Real change

I'm obviously trying to process a lot lately, which is why I've been posting a lot.  If you find this at random, you might not know that this blog is a place for me to process ideas and emotions, to think out what's going on in and around me.  It's raw and barely edited, some proofing, but largely it is as it comes in the moment, left for you in the off chance that you might find some value in it.

So right as I'm starting to get my feet under me and figure up from down after uprooting my life, giving up my career and moving around the world, I'm now struck by a disturbing thought.  As I sit her late at night listening to the wind swirling outside, I feel a strong inclination that what I'm thinking has all happened before.  Good or bad, I don't know yet.  So that's what I'm hoping to find out here.

I am not happy here, as much as I try to relax into it, to accept it, to let me own desires go, I just don't want to be here.  It's not the country as a whole, it's this particular place and situation.  It's not without it's blessings and charms, but I still on a whole want out.  Only 220 more days or so to go!  But that isn't the disturbing thought.

I was thinking of how to capitalize on this, how to make the best of it, and the thought occurred to me that by making my feelings know I might be shooting myself in the foot.  I should probably, at least publicly milk it for what it's worth and when I return home, spin it into a grand learning experience in which I accomplished quite a bit, even over a rocky start, and boost myself right into something.

Even this isn't the really disturbing part, as Machiavellian and disingenuous as it is, I know my potential to be a politician, to manipulate, so I'm not surprised by that.  But that's when it hit me that this has happened before.  And it worked!  That's what disturbs me.  Eventually I might have even started to believe it!  Which again, isn't the first time, because to sell a con, you have to believe it first.

So I may be wrong.  I may be misjudging myself, as a mentor has told me.  But let's just play out this perspective for a bit and see.  So here goes, this is likely going to hurt.

When I came here before, I wasn't perfectly happy either.  The job was very similar, though I had a few opportunities to sink my teeth in and better relationships that have been lifelong.  But it wasn't perfect and I was reluctant to return, but did for many reasons.  I always wanted to go back, so I started about a process to try to make it possible.  Very quickly opportunities presented themselves and through a little planning, and mostly capitalizing on the opportunities by looking long range, I was able to work my way into a position that received a prestigious award from the government of the country I am now in and made me quite well known in the circles I traveled in my home.  I don't want to over blow this.  Most people wouldn't have a clue who I am and many in the circles wouldn't know me either.  But the point is it worked for my purposes and I was able to keep doors open and here I am.  I'm not even really sure I got well evaluated for the job, but am pretty confident my reputation scooted me through on the grease I laid with my con skills.

So I could do this again.  I could start paving the way now and just to prove it, I'll talk about how.  I'd start by ceasing all negative comment in a remotely public setting, then removing any that have been published on the internet.  Those that remain would be chalked up to a weak moment if ever questioned, who among us doesn't have those, and look at the risks I took, it's natural, right?  Then I'd start manipulating my current workplace.  They have no idea what to do with me and they all either care about their careers or their mission to educate, which is admirable, and open to predation.  So I'd start feeding each teacher what they want to hear and insert my own ideas into their minds by small suggestions until I get to start something that I already know will fail, but which won't be evaluable.  See the success is not important, it's legitimizing the effort.  I just need to be able to say I did, x, y ,z while here.  Then I'll look for some public ways to verify that by starting some social media posts, or groups, organizing the others on the program here for certain small scale events, even starting something regularly to show that I can.  Doesn't matter how well it goes, because like I said, no one really cares.  I just set it up so it keeps my face and name in front of people for later.

Then upon returning, I'll look for opportunities, which won't be hard to find, since I did legitimately put in a lot of time building the persona and no one wants to fill it.  So I can easily take it right back.  At that point, it will be really hard for anyone to verify anything I say, so if I put on the right body language and key phrases, I could even end up getting a job out of it.  None of it is a lie.  None of it would be outright false.  But it's still all a front, a sham designed to get me something.

So is that what I'll do?  I could recount so many instances of doing things like this in other parts of my life.  Like they said in one of my favorite movies, the Prestige, to pull off a deception like this, your life has to BE the con.  You have to LIVE it.

Am I evil?  Do I do hurtful things with my manipulations?  No.  In fact, I do a lot of good with them.  But they are still all masks.  Here in this life, I'm learning to be more honest and open.  I've so far refused to use those tactics.  I'm letting others flounder around when I see so many opportunities to take the reigns to some degree.

Or am I flattering myself?  Is all of this I'm saying the actual fiction?  Maybe I am not so deceptive, nor even so skilled.  The problem is I can't tell.  But I am well aware that to do the same things produces the same results.  So to get different results you have to do different things.  This is why people will occasionally disappear from public life.  Or sell out of being a lawyer to be a lawn guy.  So I came here in an attempt to change the story of the rich young ruler and to actually get out of the boat and see if I can walk on water.  So what happens next?  If you read this, you'll have your answer...unless it's just another play in my long game.

Gospel

OK.  So this is such a hard topic, that I just wrote a screen full of paragraphs and deleted them all.

Here's the difficulty distilled.  If the Gospel is such good news that people would change their lives from it, change their personalities, go to very gruesome deaths over it, why don't I feel that way about it?  Truth is I don't.  I feel like I should.  But I just don't. 

So let's break down the possibilities. 

1. I am broken such that I am having an inappropriate reaction.

Possible.  I could be mentally damaged in a way that I can't perceive this correctly.  Problem is it's for all people.  So if I can't perceive it appropriately, there's nothing I can do about it, and further discussion is pointless.  I'll either be excused by a good God or condemned for it by an evil one.

2. I am so sinful that it's beyond me.

I thought this for many years.  It led to constant searching, anxiety, self-hatred, and extreme asceticism that even adversely affected my health.  Many of the Mystics started here too and I had clung to them as brothers and sisters in a struggle.  But here's the thing.  Some of them left that life after coming to believe God didn't want them to harm themselves in attempts to cleanse the wicked.

I have to agree here because I also feel the same way.  There was no joy in it, and joy is supposed to be a fruit of the Spirit.  Plus, if I step outside myself and look as objectively as I can, I'm seeking far more than many other people who feel the joy and love the Truth.  Many don't ever even enter such a crisis of existence.  So explaining that could force me to brimstone preaching if I go the Armenian route since they're all dead in their transgressions and marching straight to hell and I should shock them into reality.  Or else I slip into pride or despair on the Calvinist side, since I'm either one of the elect or not, as you choose to interpret the attitude.

3. There is no Gospel.

Tempting.  But I've been down this route before.  It ends in nihilism.  If there is no real truth, then my highest and best faculties are illusions and there are no consequences except to cease being, which doesn't matter anyway.  I am forced into hedonistic abandon as I try to get the most pleasure out of my meaningless life or more usually for nihilists, into despair as no matter of effort makes any real difference.

