattered all through my life, and I started to see this after banging on God's door and yelling for help.

Only God really believes that the sere desert can be watered into life. I've seen it happen and still have a hard time believing. What happens if he abandons me now? Trust is hard.

Autumn is approaching in its languid southern California way. The hills are desiccated, dusty, brown. Not a flower decorates the seared hillsides. We had little rain last season and none since early April. The deer come down and graze in the polo field because there's nothing else for them to eat; I watched them sample eucalyptus bark one day. I can't live on eucalyptus bark but it's what I'm used to. God is working on getting me to eat better things.

How long does it take to grow trust? How much water must be cast onto the lifeless ground before real growth begins? Is the growth that God envisions the growth that I want? How would I know? Four years on, and I still have only a hazy notion of what I'm hanging on for.

Three Years

2007-08-28T17:09:00.000-07:00

Hi, folks.

Three years. Upward of 400 posts on this Blog. People told me I'd be a natural blogger due to the stories I sent around. I'm still not convinced; there are others much more active here than I am. Amazingly, as with other things I'm still here.

Reasons for blogging: sorting out thoughts, presenting an alternative view (to the two or three people who still read this), marking the waypoints on the strange trail God has walked with me through the wilderness of the unlearned soul.

I'm not presenting myself as being right. God is right. I walk and hope these stories from the edge encourage others to also walk with Him. Our paths differ but God and his love are the same. This fascinates me, in a world that so stresses standardization and one-size-fits-all unisex.

I make no promises for the coming year. It'll probably be the same fits and starts.

Onward.

More INFPs

2007-08-27T06:24:00.000-07:00

Well, so much for rarity. BJK left a comment and said she's an INFP. So is Layla. Yesterday I was helping Debbie and Nate with a video project and while talking about things Debbie said she's an INFP. All of this means that if you shake the tree of people with whom I have regular contact, half of who falls out will be INFP. What happened to that 2% thing? Or do I just have good taste? Like calling to like? I at least have something in common with them.

Two INFPs

2007-08-24T09:30:00.000-07:00

The Web is rife with personality and IQ tests. People take these and post them on their blogs. I usually ignore them as being akin to astrology: too much made from too little.

A while back I ran into one that seemed to go into more depth. Based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, it uses various theories built on Carl Jung's research to make an inventory that gives a kind of broad outline of one's personality. I first ran into this in 1981, when I was meeting with my first psychotherapist and we were considering what kind of job I should look for.

I didn't pay much attention then. When the subject came up again at Mosaic I was even more resistant to being pigeonholed so, although one person described me as either INFP or INFJ, I ignored it.

The only way to find out what a person is like is to do things with them. Work. Take a long car trip. Go camping. Spend some evenings drinking beer and talking. Play an on-line game with them. Each person is unique, and once you get that label attached it's hard to shake off the name. "Oh, you're an XTPM? Wow. So's my uncle's father's second cousin twice removed. Amazing coincidence." And they think they know everything about you. Well, there's a lot of me that won't fit into four letters.

Now, hold on here a minute. Outlines are useful. I use them myself. So long as it's recognized that the summary isn't the story, nor the map the territory, types can be useful in helping folks find a place to belong. You wouldn't want an INFP to do your accounting, no sir.

Lu mentioned the same site I'd looked at earlier. Normally I'd have ignored this, but something very interesting came out: Lu is changing. I thought types stayed types. Years ago she was INFJ but now is solidly on the INFP side of the graph. The open question: "Is this due to God leading her to be more herself?" Interesting.

Last night I followed the link to the site, thinking just to look it over. It didn't seem overblown. "Use this, and other things, as tools." Signing up was easy. I looked over the material and got another surprise.

I'd assumed that types were assigned in roughly equal proportions. There are 16 types, so about 6% of the population ought to fall into each socket. Wrong-O, Buzzard-breath. Some have more, some less. Some have much less.

I took the test. The choices are binary, and I often found the distinction artificial. I know I have traits on both sides. Well, there are only two choices. Makes it simple to take the test. Post-processing provides the detail: 2^72 different responses possible, which is a lot of people. I hit the "Finish Test" button and waited for the results. According to this I'm an INFP.

INFPs are rare. Overall, 2% of the population. Among men, even rarer: 1.5% The only type more scarce is the INFJ. I guess this explains why I've given up on having anyone understand me.

This got me thinking. Lu is in the INFP camp, So am I. We're very different, underneath the obvious. Does this bring into question the validity of the whole idea? Depends on how wide your generality brush is, and how thickly you lay on the paint. I could question why we're so eager to generalize in the first place. Who am I like? No one... and everyone. No one is like me, but we all have similar needs.

I have a very strong anti-herd tendency. I learned long ago that the main result of following the herd is that everyone goes over the cliff together. Whoever is leading is usually no better at it than I am, and I'm a far better troubleshooter than most so I can see disaster before it arrives.

This is good and bad. Keeps me out of trouble, but also keeps me from doing things that have led Lu to be more outgoing: her missionary experiences, moving to Nashville to plant a church that never really got started. It was rough for a time but now she likes being in Nashville. When life hands people lemons God can make lemonade.

The joke is pretty much on me. One thing the notes for INFP say is that they can masquerade as other types, at great cost in energy. I'm working very hard to make sure God changes nothing that I don't want changed. I suspect everyone, and God has the connections and power to do anything. I can't hide from him.

In the beginning there was desperation. "God, do whatever it takes." Emergency measures. Now we seem to be moving into a different part of the land, where desperation is no longer a good enough reason. God respectfully asks for permission, it seems, and won't move until I'm fully in agreement with what he intends. I believe it intellectually but my feelings lag far behind. I have a hard time trusting anyone. It has to be earned every day, and if something doesn't look right I bolt. A feather's touch in the wrong place is enough to send me running for days or weeks.

The only new garment I fully accept at the moment is the new robe Jesus gave me. I thought I was out of that a few days ago, when I realized I really didn't want to go the way I thought he led. I love no one, and want nothing to do with love. That attitude comes from way back and is reinforced by my assumed manipulation. Who's doing the manipulating, though? I ascribe it to God, but it's really me trying to hide just about everything important in me from him.

Honesty is a place to start. God knows I don't trust him. If I truly am an INFP then that's either the way he made me or the resultant of the vector he gave me and all the additional vectors I've applied in the process of surviving a hostile world.

In 1980 this information was more useful. I had time for a meaningful choice in a career but didn't look into it. Now I'm pretty well stuck where I am. At least I'm still here. What choice, really, has the failed man? Well, God never quits and his truth is always surprising.

The Blood of the Lamb

2007-08-13T17:11:00.000-07:00

I was talking with some folks in Uru Saturday. We were in Fisher of Men's Neighborhood and the discussion was about absolutes. In these in-cavern discussions I can actually keep up; although I tend to be fairly slow at figuring out what to say I make up for that by being, by Uru standards, a very fast typist.

As part of the absolute idea we talked about Jesus and the Cross. One of the people said "I believe God is love. He couldn't possibly have required Jesus' death." I pointed out that the Jewish leaders were after His blood and pretty much forced the Romans to follow along.

There was also an echo with my past. Years ago, when I was still alone, a Christian friend called me. We naturally talked about Jesus because we'd met before I did my filtering work and decided God wasn't around. Steve asked me what I thought about Jesus. I told him that the idea of blood sacrifice was abhorrent to me.

I had no better answer when the question came up Saturday. When God picked me up a few years back I got to the point where I just had to agree. I didn't understand the requirement for a blood sacrifice--"without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin"--but if I wanted God's hand in my life I had to agree.

Agreement isn't belief. Here's more proof if you want it, from someone who has a lot more experience following Jesus than I have. So, God reopened the question. We looked at the Cross again.

Why? One way I got around this question a few years ago is that Jesus is God's son. God wouldn't have sent Jesus to death if there had been any other way to bring us back to Himself. Given that, then I had to look in the Garden. We were made for eternity, and we used to walk in the Garden, in the cool of the day, with God. Think about that. Walking beside God in the cool shade below damp green plants and bright flowers. That's what God wants.

We lost it due to believing lies. God said "You will surely die." Satan said "You will not surely die. You will become as gods." He was half right. Only God can bear the burden of separating good from evil. We break down under the constant load of decisions. The conflict kills us. We've become blind to the idea that life could be any other way.

God, being who He is, wouldn't take this as the final answer. How could he get our attention? We're good at ignoring anything.

Read just about any book and somewhere in it you'll find someone's dream of immortality. Dreams of afterlife, past lives. Past-life regression. The soul lives on, even if in a cockroach, so you get another chance to try pushing that impossible rock up a hill. Life can't just... end. Yep. That'll get our attention.

One way or another everyone respects death. It's serious business. The blank wall beyond which no one knows. That doesn't stop endless speculation and the invention of religions to enshrine the speculation.

God got Abraham's attention on a mountaintop. Abraham was a man of faith, following instructions, and had Isaac ready to go when a ram showed up. Isaac got to live another day.

I don't know how I'd have felt there. I doubt I'd have had enough faith to think ahead to God's provision of a ram. Not my decision. Abraham got it, and God got his attention. Abraham became the father of a race.

So, we look at the cross... and see a decoration on the side of a church. Maybe in lovely stained glass. We gloss over the whole thing but the stains should really be, as Lu writes, "Every last one of our names has been personally carved into the cross by Jesus Himself and if we were to look closely at it we would see our own name carved into the wood and covered in blood, forever marking our redemption.." Many people look at the Cross and feel intense guilt. "I killed Jesus," they think. Not really. The Cross is the beginning of our celebration. Jesus' sacrifice tore the Temple veil so that we could, for the first time since the Garden, meet God face to face. A common reaction is "No, thanks. I'd rather do it myself."

Put your shoulder to that rock and push. Good luck.

I suppose there's room for some pride in the do-it-yourself camp. You can keep that burden. I'd rather be free, even if the freedom terrifies me because I simply can't conceive of where the path will take me. I'm used to planning and organizing and predicting every step. Personal safety required this. Jesus says "Quit worrying. Come play with me. When you get hurt, let me hold you."

This isn't the whole story. Everything is still moving around in my mind. I'm sort of getting used to how God holds the loose bits together with His gentle hands.

I Would Do Anything...

2007-08-06T17:22:00.000-07:00

One hand has a death-grip on the rope. The other clutches the sharp, slippery rocks. Below is only air, feet dangling. Above... well, above is the rope running upward toward a face... and a hand. The hand is scarred, and hold the rope's other end but it's shadowy up there. The whole scene is dark. Just how careful is He being about holding on? My grip on the rock tightens. No wonder I'm tired.

Gratitude... debt... placation, sacrifice and knowledge. If Jesus lets go I'm toast anyway no matter how I try to hang onto those rocks. Trust the rope? Fat chance. Oh, I know he CAN hang on, but what if he doesn't want to any more? What if whatever tolerance he has shown until now runs out?

As you start so shall you continue. God picked me up and I knew it was my last chance. It didn't really matter. Failure with God wouldn't be any worse than the solo failure I could see ahead. I had nothing to lose. At the time I suspected that the situation might change, and as time went on change accumulated. I knew there was a good chance of using my new-found strength to run again.

By the time that happened, though, I'd gotten a good whiff of God's fragrance, the music of his voice, the kindness of his touch. I'd never run into anything like it before, never experienced anything so attractive. I'd intentionally guided my life so as to avoid these attractions and I certainly didn't think it would happen with God. He was, after all, the ultimate task-master, interested only in productivity.

Well, now I was caught. Even if God wanted only productivity I was caught. I needed... ah, what terror that caused... needed His touch. Oh, I ran but it was like a baby running from the breast. Only God Himself attracted me. I tried to kill that part of myself but He wouldn't let that happen. We argued night and day. I wore myself to nothing. The proud mountain biker capable of 40-mile transmontane rides for lunch now thought 10 miles to a local molehill was just about right. We argued about guidance and slavery and what to live for.

Perhaps you fall in love with the one you can argue with. Perhaps I fell in love with Truth as an idea and then found the idea was attached inextricably to God. Arguing with God is safe in that he has no ego involved, but it's entirely unsafe in that he is the perfectly honest presenter of Light, and what that Light shows may be ugly but is still true and no relationship can work without truth.

So the years passed. I ranged as far as I could but still remained attached, becoming ever more tired.

There are things I just don't want to know. I decided years ago that I would just live in a way that didn't require knowing about needs and relationships and such. Use intellect to figure out what needed to be done, and do it. This actually works and kept me out of trouble. Where it utterly fails is in making life worth living; logic is no comfort at 1 in the morning, a need for something other than answers knocking on the soul's door. Why am I here? What do I want? I'd look in the box of answers and find nothing fitting those.

All through this the Holy Spirit continued His work. That gentle rain gradually dissolving the cold stone, His hand holding me as pieces fell off the years-old pile.

One big argument was over guidance. How much did I trust God's guidance? Was He thinking of my needs, or was His interest just in making me an adequately performing part of the Christian mechanism? Oh, intellectually I could see that the concept made little sense. I could look at what God had done already: he sacrificed His Son to bring me to him. So, how to explain the words of others, saying they'd never heard God's voice, never caught those whispers, were always feeling alone. Here I wanted to be alone but wasn't. Then some things happened and I wanted the whole thing to be a lie. I wanted to choose what to believe, and I chose to believe that God was lying about His guidance. He'd betrayed my trust. He had guided me only into more pain, forcing my nose into the gulf between myself and being a real person. I could imagine him laughing. I knew it was a lie. After a while I got really, really scared. I could do this. I could separate myself from God by continuing to force the lie. About that time God asked for forgiveness, not because he'd been wrong but because I'd been hurt so badly and the event awakened old dogs that had long been sleeping. I preferred leaving them there.

And yet... even facing those sleeping dogs was minor compared to losing God's touch. I couldn't bear that. I was really dying and there'd be no coming back. I was even more tired. I saw where the path led and I turned around.

Which eventually led to an even bigger problem. Gratitude... connections... needs... honesty. Where are we going? Does it really matter? I'm not sure. Just let me stay with you, Jesus. Paul rejoiced in jail. He knew where reality was and counted everything else loss.

Do I really want to let go of the rock? My whole life depending upon God's grip on the rope?

The way I relate to others is to give them what they seem to want. It works for the short term or in shallow relationships. I know no other way. God presents me with honesty and of course I panic. I'm grateful just about as long as He holds the rope. There's nothing attractive in me. Why wouldn't he just give it up as a bad job and let go?

Consider history. He never left me. I walked away, trying to find answers that would fit my logic and God's way. When the time came to choose, I chose logic. Jesus probably cried at that point, but he still held on... 1983... 1984... 1986... onward... 1993... 2002... 2007. How do you please someone who resolutely refuses to give any sign of what would please him, other than simply holding his hand? That one drove me crazy. Oh, yes, there are lots of things that are said to please God but I couldn't do a damned one of them. The real surprise in my first-principles approach to following Jesus is that it's exactly what He wanted. Work out your own salvation. Grab hold of God's coattail and hang on until answers are shaken out. From my point of view the answers come grudgingly; we see what we expect to see. From God's point of view... "Well, why didn't you ask that one earlier? Like... about 1974? Didn't I sing it to you? 'Come, let us reason together.' "

So, here's a relationship I'm learning is of my essence. Oh, how that makes my soul quake. I need God and there is nothing I can do to ensure His continued love. The thread feels delicate as last year's spider web.

I don't have an answer to the question of what makes life worth living. I've hidden from it. Better no answer than a bad answer. What if I finally open that box and it's empty? Worse yet, what if the answer looks like my family? There must be something better. What changes? Viewpoint or eyes or light? Probably all. God is an optimist. He assures me that all I have to do is keep walking, holding his hand. I need him. Is need enough to build a relationship? Maybe that's where we start.

If the thread were really that delicate I wouldn't be here to go on walking. I have no idea if the fear I feel really comes through these words. I've left fingerprints in those rocks. I'd rather trust my grip because... it's mine. I can't control God. I have never lived in a way that would allow anyone else to control that much; I've always reserved the option of running. Now, that would be cutting my own throat. Trapped by need. Cornered, ready to fight the last stand... but all I can do is look up into His confident face, the rope wrapped around his fingers, and they do look strong.

Forced Re-evaluation

2007-08-04T15:40:00.000-07:00

It happens periodically. Something trips an alarm, or a flag goes up, and I find myself required to rethink some assumptions I've been using. Maybe for weeks, sometimes for years.

The most recent re-evaluation is of my methods and meanings of relationship with God. The trigger here was the recent prayer incident with Barbara; I wrote then that I'd been pretty much a failure in the spiritual director role, which was a statement in response to another of her comments. She'd suggested I'd be a good spiritual director.

The problem is that those I've advised haven't done any better after the advice. Perhaps the advice is too dippy, or too out-there... or maybe it's just not true.

Maybe I've made this whole thing up from whole cloth. Maybe discipline and forcing myself to behave, and following rules really are the way. After all, far more people live that way than in mine, and if truth is defined statistically I'm way off the beam.

As usual, God has his own take on things and made sure I saw that. The signs are always subtle. Perhaps my direction of others hasn't led to significant change, but at the same time I see others coming closer on their own paths, led their own way.

So, as I walked up the back road to Will Rogers this morning, I thought about the complexity of life change and how long it takes, and how it has to be experienced. You can tell someone how to add; it's a clear-cut process that works for everyone except the politicians who sometimes get nutty ideas about legislating math. I wonder, though, if you can tell anyone how to be a Christian. Oh, I'm sure you can but the result won't be "a man after God's own heart."

Some people, I'm sure, see beyond the rules and rituals to God's heart. It's just too easy to communicate the rules and leave the heart behind so that the next generation knows rules only.

So, I find myself walking, holding Jesus' hand. Destination is unclear except in general terms: I am to become like Him. He has promised to make it so.

The big question is whether I will like the result. I don't know that one either. I dread the rules, the rote performance, the endless browbeating, sackcloth and ashes that seem to be the part of most Christian experience. But then, Paul rejoiced in jail. How'd he do that? Must have been seriously in love with Jesus, is all I can think. Rules don't lead to love except where they save a person's life long enough to get to more solid ground, where love can be learned and used to replace rules.

I don't know folks. Life with God this time started weird--asking God for help sorting out my thoughts--and has just stayed weird. Maybe it's just weird because I'm looking at holy things with old and tired eyes. But you know for sure that things are normally weird if Lu is considering similar ideas. She and I have always had this connection and similar timing.

Eventually maybe I'll trust God enough to quit worrying so much about the path. Survival has always depended upon prediction of where I was going, which is a lot of work. I'd like to rest.

Gratitude and Direction

2007-08-04T15:27:00.000-07:00

I awoke this morning with a thought about gratitude. Well, actually a cluster of thoughts at whose center gratitude hovered.

We're taught, as Christians, to be thankful. I suppose this works for those who are glad to be alive but I, who never expected to live this long, am not all that glad. The impulse to remain alive is far stronger than I expected and, given that, I am glad that God chose to pick me up. If one has to live, it might as well be with God. The alternative is much, much worse: all the same pain with none of the offsetting pleasure.

Still, I found myself wondering if I said "Thank you" to God simply as a verbal talisman, a charm to assure His continued positive regard. The truth is that I really don't look forward to anything. Why be thankful?

Yet there is a thread of new optimism growing in me. I don't understand it. Rather than always assuming the roof is about to fall in, I'm more likely to look beyond the collapse. Things do fall apart. They can be rebuilt, God says. They will be rebuilt. All things will be made new. I doubt that having this happen depends in any way upon how much gratitude I express to God. Still... I guess I'm superstitious in some ways.

Or maybe it's just the social lubricant idea. The "Thank you " to the bus driver or the waiter might not really mean much, but it's better than nothing, and far better than a snarl.

I just don't know. Where is the meaning in life? I sat at the top of Inspiration Point this morning, looking at the mist-veiled dry hills, wondering what I wanted. I've pretty well abdicated this particular responsibility, which might have something to do with the fact that I live in a city I don't like, that constantly reminds me with noise and rudeness how much I don't like it. Where am I to go from here? Not only do I not know that, I don't even know how to find out. I never expected to need to know.

Maybe I still don't need to know. God is a good guide. Maybe that simple fact is what I'm grateful for. Not that his guiding is easy. It's a difficult walk, finding out who I am, but perhaps it will eventually pay off.

I Changed the Universe

2007-07-28T07:51:00.000-07:00

My friend wrote:

"I AM TOTALLY BLOWN AWAY BY YOUR POST! THOSE THINGS:
CONFIDENCE
HUMILITY
PROTECTION

Yes that WAS God telling you those things and He DID answer. I knew as I sat and talked to my son that it was not "me" I was so calm, confident, so unwavering. Of course I have been a wreck internally this whole time but he doesn't know. Humility - yes I get that too. I totally get that and why that is an important part of this, it has to do with my pride, defiance, defensiveness and stubbornness as a parent - without humility I would not be able to get the help I need or admit I need it."

I was thinking about this as I rode around in the dawn. Questions. Why does God bother to answer prayers? Why did He respond here? Did I really have anything to do with it?

I sat on the picnic table and watched new sunlight rise over the ridges, discussing things with the Holy Spirit and thinking about prayer. People tend to be amazed when God answers a prayer. I wouldn't say that I've become blasé about it, but I do expect something to happen. I've learned that God cares. He enjoys giving us gifts, whether it's a child or a sunrise or protection. I think there's a lot of false humility going around, too. People beg for just a second or two of God's time, if it's His will. He already gave us His Son. Is he going to hand us rocks when we're starving? I don't think so, so you might as well go into His presence with a brass band and ask for what you need. Get in his face. That way He knows you're serious. Of course, what you get may differ from what you asked for because of God's rather quirky way of interpreting prayer: he cuts through the assumptions and holy gobbledygook and sees what the real need is, and then looks at needs that connect to those needs. Pray for a crumb, and get a feast with friends. Or, pray for a friend and get God.

So, gradually I got this wider idea of what prayer does. God is eager to help and looks at the whole universe. My role in this is tiny. And yet I asked and in one night the course of events bent a little bit. Would have this happened anyway? I don't know. That's not my story.

In the end, though, the most remarkable part of this whole event was my friend's request for help. Most of our time we spend under blessing-proof umbrellas, alone, wondering where God is. That near-panicked Email, "Pray for me," opened a window in the umbrella.

And the long-term answer? Well, if you want a permanent fix you have to be around long enough to get it. One night's answer leads to the next night's answers. Survive long enough and eventually the stiff human mind begins to bend and grow under God's ministry.

Humility is the model. There's much talk of this but from what I can see there isn't much understanding. God humbly offers to help us, if we ask. Asking for help may be the one act that releases God's power. It allows him the privilege of helping, and you don't stay with anything for very long without feeling that to do so is a privilege.

