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...

Answer?

Last night, I was thinking about how churches often drive for participation.  I've discussed that on this blog at length.  But as I've alluded, I rarely jump to conclusions.  So even though I am staunchly opposed to coercive participation, when faced with yet another instance of it, I still find myself stepping back, and thinking, "Am I the one who's wrong?"

It's always a possibility.  Especially when one finds the same message occurring repeatedly, it's wise to take note and analyze again.  So, I found myself mulling this over as I went to bed.  Remembrance of times when I've tried to buy in and go with it, only to end in disaster.  Debate amongst messages I've received, verses I know, Truths I hold.

And so, as I tried to turn off, I asked God to show me the answer.  And I fell asleep.

So this morning I awoke with two vivid dreams in my mind.  As always, some details are fuzzy, but the important part of any dream is what isn't fuzzy.  In the first, I was going about some business or other when a highly contagious disease began to be noticed among people.  It was subtle, really, starting with few symptoms that were easily misinterpreted.  Tiny red spots, etc.  But if untreated, it ended in death.  It quickly became an epidemic and was still spreading.  I found myself trying to spot people with the disease and help them in any way I could.  At one point, I ended up with a sort of clinic that was set up like a pizza delivery.  Drivers were going out on calls to provide aid, or bring in patients while the doctor and office staff kept calls coming in and treated patients.  I stepped in as a driver and spent the dream taking errands to bring aid, help the sick, bring them in.  I remember being slightly concerned that I may be infected, but didn't have time to be concerned.  I might be infected anyway and these people certainly were.  They needed help.

In the second dream, I was volunteering at a church camp.  I went to sign up and was explaining my experience with education, even coordination, and program development.  The staff seemed too busy to be interested, but when I mentioned education, they started jargoning about educational theories, statistics, etc.  I realized I couldn't possibly keep up with that, since I wasn't a classically trained educator.  But I knew how to work with kids.  So I stepped in and began to relate to some waiting kids.  Then we were ushered into a big room where activities were underway.  I tried to hang on and be useful with no idea what was happening or what I was needed to do, as I've done many times in church ministry.  And that's when I started looking for the red spots again.  I knew some of these kids must be sick.  I needed to find them.  To help them.  I woke up from this.

It was soft morning and I immediately began to think about the dreams while they were fresh.  They didn't feel like my normal dreams...not fueled by my health condition (which produces a characteristic type of dreaming), not the usual amalgam of recent experiences.  It wouldn't be the first time a dream had directly answered a prayer for me.  But any dream could also be my own thoughts.  So I searched for confirmation.

That's when the words of Jesus came to memory, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." and "I came to seek and save that which was lost."  Could that be right?  Did this really apply here?  Was it my imagination pulling together relevant information?  I felt moisture drip down my cheek.  I touched my eyes.  They were wet.  This is often confirmation for me.

I thanked God for answering my prayer.

Then I woke my wife to tell her and see if she confirmed it as well.  In conversation, I became more certain.  This was a reminder of what I had known.  I know my mission, and it is not in vane.  Religious organizations and ministries will churn and that is not my concern.  The secular world will churn and that is not my concern.  Both are equally irrelevant to the task.  The sick are among us.  The disease is rampant.  Symptoms are slow but definitive.  But I am to look for them, and aid where I can.  This is it.

The aid will take various forms: comfort, support, steering toward healing, taking to the Doctor, bringing medicine to the sick.  I don't have to think about being infected.  I just have to help.  I don't even need to cure the disease.  And I'm not alone.  There are many doing the same.  We know each other when we see, but keep at our work.  It compliments each other and we know what to do in this effort.

And if by chance the pizza delivery has a physical manifestation, I'll keep my eyes open.  But the context doesn't matter.  The disease doesn't respect persons or status.  So the cure can't either.

Run

Today I ran.  I run nearly every Friday.  Just me.  In the woods.  No shirt, low tech minimal shoes.  I don't run alone though.  God runs with me.  I can feel the Spirit Lord rush behind me, through me, over me.  Meet me at a bend, whisper to me, shout to me.  I follow his voice.  I run until he stops me.  Sometimes I run fast and hard. Sometimes I run slow.  Sometimes I pause.  Sometimes I am dropped on my butt in awe.

I don't just run.  I also climb, jump, balance, swing.  I am the animal I was made.  I am in tune with my ancestors.  I can feel their joy in me.  I interact with the real world.  Today I ran with deer.  Bounding around me along the trail.  I have argued with hogs.  I have followed raccoons.  I have petted armadillos.  I am becoming less a threat to them and more a part of their world.

I learn too.  Today, I vaulted the table again.  Twice.  I had been hampered by my own mind since falling hard several months ago.  I knew I could do it, but couldn't manage it.  Today I did it.  It was awkward, but successful.

I also ran up a new tree.  Four steps, nearly vertical, no hands.  I have tried many times.  This was the first.  I ran and ran.  I got two steps.  The next time I ran harder and got three steps.  But still not high enough.  Today, I got nearly there.  Then I decided to stop climbing and run the whole way.  The realization settled on me and I felt the flow engage as I focused hard on the first foot plant.  Then lifted my eyes to the end goal and I was soaring into it.  Beyond it actually.  It will only get easier from here.

It was the same with the side jumps.  Jump horizontally from one vertical surface to another.  I could manage one side and then slowly learned to land the other.  Now I can jump from one tree to another and continue forward motion.

This is the physical manifestation of my spiritual discipline.  In this practice, I am healed and made whole, even as my body aches.  Even the rips and tears in my skin, the bruises, the sore muscles are healing.  They are part of the warrior.  I am a man and need to feel physical pain to be wholly who I am made to be.  It confirms I exist and that I can survive.

I am this thing called man.  Half spiritual, half physical, ruler of the natural world, heir to the heavens.  When I run, all is merged into one whole and it is good.