Of course there's all kinds of outposts where people stop short, such as the progeny concept where our goal is to preserve the species as a whole.  But this ignores individual suffering and identity, and worst of all, still slides quickly to nihilism when I realize that the drive to preserve the species is also a biological illusion...WHY is it good to preserve the species.  The word 'good' ceases to have real meaning...hence the reason nihilists tip toward despair.

Or if 'good' is a real thing, I'm back into objective Truth, and we go back to 1 or 2.

4. I've got the Gospel wrong.

Obviously, I left this for last because this is what I have concluded.  It comes to me over many centuries of writing, from many places, and from many directions that are unrelated to each other.  But this is where I am.  I've had it wrong.  I've been taught it wrong. 

So this leads to the question, what IS the gosepl then?  When I think about what makes me stay a Christian.  What makes me bubble over with joy.  What makes tears stand in my eyes.  What I can't help but share and what I would...seriously would easily go to my death or torture before I deny it.  It isn't any of the things I was taught in Sunday school...man, threaten to seriously start flaying my skin off alive and frying me in a giant hot pan (this has really happened) I'm probably going to find a way to reason out of most anything I learned to recite...I'm just telling you the truth.

But what I won't deny is that God loves each and every one of us.  Dearly deeply loves us.  He doesn't condemn.  He heals.  He doesn't want rule followers.  He doesn't want political duty.  He doesn't want Christians who make Christians (whatever that means was never clearly defined; sorry bro that's why we parted ways).  He wants children that climb up in his lap.  He wants a whole family of people who love each other and live in respect and not just pretend, but really truly fulfill the needs in each other.  It's not a fake it till you make it thing.  It's not a man-up thing (Geez, don't get me started on that one).  What he wants is simple, honest, goodness.  God never left us.  He never turned away from us.  Nothing is too big for him.  All wrongs will be righted.  All wounds will be healed, no matter who you are, where you are from, or even what you mistakenly believe.  Because the real Truth IS irresistible.  Who wouldn't want to fall into the arms of the perfect love and peace.  ALL of us all over the planet, no matter who, when, where, or how, know this.  I read the Bible this way.  I see Jesus as epitomizing this.  It doesn't deny other religions, it subsumes them.  I see this idea truly revolutionizing the world.  Not always under the flag of Christianity, but in a steady progression of higher and higher societal ideas which are large scale mirrors of individual ideals.

It makes me change my ways...I want to be good.  BE good, not just SEEM good.  I am free to give of myself because I know it matters and will only generate more good.  I want to tell others so they can be freed from the fears and hurts they have.  I want to help HEAL those hurts, even if it means taking some of them on myself, and thus I participate in God's work.  This is a message I would take to the ends of the earth.

And as much as it scares the living sense out of me, I'd just have to be flayed if you wanted me to say anything otherwise because denying that real Goodness and Love exist is to turn suffering brothers and sisters into more pain than you can give me.  And that I just can't do.  THAT's GOSPEL.

Look again

I was reading John 9 today and stopped on the first few sentences where the disciples question Jesus about a blind man.  Jesus says that he was born blind so that the works of God might be manifested, made manifest, displayed (depending on translation) in him.  Then Jesus heals the guy.

This is often interpreted that Jesus was referring to what he was about to do...heal him.  But I've never liked that explanation.  So God would make this guy an abject beggar for his whole life in a society that viewed disabilities as the results of sin and therefore often rejected the disabled, just so one day far into the future, Jesus would walk by and have the opportunity to heal him instantly?

I don't know, but that seems pretty cruel.  I could almost rather buy the Hebrew explanation that his parents must have been guilty of some grievous sin rather than think that God would subject someone to so much pain and suffering just for the one moment we get recorded.


If Jesus did mean the man was just an opportunity for him to heal, what about all the other people who are in the same boat, but don't get healed?  Are they actually the ones born in sin?  Are they just purposeless?  That makes it seem even worse!

So if that doesn't wash, what else could he mean?  I checked the Greek and it means just what the English says, "should be manifested".  So not much help there. 

The story goes on to describe how the man went to show himself to the priests, required for admittance back into society.  They grill him about what happened.  The man is surprisingly witty back to them, wisecracking on them and making the famous statement paraphrased, "I don't know about all that, I just know I was blind and now I see."  He even goes on to "teach" the know-it-all Pharisees some logic, which really doesn't go over well.  Eventually the man meets Jesus again and after a couple questions, showing a very sharp mind, the man believes that Jesus is the Christ.

This makes me think, maybe Jesus means the man was born blind so God's working in him could be shown.  Look at the guy's attitude!  Where does a blind beggar learn to reason and wit like he does?  Where does he get the guts to repeatedly insult the priests that everyone else, including the man's own parents, are terrified of?

Could it be that Jesus was saying this man was, dare I say, blessed to be blind because it made him more open to what God wanted him to be?  Being unable to pursue the rat-race trappings of life, he grows in truth.  Being already disregarded by society, the "rulers" have no power over him.  He doesn't fear anything they can do to him.  Having experienced their hypocrisy first hand, he "sees" through it more than most.

Could this be why Jesus ends by saying he came so that the blind will see and those who see will be made blind?  This fits well with Jesus' continual habit of turning the social and political structures of his day upside down.  We had it twisted and he was untwisting it.  The man we all despise is the best one of us, freer, bolder, stronger, eyes or no.  And all the things we build up around ourselves to define who we are and show how we stack up to others are utter stupidity.

Is this new?

After my recent cycle into darkness, I am starting to feel better.  Not 100%, but better.  I'm still working out some things about causes, triggers, etc.  No major metanoia either though.

But I did have one realization as the light started to dawn in my world again.  I've been faking things pretty darn well.  I actually do it a lot.  It probably started as a survival mechanism somewhere.  But I remember coming to a point years ago where I had to let things out.  It helped me stay out of the dark.  But I developed a reputation for being really angry.  I kept my head pretty well, but I would verbally rail about things that upset me and there were lots of them.

Overtime, I had thought I'd gotten rid of that. Calmed down.  But recently I've found that same part of me still there, still as angry.  It hadn't come back.  It just never left.  I guess I'd been repressing it.

Actually, I hate being angry.  It's really just a sort of snarling out of fear and frustration.  See, it all comes back to cages.  I hate being pent up.  I don't know why.  I'm not claustrophobic or anything, it's more an internal sort of thing.  When I'm being boxed in, given a situation where there's no way out, I start to get like any intelligent animal in a cage gets.  They either get mean, go crazy, or give up.  And mean is the most conducive to survival.  Crazy just means they've won, and giving up feels worse than anything.  That's where the demons are.  So anger it is.