My friend's life is lots more complicated than mine. Her experiments in faith have more depending on them than mine; if I fail I'm the only one going down. I can throw myself into this without worrying about the effects of God's actions on other people. Doing so in a family situation makes a relationship with God more complicated but also, from my viewpoint, more necessary. Who else can work the needed changes while holding the broken bits together?

I just think it's neat. God, the creator of our world, waiting with anticipation for us to ask for help. I need it too. This gentle touch from Him who knows every atom and assembled the suns.

The biggest problem we face is looking at God's universe from our human point of view. Asking for help is enough to enter His universe but from that point on the help has to continue in order for us to understand anything. There are pieces of a more whole picture floating around--like the popular idea that everything in nature is connected--but we either don't see or don't understand how the connections work. God sees it all: my friend's frustrated living out of patterns initiated years ago and how those patterns can be changed, and how her patterns fit with all the other paths people walk. One evening's prayers establish a new course but she'll have to keep walking. So will I. There are no automatic Christians.

Prayer is Weird

2007-07-27T05:50:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me an urgent Email: "Please pray for me." I know something of her situation and I know she needs help that I can't provide directly.

Talking with God is no problem. Asking for things is a little harder. Asking for things for someone else is very strange. God already knows what she needs, so what can I add to things? God loves her more than I do and I assume He's doing everything he can to help her. Why pray? We're directed to pray without ceasing but I don't really get it.

It's one of those things I sort of take on faith. God says it's good and I consider the source and believe he's not just blowing smoke. So then the next question is what to pray for. I've never been able to do one of those "Lord, if it's your will, could you please, you know, sorta help this person? Oh, and save everyone else in the world while you're at it." I figure it's my responsibility to know what's going on and I also know that in any troubleshooting situation the more specific you can get the more likely you are to come up with a solution that works.

So, I sat and thought about this. OK. One thing she needs is self-confidence. Where does this come from? If you're the strong and self-willed type you can just pump it up. The rest of us do without until we meet God. There's something about His unceasing care that has changed the way I view myself. So, I asked God to help her with how she views herself, knowing that this would take longer than the current situation allowed, but I asked God specifically to just do a short-term intervention. If the situation spiraled out of control, as arguments coming from low self-esteem tend to do, things would only get worse. God protects free will but I thought this was a case of needing more direct action.

And then the Holy Spirit suggested humility. That was interesting. What does being humble add to conflict? How does one become humble? What is humility? Our culture tends to think humility is modelled by the self-abusers: "Oh, I'm worthless, nothing, blah, blah, etc." Jesus is our model for humility: the Son of God dying like a common criminal after talking with anyone who came along and telling each of them the same story in words they could understand. Jesus knew exactly who he was, and spent his life doing his Father's commandments. He got into conflict but he stayed with the same story. Ego and self-justification never played a part; if an argument escalated it was because the other party just couldn't leave it alone. I asked God to keep both of these people from getting into ego-based argument.

Then I got a real surprise. It's something that had occurred to me a while back but not recently. The Holy Spirit mentioned protection. Oh, yes. Argument opens the door to all kinds of bad things, so I asked God to put protection around their house so that nothing but His spirit could get in. I imagined this glowing bubble around their house, with a long tube from the top going to where God is. I know it's silly... but nobody was going into that house without God's permission.

Did any of this help? I don't know. Not my problem. My friend seems to be in better shape today, and thanked the friends she had asked for prayer.

Now comes the hard work: short-term intervention gets you over the immediate rough spot. There's life change that needs to happen in that household, which is a very complex thing to accomplish. How is it done?

I don't know. As a "spiritual director" I'm largely a failure. I suggest things for people to try and they just don't work. Even broadening the concept to more general terms doesn't seem to bring anyone closer to Jesus. So, maybe I'm just dead wrong and everything I've done in the last few years is self-delusion.

I just don't see how one can live as a Christian without having daily conversation with God. I've assumed that this relationship is the basic concept, as illustrated by the veil in the Jewish Temple being torn when Jesus died. I'm clothed in Jesus' righteousness. Why? So that God can see me.

Yet what seems logical and simple to me is weird and difficult to others, even those who say they like the look of it. So, maybe the problem isn't in the basic idea but in how it's done. Maybe my approach is too mystical, too loose to work for others. I've learned to balance management and laissez-faire living, sort of. Some things die from over-management, as I've learned from my own life.

Note that a relationship with God is logical and simple in concept only. Doing it day by day is by turns delightful and terrifying. The God who made the Universe and planned every little part is working in me. My soul is less than a candleflame in a hurricane with him around, but his intent is protection during change. Fierce tenderness. A Shepherd who challenges His sheep.

I've even looked into Calvinism. Maybe I'm one of the Elect. No, can't be. Ugh. I can't stand the idea that God chooses. I have to believe that Jesus came to seek and to save that which is lost, every single one of them being invited to the feast.

In the end, I just don't know. People make their own decisions.

One thing to remember as you read these stories is that I turned to the Lord in 1971. I spent most of the years between then and now ignoring God; if you'd have come to me with stories of God's kindness in about 1988 I'd have asked which planet you just came in from.

So, for those of you who feel terminally estranged from God I have no advice other than "God doesn't quit." I pray that you'll leave a back door open in your walls of armor so that somewhere along the line God will find His way in, in some unguarded moment as He did with me. He is contractually prohibited from doing frontal assaults.

Unless he's invited, of course, but that's another story. Prayer always goes both ways.

Man of Faith

2007-07-25T06:31:00.000-07:00

There isn't much to do on a long steep hill other than think. At four miles per hour there's little danger of running into something when the guidance task gets short shrift. So, on my way up the main entrance to Will Rogers I got to thinking. Who knows how the topic arrives. This time it was self-esteem.

Some say that you can't love others unless you love yourself. Jesus even implies this: "Love others as you love yourself." Well, don't we all love ourselves to excess? There's constant exhortation to forget ourselves and lose ourselves in service. It doesn't seem to work very well, as measured by the transformation of our world.

I first heard the statement about loving myself in 1977, on a walk with a friend. I was sceptical. Thirty years later, riding and alone, thoughts come and go. I'm a lot less rigid than I used to be, less dependent on stiff structures of logic and intellect. God has ways of insinuating his ideas into my thought-stream and the result is a richness I couldn't conceive 30 years ago. I can discriminate more finely the shades along the continuum of ideas, and what hits me this time is that self-love doesn't require or imply self-worship.

As with most concepts involving people it's hard to fit the ideas into words. Jesus is our model, the man who lives to follow his father's commandments and yet doesn't roll over for just anybody. For those people who admit need he will do anything. He is Himself, no matter where He is. He never puts himself first, and yet is absolutely indissoluble even at the point of death: He gave Himself willingly. We have this idea that if one is not to be full of self, that implies being full of nothing. Either-or. Jesus demonstrates that to be full of God is also to be full of a real Self.

We stand down here in the maze, unable to see ahead. I'm climbing this hill and ahead of me is a switchback. I can't see what's around the far side. Having faith in road designers and the constancy of our world, I predict that the road curves around and keeps climbing. Other curves aren't so clear. How much confidence I have in a continued path depends on how much I trust God's guidance. Is there really a road out there?

When war breaks out between irreconcilable opponents, the smart residents hide and hope the storm will blow over before their houses do. When the war is in a person's soul, and goes where I go, what can be done? Is God the good guide even in the middle of the bitter warfare? What is he trying to do? Removal of self seems to be the logical answer, so that He can move in and make the place his own.

And yet here I am, riding up this hill, sweating into the cool misty air of an early summer California morning, just so that I can hear birds use the same air to call to each other. Rather than removing me, he has been very carefully strengthening some parts of me while we--note that "we"--decide which parts can dissolved in His blessings. Keep the experiences and memories while changing their associations; the old deadly associations are being replaced with associations centered on His gentle regard for who I am.

The logical question is "Why bother?" This all takes a long time. "Without faith, it is impossible to please Him." How do you transform an intellectual, rational sceptic into a man of faith? By demonstrating faithfulness every day, I guess, which means walking through all of this pain, confusion, down deep in the maze, and watching how God brings a rain of blessing along with the guidance along the edge of quitting.

I'm in a class of one. Each of is, truly, is. We can choose to make common cause with each other but that doesn't require complete suppression of who we are. That way leads to madness and anger. We need to learn to enjoy differences, which requires enough stability within ourselves that external forces aren't a threat, and that requires internal strength, and that means the Holy Spirit, and that calls for faith. We can't see Him.

We allow ourselves to be affected by lots of other invisible things: advertising, movies, TV shows, other people's ideas. Why not allow God to work in the same way? His way is difficult but good.

To see myself changing in this way is in most ways a shock. Faith? Me? Can't be. In more subtle ways, well, I've always had faith that things would just work out. They have. In the last few years I've bucked and protested as God has worked to bring what used to be hidden out into the light. My rational front has always had a fantastic structure made of flowers, birdsong and moonbeams that I didn't want anyone to know about.

That I'm still here is more a testament to God's faithfulness than any skill or strength I have. In so many events my life could have ended or taken a really ugly turn, but it has been like those cartoons of the sleepwalking steelworker who walks off the end of a beam just as another is lifted to where his foot will be. This naturally leads to questions of "Why me?" but I have no answer. How does a tender man survive in a world of sliding hard blocks? God's protection, I think. Why would he work so hard to ensure my survival? The simple answer is that it's His nature.

Winning Arguments

2007-07-15T05:15:00.001-07:00

Conflicts, differences of opinion, arguments: inevitable. They never go away, and today's won argument is like the dandelion's root. It'll be back tomorrow, and even produce seeds.

We win arguments by beating the other side down until they can't move any more. Nothing is really solved. You could say that fatigue wins more arguments than anything else but eventually, no matter how many bricks you put on top of the pressure cooker the old argument is still steaming away in there. It'll be back, and will usually unload at just the wrong time. We've all seen it: someone comes along and kicks a pebble and pretty soon the whole hillside is in motion, sliding, grinding, crushing everyone in its path as the old argument takes on a whole new life.

It seems pretty damned hopeless. Do differences of opinion always have to end this way? What happens when the argument is with the God of the Universe? He's pretty strong. Not much point in even trying to present a different viewpoint: He's right, by definition.

What we don't see is how humble God is. No one talks about this. He has no ego involved in winning arguments, and the fatigue technique is destructive. What he wants is for me to gladly agree with what he presents, as gladly as he has accepted me into his community of saints and angels.

I had a dream one night about being in about the last place I'd expect to be: in that great hall of Heaven, with the throng of people and animals all crying out "Holy, holy, holy" while looking upon God. God could demand this. It is no more than the truth: he's holy, I'm corrupt. Yet he accepts me, which is a decent foundation for worship. But still, standing around in the crowd like that? Well, the feeling of the dream was of a far more dynamic thing. Everyone was there both because they wanted to be, and because God wanted us there. There was no grudge, no pointing out of old sins. God was glad we were there, and the "Holy, holy" part was just a kind of spontaneous thing, like doing the wave at a concert.

You don't get argued into offering up a heartfelt "Holy, holy, holy." How does God do it? I can't speak for others. What I've seen and felt is God's steady encouragement. His burden really is light, and life-giving. I've seen his humility, asking me for forgiveness. I've experienced directly his steadfast commitment for 36 years, even when I said I wanted nothing to do with him. I follow none of the rules of Christianity but God still holds onto me. I'm rather sad that it has taken 36 years, but the arguments just sort of dissolve as God proves he's more interested in me than he is in a program. He holds onto me as we--what a strange concept, we--untangle the choking threads of the past.

My survival has depended on a lot of practices that run counter to the kind of life God made me for, and the kind I've dreamed of. To step away from what's familiar to me and walk into God's new land is something I profoundly resist. Dragons lie in wait out there, smoking and ready to flame. I've felt their flames. I know those dragons from experience and want nothing to do with them. I've lost every fight with them. God says we--still a strange concept to me, we--can defeat them. Argument.

Who argues with dragons and wins? Somehow, God does. It's more than a suit of asbestos armor. Truth reveals that the dragons aren't that big any more; what's huge to a boy is just plain smaller to an adult and yet the dragons remain huge in emotional memory. It's more than a sword, as a sword does nothing against flame.

So, it's truth, and patience, and waiting, and repeating the lesson in different ways until internal reality finally shakes loose in a psychotectonic event of sliding ideas. God knows that an unsettled argument is a weak foundation stone waiting to fail, and if I have the patience to match his he will take that weak stone and show it for what it is and then rebuild it.

We're on the borderland of metaphor here. I don't know how much of the foregoing is comprehensible. God is no metaphor, but he fits none of my words nor concepts so I try to paint a moving picture in words that are themselves abstractions of the rainbow-clouded reality. What is sure is that failures in human institutions are no surprise, given that they're based on winning arguments by crushing the opposition. Ruling by the strong, when we'd often be better served by listening to the weak and humble.

I also can't generalize too much here. My experience leads me to interpret events in a certain way, and what I see as oppression in an organization may be just what someone else needs. We have to make up our own minds, and listening to God is an essential part of that. He comes, humbly, offering to help because he wants to. I never thought I'd believe someone else had my best interests at heart--that's usually the prelude to a good reaming--but it's true of God because he has no ego involved.

You don't get to "We" by being beaten up. I know it's the usual technique to force things and people like it because it brings quick results, and it feels satisfying to the ones who force. They can count the numbers and see the effects, and then move on. They don't have to clean up after the explosions, because those who explode blame themselves for their weakness.

Self-denial doesn't come about because of losing an argument. Self-denial comes from falling in love with Jesus. How very odd it is that I can now conceive of that idea.

(composed to Ray Thomas' "From Mighty Oaks")

What I Want

2007-07-14T12:49:00.000-07:00

There are, as Tyler tells himself on his way north in "Never Cry Wolf," problems with describing the events of the last several weeks. I should probably just give up but what's life without a challenge? The music is Ed van Fleet's "Daydreams" from a recently bought CD and I make no guarantee of comprehensibility here. Let the reader beware. Beyond this point lie the wild things we've been taught to ignore.

I: Forerunner
Stories can start anywhere. I, as the writer, dictate the starting point for this one: a seven-year-old boy looking around and suddenly realizing that on top of the living earth, amid the glowing air, under the shining clouds, people have built lives of lies. Somehow this boy was left out when the instruction books were handed out, so he quite naturally wondered why things were this way. In his mind he conjured a dream: Find a way to be real. Ignore the holy relics, the traditions, the rules stated and unstated, and be whole.

A seven-year-old boy starts on such a quest with some major disadvantages, especially when starting from Kansas. He had one advantage: no one listened to him anyway, so he had the freedom to explore. That advantage, though, was built on top of what he'd already learned and even at the tender age of 7 assumptions have grown up like weeds.

Survival dictates conformance, at least on the outside. Outside conformance eventually works its way inside due to the sheer amount of work living split takes. All around me I could see what happened to those whose rebellions were more obvious than mine. It was rarely pretty. Oh, they got some approbation from their friends but the act looked pretty thin to me. I was looking for the heart. Of what I wasn't sure. Just... I knew there was more.

The signs were out there. What was music if not an all-too-brief visitor from the land I wanted to live in? What of the sparkle of water in a mountain stream and the scent of pines? There was magic in those but even those who walked out there rarely saw it. I was navigating by feel in a sighted world.

College was even worse. Although I can accurately translate from words into the language I use inside for thinking about things it takes time. College allows no time for thinking; you must simply absorb. That's what they'd been wanting me to do all my life but I couldn't see the difference between that and any more formal brainwashing. I dug in my heels, fell behind and got kicked out. All that was left of that year was Craig and a hint of Jesus.

II: Touch
Craig sent me his spoken plea. The burning question was: Could I become a Christian with any kind of honesty? The debate raged furiously for a couple of weeks, which didn't help my work habits.

Could I really give my life to Jesus? How is this even done? Just a few words?

We'd always gone to church but I felt no reality there. It was all a duty, and part of my core belief was that there had to be more to life than duty and obligation. What could it be? Craig was the first person I'd ever met for whom Jesus seemed to be real. Ultimately I wanted to be like him. He seemed better connected to the world of the heart than anyone else I knew. Was that due to Jesus?

It was like taking the first step into a foreign country. I already knew how language affected conceptualization and my first forays to churches after I finally made the decision--more to end the debate than for any selfless devotion--showed me that they had the same problem of people outside. The basic idea of Christianity is that Jesus died to remove my sins, and yet here was everyone in the church, every Sunday, praying for God's forgiveness.

I solved the problem in my own way. I packed up everything that would fit, gave away the rest, and headed west. Craig was in Greeley. He was a little surprised when I showed up. It turned out that his church was no closer to reality than the more formal outfits I'd attended, so the search went on.

Still, I was in a strange land, not knowing the rules. I put on my protective coloration again and gradually a new set of weeds grew up around me. God spoke to me--yes, to insignificant me--but I decided the voice couldn't really be Him as I was too young.

I ran into another group that seemed more real. Not really a church, but a kind of teaching ministry whose core concept was that of relationships. This was close enough to my original dream of human reality that I signed on and went to work. If God wouldn't make me a real relational human being, I'd do it myself.

III: Dreamcrash
Year later I walked out of the psychiatrist's office for the last time. It wasn't working. I was stronger than she was, and her tools didn't reach deep enough. I could predict where we were going and stay off the path. Eventually I got tired of paying for silence and quit going.

That left me with the problem of what to do with myself. The relationship idea was dead, the idea of being human was even deader. I just dropped the whole thing and lived day by day, one sand sculpture at a time, one bike ride, a day of work, an evening of music.

It takes time for a lifelong dream to truly die. Nine years went by and I began to wonder if I'd get over the next bump. I no longer really cared, and that scared me. I smacked up the motorcycle by not caring, so started riding the bus to work. Then Jesus stepped back into my life. I didn't care very much, so told him to do anything he wanted.

IV: Skirting the Edge
I expected wholesale replacement. Clearly I'd failed and needed everything new. I quit thinking about it. God could reach deeply enough and I expected him to just take handfuls and toss them. Another kind of end.

It has not been that way. Assumptions have power. God is even more adamant in resisting assumptions than I am. Forgiveness turns out to be a powerful push toward changed ideas.

Still, that old dream was hanging around. Last September a friend I'd met on-line (playing Uru) started talking with me. There were no built-in limits. By January it was over with, me trapped in old fears, she frustrated with my silence. In June the whole thing came back in my face; what was over with intellectually was far from over emotionally.

It had nothing, really, to do with her. It was God's work, and I was angrier than I have ever been before. Especially the timing: I'd just gotten over some fighting, finally beginning to feel that God's way of leading wasn't to erase me. And then this all blows up. Suddenly the "progress" I'd made in relating to others just seemed like what it really was: a bunch of empty tricks, tolerated by others because... ah, who knows. It was a feeling I knew well: being on the outside, looking in from the cold to a room warm with light and people. I'd never be in there.

I told God to take a hike. He tried to get through to me but I refused to listen. I told myself that God cared no more than anyone else did, which was nil.

I learned therefrom that lying to myself is dangerous. I knew that God cared. Jesus is the most direct showing of His caring. I told myself not to believe any of it; God was just another manipulator. I could feel the distance growing, and the edge of oblivion got closer.

How do you heal something like that? I have no idea. God started it by asking me to forgive him. The God of the Universe, humbly approaching me and asking. Just as Jesus did all those years ago, allowing himself to be crucified as a low-order criminal. With my toes hanging over the edge, and thinking about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, I knew I was in danger. That got through to me; cut off from God's voice there really wasn't much point to living.

It still wasn't very good. I had dreams: one of my house being invaded by people with guns, coming in all the windows, finding me alone. Another one of me finding a cop on the street and beating him to pieces. And one of me being on a road someplace and coming upon a dead cougar lying there. It doesn't take a trained analyst to figure any of that out: I was being invaded, wanted to beat the crap out of God for making me hurt, and could see the future: I and all I held beautiful would die.

It's interesting how I can know things and yet not really know them. I've written here before of God's gentleness, of how he's not interested in turning me into a robot, that he has gone to great effort to make me what I am and there'd be no point in trying to make me something I'm not designed for. Between belief and reality there is a wide gulf, when it comes to actually doing something with the belief. God is, however, patient and will just keep working on the lesson until it really takes hold.

Self-judgment is deadly. I signed on to a real dream but allowed it to be derailed years ago. There's only so much one person can do against a hostile world. I judged myself for how closely I was adhering to my ideas of truth, but those ideas were founded on the same set of lies that I'd rebelled against. All God was trying to do was give me back the original dream.

A friend asked a while back: "Larry, what do you want?" It's not a trick question, but I can't answer it. All I know is what I don't want. The question always gets tangled with another: "What am I allowed to want?" This is why God and I collided so hard: I'm supposed to want what God wants, but how do I know that without talking with him? And what is there left of me if I'm supposed to be a shadow of God?

V: The Future
Another friend made me see that I've not done all that badly. While I felt I was nowhere near the dream I'd started to chase all those years ago, I'd still ended up in a decent place. Her comment has stayed with me in a curious way. It's true, but not true. Self-judgment versus reality. What I am versus what I want to be, but how can the comparison be made when the want to be part is a feeling rather than a hard destination?

God's will, as expressed in my life, is aimed in the same direction that seven-year-old's dream was, it seems. It's not supposed to be this way. I'm supposed to be a soldier taking orders; when God says "Go" I'm just supposed to start walking.

I wonder, though. All around us are churches and Christian groups falling apart due to rancor and argument. I wonder what would happen if everyone there started looking, open-mindedly, at their assumptions about God.

How am I supposed to serve God? I'm commanded to, but the shape of that service seems to be something other than what I expected. Will I enjoy that service? I haven't much so far, but that's due more to self-judgment and argument than anything else. There are aspects of this story that I just don't want to know because it seems that part of being whole is having emotions.

One night I was lying in bed thinking about this. I saw the mountain ahead with this steep road going up it, and thought "Ah, just bag it. It's too much of a problem for me. I'll live without it." Jesus said at that point "What are we going to do about it?" We? My thoughts changed course. We. I always judge what I can do based on being alone. I see the impossible and just turn aside. God, however, calls me toward that impossible emotional life, and says "We can do it." He's crazy. I've become crazy enough to believe him.

The Borderland of Sanity

2007-06-01T18:49:00.000-07:00

Ah, what is it like, hanging one's feet out there on the edge? How did St John of the Cross explain himself to others? Did he even bother? At least then people had some basic assumptions of spirits in the world; our secular age denies all such contact and laughs at those to claim to talk with God.

