Not a Miracle

I debated whether to post this or not.  But then, I realized that hiding the truth even to spare someone is a kind of lie.  And letting them believe a lie is not doing them any favors.  At the same time, I don't want to damage anyone's faith or reputation unduly, so I am going to stay very anonymous and use pronoun swapping to further shield the person's identity.  Chances are he will never read this, but someone who knows her (see how that works) might.  If you decide to share it with the person, that's up to you.  I ask any reader to be sensitive.

The other day I met someone who walked into this place and very quickly introduced himself to me with a good deal of flourish and formality about who had invited her and why he was there, etc.  I don't know why she introduced herself to me, perhaps he thought I was someone important.  But being the kind of person I am, I am instantly turned off by any pretense at someone being special because of who they know or what they do.  So in an effort to politely express that, I returned the introduction, "Hi, I'm Cav.  I'm nobody."

As soon as I said it, his eyes softened and she began to concernedly explain that I truly was somebody in a mealy voice that further turned me off.  "Here, we go," I thought.  "I should have seen this coming."  But I just politely excused myself from the whole thing and went about my business.  Soon, though he was back asking me if I was an artist.  No?  Maybe a musician?  No, huh.  Finally trying to end this unnecessary bolstering of my self-esteem, I said, "I organize.  That's what I do."  Which I was actually doing at the moment; trying to set something up for her, which she was too involved in my bolstering to help me with. "I set stuff up for ____." I said indicating what I was doing and inserting his self-proclaimed title in the blank.

"See, there's something!" was the sappy reply.

So chalk it up to different strokes, it takes all kinds, whatever.  I went on with my evening.  But later as we were about to leave this person finds me again and has to, "give me a Word."

OK, sidebar.  If you aren't familiar with the term, "give a Word", it's used in certain sects of Christianity to indicate a special message from God.  If you do know the term, please understand that those from other traditions (like me) find it, at best, an excuse to tell us whatever emotional sentiment happened to occur to you at the moment.  And opinions on it range down from there through insipid, presumptuous, and even heretical.  So if you want to get along with someone from a different sect, hold off on this phrase until you know where they stand.  End sidebar.

So, now I'm totally completely uninterested in anything he has to say.  But in the interest of polite brotherhood, I opted to simply listen politely rather than start an argument or offend someone who might be legitimately thinking she's doing good.

The "word" was that I was a craftsman and artist, even though I don't thinkso and when I expressed it by dancing as she had seen me do a few minutes before it had "changed the atmosphere."  Then he capped it with some vague Bible references that I knew but didn't see the relevance of.  But I thanked her and I could tell he was looking for more of a response.  So I turned the conversation to other more general topics and ended with as genuine of a 'nice to meet you' as I could manage.

So, you might be thinking, what a jerk I am for discounting this sensitive soul's attempt to help me.  But if someone is thinking a duck is a flamingo and publicly declaring it, am I not cruel to leave them uncorrected?  Or to be more realistic, if someone is repeatedly calling a new acquaintance by the wrong name, am I not right to point that out, even if it results in momentary embarassment?

So here is what I want to say to this person.  Please read it with as much love and tenderness as you can:  You were wrong.  You weren't hearing anything special from God about me.  You misinterpreted just about everything I said.  And you were very nearly offensive to my brand of faith.  I won't go so far as to say there is never anything true in the way you practice your faith, but in this case, you were totally off.

I know who I am, good and bad.  At least as much as any human can, and probably a good deal more than most, as evidenced by this blog.  I know where my true value lies.  I give God the glory for that.  But culturally, I find it offensive and morally wrong to place any human above another.  So I wasn't going to brag about myself to a total stranger. 

I can't honestly say, I've never dropped a name or asked for a special introduction. But I view these times as failings and ask God to help me become more like the servant Jesus was, who wouldn't even answer the false accusations against him.  In fact, like I said, I wouldn't even be saying this if I didn't think it wrong to withhold the truth when I have the power to potentially open someone's eyes.

Secondly, I come from a tradition where what you do is not considered to be from God.  We read the same verses and arrive at different conclusions and styles.  Neither of us can categorically prove the other wrong.  God will reveal the truth to us as we grow.  So until that time, I'm willing to respect your beliefs and ways.  I ask that you also respect mine. 

So reader, if you find this sounding uncannily like you (whether it was you or not) please know I don't hate you.  I think you were trying to do good.  But please recognize that not everyone understands or even approves of what you do.  If you would call those of us brothers, then maybe you should tone it back a little, especially if this is the first time you meet someone.

Imagine how much damage you could do to someone's faith if they believed you were hearing from God but were totally wrong.  Does that mean God is wrong?  Or are you a liar?  Or maybe just a lunatic?  I'm not saying this is what I think of you, because I understand what you were attempting.  But this is what you might look like to someone who doesn't know better.  So don't bruise a reed.