But anyway, my point is that I had become pretty good at faking the right attitude.  Even in my spiritual life, I know what a mature Christian should exhibit, and I can put that on.  I can also pull off just the right mix of humility and power to make people think I'm pretty darn holy.  I even learned to mix in a good deal of truth with it such that I flat out tell people I'm bad, but do it in a way that they don't believe me.  I'm serious about this.  I know how to pause, tone my voice, phrase my words and make what I want to say seem wise or mysterious or even beyond my years.  I even fooled myself into believing it.  Seriously.  That's what I've just learned.  I haven't really grown much at all.

Now in some ways I have, sure.  I could go into those but that would make this over-long.  But in this deep root area, I have not changed much at all.  The fruits of the spirit are just not there.  I know how to make them look like they're there, but that's not the same thing.  It's not.  What's real is the natural outpouring of the heart when we're not trying.

What's been coming out of me lately means I'm either possessed or have just opened up a dark corner of my internal house and found it has been rotting in there for a long time.  I don't want to go into what made me realize this, but suffice to say you'll probably imagine it worse than it was outwardly, but if I told you, you'd imagine it far less than it was inwardly.  So I won't say.

But this made me think of how that could happen.  How could I pursue virtue and good character and not find even a little of it?  I think it's because I'm pursuing the wrong thing.  You see, any time we Christians lay an expectation on another, we force them, be it insidiously slight or brashly overt, to ACT like we tell them they should.  It's all about the DIY.  Fruits are love, joy, peace, patience... So I'll just be more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient.  I won't be perfect, but heck, we're all sinners saved by grace, right?  It's the try that counts and the more we try, the more we actually become.  Fake it till you make it!

This is wrong.  God wants us not to love him from obligation or expectation.  He wants us to genuinely love him.  He'd rather us reject him than pretend.  This is the only explanation that makes sense.  So if I'm doing something good that my heart's not into, I might as well not do it.  Better to be bad and honest than good and a liar because the first leads to real life, while the other leads to white-washed tombs.

So this part isn't new.  I've blogged about it before.  But what is new is the realization that I am one of the tombs.  If it took a trip to hell to open my eyes to that, then I thank God for it.  I've got to quit this, but I can't.  So I have to re-learn it all from this perspective.  He does the work.  I just grow however he grows me; I can't, sow, hoe, water, and prune myself.

So if you think I've fallen off the deep end, you were just one of those I duped.  Please don't try to draw me back in.  It's hard to stay honest in this.  And I'm faking it enough already in writing this so cleanly.

New Wine

Think of a world of goodness.  A world of hope and happiness in which people are fulfilled and not wronged.  A place where you are known for who you are and you can drop the masks of conformity and social acceptance.  A place where things are as they should be.

Doesn't exist, right?  Many people have promised it in one form or another.  Many have sought it in one form or another.  Many try to bluff us into believing it is in a certain system or organization.  But our hearts know when it isn't there, right?  Deep down, they can't lie and we know when we're being fooled.

I was taught that Jesus was the way to all those things. That it didn't exist in this world, but it would in the place called heaven where no bad thing could enter. That Jesus was the gatekeeper.  That we had to follow him.  That all we had to do was accept his free gift.  Well, accept it and truly believe it.  That, and stop doing bad things.  Oh, and go to church, learn about him.  Yeah, and memorize Bible verses, and not listen to music that was too wild...unless the band was Christian, but then only if they really acted like it because you know people say they are, but the proof is in their life.  Which, while we're at it, let's talk about your clothes.  Oh, and of course, you HAVE to witness.  That's everyone's job because there's so many people out there going to hell because they don't believe right, which we can tell because they don't do all the things we do.  Of course, we can't judge.  Some of them could actually be saved.  But definitely not those over there.

God help me! Is it any wonder I lost my mind?  Who can keep that up?  It's insidious and wicked to the core!  It eats up those who spew it like stomach acid.  So if that's what hope is, I can't have it.  And without hope, there's only nihilism.  A dry empty desert of never-ending grey.  No direction, no purpose.  Just blind existence.  Nothing matters.  Maybe I'll just die today and think, 'finally' as the life slips out of me and I release the curse of consciousness.

But in that place, something broke through in me.  It was fresh and bright and full of energy.  I didn't know what it was, but it appeared, when I could see it, with strong male arms and hands.  Of course, I pretended it must be Jesus because that's what I had been taught, but I didn't really know.  I was just glad to have breath.  To see light.  To see that the world was hopeless because the hope was outside of it.  While I didn't know who or what that was, I was hooked.  I didn't care, something inside was screaming that was what I needed.

If it ate me up, I didn't care.  That was life and I needed it. Like heat migrates to cold, it was soaking into me and I didn't want it to stop.

It wasn't at all like the Jesus I had been taught.  So I dropped what I knew like a broken toy.  If Jesus and this light went two separate directions, I was following the light.  How could I not!  This thing was palpable.  I couldn't go back to that death.  But the weird thing is, the more I tried to shake off the Jesus I had been taught, the more I kept finding he wasn't really what I had been taught.  When I read his words with my own fresh eyes, they didn't say what I had been taught they said.  They said things that flared that light inside me.  Things I didn't find anywhere else.

Now I've blogged enough about my darkness.  That cloud in my flesh never really goes away.  But deep inside, there's still this place of light that no one gets to see.  And I mean that, no one.  And from that place of freedom come all kinds of good things that make people look at me like I'm from some other planet.

But then, I keep trying to find others who share this understanding and in every church, in every group, I find sparks of it, that quickly get smothered by a heap of stinking wet leaves every time they flare!  Why is it that people can't stop heaping their own death on the living fire?

Don't get me wrong, some have and we get along like the kindred spirits we are.  But most of those that think they get it don't.  They try to pull me in, they see something in me they can't place, but they like it, so they try to rein it into their system.  But you can't!

I'm telling you all, you know who you are.  You can't rein it in because it isn't in me.  You can't rein me in because I'm in it.  It's so much bigger.  You touch it and then try to bottle it.  But it can't be bottled, and I have to be true to that light and truth.  I don't steer it, box, it, guide it.  It guides me!  It...or He as I have come to know Him guides me.  In my deep place where He sits, I know what's right and what isn't.

See, even now, you're searching your mental scripts for a place to stick what I'm saying.  You think you've got it.  We'll, I'll help you out...it's in the Bible.  "Stand at the door and knock", "Come in to him and make my home with him", you're hearing the songs from Sunday School about Jesus in your heart.  Yeah, that's because they're describing this!  It just isn't what you think it is!!  If it was, you wouldn't look at me like you can't quite get me.  You'd look at me like you know what I know.  I can tell man!  I know because I came to it from the outside.  I couldn't see it from the inside either. 