Talking is just the first step home. Secular senses meet the Holy Spirit and reel away in shock. Then it gets more confusing. How does one judge a path in the spiritual world by using secular learning?

How much do I trust God? Do I really think he's interested in me? Oh, I'd like to believe that. He'd be about the only one. It seems too good to be true, the God of the Universe caring for me, caring what happens, guiding me to some destination that's his plan, my far dream.

Any follower of Jesus has a foot in each world. Physical here, spiritual in an unimaginable place but very imaginative. Jesus is imaginative enough to figure out how to live with us. My guess is that real sanity derives from contact with God. It's quite an experiment. Headed in the direction of becoming incompetent in this world, seemingly anyway, who knows where I'll end up? I have to trust God that it will be a place that I'm interested in, a life I care about. Beyond statistics, beyond the repeated assumptions, away beyond stultifying beliefs.

I know what Jesus means about dying to self. Turning loose of my rational guidance is the hardest thing I've ever done, which is why I'm very tired right now. Having chosen for the last several months to fight God's guidance, I've come ever closer to familiar oblivion. Care or die. God gets a grip on things, proves his care, and I run, fight, kick, scratch, demand to be left alone. He complies. Sort of. He waits as I thrash, inserting brushes with sanity when opportunity comes. The windows are small and open only briefly.

This may be changing. Never can tell. The heart is pretty desperately committed to its own ways, and the mind too. God has his work cut out for him, but it scares him not at all. He doesn't even think about the work on the way, seeing the glorious conclusion. I guess. I, at the bottom of the trench, see no such thing. Well, maybe that's as it should be. I don't do well with the future.

So, bit by bit, control goes to God. Or something. It's hard to put into words, this state of an independent human being, made independent, becoming more dependent upon God. He wraps my poor overheated mind in his cooling hands. As long as I care things go OK. Perhaps caring is the great key to guidance. What I care about comes to pass? I don't know but will probably find out.

Lightening the Future

2007-06-01T06:57:00.000-07:00

The future is a hanging stone, looming. Anything could happen. One little shake and it all comes down. closing out life as a collapsing wave maytags the surfer who just hopes for one more breath, not even thinking about walking again.

God's sunlight produces growth that can't be stopped. If resisted it finds another way to grow. Years he will take, waiting for a moment's window to move forward. Always forward.

Whose forward? Who knows? I judge the future by what my past has been like: capricious, unreliable, things done arbitrarily, beyond reason. Things just happen.

I look at the track established by my past under God's guidance and the follow the azimuth forward, not caring much for what I see. But what I see is an extrapolation based on my own time in the Houses of the Partial God. The real God, the one against whose breast John leaned back in an image of relaxation I can barely imagine, the Whole God, well, I don't really know what He wants.

What do I want? The question is irrelevant. I want no more than what I get. Just take another step and don't look too far ahead. What's coming is probably worse than what has already been, so don't look. Yet here I still am, 55 years on, still walking. Someone has been guiding, even after my clumsy and destructive attempts at changing the direction of an undirected useless life.

How do I know what God wants? Assumptions are easy to find. Reality is more subtle.

How much do I trust? Would I rather depend upon my view from down in the maze, or trust that God's plans lead through the maze to something I will enjoy?

Enjoyment of the future isn't exactly number one on the list of things handled in the Land of the Partial God, but logic and history both indicate that enjoyment makes just about everything go better. Some aspects of enjoyment aren't all that enjoyable (every route has ridges and valleys) but might not God have a pretty good idea of what I want but don't know that I want? Might I like the situation once I get into it? I just anticipate pain, suffering and drudgery.

Well, who do I want to fool? With whom am I trying to make points? God doesn't care about points. All he expects, all he wants is my hand in His, and step by step. Maybe I can do that, and maybe the future will look less like a threat and more like a promise.

Futures tend to be self-creating. My belief that it's going to be bad doesn't make God's job very easy. If I want bad, well, it's easy to get bad. That leads in the direction of not caring, which is the ultimate weakener. Not caring is what crashed my beloved BMW R-80. Not caring is what led to wrenching my knee on the bus two days ago. Caring leads to strength. Where do I get the strength to care? Three guesses, and the first two don't count.

What's interesting is that this situation is similar to some other special ones. How do you cast your cares upon Jesus? Quit holding onto them. How do I start caring, or allow myself to care? Loosen my death-grip on "I don't care." The future is in caring.

We Do It

2007-06-01T06:45:00.000-07:00

"What are We going to do about it?" Jesus asks. It takes time for me to get used to the idea of having help. What a radical concept. I'm not alone in this?

Of course, there's a funny aspect to this. Jesus accepts me as I am, as no one else has ever done, and yet his very presence in my life is the cause of change. Just by being who He is. Sunlight on the little plant inevitably causes growth. When identity comes from an unswerving commitment to avoiding the world's traps and distractions, change is a real threat. So many want to dissolve my thoughts, erode my resolve, assign me to their belief systems. The attack started when I was young and never let up.

Well, actually it did let up but it's very hard to get out of that old way of seeing. The attack could come at any time.

God is the very embodiment of the ultimate attack. What is the Holy Spirit in my heart if not the greatest danger of brainwashing I've ever faced? He could make me think anything He wanted to. I'm a mouse before the locomotive, defiantly waving a tiny fist, staunch defender of a kingdom that is, although nearly uninhabitable, mine.

Well, somehow God wants to make the kingdom no less mine but also His. Thousands of years of tradition say there is no God, at least not in the real day-to-day sense. If there is a God, He can't be bothered with one person's feelings.

But what is life if not feelings? We are of a piece, memory, intellect, emotion. We talk of muscle memory in the allowable devotion to physical prowess but what of spirit-memory? You walk past the houses of devotion to Elephant-as-Partial-Idea and eventually get to the ones who've given up and say the Elephant died some years back. The idea is foundational. You don't have to look too deeply into the houses of the partial idea to see the base layer is the same: We ascribe words to the Elephant but we no longer expect Him to wrap his trunk around us.

Well, remember John. Reclining against Jesus' very real chest. Fishermen deflected from a life on the water to a life on the land.

Seeing the Elephant

2007-06-01T06:19:00.000-07:00

Ah, I know it's out there. He's out there? More a feeling, a melding of logic and emotion and something else.

To get there I have to walk past all the other houses, where people worship the Elephant as Rope, the Elephant as Snake, the Tree-Holders, the Fan-Wavers. Each holds a part apart and looks at nothing else. "Come unto us, son. We know the Elephant well."

No, they don't. They have an idea handed down for generations, a tiny idea grown around with encrustations of tradition and dead filigree. An idea of an Elephant isn't the real thing, a fragment of the Elephant just dust in a strong wind. How do you hold onto that? More, how can it hang onto me? Keep walking. If that's all there is I'd rather die looking for something better. If there's something better maybe I'll find it out there. It's certainly not here.

Keep walking, tired.

Walk on, even as vision dims and belief become tattered by the wind of years. Habit, if nothing else. Identity as the non-conformist sustaining when nothing else works. Footsteps uphill, just because that's the way things have always been, a mad parody of the fled tradition.

And then, inside a box that doesn't look much different from any other, there He is. The real elephant, and a memory of meeting Him.

How is a real Elephant different from the Idea of Elephant? A real-conversation stopper, that's for sure. The walk remains lonely. Having grown up with lies I know how to detect them, and also how to detect when others just aren't comfortable with the direction of conversation. A real God who walks into a person's life and performs miracles is a tough topic.

God, for all his Elephant-in-the-living-room reality, is a surprisingly gentle house guest. He invites a reply and waits. Not always patiently, but kindly.

What of real change brought about through contact with the Living God? Well, in my case it's panic time. Change is threat. Dependency is even worse, as people usually disappear just when the need is there. Each step with God leads toward greater dependency.

What if the change isn't what I want? Well, what do I want? I look in that direction and just see grey fog, the result of a lifetime of ignoring the issue. Who made that possible? God. His hand on my life from the beginning. Things will work out. They have.

It's still frightening. If God lets go of me I will fall, irretrievable, gone down a black hole. Oblivion is just one slipped grip away.

Yet God's outlook on the whole thing is sunny. Optimistic.
"What do you want," I asked one night. Thinking that I'd get a list of things to do. My value is only in what I can do.
"I want you," God said.

Another night I was thinking about caring. I've always thought that caring about things was the idiot's way. In that kind of elliptical conversing with God that passes for prayer in my life, I started to say that. "Not caring makes me strong," But in a way that happens regularly the thought changed to "Caring is what makes me strong" and I... paused. Not at all what I meant, but it didn't take long to discover that it's true.

Those who don't care don't last. I've seen enough examples in others' lives, and some in mine. Lots in mine, actually, times when I just didn't care that much, and bad things happened.

The question is, then, how to live with caring. Once people know I care about something they're given a free handle for manipulation. As usual I was wondering what I'd do about the whole situation. How to I live with caring? What happened? I used to care. Well, naturally, the Holy Spirit knows everything I care about and in this regard I feel his presence as a big rock about to fall on me. I care about such silly things. Music. Wind in the trees. The magic of rain in a dry land. The rare conversation that's more than unfelt words. I'm supposed to care about big stuff, but I've never been very good at "supposed to."

God wants me, as me. His presence changes me. Who am I? Glaciers frozen in place for years melt under God's sunny gaze and begin to move. What do I do about that? Jesus again rephrases: "What are We going to do about that?"

The Real Chase

2007-05-11T07:58:00.000-07:00

We grow up in a supermarket of gods, a smorgasbord of beliefs. Like anything else that's constantly repeated all of them become unreal. Brainwashing deadens our perceptions.

Couple that with my own techniques for self-protection and you get a situation in which it's surprising God can make himself heard at all. I'm still surprised by God's reality.

The whole thing is so subtle, but like the movement of continents eventually things happen. Do I trust God? How much?

It was easy at first. I had no hope, facing a singularity beyond which there was no life. So, give everything to God and see what happens. I expected death, having been prepared for that for most of my life; it's with real surprise that I find myself on the high side of 55 and going on. God would simply take me apart and put me together his way, the way the Marines advertise. Bash 'em to pieces and then rebuild in just the shape you want. Brainwashing.

It all fit very well with my ways of surviving. Layers on layers, with what was important to me on the inside where no one could see it unless I expressed it in some highly elliptical way. Sand sculpture is an example. In plain view, but incomprehensible to almost everyone, so it's completely safe. I wouldn't get laughed at.

I learned from my brother that hard walls don't work. That just makes everyone else want to knock them down. He got into fights. I used soft boundaries that would gradually deflect people. They were forever on the outside, finding themselves out there again after trying to find me. They'd wander for a time amid the mirrors and illusions and then end up where they began.

As has been said, the problem with putting on a brown monkey suit is that eventually a pink monkey starts thinking like a brown one. Walls reflect inward. I became something I wasn't designed to be.

Familial attitude. Laughing at those who "were trying to find themselves." Why, here I am. I'm me. That's all. The real joke turns out to have been on me because I was no more myself than a parody in a movie. Occasional telegraph messages came through from reality but I'd ignore them. Sometimes I tried to change but found that resistance to change is very strong when backed by survival. So, I just gave it up and waited for the end.

Human life turns out to be quite robust. The mind may quit but the soul apparently continues to seek reality. At least mine did. Perhaps it was really Reality seeking, and holding, me.

Yes, I know how it sounds. God talks to me. We converse late at night, or at other times. He does things to protect me, and always has. I don't much care what it looks like. What is life worth? It's worth taking some heat for wild ideas, especially when the wild ideas make life better.

A future? What a wild concept. Instead of waiting for death, I should be waiting for life? This idea is a real threat, and I have a headache at the moment because of it. The changes I tried to make on my own are now happening because the Holy Spirit doesn't quit and I've given him entry to where my deepest assumptions live. Can I trust God? I look back over my life and see His hand. I also see times when I went against his subtle guidance... but he made it work out anyway. No matter where I go, there He is.

Last night I just about panicked. I could see chunks of the stainless steel armor falling away. How do I live without it? I'd be like a snail reft from its shell. I started to ask "What am I going to do..." but the question instantly turned into "What are we going to do about this?" I've never been a "we" kind of person; if I can't solve a problem by myself I let it go. There was Jesus, holding me... His love continuing to dissolve the bolts holding the armor on but making it all right anyway. I have no idea how this works, but I can see what he has done in the past. I've not been steamrollered. I'm still here, despite clumsiness and incompetence and ham-handed attempts at guidance that just leads to another cliff.

To be around Jesus is to be whispered to in a most insistent way. His voice stands out. I bleat in panic and the Shepherd calls my real name and I resonate. I can't resist.

If God called me to some far corner of the world, would I go? Probably not. Mainly because if the whole world went off a cliff I wouldn't care very much; I see the human race as billions of parasites destroying a world that used to be beautiful. And yet God loves the whole bunch of us, even me, who loves no one. I'm disobedient in that. The soil is very, very rocky. God knows how to change soil and it's not with a hammer. He spreads his soul-scent around, drizzles love, and waits for the change. I think we're about at the lichen stage now, which is much more than I expected.

Who really expects God to take a hand, directly, in growing a soul? Especially one as devoid of value as I am? Yet Jesus doesn't count the cost, nor the years. He sits, waits, as I orbit closer. His face, his scent, his hands... I can't resist. My soul knows where life is, and it's the utter ruin of everything I've believed. Well, believed rationally, anyway. Pull the anchor and set sail for someplace in between rationality and spirit. A leg in each world, walking, listening. Hoping? Maybe. Hoping for what? A life that I will enjoy?

Now, that's an act of real trust. Do I think that God's desires and mine might actually coincide? That he might want me to look forward to following him? Usually I walk the path, head down, taking the bitter medicine because I know it's essential. I'll die without it, but it's impossible to enjoy it. No problem, because life isn't for enjoyment anyway. My ancestors were, after all, Puritans. But... what if? What if, as Jesus changes my soul, my perceptions and desires change also? Might it be that what He's really uncovering is Reality, underneath all those coats of whitewash? Perhaps there's a real treasure inside. Well, I already know that God thinks I'm a treasure but it's hard to buy into the idea.

Belief is hard but guides reality. Think you're a piece of shit, well then, life will stink. Yet that state is safe. No pedestals to fall off of, no light to call attention. No target. But it's a package deal: along with the hysteria of change comes Jesus' hand. If I can learn, as John did, to lie back against Jesus' breast and relax the walk might be easier. But what if Jesus backs away? Thump. Head on the cold ground. He didn't back away from the Cross so he's not going to back away from me... but still I think "What if?" Besides... rubbing up against Jesus just means I become more like him. That love thing again. Do I want love? I think it goes with the rest: "Come and see," Jesus said. He points. The new land awaits. I look at the ground but can't resist taking another step.

Cage of a Million Names

2007-04-28T05:32:00.000-07:00

Names exert a pull on us. Layla wrote "I think there is some value in these "temperament" tests when taken in a work or team environment to assist people in understanding why one form of communication (or appreciation or instruction or whatever) works for some but not others." I agree, so long as the temptation to pigeonhole people is strongly resisted. Any tool can be misused.

The problem is that this one is easy to misuse. The temptation is to think that when your co-worker comes out as "Type AEQM" you know everything about her. This is as absurd as astrology and the planets, or the Chinese zodiac assigning us to niches based on birth year. I was born in the year of the Dragon. It's easy to find characteristics of the dragon in me, but there are many others.

Alfred Korzybski delineated a lot of this, and then got stuck in a pigeonhole of his own. People who want to appear erudite quote Korzybski and entirely miss the point.

People are complex. There are many threads in the individual tapestry and no one is the same as anyone else. Yes, I have some dragonish characteristics, but many others and our sets overlap those of others. The problem with the Myers-Briggs and other such instruments is that they exert a pull of definition that makes like similar to walking a plain of holes. The flat area between holes is narrow and footsteps have to be made carefully, as I've done.

Yes, I'm Intuitive... but not only intuitive. I like the sensing of the sand under my fingertips as I carve. I tend to leap from crag to crag instead of climbing down, across and back up. This is good and bad, just as any other characteristic is.

And then Lu comes up with this little bomb: "And [hearing God] seems to be tied more to hearing the difficult than doing it.... I know lots of people willing to "go the distance" for God, so-to-speak who don't hear His voice no matter how much they cry out. But after knowing them I realize they aren't really willing to hear difficult things; things that challenge their paradigms about themselves or the world or God." Read that again and realize how radical an idea it is. The general culture and especially that of most evangelical churches would turn it around: deeds are critical, no matter what you say about your relationship with God. Love is shown in doing.

I guess it really is. If there isn't any doing how does anyone know anything? I can talk about and imagine all kinds of sculptures but how do you know unless I make them? Still, the emphasis on doing above all can be the worst distraction of all.

God started singing our names before the creation of the world and hasn't stopped yet. You're going to try to fit that Name into four positions with two symbols each? Sixteen combinations, sixteen pigeonholes for people. No wonder we're all angry. No matter whose assignment you take on, you won't fit the niche. I'd expect this kind of thing in the world but it's shameful that followers of Jesus follow the same model. Jesus himself has been assigned to a niche: savior who lived 2000 years ago. I wonder how He'd come out on a Myers-Briggs. "Mr Jesus, I think you'd fit in with our futures evaluation team."

And yes, I'm angry too. This is one of the unpleasant truths I'm having to deal with. I got my share of niche assignments and dutifully made myself fit. I'm tired of it. My lack of patience with churches is an outgrowth of my anger coming from wasted years of acquiescence. I don't trust anyone to help me find my name so I just do it myself, as I've done with everything else important to me.

How important is reality? I think it's critically important, and I also dare to believe that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, reality can be known even as it moves around. The ocean appears chaotic and yet surfers regularly catch and ride its waves. I'll bet surfers are intuitive.

I wonder if intuitive skills can be learned. I see people taking surfing lessons, and I wonder how well the students' training in verbal learning works in learning something that changes so fast that it can't be known in detail but only in passing feeling. I see following Jesus as similar. He changes me, which changes my place in the world, and that leads to more changes in me.

Lu wrote "I think this is what Jesus meant when He said, 'those who have ears to hear, let them hear.' " I'd always wondered about that. Hearing has always been important to me; I seek out quiet places where I can hear the real world's voice. Birds, water, wind, each of them true. There is no lie on the tongue of the wind in a pine tree. It is what it is. I can listen in trust.

Sooner or later listening will lead to action, just as the gentle fall of rain will eventually cause a whole hillside to slide. My hill is very, very dry.

Resist the naming others would apply. Especially resist the million names of judgment that you apply to yourself, having learned how the world works. God doesn't work that way. He calls your true name and, while it's flaming and alive and frightening it is also fragrant beyond compare and oh, so attractive. Perhaps that's why we keep ourselves so busy. Just like the wolves in "Wolf's Rain," senses deadened by living in the cities. The Flower Child comes, and suddenly they wake up and smell the Call of the True Name.

From a logical point of view, Jesus got killed because he refused to let the Jews, the Romans or anyone else define him. The view from the heart shows the reality of Jesus giving up his live by his own choice. Walking your own way, hearing God's call, won't make any points for you in the logical world at large. If it does make you points, look out. You're being set up by someone else. It's a heart process, folks, learning as we go, tired footsteps taken on the path Jesus knows and feels.

-----------
Last paragraph rewritten because Lu pointed out a problem.

One to a Pigeonhole, Please

2007-04-27T05:50:00.000-07:00

Eric Bryant, he of the life-changing invitation to visit Mosaic, wrote an interesting post about how churches don't reach out to intuitive people. This is based on something called the Myers-Briggs something or other. I took it once, years ago, but have forgotten the details. It's a sort of inventory of personal characteristics, and apparently most folks come out as "sensing." A quarter of the general population is "intuitive." I suspect I'm in that subset because I seldom fit in anywhere.

Eric says that 95% of churches are set up to reach the "sensing" folks. I'd believe that, too, because if I don't fit in the world at large I really don't fit in churches.

Still, I have a hard time buying the whole concept. As a culture we are far too eager to assign people to pigeonholes and God's hardest task is winkling us out of those assigned niches. It starts the moment one is born. Well, now it happens even before you're born: "Are you having a girl or a boy?" "Oh, it's a boy. The ultrasound showed that clearly." So, the baby room gets done up in blue and the parents stock up on toy trucks and baseball mitts. What if the child really likes yellow? Or, God forbid, purple?

I'm sick of the whole thing. How much potential in our society is simply thrown away, cut off by institutional biases?

Churches probably do need intuitive people. The way I see this, sensing people walk up and down the valleys and mountains, treading each rock. If you need detail this is the way to go. Intuitives, however, seem to get the patterns, and simply leap from one spot to the next, kind of like a spiritual hyperspace.

Perhaps it's like sand sculpture. I have to embody both detail and pattern: detail in the engineering enables the overall pattern to remain standing at the end of the day. A church built of detailed words is sturdy, but what of the ones who want to fly?

All I really know is that churches feel like a straitjacket to me. God has a name for me, and that's the name I want. Its first syllable is "forgiven," and this is something that most churches seem not to get; they crucify Jesus anew each Sunday, quaking in fear that this time they'll be thrown away. Folks, it won't happen. One who is in Christ is forgiven. Done.

Perhaps it's the intuitive point of view: I know, I feel, the gulf between God and me that Jesus bridged. I see it below my feet, between God's fingers. I like God's name for me. The process of learning it is difficult but doable because He cares. How do you put caring on an intellectually justified basis? I don't know. It's irrational, at least in human terms. Fortunately God's rationality is something else.

So, I guess the real question is, how do you make a church for people who don't fit and don't really want to fit? It'll be interesting to see if Eric and his church-planting friends come up with an answer for this. I have no idea. First Church of Jesus, Intuitive, anyone?

Rain of Kindness

2007-04-26T18:40:00.000-07:00

I told my boss that Friday would be an emergency sand sculpture day. He's used to it. I got up that morning to clouds and damp. Rain had passed through, and storms often have trailers. I got the mountain bike out of the garage and headed north instead of the beach.

Offshore were clouds in many layers with some patches of blue visible. Little tufts here and there caught attenuated dawn light. Yah, chance of rain but slight. I quit thinking about it.

Of course, I hoped. We're way short on rain for the year. I haven't been able to take a single walk in the rain. I thought of my standard offer: "OK, God, you make it rain, I don't mind getting wet. I want rain."

North along the beach, into a mild offshore breeze. Then east up the canyon to various back roads. Pedestrian bridge over the creek and then a short spin along Sunset. Then I walked partway up the road to Will Rogers Park because it's pretty. I drank some water at the fountain by the parking lot and rode on.