I speak for the trees.

I'm pretty sure Jesus just rode past me on a bike

OK.  Long title, I know.  It's also been a really long time since I posted anything.  Bygones.

When I run in the swamps every week, it's a real spiritual time for me.  Like John Muir, that's my church.  It's common for me to come out with a revelation of some sort.  Sometimes these are very profound, sometimes kind of silly...like the time I realized that "catch your breath" is exactly the opposite of what happens.  More like we outrun our breath and it has to catch us. But no one says, "I have to stop and let my breath catch up."  But I digress...

This week, the place was entirely deserted when I got there.  Humans are usually pretty scarce when I go, but this day, there was not a sole around.  That alone makes the wild places more majikal (my spelling distinguishes between the real otherworldy supernatural quality and the performance art).  Things just come more alive, seriously, there's more animals visible, etc.

This time though, I was also wearing some natural bug repellent.  With zika on the rise, I figured some form of protection might be prudent.  But this stuff smelled intoxicatingly sweet, like standing in a field of wildflowers.  If you haven't stood in a field of flowers and felt the light-headed giddiness of the perfumes, you don't know what you're missing.

So these two factors were making the place seem way more majikal than usual.  I kept seeing shapes move in the periphery that were gone when I looked, hearing sounds that seemed to have no known cause, feeling chills and shivers, and I thought, it's easy to see why Romantics were so taken with the idea of Faeries.  If they were real, this would be the time and place, you'd find them.  I half expected to fall into a toadstool ring and find myself in different world. Or to stumble across a party of them and be whisked away into a some adventure.

Then I thought, well maybe they aren't real.  But something sparked the notions, so perhaps other forms of being were actually afoot.  That's when I quickly recognized the danger of courting spiritual forces, which I have ample experience with.  So I turned my thoughts to God and thought whatever was up, He was in control of it.  And I asked if I could meet anything like that. Just have a peek behind the veil for a moment.  Then it occurred to me, that if I was asking for that, how much grander would it be to meet God himself moving through the swamp and how all it's glory would ignite with His presence reflecting and radiating through it.

That's when I felt the wind at my back.  It's hard to describe.  It's not there until I start running, and then I feel it pushing up from behind as well as running into it.  Stop and it stops, start and it starts.  In the extremely humid Florida swamps, much of this may be the very air flowing around me as I move through the thick vapor.  But if I've learned anything from my predecessors, it's that one must never assume that because something has a rational explanation, it doesn't also have a majikal dimension, like Uncle George's faerie realms where every flower and sunbeam is a palpable metaphysical argument.

I say this because as the wind whips around me, I often feel it urge me on, like a ethereal being swirling and gamboling around me.  I can almost hear it telling me to run.  And then it struck me deep inside like God often does...crack...Divine Wind...boom...like lightening in my deep brain.  What if that WAS God flowing around me.  The Gentle Blowing.  The Kurios Pnuema!  And I whispered, "God show me."

I kept running.  Through the hotter places, the new growth forest and the heat rippled sand flats.  Eventually I made it to the edge of the swamp.  Just like in a movie, this is the line where it goes from hot to cool, Sun to shade, open to heavily treed.  This is my cathedral.  Just in, I slowed and climbed the vine I usually scale.  4 meters up and then hang in the air.  Then slow back down.  It's my gate to the swamp, the antechamber of the sanctuary.  If God was going to meet me, it would likely happen in there. 

I slow to breath and cool down a minute, when out of nowhere I hear a clatter of bike wheels and a young muscular man with slightly long sandy brown hair erupts over a rise and cranks down hard.  I stayed to the side of the trail.  He made eye contact as soon as he came over the rise.  As he passed he smiled a big knowing smile, gave half a nod, and blew past me down the trail.

I padded off behind him as he disappeared out of site.  I thought how weird it was that he would come out of nowhere (usually I can hear them coming farther off)  and was going so fast in that heat that far from an entrance, and the look on his face was not the usual polite trail greeting; almost a knowing smile.  And then the second of my revelations hit me.  Maybe that was Him!

As I ran, my intellect argued, "Come on, just some guy.  He was probably smiling because you and he are the only crazy ones out here. Or he saw that we were half covered in dirt or something."  But I answered myself, "Yeah, but how else would we expect Jesus to look if he was to show up out here?"

My intellect responded, "Good point."

So I continued, "Heck, for that matter, he could be anyone!"...crack...Angels unware...crackle...least of these...rumble...When did we see you...BA BOOOOOOMMMM...

My intellect, my soul, my skeptic, and all the other parts of me stopped in their tracks...Whoa...