So you know what?  I'm done with it.  I'm shaking the dust off and going to those who aren't tainted.  New wine skins for new wine, yeah?

The very images you use to leave people in the dust who disagree with you are what I'm using to part ways with you.  But unlike your understanding, I don't think it means you aren't worth my time or are in error.  We just don't speak the same language and therefore we can't communicate.  You think we do, but we don't because when I try to make a point, you say, "Yeah! and then go totally the other direction."

But I will leave you with a sign post in the direction I'm heading.  Because I know you'll come sooner or later.  Whether your rules involve authorities and buildings, or annointings and movements, or doings and houses, they're still performance-based systems motivated out of ought and should and gotta.  And if you think yours isn't, test it in this way:  Refuse or challenge what some leader in your system says should happen.  Do it to them directly...politely, but in no uncertain terms.  See what happens.  Dollars to doughnuts, their reaction is severe, possibly angry, and rooted in threat response.  Because people who don't line up show the cracks in their boxes and what can't be controlled must be expelled.  Don't believe me?  Try it.

To everyone else, don't be afraid to follow that light and good you feel.  Chase it down where you find it.  That love won't lead you too far off.  And if anything I've said has sparked that in you, come find me.  I mean that.  I'll help you carry your baggage and I don't need to see what's inside it.  We'll follow that light until we find that place to rest.

Assimilation

This blog is about Truth.  With a capital T because I mean it in the big sense, not the baser sense of "true story" or true/false.  Science is also about Truth...at least it is at the heart, before media and corpocracy and fame have tainted it.  The only reason science and religion conflict is because practitioners of one or both confuse the roll of each.  See science can only tell us about observable reproducable things.  As such, it can't talk at all about things that fall outside of the ability to observe and test.  Conversely, religion isn't about empirical, observable, testable reality.  Reality, yes, but not the physical world in the way science is interested.  Anyway, I digress.  My point is that I try to understand my world as a whole.  And science informs things quite well.  So it shouldn't be a surprise that this blog may also cover scientific matters from time to time as they engage in my brain.

So the concept of assimilation.  This is the process of taking something in and making it a part of the entity, whether that is biological, social, spiritual, etc.  Essentially, an assimilated thing ceases to be separate from the thing that assimilates it.  We assimilate nutrients.  Nations assimilate people.  The US is known as the "melting pot", which refers to the quality of assimilating people from many backgrounds.  We are not a nation based on genetic isolation or ancient tribal divides.  Assimilation is a natural process that absolutely pervades every aspect of the function of the world.  But I don't think many people understand it at all.

I was thinking of assimilation around the Christmas season for a couple reasons.  First, because people get wound up about the various elements of the holiday.  Regardless of what angle of that argument you might sit in, I think the concept of assimilation should help unwind that tension some.

No culture exists in a vacuum.  Even the oldest cultures are influenced by those around them and evolve through time.  The culture of a tribe 1000 years ago would not be the same now, even if that tribe were totally untouched by the outside, which none are.  So there are going to be things that move from one to the other in both directions.

When Christianity first began to spread, it was spreading through existing cultures.  Some of those celebrated Saturnalia, some celebrated Yule, and many other winter festivities.  So when a few people began to see that this new faith had Truth, they didn't cease to live in the culture they were in.  Others around them still celebrated the things they always did.  Christianity, being a very assimilative type of faith, does not proscribe or prohibit much outright.  The Apostle Paul (Saint Paul, depending on your tradition) who wrote most of the New Testament says all things are permissible, but not everything is beneficial.  The individual has to determine what is good for themselves and their own.  So many found what was good and true in the culture they occupied and kept those elements.

Where there were conflicts of conscience, people sometimes adapted the holiday to something that fit their new beliefs.  Ok, so we aren't celebrating Thor any more, but as all powers and principalities are subject to the One God, then Father Christmas must also be subject to him...It's not a conscious happening, it's a slow and imperceptible shifting.  Father Christmas, sounds much like the traditions of Saint Nicholas from southern Europe, so those gradually get merged as well.

Now if you are seriously conflicted by any pagan elements in your holiday, by all means, do what your conscience demands.  Paul also says to bear with those who have weaker faith, so I for one won't be in your face about what gives you trouble, just like I won't drink alcohol around an alcoholic or a Baptist.  But for your part, recognize the freedom of those of us who do not feel conflicted about it.  We're not apostate because we let our kids enjoy a gift given in the name of a mythical character or a Saint.  WE aren't worshipping a pagan God when we do it, despite the origin.

And if you're on the other side where you feel your holiday was stolen and perverted by us tyrannical Christians, please remember that you are still free to celebrate whatever you like.  As I described above, most of the assimilation was a natural cultural process and not a decision to abolish or persecute your religion.  I don't doubt that there were times where a state religion prohibited practices in an attempt to mandate what it felt was good.  But that's not what's happening in the West right now.  In fact, in today's world, you're more likely to live in a nation that mandates against Christianity, if it speaks to national religion at all.  So it goes both ways.  Individuals are not nations and nations are not individuals.  Celebrate what you like in the way you like and allow others the same respect, even if you disagree.  This is the definition of political and religious freedom.

Now on to the second topic of assimilation.  Food.  When you eat, your body assimilates the chemicals in that food: proteins, lipids, nutrients, synthetics, etc.  Those things become a part of your body.  Your body knows how to use a lot of those things.  A good deal of them, your body can't use.  Some of them actively break down the processes in your body as it tries to figure out what to do with them.  But since assimilation is a great principle of life on Earth, a natural law, your body has an amazing capacity to take damage.  It will assimilate and assimilate until it is overloaded.  Even useful things can become a problem when there are too many of them. 

Unfortunately, our bodies are so good at assimilating stuff we often don't take notice.  The impacts, are virtually undetectable.  But they are occurring.  We only notice it once it's so far damaged that something actually breaks.  It's the same process all over the natural world.  I'm a water scientist and I see people seep junk into lakes and rivers for decades and then get utterly bewildered when the lake turns green and icky "all of a sudden".  Truthfully, there are usually warning signs if you know what to look for, but people don't pay attention to them in their body or the world around them.

Even the government is not good at watching this.  You see, most of the government employees want to do good, that's why we choose a lower paying career that comes with ample abuse from ignorant people.  But a good deal of the job is about keeping the wheels turning.  In the US especially, it's hard to just say, "whoa, change everything because this isn't working."  So we operate by determining exactly how much we can mess something up before the impacts are too noticeable.  I'm dead serious about this.  It's how the laws are written and how the policies are structured.  It's not a mindset of keeping things healthy, solvent, or sustainable.  It's how much abuse can we take from all the pressures and not fall apart.