It's a nice, simple ride. Having been a while since my last long ride I've been sort of easing my way back into it. I had new tires on the bike, hoping for better grip than the FireXC Pros it came with. I went the steep way and liked the way the tires hung on but not the way the rear picked up sand and tossed it into the heels of my sandals. Well, yes, I shouldn't be riding in sandals but it's irresistible.

Eventually I got to the top of the local maximum, a little hillock standing out from the rest of the ridge. Off to the east Los Angeles was getting rained on. Through clear air I could see all of Santa Catalina, 40 miles away across the water. It looked huge. Straight west was the same layered cloud. I sat on the picnic table and listened to the birds.

Distraction. I suppose the main reason I haven't been riding very much is that it's too much quiet time. Nothing to do out there but keep the pedals going, and the mind freewheels. That means it usually lands someplace near God, and He still scares me. He should be the first I run to when hurt, but I still have the habit of running away from everyone. People, yes; they love to kick the down player. God never does that. Still, I know what a failure I am as a follower of Jesus and don't want to hear about that from God. He has never done so, but still. Some day my number will come up and I just don't want to know about it. So, I sat on the picnic table and thought around the issues, sometimes going to their heart in a quick pass. Calming. I definitely needed the time up there, alone.

After a time I moved on. I decided on a whim to ride partway up the Backbone Trail, singletrack that leads to the farthest ridge, a few miles up. I didn't want to go that far, but wanted some practice.

Shortly after starting up the trail I got a feeling. Turn around. Hmmm. Makes no sense. I kept going, but the feeling wouldn't go away. Definitely a sign of God's quiet voice. So, I turned around. I'd been quiet enough to actually hear Him. Back down to the park entrance, for some more water, and then on down the hill. I retraced the route over the ped bridge and down the canyon to the beach. Under PCH through the ped culvert and then I had a chance to look around.

Oh, my. The western horizon was gone. Just a grey wall out there, and I know from experience what that means. This storm was rolling right down the alley. A few miles away the hills near Malibu faded into the rain. I worked my way south into the storm-brought opposing wind and felt the first few drops as I approached the Santa Monica Pier.

I still had time to run a quick errand and then go on home. Five minutes later the rain hit, and kept going for three hours. It was nice. Everything smelled good. I like rain.

Well, naturally, my first thought was "Why me?" There are people out there far more deserving of hearing God's voice, and they're doing things more important than mountain biking. There are people out there begging God to make Himself known to them, and here I get this casual comment that basically keeps me from getting wet.

I've been wet before. I've ridden in snow, rain, wind and 20-below-0 cold. I raced a thunderstorm in Nebraska and barely got home in time, uphill and against the wind. The answer seems to be that I listen. God speaks to everyone but I pay attention.

Then I got into the wider implications. What would I do if God told me to do something I didn't want to do, like Ananias being told to meet Paul? The thought that came to mind is one I've heard a few times in military history: a commander who gives commands that won't be followed doesn't stay in command for very long. God could dragoon me. He has the power. He just doesn't use it.

He waits to melt my heart. I can feel it changing.

Losers, Seeking

2007-04-20T13:49:00.000-07:00

heaven's not enough
if when you get there..
just another blue
and heaven's not enough
you think you've found it
and it loses you

They're a bunch of wolves, hated by all, hating the city they are forced to live in. They catch a scent of something and it calls them. Out of the city, into the snow, toward something one of them calls Paradise.

you've thought of all there is
but not enough
and it loses you in a cloud

The others are skeptical. "What's paradise?" they ask. "How do you know it's real?"
"I feel it," Kiba says. "I smell it."
"I can smell something too," Toboe says, ever eager to make an impression on the older ones. Tsume is, as usual, distant, scoffing. Still, they keep going.

"there" most everything is nothin'
that it seems
"where" you see the things you only wanna see

They pass through other cities, each uglier and more desperate than the last. They escape by working, albeit reluctantly, together. Overhead pass the ships of the Nobles. Who are they? What do they want, other than the destruction that seems to go wherever they do? Smoke and lightning.

I'd fly away
to a higher plane
to say words I resist
to float away
to sigh
to breathe.... forget

They dream... flowers... lakes...
They find a tunnel and go on. Others find them and shoot. They end up at a city on a crag and see the Flower Maden, Cheza. Hers is the scent they've been following. She is taken away by one of the violent Nobles. The wolves follow.

and heaven's not enough
if when I'm there I don't remember you
and heaven does enough
you think you know it
and it uses you

They pass through the dead forest into desert that alternates rock and snow. They meet strangers who seem to understand, but can't come with them. The quest is the wolves' and it leads to the last redoubt where the last of the Nobles has laid a trap in the heart of his dead city.

I saw so many things
but like a dream
always losing me in a cloud

Everything is lost. The Noble escapes. The wolves, having no choice, follow. On the final mountain, one by one, they die.

cause I couldn't cry
cause I turned away
couldn't see the score
didn't know the pain
of leaving yesterday really far behind
in another life
in another dream
by a different name
gave it all away
for a memory
and a quiet lie
and I felt the face
of a cold tonight
still don't know the score
but I know the pain
of leaving everything really far behind
and if I could cry
and if I could live what truth I did then take me there
heaven goodbye

Ultimately, all die. Even the Flower Maiden, but her green blood poisons the last Noble. He dies. Kiba dies beside him, but then... the rain starts. Paradise blooms, empty.

Those of us who follow Jesus are promised heaven. To me it's just something out there, not real. It doesn't matter anyway. I believe in what's in front of me, tangible. Faith is for people who know no reality.

What am I looking for? All of my life I've been drawn on by something and I'm still here, still not caring very much for the world around me. Surely there is something better. So, I'm no better than those faith-besotted storytime wolves: take it away, kill me on the road, no matter. Hope refuses to die. Perhaps that's the real voice of the Holy Spirit in me: hang on. Better times really are coming.

----------------------
"Heaven's Not Enough," by Yoko Kanno
from the soundtrack to "Wolf's Rain"

Daylight in the Swamp

2007-04-07T05:19:00.000-07:00

I've been described as "brutal and transparent," or at least my Blog has. All I'm really trying to do is escape from the God built of words and find some real life within the system of Christianity.

It's an odd mix, the power of God and the decisions of a beaten-down middle aged man. One decision was to be content with barely making it over the threshold of Heaven. Leave the high honors for those with more motivation. I just want truth. I have no big dreams. Leave me with John, perhaps offending others with the intimacy and familiarity of leaning back against Jesus' breast, but knowing that my Savior's heart still beats.

I've had it. I'm just plain done with verbiage, platitudes, phrases so often exchanged that all the meaning has long since been squeezed out. They make the rounds and we're supposed to feel comforted. The preacher thunders for more action and builds fancy castles in the air but conveniently leaves out all the construction details. I'm just plain fucking done with it.

In the early stages I expected to get soundly thrashed by God. Who is this guy who dares to ask me questions directly? Blasphemy! I could see him charging up the capacitor banks and taking aim. That, however, was my vision, not his. His vision was "Be prepared for the truth." Jesus said "You don't have because you don't ask." Well, yes, beware of asking because answers change the world. But my world needed changing, so, having little to lose, I asked.

I learned in that process that, yes, I do have something to lose. Self-confidence, knowledge of how the world works and my place within it. Jesus calls me to a different world. Unlike the preachers, though, and the platitude-spewers, he takes every step with me and holds my hand. He's not content to just lay out the answer in words, but to demonstrate what needs to be done and repeat that as often as necessary. The real wonder is that each time I fail to understand, I'm greeted with the same grace, the very same kindness, with which he first welcomed me in 1971. Some of these paths are very well trodden. My human teachers have given up with far less provocation.

I just want to understand. Our world is one that tends to prove things by bamboozlement. If don't have facts then just dazzle everyone with elegant words and actions. It's just smoke-grinding, but if it's a good show you'll sell the product. The problem is that I, following Jesus, need more to eat than smoke, mirrors and words. If I want myths and self-help I can listen to politicians.

If Jesus came to save us by giving his life, then he will do anything else necessary to keep us. He has proven his care. Why are we taught that it's too much to ask that God would pay attention to us and our needs? Why do we tiptoe around issues of personal destruction, assuming that God won't want to soil his hands with our messes? He has already done the hardest part: his arms are open wide for us to run to. Am I daring for so running? I don't think so. I think it's just basic need. I'm desperate enough to try anything.

I believe that God will let me know if I do something wrong. So far, he seems much more interested in what I do right. This, to me, is the core nature of sin: twisting the truth just enough to turn it into a lie, putting truth in a mirror so it comes out the same, but backward. Judgment landed on Jesus, not me. I no longer need to walk in the corners, cowering, expecting the lash and the lightning. Jesus caught all that. I face a new land and a new era. Sometimes I'd rather have the lash because it's comprehensible.

God's love is irrational. My rational foundation-stones are looking for a building.

Visible Sand, Invisible Granite

2007-04-03T04:10:00.000-07:00

"Master, come quickly!"
The morning was pleasant. A few wisps of fog carried far, whispering of the sea. Golden light on the old land. I'd stopped, even though it was early, in accordance with the old principle that you're never lost with a full water bottle.
"Yes? What is it?"
"My house, master! Oh, please come."
"All right." I dipped up another bucket of water from the roadside well, filled the bottle, put the bucket back and then stood up. "What seems to be the problem?"
The man led me away, around a curve in the road. "I took your advice, sir. 'Build on solid rock,' you said. 'Don't build on sand or it will be washed away.' That's just what I did. Now, look!"

Ahead I saw a small, neat house. It was built upon a well laid stone foundation. "Good craftsmanship," I said.
"But, Sir, don't you see?"
I hid a smile. "Of course, I see. I see a solid hillside, and three courses of dressed stone, and then your house. Beyond I see an olive orchard, and some more hills..."
"But... There's nothing there!" The man wailed, very distraught.
"What do you mean? The house is there."
"But underneath! I built on rock, and when I came here today all I see is daylight under there!"
"The house is still there."
"Yes, but..."
"Have you gone inside?"
"Are you cra... oh, sorry, Lord. Ah... no."
"Go on inside. I'll wait."

The man walks to the doorway. Looks under the house. Looks at his feet. Looks inside, where morning sunlight is marking the new wooden floor. Sawdust and shavings remain in the corners. Gingerly he sets a foot on the threshold and then, closing his eyes, steps up. He walks into the house. After a time, I join him.

"See? Nothing to worry about. Solid as a rock. Good builders."
"Well, yes, you'd know carpentry. But..."
I jumped up and landed with a thud. Again, and again. "Come on, man. Quit telling yourself what is real, and believe what's here. I will never deceive you. Yes, I know carpentry but I also know foundations and cornerstones." I jumped again. "Enjoy it. It's well made."
"But... it's not there."
"You don't see it. You have other senses, though."

He does a little bunny-hop, tentatively, ready to crash. Nothing happens. The house remains foursquare and level. I looked around. "It's a nice house."

I looked out the window. The tendrils of fog had turned into clouds.
"Looks like a storm coming."
"At this time of year?"
"Again... what do you see?"
He went to the door. "I'm ruined!"

The clouds rapidly built. Lightning stabbed the hilltop, and thunder echoed. Wind drove a cloud of dust and then the rain arrived. The man was crestfallen.
"All that work..."
Rain fell in buckets. It was a great storm. The house didn't move. Wind and lightning passed on, typical fast-moving spring squall.
"You can open your eyes now.

"We're still here."
"Yep. Seeing isn't always believing."

Fences in the Fog

2007-04-01T06:53:00.000-07:00

Last night was late. I recorded my friend Rich's concert. He's in a community choir and this was their big spring concert. They did a lovely program of French music which culminated with Gabriel Faure's "Requiem" with a chamber ensemble. Beautiful.

Music dislodges thought, kicking me off into some strange place. Or perhaps it's more of an invitation to go in an unusual direction, a way unfamiliar to the land of concrete and square edges. After I got home I started thinking about relationships.

I've had more failures than successes in relationships and those failures have come to define me. So, why failure? In that late night unhinged state God could make some suggestions, in a kind of guided words-and-images process.

I tend to get angry. Why? I had an image of a lid over my life, getting closer as I approach people. Freedom. I want freedom and can't have it when I'm around others.

A new relationship is full of promise. Anything could happen. But then the training takes over and I become very alert for hints of what the other person expects. You could liken it to walking in a foggy field. Anything could be out there, pots of gold, deep holes, land mines, elephants, pussycats or pissed-off jaguars. You don't know until you run into one. Until you discover what's going on in that other person it's all a mystery. Land mines are unpleasant so I've tended to draw a universal map that avoids the site of anything that even hinted at blowing up. Naturally this doesn't leave much room for living, nor self-expression, and I become just a reflection of I think the other person expects.

This isn't the way to build a relationship but it is safe. Can I learn another way? Can I walk beyond the fences and trust that if something blows up God will keep it from destroying me? Why would he care? I have no idea. All I know is that he has demonstrated his care in the most direct ways. I'm still here.

Man Overboard!

2007-03-31T10:37:00.000-07:00

One of bjk's friends asked about belief. It's a good question.

Somewhere between concrete and air is the real thing. Some people believe in nothing, and have nothing. Others believe in everything and still have nothing. Truth is hard to find in a code, or in theory. I can believe anything I want but if I jump off the roof of City Hall in the belief that I will fly I'll have about three seconds to consider the failure.

Yet belief tends to get lumped into one big pot. It looks messy. It is messy.

I don't like secrets, at least of the kind that are introduced with "You won't understand." Or, "Don't ask questions." I know truth is shy, but it's not that shy. If I want to know something, I'd like for that something to at least stay in the neighborhood so that I can learn of it. If I can't learn of it then I suspect that it's not real, not worth leaning on.

Concrete isn't it. I look for patterns, shapes, curlicues and colors in the wind that denote a reality one step beyond mine. Once the new thing shows enough shape I take the step.

Why do I believe in God? Because of the pattern of events in my life. I look back and see events that form a pattern I can't, in good Berean style, ascribe to coincidence. Everything had to come from someplace and I might as well believe God made it because the gracefulness of such an answer fits with the grace that has accompanied my mostly wasted life.

Some would say that belief is a chemical reaction. They're probably right. Inject me with the right chemicals and I'd probably forget all about God. What have you proven with this? The human body is a chemical factory. I stay away from needles and other forms of mindless brainwashing.

I demand that the curtain be pulled aside. I want to see God at work. Less so now than when I started, but I still don't want the wool pulled over my eyes; I want to know how faith works. God doesn't seem to mind. He answers my questions and then waits for a response. "OK, Mr. Mystic, what are you going to do next?"

In her response, bjk quoted 1 Corinthians at length. One verse is the cornerstone: "If Christ wasn't raised from the dead, then our faith is in vain." I've never seen anyone resurrected but have heard about plenty of near-death experiences. Are these real? I won't know until I've either had one myself or met someone who has. It does no harm to my own faith to lodge it in this particular tree. I can't prove that Jesus rose physically but if He didn't when my own time comes I'll just be worm food.

I just don't buy it. That would be an ugly end and would not fit with the pattern of my years. Why would God put so much effort into bringing me back from the edge of self-destruction if I were just destined for another hole in the ground, this one physical? I realize this is self-referential. Here's an exercise for you: work your way back along the path of your own life and try to find things that are NOT self-referential. Ultimately all of life is smoke and mirrors. "We see through a glass, darkly." We can reach through the mirror of Jesus and touch something that is subtly powerful but because He appears somewhat differently to each person--in accordance with that person's needs, but never deviating from the basic truth of His sacrifice for us--and that makes it hard to compare notes.

I don't talk much about my beliefs because I'd rather blend in. My faith looks pretty strange and I just don't want to have to justify myself to anyone else. I've been judged enough, by myself and by others. No, thanks.

Why write about it? Because out there in the world are more people like me, for whom the standard answers just don't work. As I've said before here, don't take my methods and ways as gospel. Only Jesus can save. From me, I hope people learn that God's ways are manifold. You have a need he can fulfil. You don't even have to ask nicely. Just go to Him in desperation even if you don't know what you need.

Sunshine enters the world reliably, predictably, somewhat understandably. Hydrogen atoms fuse in the hot heavy heart of a star and the energy liberated in that reaction eventually makes its way to a planet. Why is there a star? Where did it originate? Where did its matter originate? Reality fuzzes out somewhere around there. Take your pick of theories as you enjoy the apple made of sunshine and rock, while the light warms your shoulders. Facts are facts. They make a foundation for a castle that some think rises on air.

Into Mysticism

2007-03-31T08:03:00.000-07:00

you are what you are
i am what I am
bundles of curdled starlight
thrown out across the lightyears
sung into being
landing in this strange world

How do we connect?
Do we share enough world-space and starlight between us
to understand each other's worlds?

Judgment isn't understanding
Judgment simply hedges one's world around with comprehensibility.

I want to move beyond judgment into sunshine.
I'm not sure I truly believe in sunshine
even if I am made of star-stuff
and hold the hand of One who made the light.
Too many disappointments hedge me around with known definitions.

Memory.
God, Father, take me far beyond memory.

Masturing the Ergs

2007-03-30T06:26:00.000-07:00

This is a topic I was going to leave alone. I'm not in the habit of poking sleeping tigers with sharp sticks, but too many ideas have come together for me to ignore it.

Layla started it for me, asking about sin and nature. She got it from Robert, who wrote a carefully inoffensive treatise that was hailed as being daring. Neither said anything new but still, sexuality is part of human experience and perhaps these little steps will add up to some new understanding. A few comments came their way and then died out. Not surprising, that.

So, that was one item. Add to that the book "West of Jesus," which purports to be about surfing and belief but turns out to be a long wanderingdithyramb around the subject of ecstatic experience. The thesis is that surfers morethan any other athletes get into "the Zone" where time slows down and every move is perfect. Why would that be? I hadn't thought about it that much, but as I read one answer came clear, even before the author got around to saying it: surfers have to interact with something that is always changing from second to second. No wave is like another, and the wave you catch now isn't the wave you'll be riding in a few seconds. What you have to do is manage a thousand inconstant factors just to keep your footing, and the conscious mind isn't fast enough to keep up. The conscious mind is pushed to the back seat and other parts of the mind take over.

It all reminded me of something. When I'm making a sand sculpture the sun somehow goes from east to west in about 23 minutes. There are days when I can do no wrong, just reaching out to carve away sand that doesn't need to be there. That hasn't happened for a while, though.

Western society has turned life into engineering, and Christians have followed this model. Even self-described "mystics" have codified and defined the mystical experience. Preachers constantly remind people not to turn their walk with Jesus into a search for religious experience. Nuts and bolts, folks. Engineering. Every question has a linear and step-by-step answer. Logic. Five hundred years back this attitude would have been incomprehensible. Every pin had at least one angel dancing on its head.

Is it any wonder Christians turn to masturbation? It's already illicit and shameful, so you can't be driven any lower. It's also private so any potential degradation won't show. People seem to need ecstatic experience, and here it is. You don't even need any fancy tools. It's quick, too, so you can soon get up and go about the rest of your life. The only reason people look down on it is that it's free. As soon as someone figures out a way to commercialize it, it'll become OK. Oh, and it also makes you feel good, which in our culture is the biggest sin of all. Especially Christians. We're supposed to worship suffering, and doing something purely for physical pleasure is proof that one is on Hell's doorstep.

In my usual way I think it's pretty simple. It hurts no one. If married people have a sexual outlet, why not an analogous operation for singles?

The last thread came to mind this morning. Where'd the pleasure go? Now that I'm a real follower of Jesus I'm supposed to be serious or else God will get pissed off and close the door. That would be intolerable, but life itself isn't all that tolerable and hasn't been. Even sand sculpture has been turned into a rationally justified act of artistic creation, and I avoid the ecstatic parts of the process by keeping a tight rational check on what I'm doing. Still, there are moments.

The tool touches the sand and tells me much. This is a good block of sand. I take away an extra inch of the lowest part, to make the top hang out more and accentuate the windblown look I want. Such overhangs have become routine in my sculptures, but this one is nicely shaped. More could have been done but the wind is just too much. As I walk away north my hair is blown straight back by the wind that coats my glasses with salt.

One can learn a lot about life from playing "Myst" and its follow-on games. If you're walking along, exploring, and find no way through, the chances are you've overlooked
the real exit. It's clear to me that most of modern Christianity doesn't work. I think we're missing the ecstatic part. Prayer is described at labor, to be scheduled. God is kept at a distance, replaced by rote performance of what others tell us are good works. I think it's time for each of us, including me, to ask God what He really
wants.

In any hairy situation the first thing to do is keep the wheels down, or the head up. When you're up to your armpits in alligators it really is hard to remember you intended to drain the swamp, but this is a situation analogous to surfing. Too many factors to track rationally. We followers of Jesus have a lot to learn, and some things are both harder and more important than others. It takes time, especially for those of us raised in a rational, time-limited, world, to appreciate the subtle sureness of God's guidance.

I'm not advocating turning life into a search for pleasure and ecstatic experience. I do advocate accepting such things when they show up. If prayer turns intoecstasy , why not enjoy it? Of course, you can't tell anyone else about it because they will lecture you on the dangers. Oh, yes, we should always seek the lowest common denominator, as no one judges people as a Christian can. The simple principle is that a life devoid of pleasure isn't... very pleasant. Tends to turn people bitter. Pleasure is one of God'sleavenings.

I think this may be what people mean when they talk about being barbarians invading the world. Barbarians live in the moment. It's another of those incongruities: well-dressed, well-behaved people sitting calmly in church listening to someone espouse barbarian ideas. If one of them actually started acting like a barbarian they'd be escorted from the premises, where they'd end up out in the rain with Jesus doing ecstatic dance.

This post is at least as much about my own limitations and frustrations as anything else. I have hedged myself about with boundaries I dare not overstep, and God keeps suggesting that I walk beyond. He knows all about transgressing other people's rules, and he also knows all about being raised inside a deadly religious system. He can guide me out. I wish there were a church or group of people I could trust to help me with this, but the whole process feels too fragile so I don't talk about it. I tend to knock things down all by myself, and don't need help.

I'm really tired of pressing the pleasure out of life. It's hard work, too. Uses energy that could be better used for... pleasure. I used to do things for pleasure, low-key activities that could be justified in other ways. Bicycling was for fitness, sculpture was for design exercise, making tools was for support of the sculpture, talking with people was to learn. I'd ignore the feelings of pleasure these engendered, and that left just one place, one activity for pleasure. You guessed it. Sanity requires pleasure, I think, wherever it comes from.

Walk Like Jesus

2007-03-26T06:47:00.000-07:00

"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Contrast that with the usual human attitude of hoping for some lost crumb from God's grace to land on them.

Jesus knew what was coming. He also knew where he came from and had his Father's complete, unconditional support. Support is too weak a word. Love is overused. Unconditional positive regard is a phrase designed by a committee with no heart. To know how this works you have to walk with Jesus.

Jesus knew his Father was with him, like sunshine on His heart. None of us questions gravity; take a misstep and we fall, boom. We know how that feels. The experience has been repeated often enough to make us careful going down stairs or just walking on slippery surfaces. Gravity has an internal reality with, well, real weight to it. Jesus had the same confidence in God.

We have a kind of sorta hope that God will occasionally look upon us with something other than disgust. Every once in a while God will remember me and come to the end of the dangling branch and give me a little cup of water or something before He's called away to someone else. Too many people, not enough time. "Sorry. Can't stay long. Many other demands, don't you know. Just hang in there and you'll be fine."

There can't be much confidence in that lifestyle. What if we were way behind reality? Keep in mind that our teaching comes from the world, and he who rules this world has no interest in having people learn that God wills them toward freedom. Free people are loose cannons, thinking and feeling and living, sparks in the darkness that could ignite full-honk flames.

Taking a step in freedom requires confidence. Jesus had the confidence to face down the Pharisees, the functional gods of Judaism, and they saw it in His face. They backed away.

Once a person turns to Jesus there is no more need for excuses. God no longer sees me as that dark and twisted result of a lifetime spent in the wrong world. He looks at me and sees a reflection of Jesus, through His own kindness. I awaken in the morning and see labor. God looks over the whole arch of a life and simply doesn't worry about it. One step at a time. When you live in all of time, the future just doesn't loom that large. For me it's a huge wave that could break and thrash me at any time. I lack confidence.

And yet, we who believe have died with Jesus, and been born again. "These are my beloved Sons, in whom I am well pleased." Through God's grace I can have confidence that the Holy Spirit wants to stay with me. It's not a grudging gift, but offered in graceful abandonment, with a smile.

The world being what it is, walking around with God's glow isn't the way to remain invisible. God and I still have some conflict over this. I've been very well trained. God isn't interested in training, but in teaching. Freedom doesn't come from training or any other rote process. Freedom comes from confidence, and confidence comes only from experience. Experience can also be a heavy lid on a life, which is why God has to work so hard to teach me. Memory is powerful. I remember every painful fall, and to avoid more pain I take pains never to fall again.

The experience may not be much fun but God still smiles. I no longer have only my own thin resources to kiss the wounds and make them better. God fills the voids, sets the broken bones, gently rubs on healing salve, and continues that genuine smile. He waits for me to get up, offering the help I can accept, and then smiles as I take another shaky step through this new world of generosity.

It is no cheap thing. God knows exactly what He's doing, and He is patient. Onward, with confidence. We need make no excuses.

White Robe

2007-03-23T04:19:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about purpose. Lu's story kind of connected with some other things. What really got me going, though, was my effort at cataloging sand sculptures from 2002.

The year started fairly normally. Well, sand sculpture is never really normal but the first half of the year didn't bring any major deviations. In July, however, I was hired to lead a team of people from a company called Continental Development in making a sculpture for the "Heal the Bay" sand sculpture contest. My equipment is designed to support sculptures smaller than most would use at a contest, so I made two. If you can't make big, make more. We won the contest, and the next year Heal the Bay put in a "no ringers" clause: everyone working on the sculpture had to be an employee. The sculptures suffered.

Anyway, this experience rekindled my interest in the multiple sculpture, the first of which I'd done in 1996 for the World Championships. I did one more for a contest in Santa Cruze and then left the idea alone. One sculpture is a lot of work. Two is nearly impossible.

Then conditions changed. I experimented with using coarser sand, which meant I didn't have to haul it from the low-tide line. This worked pretty well, so I used the energy for making more sculptures in a variety of settings. My main memory of this period, looking back at the end of the year, was of failure. None of the sculptures was really what I'd wanted it to be. Too many compromises. I compared the desire with the actuality and the latter fell far short.

I emailed the images to people and then mostly forgot them. Images stored on an an off-line hard drive aren't of much use. On a post-sculptural Sunday a while back I started looking for 2002 images and found them. It was a pretty easy step from there to get them onto Photobucket and into Blog pages. Wonder of wonders, 4 years of separation allowed the sculptures to speak for themslves, out from under memory and expectation. None of them is ugly and some are pretty good.

So, Lu is all twisted into a knot over the Big Purpose she thinks she should have. The thought has been at the back of my mind, too. I'm a follower of Jesus. If now isn't the time for big purposes, it will come eventually. When? And what will it be? There's not much I can do about it right now, but some time.

I asked God about this. It was hard to do so because the first thing that comes to my mind when I approach God is failure. He's going to point out all the things I've done wrong already. I've driven myself nearly crazy this way, coming and going like a newborn kitten who thinks he should be independent enough to move away from his mother, but his eyes aren't open and he has no teeth. So, I get away from God's warmth and start to die. I turn back to life but then get very frightened of asking for too much and doing nothing with what I've been given already. It's no wonder the last couple of years have worn me to a frazzle. Back and forth, trembling.

Well, OK, let's just have it out. "God, what do you expect? How do you judge success? How have I failed?" Well, I didn't need to ask that. I knew I'd failed. Everywhere. "What is my purpose, and how do I know I've succeeded?" He very calmly showed me an image of a white robe. "OK. What's that all about? I know my failures are covered, but... what about success?" The same white robe.

In other words, success or failure, the answer is yes. Neither matters, so long as I let God hold my hand. The main thing in God's sight is our relationship.

Think about that for a minute. Frazzled people don't accomplish much. If I can quit worrying about failure maybe I can actually settle down and enjoy being chewed on. God has a very sunny outlook on the process of new growth, which years of dour teaching has managed to cloud over. I am well and truly sick, literally, of it. I need an alternative. As usual, the answer is to listen to God instead of the people who think they know Him.

Realizing Success

2007-03-21T13:08:00.000-07:00

Ah, yes, I can hear it now. "What has happened to Larry? Now he's joining the throng of people who think success is merely a matter of telling yourself to expect it?" Oh, ye of little faith. Bear with me. I'm as irascible as ever.

Lu wrote, in a comment, "You know, I meant the chew toy thing as kind of a slam, but you've taken it and turned it into something beautiful. I love this line: 'We bear God's toothmarks in direct relationship to how much we let him love us [...]' I like the idea of bearing God's teethmarks, I just wish they weren't always so sharp. I realize they have to be that way to fend off attackers and soul-stealers, but dang, sometimes their truth and wisdom can hurt."

Well, Lu, put yourself in God's place. You see this red-headed woman who hurts desperately. Her temptation is to go with band-aids, but you, as God, know that band-aids don't work. The wounds might feel better for a time but there's no real healing. You know, as God, what needs to be done.

Consider your restrictions. Because you're God you could just force the changes, but the creature left after that operation wouldn't be human. It would be an organic robot, unable to learn, to make choices, to delight you with creative surprises. You have to cure a being who is so steeped in sin that she doesn't recognize real life except occasionally. You have to bring her to seeing that real life, and seeking it, even when human beings resist change. There's good reason for that, because so many people in this world want us to change to suit them. In short, you have unlimited power that you can't use. You have to use wisdom, delicacy, subtlety and careful timing. How better to describe "sharp teeth?" You have to be very deft to bring about the desired change without killing the spirit of your child.

So, we have God working to change a moving target. I know that most of my own pain comes from twisting and turning to avoid contact with God, for all that I know his is the Voice of Life. It takes TIME to change all those old deadly ideas. If I feel the occasional nip of a God-tooth it's just the gentlest possible reminder that this is serious business. You invite God into your life, His very nature requires His best effort on your behalf.

Yah, it do hurt. We don't know where we're headed and have less idea of how we'll get there. We just have to trust that God knows us, knows our heart-needs, and even more, trust that he cares. This last is hard for me. The learning process has taken 36 years. So far. It's far easier, and safer, to believe that no one cares.

God expects skepticism. It's nothing new to him. He knows that he has to start at the very beginning in separating us from illusions. He knows that I don't really believe in success; the best I'll ever do is stave off failure for a time.

The key point here is that God isn't just a concept, but a genuine, real, Person Who is working to produce real change. Be glad of those nips you feel, because they mean that the God you follow is completely different from the fuzzy warm ideal of the New Age everything-is-wonderful. That's a god that is just sort of Valium. Our God has a real purpose in mind: whatever we learn here will be carried forward for eternity.

No less a heavy hitter than Thomas a Kempis agrees with me here. Well, I guess I agree with him, as he predated me by quite a bit. Aristotle, too. It's a hard path. Pain, confusion, anger accompany our introduction to God's reality, but the soul-thread pulls us onward. However long it takes our souls learn to recognize God's voice and life.

In other words, I think a lot of our pain is self-imposed. If we can learn to accept what God shows us we won't feel his teeth quite so sharply. Of course, that will open the door to further change. The key is to learn how to live with God on your own terms instead of accepting what you've been taught.

It could be, too, that churches are getting the point. Eric Bryant, he whom God encouraged to let me invade Mosaic, wrote about the missing ministry to intuitive types. Maybe I'll go back to church if this actually comes about. I just know people will never realize success when it's not success designed for them.

Sheep No. 103

2007-03-20T02:17:00.000-07:00

Lu writes about being God's chew toy. I have this image of God fondly mumbling away at us while lying down in front of the fireplace, which will probably seem highly irreverent to some. When God brought me back to himself a few years ago it didn't happen with reverence. It happened with desperation. Hoping in hope had leaked out of my balloon until I was drifting low over the cactus garden and I no longer cared enough to raise my feet. Let come what would come. What came was the gentle grip of God's jaws.

I'm sure this seems nuts to some people. In particular, Lu might be less than sanguine. She writes with some asperity, and I'm sure that God's teeth didn't feel anything like rubber when both her parents died within a few days.

Still, we're all chew toys to someone or something. God is completely serious about making us able to live in His kingdom. Oh, the basic human being is made for the place but we've added on all this other stuff that makes us unsuited, starting with the plain old basic sin that it's so unfashionable to believe in. God is serious about rescue, too. He'll go after the 100th sheep, leaving the other 99 because they're better behaved. Then he'll go after Number 101, who's gotten himself even more lost. He will never quit.

If this had been a human enterprise, the insurance adjuster would have taken one look at me and said "Write it off. Totalled. Would cost more to repair than it's worth." I'd have been sent off to the junkyard. God isn't afraid of restoration work. He's single-minded about it and will let nothing get in his way.

Imagine this little scenario: Lu and I trade places. She has to look after the traffic communication system, and I have to do her job. Which of us panics more? Probably me, because Lu is technically savvy. Still, no matter how we enter the new situation, there will be time taken to learn. Lu won't be competent in my job for at least six months, and I'll probably never be competent in hers. The point of this? Chew toys. We seem to expect people to become instant Christians on the basis of a few Bible verses and some well-worn devotionals.

The truth is that each of us is an individual. God looks down and sees people, not organizations. Every last one of us is a special case. We bear God's toothmarks in direct relationship to how much we let him love us, and I suppose that starts with learning how much we need his love. Sometimes finding and picking up that stray sheep isn't a gentle process. I'm convinced that God makes it as gentle as possible, but I hang on to my old deadly ideas with a death grip that only loosens with time and experience. Maybe it's God's saliva dripping over me that dissolves the old ways of living and seeing and thinking.

I find this to be a strangely comforting image. Dogs always have favorite old chew toys, the one they always go back to until it gets all rounded off and thoroughly soaked. I've been bashed around by the world and lost in the hot wind of endless sand with no water. Can you imagine anything more horrible to a sand sculptor? I know difficult and I know deadly. What I don't know is hope. Maybe that's what God's drool is: distilled hope that transforms the internal desert I made to model the outer one I've always felt.

It's still a struggle. I don't want hope. It's a deadly, death-dealing lie. Always has been. And then I feel those rubber teeth with their implacable grip, and my drooled-on heart wants to hope. Can it possibly be real this time? How long does it have to go on before I believe? Well, none of it is new to God, and he doesn't know the meaning of quit. He has walked this road himself and is intimately acquainted with deserts.

If this story seems odd it might have something to do with not getting any sleep. Hope does odd things. It's two in the morning. Still, if God were handing out lightning to the irreverent I'd have been ash years ago. The point here is not that I'm some super-wonderful follower of Jesus with a special connection to God. Nor is it that everyone else should walk the path I'm using. The point is that God is kind and tolerant, and will do anything, including picking me up by the scruff of my dying neck, to save one of us. Throw out the rule book and ask God to teach you who He really is. It's better to be chewed on by God than by anyone else, and once you're God's chew toy he becomes very jealous in his guardianship, just as any dog is of its favorite. No one else gets the privilege of chewing on you unless they have God's sanction.

And, ultimately, it's quite simple. God chewstises those whom he loves.

Sanctuary

2007-03-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

Along with learning the truth comes a responsibility to use it. Well, maybe not responsibility, or to use it, but to remain mindful of it. Once revealed the genii just won't fit back in the bottle, and sits there in the back of my mind, with a kind of secret smile, waiting for me to catch up.

I dreamed last night that I was in my family's cabin outside of Estes Park, Colorado. I've spent many days there: hiking, sitting on the porch balustrade with my back against a pillar, watching the light play on the high mountains. I've watched rain and shivered. I've sought the shade on hot days when sunlight bakes scent from the sage and ponderosas. I've had birds land nearby, mistaking my stillness for something vegetative. I've walked in two feet of snow and gotten caught in fast-moving rainstorms a bit short of shelter.

In the dream the cabin was shaking. Long breakers came in from a dark sea and hammered the foundation. I questioned this. An ocean outside of the cabin? I sought their origin but it was just black out there, some kind of short horizon out which the waves were born. I could taste the salt. I wondered if each hit would be the last.

It doesn't take a psychoanalyst to figure this one out. Anyone who has read much on this blog has a pretty good idea that I have, um, "issues" with safety. Short of suicide the cabin has represented shelter. I used to live an hour or so away and I'd go up there for the weekends to get away from the noise of the city.

Yesterday I wrote about bjk's fishbowl analogy. If we live in fishbowls the answer isn't to leap out; that particular sanctuary is a life-support system no less intimate than an astronaut's space suit. So, I asked God what was going on here.

I'm so eager to tell God what his business is. If I judge myself then He won't have to. The truth is, though, that he's the least likely to judge me of anyone I know. Still, I live in a psychologic bowl. I'm well adapted to being there. I interpret God's efforts at changing the situation as an attack on the core of my being.

Well, there's no way to disguise that, as it's exactly what God is doing. I tried fitting other ideas around that image of waves against the foundation. I tried changing the cabin into a cage, but it was no less uncomfortable. I tried imagining God's hand there instead of the cabin walls, but that didn't fit either. God's own imagery was more sophisticated, and gentler. It still implies the need to change but also brings in the idea that I'm not alone. His image is more like two people working on rebuilding the cabin, making it less rigid. This part is rather hazy. I don't know what it will be like.

Sanctuary or cage? A matter of how it's built? Or how it's used? Be prepared for the truth.

The Christian world is full to overflowing with metaphors that do, I think, more harm than good. They are oversimplifications that get used in place of God. People are scared of God, which isn't too surprising given how He has been presented to us as vindictive, angry, easily upset and very touchy. He can be angry, obviously, but if He were as prickly as He's made out to be He'd have written off the universe a long time back. We'd have been cinders, and he'd have walked away saying "That's no more than they deserved." We do deserve to be cratered out of existence. That's what we've earned, but that's not what God has given us. He gave us His Son, and that's what we need to concentrate on. That great gift enables a new approach to sanctuary that's nearly impossible to understand. Seek life instead of rules. Seek a sanctuary Who lives and has open windows... that He will close when necessary.

God's goal isn't to kill me. That He has to kill off some aspects of my being is a problem, but I'm gradually learning to separate the good core from the damaging superstructure. Sometimes, though, my quaking soul interprets things a bit off and feels like a sand sculpture against the rising tide. If that were God's goal he wouldn't have to work very hard.

Escape

2007-03-16T06:40:00.000-07:00

bjk has an interesting post about freedom on her blog. She asks if the world really is a fishbowl and God is waiting for us to escape.

You know what you call a fish that has jumped out of the bowl? Dead. Fish require water as we require air. What constitutes freedom for a fish? Untrammelled motion through their three-dimensional medium, in pursuit of fishy beingness? I don't like seeing any animal in a cage or tank.

God does call us to escape, and the world he calls us to is as strange as our atmosphere would be to a fish. His world is a kind one, motivated by love. We live in a matrix of hard-edged bitterness, self-recrimination, do unto others before they do unto you thought and emotion. It's how we're raised and it's how this world works. It's the very opposite of what God wants.

Can fish wear spacesuits? If an astronaut wants to take a walk she'd better be careful. She can't just open the door up there or she'd be in the same state as the fish out of the bowl. How does a Christian learn to live in the very strange world of God's presence? Perhaps it's quite simple. Just quit trying to talk God into the bowl along with you.

The bowl we live in is made of our own expectations. God teaches us to see accurately and guides us by heart and by hand. It's no less a shock to leave the place for being imaginary because imagination makes our worlds.

Where does hope come from? I've tried to leave my own cage many, many times. I've always failed. Hoping in momentum, hoping in hope, hoping that maybe this time... but no matter how hard I hit those elastic walls they always just stretched until I ran out of steam and then snapped me back to where I'd been, and in the process removed more hope. Eventually I quit trying.

Hope has to have a real object. There has to be something real in it, or it's just another salesman's cheat. Those who sell Jesus will promise anything so that people will convert, or say the right words. Then they move on and we're left with another person who just knows Jesus' name but nothing about how to approach Him. Hope can easily die again, as mine did.

God knows all of this. He knows us inside and out. He knows that just as the sun is ultimately the source for all physical life on hear, He is the source of hope. Everything else is human strength. Some people are prodigiously strong. Many aren't. I heard a guy on the bus the other day saying "My mama didn't raise no weak children. You have to be strong." That's fine, for those who are strong. What about those of us who aren't? In what can I hope? How can I achieve escape velocity from the daily familiar round?

Momentum and step-by-step programs aren't the answer. The only hope I have is that God won't drop me.

Getting out of the cage isn't really the hard part. The door is imaginary anyway. The world outside, in all its strangeness, is real. How do I live out there? I've gone one-on-one with the tigers out there and lost every time. What makes me think that I can win this time?

The Holy Spirit. He breathes on my worn-out spirit and asks me to take one more step. If I'm too tired to make a step he lets me hide in some music or a book. I've been doing a lot of that lately. I'm a fraidy-cat. I've lost too many battles to be sanguine about my chances. I decided that the world was compassed about by my own limitations, and I've simply squatted there, awaiting the eventual end. I've never looked forward to the coming day.

How many years can one live without hope? Some hang on their whole lives. I'd have given up long ago but for life being easy. I read some of the stories and think "If that had been me, I'd have simply killed myself." That was always my final answer: if this just gets too tiresome, I'll quit.

God kept dropping little things into my life to keep me going, little bridges over the problems. And here I am, still walking, and learning to live with hope. God is stronger than the world outside the cage. It's a very strange place. It ought to be horrible. It's a hard way of life, facing my fears and learning new ways. Every day.

Jesus has been there before. Unlike human examples, he's not asking me to do things alone, and he's guiding me through places he has already visited. He knows me. And he still smiles.

The Spirit of Slavery

2007-03-14T16:59:00.000-07:00

Paul describes himself as a "slave to Christ." This is upsetting to me. Why would I want to be a slave, to anyone? Besides which, Jesus says "If I make a man free, he will be free indeed." So, what is it? Slave, or free?

As with most things involving God this concept has gotten buried in all kinds of fluff and scree, falling from the great edifices people build around simple ideas. God said to me last night, when I was thinking about this, "How can you be a slave when you've never been free?"

Good question. What is freedom? Certainly not the hell I've lived in squashing myself to fit my own expectations of the world. My intent is to stay the hell out of sight, but that's like a tree living under a sidewalk. Neither of them comes out of the experience very well. Bent tree, busted concrete. Yet it looks normal to me. Normal, familiar, comfortable, no challenge. When one is running close to the limit, challenges are the last thing desired. The next one might be the straw that breaks everything.

God is still himself. He remains constant, unchanging in his care. It's interesting. With that kind of constant regard, the Lord of the Universe smiling on my shaking shoulders, I begin to become something like confident.

Hope is a real tease. I've had hope before and it just precedes a longer fall. Up and down, growing and then dropping rocks. Turns out that I'm the main dropper of rocks, being well trained by this world in what's expected of a normal stable individual. Certainly talking personally with God isn't in the script. Still, silent or no, He is always there.

This in itself is kind of alarming. Am I too dependent upon God? What would happen to me if He were to withdraw his presence from my life, as I've heard has happened to others? That scares me. God says that's not my story, as Aslan constantly reminded the children in Narnia. Live my own story. This is what I've been given.

Names and stories. People are quite willing to impose their own stories and names on us, which is what I've been trying to avoid all my life. Live my own story, find my own name... but doing that while trying to look as if I fit the names given me is a tough practice. God calls me to my own name. He has no interest in forcing an ill-fitting name, nor the wrong story, on me. I'm a slave to death-dealing practices right now and God is working to free me from that. The new story is a challenge, and we already know how much I like those.

He still calls. Patient. Radical. Implacable. "Be prepared for the truth."

Daring to Hope?

2007-03-13T17:14:00.000-07:00

God really wants to make me an optimist. He made the sun to shine on everyone. I remember being forced in various ways to become a less sunny person.

Keith Le called the other night. We hadn't talked for a while, so we caught up a little bit. Somehow that lunch in the Thai place where I got the "Be prepared for the truth" fortune came out of my cookie. Keith said "I wish God spoke that directly to me."

I've been thinking about that since. There have been times in the last year or two when I'd have gladly traded places with anyone who struggled to hear God's voice. His voice keeps me alive but also calls me forward into impossible things. I'd rather just stay in my nice familiar hole in the ground. I know where everything is and there are no challenges. I have enough of a challenge just getting through the day.

My guess about Keith is that God has different ways of reaching him. My practice is based on pure need. Keith is looking ahead. He has a plan. God says "Go for it." And smiles.

He smiles at me too, but I resist smiling back. I remember the touches of hope in a bleak world, and that hope always turned to ashes. God is the only person who has stayed with me all these years, perhaps because he's the only one who shook me hard enough and then held on. People give up after a while, as do I, and no surprise.

I really know very little about being a real human being. This isn't a problem for God. He knows all about being a human being. He has been there. He is an irresistible force for change, no matter how slowly I respond.