The same goes with individual health.  Many people try to sneak just under the line where they crash rather than aim for the healthiest they can be.  Fortunately for someone with a condition like me, my body reacts far more instantly to a bad element than most.  So people say it's a problem with my body and those things don't affect them.  But they DO affect you.  They affect everyone.  I'm like the canary in the coal mine.  My reaction is the magnified and instant representation of what it's doing to you over the decades.

So why play with fire?  If you, unlike me, have a good margin of safety, you won't fall out from a little bad stuff, but it's still bad!  Imagine how healthy you could be if you didn't keep taking in that stuff that's pulling you apart at the cellular level.

Anyway, these have been my thoughts through this Christmas season as I've watched and listened to the world around me.  As we start into a new year, I'd encourage you to take advantage of this marker in time to begin consciously assimilating these ideas about assimilation.  Once you understand the concept, it explains so much of the world around you.  You'll be more insightful, happier, and healthier for it.

Stolen or Lost

As often happens, I'm jumping off from something someone said who may actually read this.  If that's you, or you know who it is, please note that I am being careful to divorce the statement from the person.  As I've stated before, I'm dealing with ideas in this blog, which are the things the internet is made of, and not attacking people.  Truthfully, the statement is nothing more than a point of departure that got me thinking.  So I'm thankful for that and move on in the spirit of healthy salonic discussion and the "you" I address below is not that person, but a strawman I've set up for express purposes of tearing down. (that's actually what 'strawman' means, though people rarely use it correctly.)

So what is this now much anticipated statement?  That God wants his church back.  Yeah, that's it.  If you're let down, you obviously don't read this blog much.  At first, my reaction was "Who took it?"  Who could take it?  Is That-Than-Which-Nothing-Greater-Can-Be-Conceived so easily thwarted that anything which is His could be taken, stolen, or lost?

Now, of course, I get the statement.  I know how it was intended: as a clever way to describe a truth.  So no big deal.  But it lingered.  So as I pondered why, I came to see this as a symptom of the very kind of thinking which has led to the problem being addressed in the first place.  That problem is a lack of true relationship, true following of God's Reality.  See, I know several people right now who are on this journey away from the institutionalized church.  They call it different names, but this has been a grand revelation for them.  I'm happy for them and supportive.  I really am, because I am quite frankly tired of being out here in the woods by myself...both metaphorically and physically.  But more importantly, as one who came through this path myself, I get it.  I know the jaw dropping joy and boundless, sometimes sickening freedom of it.  Come on and catch up so we can move on together!  I hope these thoughts help.

But it's important to recognize that this is not a new thing.  It's not a "move of God."  Honestly, you gotta drop that kind of vocabulary altogether, bro.  God doesn't move like that.  Isn't that what you're waking up to?  His work hasn't been constrained to the various human institutions that come and go.  Sure he's moved through them, but not because of any thing they were.  Not because of anything they 'got right'.  To say so is just a deeper layer of the Pharisaical doctrines that Jesus was so against.  They'd taken the truth and twisted it to their own purposes.  Blind guides.

No God only moves one way.  It's the same way he always moves.  It's the way that Jesus came to show us, and the reason so few in his generation got it.  What were they expecting?  A hero.  A Warrior King.  A Righteous Ruler to wield true Divine Authority and set right all that was wrong.  They got this from their scriptures, just like we get our fallacies.

But what was Jesus?  Not that!  He said over and over, the Kingdom of God is not what men think.  It's within.  It's spiritual.  It's unseen.  He didn't overthrow society, he stepped out of it while staying right in it.  He crossed planes and walked right by those who thought they had it figured out.  The ruler who failed; that's him on the surface.  Just another radical who died.

You see where I'm going with this?  But what he did was change people on the inside.  He made them different.  He healed what was broken at the deepest levels.  I'll say it again, God only moves one way.  And that way is the way he's always moved: in the hearts of each individual person.  In those deep places where our own internal eye can barely see.  That's where he does his work.

Everything that occurs on the physical level is just a manifestation of this change.  A projection of a mutlidimensional existence into 3 dimensions.  It all comes from that.  On our own, we can't keep from getting the cart first.

So, remember that while this may be new to you, and the greatest thing ever.  It is...to you.  But you aren't the first, not even the early generation, man.  We had these same 'movements' in the mid '90's.  Right down to the house churches and all, bro.  I'm not saying their bad.  Walk your walk out.  You can't be expected anywhere on the path but where you are.  But realize things are just well in God's Kingdom.  They've never been shaken by winds of change in the world.  No one can take God's church, man.  He can't lose it either.  What was lost is us.  What's coming back is you.  What he's changing is your mind, not the world.  you thought you knew how it worked, but you've learned better now.

Read more old books.  Rome had it.  18th century France had it.  19th century England had it.  Early 20th century Europe had it.  Same abuses, same institutions painted in the fashions of the day.  And the same people realizing what's real and what isn't.  The same people awakening to what you are feeling now.

I know it's tough to shed old habits, and you'll probably get it wrong for many more years.  I'm just a little further down the path myself, so I'll be a different person soon too.  But one thing I can see from my view of the bend that you haven't gotten to yet is the lack of the preachy interaction.  Man, everything you learn isn't a revelation for everyone else.  Heed it.  Share it for sure.  But know, you aren't always gonna be at the head of the charge.  In truth, you never really were.  You just thought so, bro.

Now, jog on up here and let's go further up and further in together!

Toss up

So, here's a question I wrestle with.  What exactly is the good news?  I've blogged it before and I still believe that.  But the crux of it this time is more about how that should be walked out.  I grew up steeped in Evengelicalism.  I'm still not too far away from it, since we tend to orbit around the gravitational centers of our upbringing.  Though I feel more like a comet than an inner planet these days.

My struggle is this:  Evangelicals take the very plain text of Paul and others about the Gospel, or good news, which simply says that Christ died and rose again, and then overlay their interpretation of what that means.  The meaning they ascribe is something of the substitutiary atonement thing that this coming and rising atoned for sins and now people can be right with God.  It's all in the Bible.  I've read it all.  I know the theology.  The thing is, it never sits that well as they spin it.

I don't disbelieve it, but I'm not sure they (we, I guess) have it right exactly.  I see a disconnect in the things Paul says and does and the things Jesus says.  I see differences in the things the Apostles say...Peter from Paul, James from both of them.  Again, I know the theology to reconcile them, but I'm not sure it's right.  It never sits well.  Never resonates true in my deep parts.

I'm not even sure how to articulate it.  So I'll ramble.  (This has the makings of a long post, so fair warning.)  Jesus says believe on him, follow him, keep his commandments.  Got it.  But his actions and words are all about doing right, faith in God, forgiveness.  It's a topside down, knife through paper, sort of worldview that rocks the people of his day.  He lifts up prostitutes and adulterers and speaks to people's hearts.  His sermons have a more universal appeal.  He harangues the self-righteous and opens arms wide to heal, meet needs, etc.  It's a big love.  He never asks them to get in line with some theological system.