God never forgets any of us. He works in people's lives to the degree that he's allowed. Desperation, staring oblivion in the eye, makes for strong motivation toward allowing God's hand free rein. Still... let me sleep and wake me up when it's over, please.

Status Committee

2007-03-04T16:39:00.000-08:00

"OK, folks. Let's get this show on the road."
"Yeah. We don't have eternity, you know."
Everyone at the table groans. "Now we know why the Father invented time. So that eventually, Gabriel, you'll have to quit repeating that worn-out joke."
"Yeah, Gabe. Even angels can, um... well, better not to say."
Jesus looks at Michael, and raises an eyebrow. That's all he needs to do. "So, what's the scoop, folks?"

If angels could dance on the head of a pin, how long could they keep it up? What does time look like to an eternal being?

"OK, Next item."
"Can we take a break, phone out for pizza or something?"
"We had pizza last time. How about Chinese?"
"Ever since you helped bail them out after that flood..."
"Ahem."
"Oh, yes. Next item."

There's a rustling of wings and a settling of robes. The slide changes on the overhead projector.
"Remember this guy?"
"Oh, yes. Your Beach Missionary, and that sand dude."
"Yah. Haven't heard much about him. What happened?"
"He's still around. Interesting how ideas change over time. God gave him the nose. He keeps following the scent."
Jesus is looking intent. "Hmmm... I wish more people would get it."
"What's that, Lord?"
"Well... No noose is good noose."

Speaking in Sand

2007-02-27T17:14:00.000-08:00

Things have been going on but I just don't want to talk about them. It's bad enough by myself. Having others jump on me, as has happened many times, just makes things worse. And I seem to be reverting to "If I don't have anything to say, just be quiet." I'm tired of acting.

Sand is enjoyable and it's honest. There's no reproach, no vindictiveness. It does what it does.

Captive, Caged, Trained, Free

2007-01-21T06:55:00.000-08:00

Nate left me a message Friday afternoon, asking if I wanted to out to dinner. I got the message at about 2100 when I checked the phone. I'd been on the beach all afternoon and left my brain there, then got involved in other things. We managed to meet, a day late.

"Hey, man, are you down for tradition?"
"Yes. Where are we going?" They've instituted a diet that precludes Killer Shrimp. Besides, Deb has said that she wanted to go somewhere else, somewhere new.
"Killer Shrimp! Yeah, man, that's what she wants." We laughed.

When we got to the restaurant Nate talked about how he has been thinking about "holding every thought captive to Christ." We talked about it. It's interesting how parts of the Bible take on different meanings when removed from their context.

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.
2d Corinthians 10:4-6 NIV

I could write a book on taking thought captive. The results have been good in some cases, disastrous in many others. Talking about taking thought captive makes me nervous because of this quote: It's something I'm supposed to do, but I've seen the results of misapplication in my life and in the lives of others.

Are thoughts to be caged, never to move again? Trained never to look beyond the barred confines? Excursions from the cage are punished. Eventually you get to the point where the cage can be removed and the well-trained mind doesn't even notice. How does this fit with "When Jesus makes you free you will be free indeed?"

I do recognize the need for guidance and some discipline. There's a big difference between a heap of random sand and a sand sculpture, and lack of discipline in engineering will soon turn the latter into the former.

How is this supposed to work? Going from my experience it seems that what happens is guided freedom. Grapevines grow on guide wires. Growth comes from the vine and sunlight, with the wires provided as a place for the vine to grow. In that case it's mainly for the convenience of those who would gather the grapes. Human growth is a different kind of thing, very complex, and the guide wires are invisible and can be ignored. I think my thoughts twine with those of Jesus, shaped as I allow by the Holy Spirit in a growing braid.

I have replaced God's plan for my life with my own ideas and practices. I've enforced these ideas brutally and turned God's garden into a desert. I don't know much about growing. I know that cages don't work, that training tends to turn into dictatorship and that captives tend to just give up and die. Learned helplessness.

How do I resist the maker of the Universe? It's built into His nature. If I really want to walk alone he will allow this but I'll be missing His guidance, his sturdy wires that allow me to grow and spread. If I want to. Growth is frightening to someone who has been mostly dead. It's new, confusing, and can't be learned as a captive.

History holds us all. Familiar paths calling our tired feet. I accept this phony rest, an easy walk in a dead land. I suspect that if I could really see what God intends the path would be much more attractive. God wants just one step at a time, even if taken while not looking more than about a foot in front of my toes. He'll handle the guidance, for now anyway.

God provides structure, strength to resist both the pull of the past and howling winds of present confusion. His structure is mysterious and kind, just about the opposite of what we've been taught.

I am Jesus' captive. I'm very glad I'm his captive, and no longer captive to my ideas of who Jesus is. It takes a long time to learn the difference in the real world of emotional experience.

Fernando Ortega

2007-01-19T07:40:00.000-08:00

My friend sent me "Home," by Fernando Ortega, as an introduction to his music. I liked it well enough that I bought more of his CDs.

The more I listen to these the more I like them. His voice is gentle but strong, an interesting combination. The lyrics are personal, honest. Sometimes he rearranges an old hymn and makes it new.

The biggest surprise for me has been the recording quality. Great care has been taken in putting the music onto the CD. They've used excellent mics that let me hear the differences between the various cymbals used, and the drums. There's subtlety and richness in the sound itself that reinforces the beauty of the words.

In general, he has gone far beyond the usual stereotypes. His music doesn't fit any genre but his own, as he uses motifs of various kinds to go with the subject. I'm surprised such music could come out of our commercial system. He's like early Ken Medema in that I know there's a real person doing the music, not a committee guided by focus groups and last year's hits.

If you're looking for exceptionally good Christian music, I recommend these:
"Home"
"Meditations of the Heart" (instrumentals)
"Fernando Ortega"
"The Breaking of the Dawn"
"The Shadow of Your Wings"

God of Depression

2007-01-19T07:04:00.000-08:00

I intended to write this a month ago but got distracted. Better late than never, I hope, and perhaps my thoughts are more coherent now.

Gary wrote about spiritual depression in December. I left a comment in which I mentioned that God had promised to take care of my depression. Other comments were skeptical. Not surprising, given all the nonsense about God and healing, but in this case I wasn't the leader. God's the one who said it.

Oh, yes, I understand the skepticism. I'm a skeptic myself but have been encouraged to believe by spending a lot of time standing with my toes hanging over the edge of the abyss. Even radical, absurd impossible change looks better than the long black fall.

From my point of view it's very logical. Depression adds nothing to life. I look back over the three years I've been walking with Jesus in desperation and each little step shines, each one leading to where I am now.

There are lots of reasons for being depressed. I made my own, converting God's garden to desolation with my own brand of dynamite, big mechanical scarifiers and other powerful ideas that reduced a normal self to a kind of shadow-human. God tells me the damage can be undone, and dancing ex-cripples illustrate his power. Lazarus walked.

God says he can teach me to love. As with any other long trip there's a lot of preparation work that has to be done first, such as learning to recognize it. I've used intellect as a substitute for most normal human processes, which has been good in some ways and bad in others. Relationships, even that with God, aren't a rational process. I don't even see how it all works. Anyone else would have given up. I gave up. God didn't.

How far will we get before my time here is done? I have no idea. That's God's business. One good idea that came out of the dead years was that life is a process, and process is much more fun than arrival. More interesting, anyway.

There's a fine line between believing what's impossible and believing that something is impossible. God has to be able to insinuate the idea that change is possible, even if church and world say it's impossible. I see mainly my need. God sees mainly my transformed self in Jesus' white raiment, but he also sees through that to my need. He's not upset. He simply reaches out with his hand and asks me to hold on.

Resting, Resting, 1... 2... 3....

2007-01-19T06:55:00.000-08:00

Gary (see link to left) quoted Ruth Haley Barton on the topic of exhaustion. It's something I know well, me, with my emphasis on performance as the way to remain acceptable to everyone.

I was sort of awake in bed this morning, thinking about things. There are two major questions in my mind right now. I'm wonder what love is, and how you know if you love someone. I'm also trying to figure out how art fits into God's plans.

I may have run into the limits of what I can know through logic. Like a pioneer leaving Kansas City in 1850, I step into new land. Unknown. There be dragons, or grasshoppers, or something. The wagon dries out, wheels loosen. I dry out and don't know where to find water, mile after dusty mile, knowing only that God will never let me hit the absolute bottom. Somewhere out there is an answer, or a chain of answers.

I can only take so much horizontal time. My back hurts. I got out of bed and started the day. I think the key here is to learn how to rest while in motion. Or at least rest while remaining engaged. Or something. You make a theory and think, but only putting a foot to the path will bring the answer, or pieces of answers, closer.

Gifts and Self-indulgence

2007-01-17T18:09:00.000-08:00

I'm listening to Fernando Ortega as I write this. I've been thinking about this one since my friend asked me an interesting question last night. How does a real artist get around being self-indulgent?

That wasn't my friend's question but it was at the heart of how I evaded a real answer. She asked, after I'd mentioned that the year-plus hiatus in sand sculpture hadn't hurt my engineering chops but had allowed my holistic design sense to atrophy, if I thought the deterioration were due to no longer being comfortable showing myself out there.

My answer wasn't really evasive. I just explained the reality: I don't think about that very much. If I did I wouldn't be able to carve at all. I grew up with a strong sense that I would best be invisible. That I ended up doing art in about as public a place as can be imagined is easily explained: it didn't start as art. I just wanted to make an arch. I was comfortable as an engineer because I was doing research into the structural qualities of packed sand.

Since my friend asked me about that, the Holy Spirit has been giving me something of an itch to drag this whole unwieldy structure out into the daylight. To justify sand sculpture after it turned into nearly pure design--what else can you do when you've solved all the engineering problems?--I just quit thinking about it. Each sculpture stood alone. Then it washed away, leaving no tracks to show my completely self-immersed indulgence of a useless practice.

Those who are the most showy usually have little really to show. Those who make the most noise are the ones who should really keep quiet. I don't like show-offs and self-important people. That's why it's handy that I work in sand: it's hard to be self-important when the Greatest Artwork in the World just dries out and crumbles when a seagull lands on top of it. Go to the beach the next day and there's either a stump or nothing.

And yet, all that said, people have been interested in my engineering/art since the day I started making them. I used to discount this. They're just being nice. But I'm sensitive enough to know that this wasn't true. I could see the looks on many people's faces: fascination. Well, it is unusual to see a lacy structure of sand standing nearly as tall as a person from a base about the same size as their footprints.

I imagine that all creative people have doubts. I wonder how Fernando Ortega handles it. His music is beautiful and humble, yet he stands on a stage and sings for crowds.

There are some truths in sand. One is that I developed the whole process from scratch. Another is that what I do is unique, not in the currently overused connotation of that word but in truth. No one else does anything like it, in all the world.

That doesn't really matter to God. We were discussing this tonight. I'm practice-oriented. I have value so long as I do something useful. Sand sculpture for God. God values me for who I am, which is a concept I may someday understand. His outlook is more like mine in 1984: forget the questions, quit thinking, just go out and make a sculpture and see if it stands. Half the time that year it didn't stand. From just about my birth, though, the easiest way to find me was to go where there was a pile of sand or dirt. I'd be there digging, making roads. I like the feel of the material. Sculpture comes out of my hands and heart, sneaking out the back door deliberately left open while I'm not looking. Maybe that's the same door that God sneaked in through in 2003. Sure enough it's the door that has been closed for the last year or so, until I decided, well, to hell with the thinking. Go make a sculpture.

I still enjoy it. Is that good enough? Can I ever become comfortable with being publicly creative? From my viewpoint it's about as pure an artform as can be conceived: no economic attachments, no politics, no focus group nor design by committee. One man, one day, one beach and an Idea that leads step by step into places I never thought about before. If someone had told me in high school that I'd be on the beach doing art because I liked it I'd have said they were nuts.

I always did art in high school while looking over my shoulder for disapproval. I'd learned long before that my way of seeing things, and the things I enjoyed, were askew from the rest of the world. I was tactile, soft, experimental in a hard-edged we-know-everything culture. That's why I had to hide my art. I kept it in my head. Images built and changed.

Sand sculpture starts from those images. How does one get comfortable with anything like that? Maybe really creative people never do. Maybe they reach accommodation and go on, but the deep itch never goes away. Maybe it was a comparable deep itch that caused Jesus to open his mouth and sing a universe into being.

If I'm being self-indulgent, I have a good role model. Creativity is a gift. My friend says she has no artistic talent. I wonder. I think everyone has some and the key is to keep experimenting until you find a mode of expression that you enjoy enough to keep after it. I benefit from not having a well-trodden path ahead of me. Every sculpture I do makes another blaze on a path in the wilderness. If I were trying to paint people would have all of history to use as a judgment standard. They have no idea what to make of my sculptures, meeting them on the sculpture's own terms. Maybe they're no more comfortable than I am.

Perfecting the Bus

2007-01-12T05:43:00.000-08:00

Lu posted some alternative ideas on my bus metaphor.

Are you sure they are the ones in the front? Seems to me -- in my picture of this bus -- that those are the ones toward the back, or at least in the middle. They're the people who, while still on the bus, aren't really in contact with Jesus that much; who are still trying to drive their own particular buses without realizing they don't have control, never did.

A good idea, I think. As I'd expect of Lu it's a more understanding way of seeing things.

My thought when I wrote the story was that the ones in front are the self-important ones, those who want to be seen, the self-proclaimed experts crowding around Jesus so He will notice how good they are. This is modelled on the way people try to take the "best" seats at the banquet.

I think you and I are the ones in the front -- where we can be in constant contact with the Driver, with Jesus. We realize that no matter how much we WANT to be in control, no matter how much we try to be, we aren't. Control is an illusion. And, yeah, I believe the illusion more than I prefer to admit, but that doesn't change the fact that it's illusion.

My idea was more along the line of it not really mattering where you sit. Jesus sees all of the passengers, every one of us, even if we're hanging onto the rear bumper like that woman with the hemorrhage. So, the Important People in the front make it impossible for anyone else to be there. We end up shuffled off to the back end... where we really find Jesus' heart. Jesus loves the shuffled-off, the bottom feeders, the marginal ones. Well, he loves the self-important ones also, but rarely can do even so much as get one word into their well-organized worldviews.

And I'm not so sure the sign on the front reads "Perfection" -- unless we're using the Biblical definition (ie, complete-ness) and not the world's definition (without flaw or brokenness). At least I don't want to be on a bus heading for the latter -- the former, yes, but not the world's view of perfection. Perhaps it reads "Redemption".....?

I thought about this. Decided to stay with "Perfection" because that is where Jesus has promised to deliver us. If the headsign on your bus reads "Nashville" but the driver takes you to Poughkeepsie, he hasn't done his job. He has betrayed you. Jesus says perfection and that's where we're going, but it's His idea of perfection, not ours. I doubt that it has anything to do with toothpaste smiles and big ugly-but-impressive houses.

Redemption is already done. As soon as we stepped, or were carried, through the bus door we were redeemed. I got off the bus but was still a passenger, and Jesus came back and got me when I was tired enough to start listening again.

---------------------

I thought about making this a longer story. I'd have some characters, kind of like Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" and illustrate various things. But I had about ten minutes for the writing so I pared the story down to just the essential core ideas, that Jesus will get us there, and that the most important thing we can do is stay with Him. Where there's connection to Jesus there's hope.

I came up with the bus metaphor because I've ridden them. I was on a bus in Colorado one time when the driver didn't know where the stations were. I'd been over the route a few times so I guided him to each station in turn. I don't know what he did north of Greeley because I got off there. I've been on city buses too where the driver sort of got lost and did a few extra loops around the city.

There are people who are afraid of flying. They get on the airplane and tremble the whole time. I see the time to worry being before you get on. You can decide not to fly. Once you've decided to fly, you might as well relax as there's nothing you can do. Worrying and fidgeting isn't going to keep the clear air turbulence from tearing the plane apart, or keep the pilot from having a heart attack, or anything else our active imaginations can come up with.

No, once you get on board, bus, plane, train, you might as well relax and enjoy the ride. Or read a book. Getting potted helps but you have a headache later. Books and music are better. You get on, turn on the music, open your book, and some indefinable time later, voila. You're there. You've arrived.

That's the idea I wanted to get across. It's Jesus promising perfection, not our own efforts. It takes time to learn how this works in the real world.

Staying On the Bus

2007-01-10T04:30:00.000-08:00

If you go to the Greyhound station and buy a ticket for Nashville, you can pretty much count on making it to Nashville unless there's a flood, or snow or some other problem. If you stay on the bus you'll get there, eventually.

The bus whose headsign reads "Perfection" is no different. I got on that bus in 1971, but got off after a few years. Many years after that, Jesus saw this pathetic wreck beside the road, stopped the bus, shot the brakes, got out from behind the wheel and picked me up. Very gently he picked me up and put me in a seat on His bus.

Did I look at the headsign that time? No. I knew I'd been headed over a cliff. Jesus saw more in me than I ever saw in myself.

It's a big bus. There are lots of people on it. Those near the front have equipped their seats with all kinds of controls: steering wheels, brakes, gearshifts. They pass around books telling each other how to drive. They espouse schemes for repainting the bus to make it more attractive and jazzing up the message. The people in the back just sort of look dazed. Some of them are crying because they thought they were lost but the bus came for them. A few have strapped themselves in because they know they have a tendency to wander away.

This one's for Lu.

Trust Or Die

2007-01-09T17:19:00.000-08:00

Trusting God seems to be a big deal for lots of people. This is kind of surprising when you consider that God made the world we live on, so providing the means to live for a few billion people shouldn't be much of a challenge.

I think there are a couple of big reasons why I have a hard time trusting Him. One is that trusting people provides a very bad model. "I'll always be here for you," they say, until you actually do need them and then it's "Um, sorry, I have a prior commitment." God comes along and says "Trust Me," and I, in the grip of memory, say "Yeah, right."

The other big reason is that many commonly repeated stories about God reinforce the idea that He has His own agenda, which probably won't include anything I'm interested in. Why should I give my already ruined life to Jesus when he seems to have ruined so many others? They have a hard time paying their bills, they get hung out there on the edge, life is never comfortable. I'll settle for comfort, thank you, having had about as much challenge as I want. Those followers of Jesus who are gung-ho for some hair-raising adventure can just leave me behind.

It could be, however, that there's another way to look at this. Instead of seeing God's demands and my shortcomings compared to the future, maybe I should concentrate on God's forgiveness in the present. He knows who I am, to the last little detail. He knows I'm impatient, ungraceful, reticent, a loner. He knows I'm not the first person you'd choose to represent the Model Follower Of Jesus 2007. I'll never be on the cover of "Christianity Today," which might just be a good thing.

There are reasons why I'm a sand sculptor. I don't have to ask anyone's permission. The materials are free, and the result is immovable and temporary. No records other than the abstraction of a photograph. These days even the photograph isn't real, being just a collection of ordered binary numbers on a computer hard disk. I ask nothing from the world except to be left alone, and sand sculpture is the medium of expression that suits my trackless vagabond ways.

I live as a homeless person. I've feared the future even while not believing in it; I could die tomorrow. I never thought I'd live to be 54 but my one-day-at-a-time steps have resulted in an impossible accumulation of years.

Along the way I've accumulated experience, too. It's odd experience, but there are times when what I know exactly fits someone else's need. I have the occasional chat with people, or the occasional Blog post that hits the spot for one or two others. Perhaps God never intended me to be mass-market.

So, I can thrash around and assume God is going to make me mass-market, or I can continue the pattern of a lifetime and drift in His hands. The overall assumption is that no matter where I end up God knows what he's doing, and knows who I am. The chances are his fearless guidance will be much better than my cowering behind a rock, expecting to die.

The Fat Moment

2007-01-08T19:06:00.000-08:00

Jesus says to cast all my cares upon him because he cares for me. Worry not about the future.

Well, about all I can do is look at the future and shudder. Anything could lie in wait out there in the dark unknowable shadows. I've seen many people laid low by the unpredictable, a long litany of events ranging from all too common to the absurdly unlikely.

There are many things followers of Jesus beat themselves up for. Worrying is one. "Who of you by worrying can change anything?" Or something like that. And yet I do it.

God is understanding, and takes his time. You can't just deprive someone of a lifelong habit, so the Holy Spirit insinuates his subtle guiding thoughts in my unguarded moments.

"What can you do about the future?"
"Well, um... nothing, really, but I should be prepared."
"Look at how expensive that is. Always expecting the blow, twitching, ready to leap."
"What else can I do?"
"All you have is now. This moment. This is where you live."
"Yah... but over this moment looms the breaking wave of the future."
"Can you stop it from breaking? Whose Hand stays the blast?"
"No, I can't. But I just... seem to be a worrier. I can't stop."
"True, but you can quit holding onto the idea."

Another theme of this new life. Quit holding on. Use the energy for something else.

On Returning...

2007-01-03T07:59:00.000-08:00

SuZi came down a couple of years ago and shot some video that she used in a short film about Venice, called "The End of the Western World." Call it an anthology of fringe people. I'm surprised I made the cut, as most video producers go no farther than the Boardwalk. Sand gets in their shoes, you know, and it's hard work to get out there. And the wind might mess up their expensive hair designs. SuZi did a good job, digging deeper than most. When I decided to do a New Year Day sculpture I sent her an Email saying I'd be out there. She and her husband came down to see what I was working on, and shot some photos as I worked.

You could compare this to a photo of a soldier in a foxhole: it's a wonder I'm still alive. Sand sculpture was the bridge and my shelter through many years. Once God picked me up again He demonstrated to me that it was still OK for me to do sculpture. It is, after all, a gift.

And yet, following 2005-September-24, I just gave it up. When cold rain deterred the New Year sculpture I just sort of quit thinking about it, and those to whom I had sent images seemed not to notice the lack. I didn't either, being more concerned with removing anything from my life that would give rise to any thoughts of me having real needs. A robot in a dark foxhole.

Is creativity a legitimate need? I'm kind of tired of the word "legitimate." How do I know? A better approach might be to say that if I can sculpt, it's not only OK but a real need.

If I can talk to people and make connections, it's not only OK but a real need. See the ramifications of a simple tool on the sand? And yet one leads to the other quite logically and God created logic. The wonder is that my ideas and desires lived through that long self-imposed draught.

Desperation of Need

2007-01-03T06:28:00.000-08:00

It started with great hope and a little fanfare.
It continued with some laughter.

Then it turned into the antechamber to hell, which is typical of my life. Good things precipitate really bad things in some kind of sick psychic balance.