But then we get into Acts and the Epistles and we get this charge out and argue, win converts, lose your life defending the truth sort of thing.  It's far more political in a sense...or am I missing something?  Maybe I just need to do an in-depth study of some parts to get a better handle on it.  But it seems to me, either these guys are heading in a different direction (though it could be a direction they were sent, as some argue that Jesus' work is different from ours). 

Or we've missed the point of the message the early evangelists preached.  I've heard this approach too.  That we're piecing together a system out of one side of several  conversations addressing discreet issues.

So is it valid to think that Jesus' approach is what the Apostles were using?  In some cases, clearly not.  They were preaching out systematic theology.  Most of Romans is this and it accounts for most of what we call Christianity today.

So when it comes down to it, here's the rub.  I have gone out and "witnessed".  I've used the tracts.  I've used the wordless book and beads.  I've worked the tents at fairs.  And all of it was uncomfortable and hollow.  I felt like it was doing little and I just wanted to stop.  So am I so lost inside that my old nature has that much sway?  If so, I can't change it.  No fake it till you make it for me.  That's living a lie and I've done that too.  I have no choice but to wait until that is fixed within me, despite what the "get out there" people are saying.

But I am totally comfortable with people knowing what I believe.  I explain it, allude to it, talk about it in an easy natural sort of way.  I'll explain theology to people who have an interest.  Listen to people's problems, meet needs (oh this is another peeve I'll get to in a minute), pray for people.  But I don't want to whack them over the head with my beliefs.  I'm not going up to people and cold-cocking them with, "Hey dude, you know what the Bible says about following Jesus?  Let me tell ya!"  I'm not walking the streets looking for people to stop and witness to or pray for or debate with.  Heck, I'll pray for them.  I'll jump right in and meet the need as soon as it's shown to me.  Which brings me to the peeve.  If you're going out and doing any sort of ministry without first meeting the real present needs before you, you've got it backward!  I'm sorry.  You don't need to ask a homeless guy what you can pray for.  It's obvious, man!  Give the dude some food or clothes, or money even (if that won't send him into a bender).  Even regular people.  Just meet the needs, then work on the spirit.  you can't get teh spirit in tune until the animal is cared for.  But too often, Evangelicals are so after the soul part, they walk right over the needs of the moment.

And I have struggled with this for a while.  I once went and talked to a mentor of mine regarding this very thing because I was convinced I needed to start some direct ministry and was even going to abandon my community to "spend the energy on more holy pursuits".  But surprisingly, this person told me I had it all wrong.  He told me I already had my flock.  He cautioned me against what I was thinking for good reasons.  I asked how I make it more Christ focused and he said, "don't."  I was shocked, but it rang clear as a bell in my heart and mind.  I felt the peace about it.  He was right.  It went against my upbringing and theological training.  But he was right.  I should trust my heart over my head if the Spirit Lord is living in me.  When I get confirmation, I should drop anything that isn't in line with it.  But it's hard to do when I'm surrounded by the buzz of the other mess.  My mentor told me that I was to do what I'm doing.  Follow God's leading in the moment.  When he led me to speak, I'd speak.  Otherwise, live it first and foremost.  Serve my community.  My flock.  It's that simple.

And that's what I'm trying to do.  I just wish I could settle my head around these other issues.  Like I said, I think I need a period of intense study to come to terms with it so I won't keep feeling like I'm missing it when people start jawing that other stuff...that isn't wrong necessarily.  Do what you gotta do, man.  But let me do what I gotta do.

War

I recently heard someone speaking about Deliverance, with a capital D.  I hadn't heard of it before.  Honestly, I ended up in a position to hear him speak completely unintentionally.  Anyway, the word with a capital D refers to, the speaker said, "the casting out of demons." Yep.  I'm not kidding.  It's a thing.  He wasn't making that up.  I check everything.

So as he presented it, it's a system of counselling that focuses on removing demonic influence from people's lives.  To his credit, he was not at all pushy and delivered his talk in a very matter-of-fact and non-spooky way.  He did not come off as a charlatan.  I'd have walked right out.  I think he legitimately believes what he's saying and considers himself more reasonable than many he knows in the field.  Since he could approach it in a rational manner, I felt he deserved a fair hearing.

He didn't go into detail about the process, partly because he didn't want to spook people out (he said this) and partly (I think) because he had a seminar to plug and a 'ministry' to support.  Though he didn't ask for money.

He gave a few stories, but mostly just talked about the background principle.  The stories were sufficient to make me think.  I have enough experience of the spiritual to safely admit demons and other spiritual forces do exist and influence people. But the background principle is what didn't sit well.

He pulled verses from the Bible that seemed a bit out of context and misinterpreted.  But as is my bent, I began to consider what might be true in it.  Was I the one misunderstanding?  He admitted demons aren't behind every problem, but claimed they could be behind any problem.  He alluded to some sort of contractual type scenario in which people can, knowingly or not, give demons access to themselves.  He claimed that Jesus could save a soul, but that the body and spirit might still be "infected" as he put it.  The focus of Deliverance is to break those contracts and make people as free and healthy as possible.  He said that there was a process people had to participate in.  Alluding to some 'steps' and such people had to take to be sure they stay free.

I left mostly denying it, but with enough doubt that I had to consider more fully.  I talked it over with my wife and son.  I asked God to tell me what is true.  I even wrestled with it in dreams for a couple nights.  I debated calling a mentor of mine and discussing it with him.  Was I right?  What if I wasn't?  Could I be suffering from some seemingly medical ailments because of the doors I'd opened in my past?  What about beneficial suffering; the "thorn in the flesh"?  Wasn't Jesus sufficient?  Why wouldn't he cleanse everything?  Could I take the chance on that?  Was it worth the chance?  It didn't fit with my understanding of the universe, but it did echo many of the things I encountered and heard from people in the Spiritualist world that I had dabbled in fairly extensively years ago. 

So finally, I decided to look it up.  Though I was a bit scared of creeping myself out.  The speaker had said it was easy to find on the internet.  So I did a late night search and was quickly provided with an article from an ex-Deliverance counsellor who shed all the light I needed. Thank God for answering.

This long article described the Deliverance movement in such verbatim detail to the speaker that I had no doubt they were talking about the same thing.  In fact, they quoted the same people, same verses, same vocabulary.  The article described it as very real.  He had seen many amazing things happen.  But still he left it.  The reasons he left it encapsulate my very difficulties.