I have changed in the last year and a half. The agent has been an on-line game and the people who play it. In physical life I've survived by being low-profile verging on invisible. If I do become visible, for example by sand sculpture, it's temporary as I walk away and the sculpture disappears. In the electronic world of Uru, however, I've become very visible.

That wasn't my intention, but by following my nose it just happened. I turn my face toward those things that interest me and, nose leading the way, I walk into something new. In Uru there is essentially unlimited idea-space for people to use. There is no competition for limited resources. So, I grew into places that I didn't predict and became a somewhat larger-than-life organizer of musical events and parties. It would be hard to imagine a role more different from anything I do in the physical world.

And yet, every avatar I see in Uru is backed by a real person. Propinquity leads to intimacy even when the face you see is that of an electronic simulacrum. Somehow enough reality comes through the interface for people to know each other. Perhaps they even like what they see.

The electronic simulacrum is at least partially the real person. In my case the impresario role isn't so much a lie as the result of lifting the rock off from something that I've always been. I displace no one by what I do, and those who enjoy it are free to join me, just as those who don't like it are free to stay away. Nothing is forced.

So, who am I? Party maven or submarine? Depends on the world. The changes in one attracted some of the people there and I suddenly awoke to what was going on. People liking me, wanting me to be there, comes close to need. I enjoy their company and that comes even closer to need. I am to have no needs. Needs are the hooks the world uses to tear you apart, one little piece at a time until there's nothing left but an obedient shell. Seeing what lay ahead I did the natural thing: run. I might have paid more attention to guidance, but it's hard to guide when looking backward and I ended up splitting the exit between physical me and electronic me, and ended up at hell's antechamber, overlooking oblivion's dark hole, wishing I'd never started anything.

Naturally, when the discussion turns to need God's name comes up. Well, I don't need him either. That put the black paint on the antechamber, but still it looked better than where I thought He was leading me. "Nope. Not going there. Forget it." Still, he has the advantage. Me trying to live without God is like the Kansas sunflower trying to bloom in January. All He has to do is wait.

Well, it's more complicated than that. God's kind of waiting is very special. Ascetics spend years learning how to be quiet for a few hours so as to hear God's voice, but sometimes all He needs is a split second to insert a thought. Accumulate enough of those little quick thoughts and eventually they achieve something like critical mass and softly explode into new light and meaning.
"Are you really living now?"
"Are you sure it's Me you're running from?"
"Remember _________________?" (fill in the blank with one of many little miracles)
"What do you think I'm working at?"
"What is the source of that idea?"
"Are you really living your life, or someone else's?"
Note that none of these is couched in the usual challenge of day to day conflict we all live with. God isn't out to prove a point. His only desire is to serve me.

Still, it all takes time. I keep sliding down, driving myself with well-aimed kicks. Self-destruction is the theme of my life, which has taught me draconian survival skills. I've learned to be the indigestible nut passing through the world's drains. No matter what you do to me, I will remain. Hah. Take that. Of course what comes out the other end is hardly a human being, but look at it from my point of view: survival is the necessary precondition to getting better. If I allow myself to be ground up by the world's ideas and attitudes there is no hope at all. Little enough as I go, but even less that way.

But, hell's bells, folks, it's no way to live and it certainly isn't God's way. I have my ideas of what God wants, but He always surprises me with his gentleness, certainty and service. God knows His own. Anyone else in His position would use that power to completely overwrite my psyche. Sometimes I wish He would. That would be easier that going through these lessons in becoming a human being.

Some things are just hard to admit. I'd rather do just about anything than admit to having needs of the personal sort. You can't order friends from Amazon and have them delivered to your doorstep, and get some credit on your card. People aren't products and God is not at all interested in making them such. Neither is He a product. "Be prepared for the truth." God is a person who knows what He's doing. Beyond that, He knows how to do it for each of the many people under His care.

My life has been a succession of things given up. Dreams, facts, whatever. Bit by bit, like an aeronaut tossing things out of the balloon to keep it flying just a little longer. Eventually I started tossing the important stuff, whittling away at life, doing the things that I'd determined not to allow the world to do. Run from God and die, sinking, sinking, turning my eyes from His buoyant life.

Of all the things I wanted to eliminate from my life, need for other people is the biggest. Well, at the moment. Who knows what else is buried in there. As I said about the therapist I was talking to for a time, "I'd rather die than tell her anything." Well, God, as is His way, took me up on the dare. "You want to die? Go ahead, but first I'll help you figure out what the truth is."

I wish I could tell you how the turnaround happens. Somehow God's words reach beyond my panic, while He holds me invisibly to keep me from falling off the cliff edge I court so assiduously. Perhaps I compare the view ahead--desert, dark, dry, no promise of change--to the vision God offers to one side or the other down some little path marked by a blood-red flower. That's the promise. He let himself be killed so that I could go on walking. Eventually I come to my senses, exhausted, and quit dreaming of moving to a cabin out in the middle of nowhere or flying an airplane that never needs to land.

Jesus suggests that landing isn't so bad, that living in the cabin might be smoother but it wouldn't be so rich. He further suggests that such richness is a good thing, rather than the erosion that I've always believed it to be. Maybe it's pure fatigue that allows me to agree with him at the moment, and when my energy comes back I'll start running again. I hope not. I'm really tired.

Return to the Beach

2006-12-17T16:10:00.000-08:00

There seems little point in being creative when the larger point of my life has utterly failed. If I have to turn the planning over to God, well, of what worth am I?

Perhaps that's just God's way of letting things fall apart that never should have been built in the first place. I had patches on the patches. What part of my life did I ever live for myself? Most of it was done just to keep other people off my back. Protective coloration.

Sand sculpture was a real thing in the interstices between fogs of phoniness but my own ideas were so befogged I didn't really understand. Everything slid downhill and I didn't see any point in arresting the descent. God kept me from following the rest of the wreckage but I had no idea why. I waited.

Some things might be coming clear. What do I care about? Good question. Even creativity was more of a bridge across empty time than any truly satisfying act. If it had been satisfying I'd have torn it down and thrown the pieces away. I had to do sculpture while remaining unaware of the meaning, so I couched it in terms of simple physical pleasure and the active intellectual balance of engineering and art. Walking a knife edge, and I fell off.

God knows no limit to kindness, though. Day by day he just held onto me so that I didn't do anything... final. Waiting.

So, today came up sunny and cold. I have done two sculptures this year, both casually done while walking home along the beach. The first of these, in July, was very quick. The tide was rising and in a few minutes I raised a pile of sand and carved a small arch. Then the tide reclaimed the area, dissolving it. Still, it was completed. A few months later my accidental timing worked out better. The tide was going down so I had time to build a much bigger arch. All I had to work with was my hands. It was a little lumpy but still the elegant shape came through. Today the tide was low and I deliberately set out to do a sculpture.

I picked up two small tools and walked out. Unlimited sunshine from a blue sky. Classic southern California winter. Winter also makes sand unpredictable, and the good sand I'd used a few weeks previously was gone. Still, one-day-beach sand sculptors learn to run what the sea brung. I built a pile in accordance with the sand available. In other words, short and small. The water comes out too fast for anything big to stick.

Small tools work well for small sculptures. I trimmed here and there, smoothed things out and then started carving detail. The result was nicely braided and perforated. A delicate touch is needed with this stuff. Free-piled coarse sand is very weak. Kind of like me on a bad day. Don't prod me or things will fall off, just as I did at the top of this piece with a misdirected cut. Oh, well, the lack becomes part of the design.

A sign of better things coming? Or taking a break? Or just a nice little thing to do on a sunny afternoon? I've been beaten up enough that I have no confidence in the future... except for God's continuing hold on me. My feet still dangle over an abyss, but I think I see hints of new ground filling in the space down there. I don't have confidence, but God does. Time is His, and one thing I know is that I don't begin to know everything that God can do. He's much more interesting than I thought.

God, caring about one man? Amazing.

More Music Player Notes

2006-12-16T17:11:00.000-08:00

One day while looking for a way to play music at bedtime I ran into a new concept: the Network Music Player. Of the various available devices, the Squeezebox seemed the best fit with my needs. Its server software handles Windows Lossless files. It got good reviews. I finally bought one and it arrived yesterday.

Hooking it up was no problem. I bought a long cat-5 cable and strung it along the ceiling with the Christmas lights. It found my PC. I introduced the server software to my scattered music library and I was in business.

This all started years ago with a Sony portable CD player. I kept it by my bed, with a stack of CDs that would grow until they started to fall off. Then I'd remove that stack and gradually build another. When the neighbor broke in and stole the CD player I bought another and used it until it wore out. The replacement clicked between songs as it turned the amp on, which was annoying.

Over the years I've tried various headphones. The original Sony MDR-CD7 set got stolen with the first player. Those were no longer available for the replacement, so I bought Sony MDR-CD6. I still have those but they're old now and the earpads aren't available. I tried some Etymotic ER-4S, which have wonderful sound if you get them installed correctly. They have to fit just right. Too much hassle, so I kept using the CD6. I tried the noise-blocking headphones I use for live recording but they aren't comfortable. I tried a Sony MDR-V600 but their sound wasn't as good as the CD6. Then, in looking at other things, I started reading about Shure's E500 triple-driver "in-ear monitors." I decided to try them. They turn out to be outstanding: sound better than the Etymotics, easier to use, and less cable noise. Everything that's in the music gets to my ears.

This actually has turned out to be a problem because they show the deficiency of the source audio. There's a lot of talk nowadays about headphone amplifiers, and you can spend a lot of money for one. It turns out that my Archos AV500 portable music player has a good headphone amp built-in, and using that device with the Shure headphones is a real treat. Except for the hard-disk spin-up noise. Thus, the Squeezebox.

I plugged the Shure headphones into the Squeezebox and the first thing I heard was noise. Hiss. No disk drive noise like that of the Archos, but a constant hiss. Well, maybe the music would cover it up. That didn't work. In this age of digital recordings and 90-dB signal-to-noise ratios I'd pretty much forgotten about hiss. This thing sounded like an old cassette player.

Not only that, but the amplifier has no guts. Bass just wasn't there. I'm not the kind to want to rattle the windows--in my head or out--with bass, but music needs bass to be fully formed and this device just didn't do it.

Well, OK, maybe it's the headphone amp in the Squeezebox. I got out my Sound Devices headphone amp and hooked that up to the Squeezebox's line output. This solved some of the noise problem, and also has real bass, but the midrange sounds as if it's coming from a cardboard box. The Sound Devices amp is designed for field conditions, and loud is more important than accurate.

I know there are many ways to fail in other aspects of life, but... bedroom music? I really don't want that much. In the old days it was easy. CD players just played CDs as if they were records. No clicks, no pops, no smart switching of an amplifier. Now everything tries to think for me and all they do is mess things up. Maybe I should just move the turntable to the bedroom and play records.

It's a simple problem. Why do I get the feeling that I'm swimming against the current all the time?

The Claws Can't Reach

2006-12-08T07:38:00.000-08:00

Write a little, pay a lot. That last post nearly cost me my sanity, from my point of view anyway. God's view is different. As the Soul Whisperer he sits calmly and spreads his hands around the burning soul to prevent utter self-immolation. When the calm finally penetrates far enough to make a difference, then His Voice can be heard again.

Grow up with brutality, it seems the normal way. If you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing, beat yourself until you do. If that doesn't work then the claws come out in punishment. Never do that again! And one more soul backs into a corner, weeping where no one can see. Well trained. You can't lead any kind of expansive life back there, though, and God's Light calls from out there in His green grassy field. "Wouldn't you rather live out here, run, jump, enjoy? I made you for pleasure, you know, and I'm pleased when you enjoy life."

There are levels of brutality. Some is obvious in physical scars. There are apparent emotional scars too. Better to keep them hidden to prevent phony sympathy and the platitudes that come from no desire to understand but rather to remove a source of pain. In a perfect world everyone would grow up with their needs met and we'd learn how to deal with each other as equals. We'd learn how to live well.

I've always wanted to live well. The problem has come in figuring out what that meant. It's not a trivial question because there are so many opinions. Millions of gurus and generations of gods all with advice on how to live well. An answer imposed from outside doesn't work very well, at least for me, and I've stuck to my own counsel. I've seen this as a weakness.

In some ways it has been, and still is. It's very hard for anyone to get to me, to even see me. I'm quite skilled in obfuscation and living amid self-defensive shadows. But as a friend of mine pointed out last year the results haven't really been that bad. Her statement was a real surprise. I'd never thought about my history in terms of anything but ongoing failure. She said I'd done pretty well, beyond just having a decent job and a place to live. I had some freedom to express myself and in that was interacting and enjoying some other people. And I was still here, when so many had been torn down by the conflicts.

How have I survived? Not, as I've always thought, by any particularly well-managed skill. I'm an opportunist. Others make long-term plans. I just drift in the river and when I arrive at an opportunity I choose to take it or leave it. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. I've been to college three times, failing all three. You're supposed to have a plan for your life, right? If so, then how come I'm still here? Here's an example.

In the fall of 1976 I was doing some hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park. The sun was near setting behind the Continental Divide and I was putting my equipment back into my old VW Bug. A woman walked up to me and started talking about hiking. Eventually she got around to her point: she wanted a guide up Hallett Peak, which we could see from where we stood. It's a walkup. All the ranger-led hikes were done for the year and she had only a couple of more days. We met the next day, early, and started hiking. It was a glorious day. We got back around midnight. We stayed in contact and she invited me to visit her in Los Angeles. Last place on Earth I wanted to live but in 1982 I, having nothing else to do really, went out to visit. She leaned on me to take a Civil Service test with the City and, to keep her happy I did so. The job was Warehouse Worker, and given the competition it was no big surprise that I was at the top of the list. But I was on my way back to Nebraska to go to school again. I declined the job offers.

Two years later I flew back to Los Angeles, having failed the third school attempt. With nothing better to do while deciding if I wanted to stay in L.A., I assembled a simple sand sculpture kit and headed for the beach. Ultimately, weather and impecuniosity combined to cause me to put my name back on the job list. I was already here. Staying for a couple of years to pay bills seemed like a good idea. I got hired in early December 1984. The relationship with the friend blew up a month later and I moved to a place of my own. The failure of another relationship in a year started me thinking there wasn't much point in continuing but before taking that dive under a train I looked for professional help.

Note the pattern here: no real decisions. Just solving problems as they come up. No planning. There's nothing to be proud of here, no great demonstration of skill in living on my part. I'm like a pinball ever going downhill, just choosing between this bumper or that.

Whence comes self-respect? I really don't know. I don't believe the usual stories. All that crap about men conquering the world and such. Our world is conquered to the borderland of Hell, and how the next few generations are going to make it I don't know. No, there's something else out there to live for, some reason to get up, but it's nothing normal.

Who am I for believing such nonsense? I'm like an egg with a shell of prickly diamond and a marshmallow interior. I believe in the soft part of life. Not everything needs to be beaten with a club. Why not sit still and let the sunset come to you, washing with its golden light the world we all live in? Why would God permit me to hold onto such stupid beliefs?

Well, maybe He gave me the ability to believe. I've been drifting, not doing much guidance, but the river is God's. Maybe he's the one who gently guided events as they needed to be, and I simply grew up with a kind of gut-level faith that despite all the thrash and brutality that everything would work out in the longer haul. It did. It has. There is no call for pride in my life, but pride is another misunderstood idea. I can't stand on a hilltop and point to all the magnificent things I've built or done, the people I've influenced to do even greater things.

I'm not sure what the rest of this story is. All I know is that I woke up early this morning and was poised for some serious self-excoriation. The claws were out. I heard this little voice. "I love you." This has happened before. I've wondered whose voice it is. Mine? God's? This time, at least, it was God's voice. Quiet, small. He wrapped me up and wouldn't let the claws scratch. They don't do a damned bit of good anyway. Self-punishment never accomplishes anything but it's still a hard habit to break.

OK, I'm not only a mystic. I'm a creampuff. A papier-mache' lion. Look at me cross-eyed and I run. All wall, no interior. Look in the eyes and see vacuum. Soft. Not suited to this world at all. Better people than I run to seek adventures that I stand aside for. God seems to have other opinions on these events and I am in any case forgiven. In the forest of self-judgment it's hard to walk after the hart of new life. The trees may be imaginary but they're no less obstructive. Cutting them down doesn't work. All I can do is, with God's help, quit fertilizing them.

Feelings ARE Facts

2006-11-29T18:10:00.000-08:00

Another relationship blew up in January of 1985. I moved out, found a place to live right by the railroad tracks. Freight trains blew through frequently and I almost as often imagined just diving into the front of one. Lights out. I'd done nothing but screw things up. Why try again?

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. They say. What happens when the problem is permanent? Well, maybe it's not. There was the radical option of psychotherapy, and I decided to do that. The short-term counsellor I saw suggested something longer-term and, having no other appointments that I could think of other than with the east end of an eastbound highballing train, I went for it.

Nine years, a whole lot of hours and a large pile of money later, I bailed. I took little away from the experience other than memories of long silent struggles. A lock on the mouth, a straitjacket for feelings. A few things stayed with me, such as the idea that terminated the process: I'll die before I'll tell her anything. More valuable was a basic concept that shook my world: A feeling is a feeling. It's real. It's there. I can choose how to respond to it but the emotion itself is a fact.

I, however, was better than that. I could wave my magic manipulative wand and make feelings just disappear. I couldn't erase their history, however, and only time allowed some of the stronger ones to dissipate so that I could resume an even keel. Time requires solitude. I live alone.

So, God comes along and plucks me up from the edge of the last fall. The main thing I got from psychoanalysis was a bridge across those nine years. I might not have survived without them and might have gone over the edge before God had done all of the preparatory work. I was still there when His work bore fruit and I saw His hand and heard His voice.

I had nothing to lose. And then suddenly I did have something to lose: my vaunted emotional independence. Feelings might blow through but they didn't affect me. As God returned sensitivity to the old dry desert feelings began raising dust-devils in the sand, writing curling lines of the future in their passage. I did what any self-respecting intellectual would do: I ran. Running from God, though, is like tearing the Earth from its orbit and flinging it independent out into the black. It's cold out there, dry, ever farther from the sun that whispers of life in frequencies ranging from infrared to beautiful blue. Jesus said his sheep knew his voice. I'd learned it and there was no other. How could I run? The Son's warm reality might kill me but the cold would surely finish the job I'd started years ago when I started manipulating the reality of feeling.

God gave me the ability to feel. Feeling, it seems, is central to human being's participation in life. People who feel they're worth nothing tend to act that way. Belief and feeling are strongly connected. I'd known this for most of my life and what got me as far as I managed to go was an unspoken and little-realized balance: If the emotions would leave me alone, I'd leave them alone. I knew of their importance to design and decision-making processes. Any decision that was purely intellectual was bound to fail. That didn't keep me from being as rational as possible and keeping emotions in the mental ghetto but I still knew, and used, the principle. God upset that balance. He shines his light and it goes everywhere, not just where I'd like it to go.

What's the point in doing anything if I don't feel good in the doing? If everything I do leads to pain, why bother? No matter what, I can't win. I'm depressed when I'm depressed, and I soon become depressed if at some point something happens that makes me happy.

Happiness has to be earned. There has to be a reason for it. Otherwise, it is unearned and therefore unjustifiable. I have no good reason for feeling that way. Feeling good just opens the door for the Junkyard Dog to return and hammer me into the ground, so it's much better to just damp all feeling. That's not the way Jesus lived. He sighed, He wept, He groaned. Much of what He saw made Him sad. No surprise. He knew what He felt and He didn't worry about complex rational arguments for justification of those feelings. His goal is to make me like Himself.

So, I have to face facts. I'd think it's impossible if I hadn't already seen what happens when I think God can't do something. The emotions are there. I don't know how to live with them.

Care is Core?

2006-11-23T17:14:00.000-08:00

When the secrets start to come apart life gets difficult. For most of my life I've cared greatly about things but never shown it. Now, the whole damned world knows. Through this Blog and other things you all know, and God knows, I care about music, sculpture, art, peace, beauty, and many other things that don't count for much in modern society.

My response to threat is to abandon the handle and run. I've used the metaphor here before: the skink's tail gets trapped by a predator and the skink simply abandons the tail and escapes. How much of a life can be abandoned and still have a person be viable?

Of course, writing about it and having it understood are two different things. I have no idea how much of what I've written here is comprehensible. I just write. Comprehension is someone else's responsibility.

Caring is important. I've always known that, and I can see the results of loosening my grip on it. If not for God's hold on me I probably would have gone over the edge, but he holds on and I just kind of stagger on, thinking that if I'm lucky someday things will get better. I don't really care much any more, and I see the outworking of that in my life.

How does one learn to care openly? Jesus knew how to do so. He was no patsy. He always did what His Father instructed. He was so convinced of His Father's love that caring about doing what was right was his first nature. I'm so convinced of the world's hostility that I don't hang around to see if anyone treats my ideas with respect. I expect problems, abandon the issue like yesterday's sand sculpture, and run. It's a bad model for life.

How do I learn to care again? I don't want to care in God's terms. And yet I've done myself more of a disservice by not caring than God has ever done in working to teach me to care from my heart and to hold onto what I care about.

There is a difference, I believe, between acting as if I care and really caring. I know the teaching about learning to care from the act, and perhaps there's some truth to that. It is, after all, better than the alternative. I still don't think it'll hold up for long under the stresses imposed by daily life. Assumed caring is brittle. I've had done with being brittle. I want to be more flexible.

I'd really like to live in beauty, to have my every movement be an expression of confident assumption of God's beautiful life. Instead I just stay indoors and hope no crises show up. Nobody who has done good art has lived that way. I know it's fashionable to believe that art just happens, that it requires no part of the human soul, but I don't believe it. Art without soul isn't art. Art that has no piece of a human being in it is dead. I have no interest in doing something like that, nor perceiving it.

The human heart makes a difference. What is it like to care enough to go ahead and put one's heart out there and be prepared to take the inevitable hits? What is it like to be visible?

Finding the Right Melody

2006-11-23T13:27:00.000-08:00

It seems an absurd question: "Who am I?" It's the standard criticism of a generation. I believed that it didn't matter that much. I am I and who else needs to know?

Well, it becomes more important as the world closes in. It seems that everyone wants to reduce the individual person to an easily assigned cypher in some equation. Those who manage to escape the trap are assigned to the "weirdo" category and no one takes them seriously. Movies are about mavericks but they are received better in the fantasy world than in reality. Try making a living as a maverick.

Does God want individuals? Does he want easily directed robotish sorts? Seems people usually lean toward the robotish, but that's not only among Christians. The whole wretched world goes that way. I've always hoped for something better.