I'm not going to try to digest the whole article for you.  Look it up yourself if you're interested.  What resonated with me was, for one, that the Deliverance movement is a 20th century invention.  It claims roots to ancient times, but no more than Wicca can claim to the ancient pagans.  In other words, it's a modern supposition of what might have happened, and not a true religious tradition and therefore does not have the weight of history and community of consent behind it.  But more importantly, Deliverance is essentially a works-based faith.  Freedom is not obtained by the work of God.  It's made possible by that, but people then have to get the right prayers, the right lifestyle, the right program to be fully free.  And then only so far as they keep it up.  Further, it adds chains to people with the concept that when a demon returns, it brings more with it and makes the end condition worse.  Thus someone who is struggling lives in eternal fear that they may not only go back to the torment, but it may get worse.  And if you've never experienced spiritual torment of this kind, let me tell you, it's enough to make you high dive into concrete.

The article described it like a spiritual protection racket that Satan himself backs by putting on good demonic shows.  "Sure, cast me out, but watch how much of a fight I can put up. Get proud, feel special, feel afraid."  It's like the Fight Club assignment to pick a fight and lose.  It puffs up the counsellor and terrorizes (in the Terrorist sense) the victim who now has to look around every corner for the evil he knows "can get him at any time".

So is there another view that allows for demons and their influence but avoids this false paradigm of Spiritual Warfare?  Yes!  God is sovereign over all things.  Christ has put all powers beneath his feet.  The head of the serpent has been crushed.  Evil in fact, doesn't exist.  Philosophically proven, it can't.  What we call evil is the negation of a created thing which God called good.  A thing's evilness is exactly proportional to the degree it departs from what it was created to be.

There are far more verses in the Bible supporting this worldview.  Jesus sets free.   Nothing can harm me except as God allows and that means it will only be for my good, like chemotherapy that makes me sick so I can get well.  Or like physical training hurts so my muscles grow stronger.  The demons have no inherent power.  Only the illusion of it.  So what more would they want than to be attributed the power to control and manipulate us.  Sure they'll exploit it!  If we want a show, they'll be happy to oblige. 

Better to learn what Sarah had to learn in Labyrinth.  Not how to defeat her demons, but that they had no power over her in the first place.  With that it's all over.  This is echoed in my own life: dreams, studies, experiences, and reasoning.  It is the only way.  It is the Truth. 

Demons are real, but the conflict is not.  It's a bluff, a farse, a simulation of the Matrix.  God is sovereign and the truth is what is real.  As in War Games, we have to learn that, "The only winning move is not to play."

Roots

I have been reading another George MacDonald book.  Uncle George does not disappoint again.  This one, I've been putting off since it doesn't seem like something I'd like at first blush.  It's called the Vicar's Daughter, and it's described as a Victorian novel.  Hmmm.  Need I say more?

But as usual, when the time is right things fall into place and I went ahead to read it.  Also, per usual, I found that the stereotype of "Victorian" is far from the truth.  Certainly this book was written in the Victorian era.  As such it has a certain defined social code, etc.  But humans are human and I find all the fun, struggles, loves common to all people.  However, literary critic I am not, and so I won't belabor this.

What really has taken me is the thorough similarity of the characters with my own time and viewpoints.  I don't mean this to say I have an old-fashioned mindset.  I'm far from a traditionalist,and am not very sentimental.  But I grew up in a prosperous country on the teeter of decline, in a middle class family, right as the notions of an older generation were passing away from our culture.  I moved naturally from this to a countercultural worldview we call punk.  I grew up into a productive member of society with a family, though not shedding my ideals to do it.  This book focuses on just the same class of people in the same situation.  What I call punk, they call Bohemian, but the description is almost identical...obviously, not the appearance specifically, nor the music, etc.  But the ideals and the manifestations of those ideals are the same, even down to the shockingly reproachful clothes .

But even more than this is the similarity in faith.  While I had known my views were part of an unbroken chain of truth and truth-seekers extending back into prehistory, I had not known that it was so well documented and articulated in such a similar way.

Of course, I should not be surprised.  If Truth is Truth, it ought to manifest itself in very similar ways where conditions are similar.  And that is what I find here.  In fact, I've felt this once before, when reading Augustine.  At that time, I attributed it mostly to an above average translator whom I thought must have been able to make the ancient writing open to modern ears.  But now, I'm reading native English, close enough to my own dialect as to be totally intelligible in the writer's own words.  So I am forced to see what was obscured before.

In fact, the book sits so well with me that I'm finding it nearly a handbook for my place in life right now.  Things I have thought, said, done, wished for, are here presented in very nearly the exact same way more than a hundred years before.

I had previously blogged about uncanny similarities in MacDonald books.  But now I am certain that time has no meaning for those of us who live with eternity in view.  I do not doubt that Uncle George is presently aware of this very blog entry and my connection with his work.  For all I know, he may be communicating to me from his books, or we may share a spirit in some fashion.  Perhaps through the same mechanism, albeit a far more profane version of the connection between John the Baptist and Elijah.  Though this is more likely a metaphorical fancy than actual fact. Nevertheless, I shouldn't be surprised by this kind of connection amongst those who live in Christ.  Aren't we parts of one body?

Anyway, what I'm taking away from this book is uniquely mine, and too much to recount here.  But perhaps the greatest thing is that I now feel certainly confirmed in my brand of faith.  If it has existed for so long in so precisely the same fashion, I can safely put aside doubt.  I had feared it was my own personal religion built of my peculiar brand of rebellion and whimsy, well fortified with bricks of prooftext and the mortar of complex self deceptions.

Now I can safely stand out on it and believe I am not alone and not in error.  There have been, are, and will be those who are made like me, believe like me, and I am confident enough to cast my lot in with them for good or ill.

Thank you George.  And thank you God.  The former for being the instrument and the latter for being the wind that sounds it in answer to my prayers, even across the nonexistent gulfs of time and space.  When I meet you face to face, we will not in any way be meeting for the first time.

Affirmative

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the nature of love and my reactions to certain things in my life.  Overall, things are not bad, and I feel I am now able to take a few steps toward living the life I am made to live.  But this life is increasingly uncertain in that there is not a clear path or plan.  It is an increasingly day by day, moment by moment existence where I am constantly evaluating my circumstances, looking and listening for God's direction.

I am totally happy to be in this place, but at the same time it offers unexpected challenges.  Namely, I find myself subject to many doubts.  Since I have no clear path immediately before me, I am open to self-criticism.  I have been learning how to deal with this, but one thing I feel a need to do is to affirm what I know to be true about myself.  A friend and mentor once told me that we must forever recount the goodness of God in our lives.  Keep the truth forever before our eyes lest we forget and despair in the moment.  So in that vein, I am writing this.  I hope that it will not seem pretentious or proud.  But considering that only one or two people will ever read this, I don't think that will be a big problem.  Here's what I know:

I am Cav.  I am a child of God.  A sinner saved by unmerited favor.  I did not choose Him, He chose me, chased me, rescued me from my own destruction.  As such I am bound to Him by love and duty.  I am His come flames of hell or glories of pleasure.  I can not be otherwise.