Now I've pretty much given that up. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's a belief that I just can't stand against the God of the Universe; he'd trump any move I can make. I can't outmaneuver him, hide from him, pull wool over the eyes of Him who made lambs. Why should I care? I've obviously failed at the things important to me.

I am still here, which is a sign that I've not completely failed. But what is it that keeps a person living? What makes a person care? I'm still here but I don't care very much about it. I'm just sort of waiting for the next act, and the curtain seems late in rising. What am I waiting for? God to give me permission to be a human being? Or for God to leave me alone so I can go back to a rather rickety balance that while fragile at least felt like it was mine. Now it's all God's business. My soul is saved but my spirit seems to be dying.

So, why has this question come up again? It probably has to do with seeing, even more clearly, the direction of God's changes. I just don't want to go there. We're going down a path that don't like so where's the room for me as me? How much do I trust God? I trusted him quite a bit until this relationship stuff came up and now... well, I guess I want to renege on the deal. God doesn't accept boundaries very well. All the earth is his and everything in it. I can't draw a line around part of my being and tell him to stay out. He'll pay attention but is always looking for the way in, the little crack.

I guess I'm just living out what I thought to myself toward the end of psychoanalysis: "I'll die before I tell the analyst anything about this." Now it's God I want to keep secrets from. God, and people... and myself. I just don't want to go there. By which I guess I join the millions of other human beings trying to hide behind fig leaves, except that I know better.

God has treated me gently, kindly, honorably. His guidance has been good. Why question it now? Because he's pulling on strings that go very deep. But once you've let God in partway there's really no turning around because everything else is just... a meal of sawdust. Or Muzak on an MP3 player. God knows the tune and wants to teach, no matter what. Intellect goes one way, emotions another. I used to be able to direct the emotions but no longer.

Music Player Update

2006-11-22T09:09:00.000-08:00

Windows Media Player just about had me panicked last year. It defaults to writing music in the MP3 format, but I discovered that I could change that to Windows Lossless format. Since then I've copied just about my whole CD collection to the PC.

So, I got the brilliant idea to buy a portable music player to replace my bedside CD player. I'd have my big library available. Playlists on the fly! I bought a player with a big hard drive and started to copy. My disappointment was quick. The unit wouldn't play Windows Lossless files. I didn't know which questions to ask.

A few months later I've learned a lot.
The Archos AV500 media device will play WAV, MP3 and WMA files. Not lossless.
Windows Media Player will write MP3, WMA lossless and WMA (lossy compression).
Itunes 7 will write Apple Lossless, MP3, WAV and AAC (lossy compression).

Well, look. There is a way out: Use Itunes to write WAV files and copy those to the AV500. That means I have to copy every CD twice. Blecch.

I looked forward to the Microsoft Zune music player. I doubted it would be great, but being a Microsoft product it would have to play WMA lossless files, right? Wrong. Microsoft has come up with another dog with two and a half legs.

If I want to change everything, I can copy all of my CDs (again) with Itunes as Apple Lossless (ALAC) files. But then I lose my Teamspeak capability, and I don't know how it works with Shoutcast, and I have to re-copy every CD. Blecch, again.

Then the cavalry arrived. Somehow I stumbled upon a gadget called a Squeezebox "network music player." You connect an Ethernet cable between this device and your computer. It gives you remote control of your media library and sends the audio to the remote over the Ethernet. The server software plays WMA lossless files, too! It's about the price of a 30GB Ipod. They tell me it sounds good, too.

There are other network music players out there, designed for various variations on the service. Some handle video. The Squeezebox has a headphone output and it's small, so it will fit in with my bedside music needs quite well. I haven't bought it yet, but it's coming. I'll let you know.

Moving Beyond Leftovers

2006-11-22T06:32:00.000-08:00

Territorial squabbles take a lot of time. Everyone competes for limited resources and the last one in gets the hind tit. You either learn to live on leftovers, or you just give up and die.

How am I supposed to defend my territory? I've done this in the past by not having territory, but slipping into the interstices between other, more established, worlds. I scavenge, I wait, I don't fight. Eventually things move around and there's new space. I don't ask for much.

I figured that's the way my life would be. It's kind of like the effect on a communist society of seeing the economic benefits of commercial culture: everyone out there is wearing designer jeans but we have to put up with hand-me-downs from 30 years back. God starts showing me the benefits of making a way, and I begin to itch for something better. Jesus certainly didn't spend his days waiting for others to move out of the way before he could live.

People certainly make themselves obnoxious when fighting for space. I don't want to be like that, yet I'd also like to have a place of my own. God will really have to help me with this one. The deeper I go the more potential for trouble there is.

Small Repairs

2006-11-22T06:27:00.000-08:00

I left some characters out of the link to "Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit." I've now fixed that.

One Soundtrack Of Many

2006-11-18T07:14:00.000-08:00

Tony Myles (see sidebar link) posted a while back about soundtracks for life. He got me to thinking. Well, I'd already been thinking, and had assembled a couple of partial playlists. Last Saturday I decided to make a more complete playlist and run it for my friends in Uru. Here's how it came out.

Note that in several cases I've chosen less commonly known songs from albums that have big hits. Everyone knows the hits, and they're often not my favorites. They certainly don't need to be repeated all the time.

I Salina, Kansas, 1952-1966

I don't know when the portable stereo record player showed up. We had that and a stack of 45s. I don't remember all of them, and of the ones I remember, "Walk Right In" is the only song I have available right now. Then my brother started buying LPs.

1. Rooftop Singers: "Walk Right In" (notable for guitar break in the middle, although I didn't know what it was called then)
2. Jan and Dean: "Drag City" (my brother was the record buyer. I made a tape of this for myself)
3. The Seekers: "Georgy Girl"
4. Jan and Dean: "Popsicle"

Lawrence, Kansas, 1966-1968

I don't remember any songs from this period. We didn't have a stereo, nor a radio. I spent most of my time outside.

II Fort Collins, Colorado, 1968-1970

My mother bought a stereo record player and a few records. I mainly listened to a portable radio in my workshop as I built model airplanes when I was ostensibly doing homework. I heard Mason Williams in an English class and wanted the record for my birthday, but ended up getting "Bridge Over Troubled Water" instead, which is also good. "Phonograph Record" became the first record I bought when I got an old turntable at college in the summer of 1970.

5. Mama Cass: "It's Getting Better"
6. Waylon Jennings: "MacArthur Park" (no one understands this, but I like it)
7. Mason Williams: "Long Time Blues"
8. Frank Sinatra: "Moody River" (my mother bought this and I ended up liking it)

III Boulder, Colorado, 1970-1971 (college)

I bought a stereo and then a set of better speakers for it, setting the pattern for the next several years of looking for better playback equipment. In between there was time and a little leftover money for records.

9. It's A Beautiful Day: "Hot Summer Day" (heard this from a dorm neighbor, I think)
10. Moody Blues: "Forever Afternoon (Tuesday)" (heard at speaker maker's house in Crisman)
11. Gordon Lightfoot: "If You Could Read My Mind" (bought in record store on The Hill)
12. Peter Paul and Mary: "Early Morning Rain" (record club purchase)
13. Simon and Garfunkel: "Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall"

IV Christmas Interlude, Denver, Colorado 1970
With my sister and some friends. Brewer and Shipley should also be here, but not until recently have I been able to find a copy of "Weeds." It will be on the next version.

14. Elton John: "Your Song"

V Salina, Kansas, autumn 1971
I went back to Salina for a few months. Should have been for the rest of my life, but the sirens were in Colorado. And my friend Craig.

15. Carole King: "So Far Away" (sent in a cassletter from my friend Craig)
16. Paul Stookey: "John Henry Bosworth" (Album bought on a flyer)

VI Greeley, Colorado, 1971-1978

I got ever better stereo equipment but had trouble finding records. I expanded my Moody Blues collection, added a lot of classical, and some others. Because I've played songs form this period before, this is just a small sampling.

17. Moody Blues: "Lost in a Lost World"
18. John Denver: "Rocky Mountain High"
19. Ken Medema: "Touching"

Maine, 1978-1980

Went to visit a friend in Maine and stayed for a year and a half. While there, I learned of Karen Lafferty, and also got more into the Beach Boys. They're not on this playlist because I've played them before, but if they were I'd have "Father of Lights" and "Fun, Fun, Fun" here.

VII Nebraska (Lincoln and Omaha) 1980-1984

The Maine experiment ended badly. I left in March of 1980 and went back to Greeley for a time, then Estes Park for the summer. That fall I moved to Maine to take a job. The main thing I learned in this period is that no stereo system will sound like live music, so save money on the machinery and buy more records. I had a simple Philips receiver, a turntable and a pair of decent Polk speakers.

The Alan Parsons songs are from the album "The Turn of a Friendly Card," and I've always thought of the last part as a suite. It's included entire here.

20. Dan Fogelberg: "In the Passage" (bought this after hearing a song in a store)
21. Supertramp: "Take the Long Way Home" (heard over credits on a TV show)
22. Mannheim Steamroller: "Mere Image"
23. Alan Parsons Project: "The Gold Bug" (music for writing when I should have been studying)
24. - "The Turn of a Friendly Card, part 1"
25. - "The Turn of a Friendly Card: Snake Eyes"
26. - "The Turn of a Friendly Card: The Ace of Swords"
27. - "The Turn of a Friendly Card: Nothing Left to Lose"
28. - "The Turn of a Friendly Card, part 2"

Denver, summer 1984

The Nebraska experiment ended in more failure. I went to Denver to help my sister build a deck and visit friends. Roman introduced me to Windham Hill recordings of what's now called "New Age" music, mainly from their 1984 sampler.

VIII Los Angeles, Calfornia, 1984-2006

One of the first things I did after I got a job was buy a portable cassette player. After that, I bought that Windham Hill 1984 sampler to listen to when I went to bed. In the summer of 1985 I went out to buy a better cassette deck but discovered that CD players were now the same price, so I bought that instead. There followed an explosion of new music. CDs solved many of the problems that had irritated me for years with LPs.

This period is worth several playlists. My musical taste broadened quite a bit, especially when I discovered used CD stores. I'm willing to experiment when it's cheap, and a steady paycheck helped. What follows is just a sampling, starting with the Windham Hill 1984 sampler, which was one of the first CDs I bought. It ends with Rich Mullins, to whom I was introduced last week by a friend.

"The Unicorn" represents a class of music that has become more common with my DJ activities. People talk about music and that will suggest something, or remind me of something. One night I was playing my animals playlist, and someone mentioned "Bear Necessities" and "The Unicorn." I promptly bought the CDs, and put the unicorn song here because I'd played "Bear" at another party. People's recommendations and reviews on the Web have helped me find new music.

Note that while playing this, I was asked to talk more about the songs. I had to remove "Orabidoo" from the playlist because I was getting tired and the comments made things run late.

29. Billy Oskay and Michael O'Domhnaill: "The Cricket's Wicket"
30. Mark Isham: "Man Before the Mirror" (another Windham Hill artist)
31. Mike Oldfield: "Orabidoo" (not played due to comments taking more time)
32. Clannad: "Journey's End" (played on bus rides, portable CD player)
33. Billy Barber: "Martian Love Song" (also used on the bus)
34. Peter Gabriel:"Mercy Street"
35. Cat Stevens: "Foreigner Suite"
36. Bruce Hornsby: "White Wheeled Limousine"
37. Renaissance: "Ashes are Burning" (live version with bass jam)
38. Bruce Hornsby: "The Road Not Taken"
39. The Irish Rovers: "The Unicorn"
40. Rich Mullins: "The Maker of Noses"

Moods in music. There are many ways to do this.

Only God Knows I Am

2006-11-17T05:50:00.000-08:00

A Skype conversation with a friend last night. My text is in italic.

Shorah.

howerya doin?
are you ok?

Tired. somewhat better than yesterday, though.

awww (((((((((((((((((((((hug)))))))))))))))))

Oh, thank you.

I understand, actually

How are you doing?

good. cool. I'm much better than last time we talked.

Yes. He does have a chip on his shoulder in some regards, but not bad.

sure, well, we all do if we look over there hard enough
I try to ignore mine

Yes... I ignore them as I can, and try to keep mine from causing too much hurt.

yeah, when that happens (mine) is when I feel the worse

Well, I can't win. If I screw up I feel bad. If I feel good I end up feeling bad.

uh oh

Long-standing problem that's finally coming to the light. I hate it but maybe this time God will really be able to change it. I just have to keep walking.

yes, and I'll walk with you
I'm sorry I've been gone. Family came to visit and I had to get something on paper for my diss. advisor

That might get you hurt... when cornered I tend to lash out.

You won't drive me away, dear. Nothing you can say would
I know you well enough, and you've now warned me, lol

Thank you. I'll try not to test that too severely.

don't worry about that, either. See, now I know the score....

Right. If I hurt you, the attack is really aimed at myself.

I've been in that place you were in, too. You're going through something really big.
I know, btw

Yah.. something I thought I could just skate by for the rst of my life.

You have a need to be able to be good and mad and vent and you're a powerful person and maybe others have gotten hurt
and you think no one out there wouldn't be hurt
but here's one
so you can yell if you want
been there, guy
and it ain't pretty.

Well, if I yell at you, you'll know that progress has been made.

yeah, that would be something

I just don't do it. Well, I've yelled at God at times.

hey, if anyone can handle it, God can
he'd better be able to, after all, he got you to come here!

True. He has heard it all before.

in every very kind and gentle person is a powerhouse.

Interesting thought... I've never considered that...

and sometimes, when you're going through hell, you need strong people with whom you can be your "real" whole self

...even when my friend Lu said I have a warrior heart.

you do

But then, those who would be kind have to fight for the room in which to do it.

yes
I know
it sucks
and it's not fair

Well, that has always been a problem. I grew up in a family of appearances. Never rock the boat because then they'll abandon me.

and why doesn't everyone understand that?
still, you know they don't

Because it's easier to just reject kindness as being soft.

yep

Well, yes, they can't abandon me now because they did years ago.

they are not strong enough to not be scared
and you, my dear, could be right scary you are so wise and kind
but that's precisely why I hang out with you

I think I do intimidate some people. Not my intention.
Ah.
You're waiting for the mouse to roar.

he he he
yep
you are definitely not a mouse

Well, there is a roar in there someplace. I'm still here, which really is amazing.

btw, you'll get through this and be even more intimidating in your kindness. May as well get used to it

Oh,my.
That, I think, is the graduate degree.

when you finally decide to like who you are, it will be less painful

That ought to help. It is, however, looking like a long, steep, rough and hot slope.

strong, powerful people are not unkind. They just ARE
the worse part is, you know others don't understand

Right. Like Jesus. Knew exactlly the right word for the people he met.

they can get away with being mean, and you can't
and you wouldn't anyway

Yes... being mean just plain hurts.

but you can still hurt
yep, that's why I know you are big and powerful. You feel bad when you hurt others

But.. being kind usually works better over the long haul.

but you have to allow your self to be yourself, too

And being kind is certainly better for civilization as a whole.

and that's why some of us have gravitated to you

It'd be easier to be myself if I knew who that is.
I've lived the act for so long that I have little idea what's really inside.

aaaah. well, now, who else is going to know but you?
and I bet if you ask you, you will have something interesting to say

Nobody. I'll just have to keep walking.

yes
that is a good decision
stopping never got anyone anywhere

Easy to make because it's all I have. And yes. Just sitting on the ground really doesn't help.

and if the bridge up ahead looks like it's out, keep in mind it only "looks" like it's out

You can only steer if you're moving.

yeah
(((((((((((((((((hugs))))))))))))))))))))

*blush*
I'm not used to being needy

ooooh, I know that one!
when you finally accept it, you will be terribly embarrased
and feel really neat, too.

I'll bet you do... you had brothers to remind you of the cost of being needy.

yep
and one husband who waited for years for me to need him

Ah... I'll bet that's an interesting story.
Seems to me that need is what sinks many relationships... but it's also essential.

and he's an artist, too, and often not very confident, even when he's doing well

I've always thought I'd rather be wanted than needed, but that may be fatuous theory.
Real artists are never confident.

be wanted. better than being needed

If they're confident, they're not doing real art.

yeah, something about that

But there is an element of need in a relationship. Sometimes people need things.

and you are right about need. need implies we don't have whatever it is.

Right... but is it a real need, or something an advertisment has taught us we need?

I like him, but I don't need him, although I like needing him, lol
and he likes that (don't ask me why or how to explain that)

Well, then, who hugs you when you're feeling strung out?

right

Some need is OK. You have to be a real person, but real people need. Even Jesus sighed, and wept at times.
We're so afraid of need. Seems nearly universal.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Anger. Destruction. They, and more, are in me and I don't want to know about it. I'd rather do just about anything else, but anything that gets in the way of I Am needs to go. God knows the way. I don't.

What do I do with need? What happened to choice? Am I not too damned old to be learning this adolescent stuff? I guess if you don't do it then, you do it now or you grow older and more crabbed and bitter. Want to be a real human being? Follow I Am until you are. He sings my name out there in the wild and his voice has a quality that is irresistible.

It's hard to get through, though. There are days when I don't want to talk to anyone. That's my response. I wonder if it's the best.

I've never had anyone say to me what my friend says here. Someone to walk with me? Other than God, this is a first. Maybe there have been others but I missed the cues. I so dread need that I will beat myself rather than allow any need to show. That makes me tired, cranky and... angry. I've never been allowed to be myself. What happens next?

Well, I guess I'll get some breakfast. Movement of any kind requires energy of some kind.

Nosing Out the Path

2006-11-13T18:05:00.000-08:00

Animals can smell water from a long way off, separating the rare damp molecules from the olfactory noise in the environment even in the heat of the day. They follow their noses the rest of the way.

I believe there is a place
where people live in perfect peace
Where there is food on every plate
Where work is rewarded and rest is sweet
Where the color of your skin
won't get you in or keep you out
Where justice reigns and truth finally wins
its hard-fought war against fear and doubt

Rich Mullins is an optimist. He has scented the water in the middle of the desert.

And everyone I know wants to go there too
But when I ask them how to do it they seem so confused
Do I turn to the left
Do I turn to the right
When I turn to the world they gave me this advice

Well, actually, I guess lots of people at least say they're looking for it. Seems to me it really shouldn't be that hard to find.

They said boy you just follow your heart
but my heart just lead me into my chest
They said follow your nose
but the direction changed every time I went and turned my head
They said boy you just follow your dreams
but my dreams were only misty notions
But the Father of hearts and the Maker of noses
and the giver of dreams He's the one I have chosen
And I will follow him

"Follow your nose" is a fine old midwestern expression. I was told that a lot. I've used the phrase since then to describe how I've lived my life because it implies that just sitting still won't get you any closer. If you don't know which way to go, just start walking. Follow your nose.

But perhaps it's deeper than that. Perhaps I've gotten wind of God, scenting him on some vagrant breeze, a few tantalizing molecules amid the hideous human-made desert of what was once a magnificent place. Maybe we all start with the right sense of smell and I was just too stupid or too simple or too enamored to ignore it as was suggested by most of the people I knew. "Be practical. The world doesn't work the way you want it to." My thought was "If this place really works the way you say it does I'd rather not be here."

Somebody has to follow dreams or there'd be no light bulbs and no electricity to run them. There'd be no keyboards, no kindnesses done for friends. There'd be no music. Yeow, what a desert that would be. There would be no stories, no fantasies, no filigree around the edges of our lives.

At the same time there needs to be some kind of grounding. Light bulbs grew from hundreds of years of painstaking research, gradually disseminated in an increasingly scientific world in ways that weren't possible until printing became common. Knowledge of electricity grew the same way and led to motors and microchips and middle-aged men at midnight keyboards. Now we have better ways to communicate our stories but they've been preempted by empty dreams and promises with no more substance than fog in a Namibian dawn. We're told to believe in the dream, have faith in faith to see us through. Edison wouldn't have gotten anywhere with that idea. He got his hands dirty, tried, failed, tried again. He was following his nose, his instincts, against those prevailing in the workaday world around him. Real dreamers test their dreams and end up illuminating the world.

The only route more direct than music to a human heart is smell. Maybe what has drawn me on all these years is nothing more complicated that a certain hint of a wondrous fragrance. They say I got my nose from my grandfather. I think God knows better.

Eventually my nose found its Maker. This isn't due to any great skill on my part. God left his carefully designed scent trail for me to follow. I was blind to deeper truth and still miss most of it, but of all senses the nose is least likely to lie. Corruption stinks and no amount of attar of roses will ever hide it. Does the presence of corruption mean there is no rose? No nose truly knows; believe in the Rose of Sharon and you will be saved. Your nose isn't just leading you on.

Excerpt from "The Maker of Noses," by Rich Mullins

Soundtrack for a Life

2006-11-13T10:50:00.000-08:00

I forgot to mention Tony Myles' post Full Soundtrack in my two posts about playlists. It's probably the gentle push that got me moving in the direction that produced last Saturday's "lifetime playlist." People talk about music and memories, and it's easy for images and events from long-gone periods to come back into vibrant life with the just the starting notes of a song.

Even just in memory, "Blame It On the Bossa-Nova" conjures up the deep blue carpet of our big living room, the cool air I'd drop into as I came downstairs from my room. I'd also sneak over to the record player and change the order of the stack of records my sister had set up. I wanted to hear "Puff" before she did. My DJ roots showed early, I guess. Sometimes she caught me at it and was upset.

Given all that it's kind of odd how, when I first heard about portable music players and playlists it all seemed a solution in search of a problem. Who would want to take the time to copy CDs, convert them to MP3 and then set up playlists? Why not just put the CD into the player and spin it out?

Well, there are some CDs out there that have just one song I want to hear amid a bunch I'd rather do without. Eventually I learned that Itunes could both copy songs and play them back, and I used this capability to reduce a stack of one-song CDs to a 4-hour collection of singles. Even with this strong hint I still wasn't thinking about playlist design: the songs played simply in the order I copied them to the computer.

Now I know better. Take the same set of songs. Put them in one order, you have one kind of party. Put them in another order and you change the mood. Change a song or two and you have something else again. You can go for smooth transitions, or you can drop people off of cliffs. Music I wouldn't listen to by itself becomes a kind of spice in the larger mix, providing contrast rather as bits of ginger in the tom kah guy soup.

That's all a given. DJs have been playing with this forever. I recently found a Web site devoted to playlist design for aspiring DJs. I don't follow any of their principles. You're surprised, right?

What's not a given is what the DJ can add to things. A playlist can transcend mood design and go into deeper territory. Music reaches into people. Propagandists have used this for years. It's kind of frightening for me to know how music hooks people because I detest manipulation in any form and I'm not sure where the boundary is.