I was born under the vow of Hanna, like Samuel, given over to God before my very conception.  I had nothing to do with it.

I died.  I was given life and forfeit it, despising the gift, unworthy of it.  I gave it up and it was snatched up by my God.  I do not own it.  I am Aragh the wolf, living dead that I might not fear for my life and can exist with abandon.

I am a wild child made for and shaped by the natural world.  I understand it, feel at home in it.  It is a part of my being.  Untamable, infinitely adaptable, unity in diversity, diversity in unity, dangerous and gentle, life-giving and life-taking.

I am a Sheepdog, helping my Shepherd handle the sheep.  Loyal, commandable, responsive, intuitive, brave, self-sacrificing, unassuming, unseeking of glory.  I desire only to hear my master's praise and feel his hand upon my head.  I will not lose one with whom I am charged.  I will give my life for them and in the service of the Shepherd without a second thought.  They are as safe with me as they are with Him, though anyone who would harm them will feel my savage bite.

I am a seer, able to understand and interpret things as they are in Truth, as the Spirit gives me clarity.  This is not a magic power.  This is not a self-aggrandizing thing.  In fact, it is quite the opposite, it comes with a burden.  I will forever be outcast, misunderstood, misaligned with those around me.  Camel hair and locusts are my lot.  This is a fallen world, so seeing more means I cannot ignore pain, I feel the ache of God's heart for his lost children, their pain and sin hurts me and I long to gather them up under His sheltering wings.  Sadly, this is too often rejected as we strive to be well on our own.  Too unfamiliar to people.  This is my burden.  Yet, I will love openly, live openly, speak openly, poor myself out and take in the pain and rejection as Jesus himself was rejected.  I know that though I may suffer, others will see God's love because it does not return void.

I am all of this and more.  Imperfect, broken, punk to the world because I am of a different stuff, for a different world.  And I will accomplish all that He has for me, not in my own strength but because He is my portion and He will not be forsworn.  So help me God.

For Fidelity

I want to make a case for fidelity.  Most people don't really use this word in common speech, so it might not even register with clear definition for many people.  Simply put, it is the state of being faithful.  It doesn't necessarily refer to marriage, though that kind of fidelity is probably what comes to mind if anything at all.  It can also mean close reproduction, as in video or sound...remember the old hifi's?  It just means being true to whatever you have committed to.  If you translate a book, it should be done faithfully.  If you deliver a message, if you offer assistance, if you give your word.  In all of these things we should have a high degree of fidelity.

Sadly, it seems this is grossly lacking in our society.  I know far too many people who shift and blow with trends and whims and emotions.  As I believe grace to be the central concept of Christianity, I don't condemn anyone for it.  I know we all have our issues and that God works with us wherever we are.

But I for one, take fidelity very seriously.  I value it.  I can't be happy when a husband or wife or mother or father leave.  I can't be happy when they find someone new.  I can't just shrug when someone leaves their faith.  I have to root for the white knight.  Give me the Princess Bride, not Dear John.  The Four Feathers, not the Watchmen.  I know life happens and we all have to muddle through.  I know good that has worked out after all kinds of bad faith cases.  Like I said, I'm not judging anyone or setting up some sort of system.  But I also can't pretend it doesn't bother me.

I want my words to be true; I don't use them loosely.  I want my commitments to be real; I don't make them lightly.  In this broken world, there are virtuous people who mean what they say and do what they commit to.  They still exist today.  But we don't value it.  We barely speak of it.  Fidelity is a virtue we need to reclaim.

Railing

My reader...the only one I think (maybe I should just address these like letters to that person) said that my posts can change dramatically in style and tone. I recognize that and apologize by saying that I wanted this blog to be raw and real, so those swings are actually swings in me, chronicled in the hopes that some other soul may read them and feel less alone...but I know it makes it hard to read sometimes...which is probably why I have one reader. Whom I am tempted to call the "fan base", but I'll leave that reference there just to see if anyone ever gets it.

I also noticed that my blogs tend to be railing sorts of things. Not always, but a good deal of them. My facebook posts are even more so. I don't really like that about myself. I don't start out to be that way. And I don't feel like a very angry or miserable person always. I just think those are the things that get posted more. I have a hard time writing happy drivel.

Honestly, I try very hard not to be negative. This is an uphill battle as anyone who reads this blog will know about me. But it isn't helped by the fact that there are just so many darn insufferable things out there. What is insufferable? Well, for me it is misrepresentations, usurpations, manipulations, by those who claim (and are expected) not to do so. In my world, these are usually people who call themselves Christians and the organizations that they operate. I can't judge what goes on in their hearts, but I can comment on their actions. I want to be clear that I do not judge the person as I judge the actions. I don't. And since no one but God can see into my heart as well, you'll just have to take my word on that. I hope my actions bear it out as well.

I want Truth. I want what is real. Recently, I went into church after a few weeks out. I've been slowly extricating myself from that system of religious obligation and manipulation, but was feeling open and ready to see if God would speak through those present. I was trying hard to not be bothered by the usual irks (plastic expressions on singers, forced hype, awkward smiles covering real hurts, etc.) And then, what met my ears was, well, insufferable to me yet again. I fully believe in a real hell. I've experienced enough of it and what comes out of it to know this, so we are on the same page at the root. I was even able to look past the short-sighted Biblical citations. They were correct in reading, but the speaker failed to mention (if he knew) how those who counter them do so. There are some very good arguments against them that make it hard to use those verses alone as proof of point to someone who knows how to argue at all. If he knew and chose not to mention it, he only sends his flock out with false security against wolves.

But then he went on to start nothing short of brainwashing. Telling the congregation that they may have questions, but so what. Throw them out because if the Bible said it, that was all they needed. At this I was piqued. But then he went on to have a call-response where the congregation was supposed to repeat the mantra that they didn't need proof and their questions didn't matter. I had had enough. I had to walk out. What I felt like doing was interrupting the whole sermon by calling out the heresy right there. Maybe I should have, but most wouldn't have understood what I meant and those that did would have been too bound by their own issues to accept it. I would have instantly rocked their boats so hard, they would have instinctually thrown me out simply to stop the shaking.

So I went to the bathroom to hide for a minute, then look for a place to go. Everywhere I went there were people milling around who knew me and wouldn't understand. I couldn't attempt to talk to them, they'd see my upset. So I had to go outside.

Out there was a world. A world that God made and lived in. There were things living and moving and happening. It was calming. A whole different tone from the cursed tomb that was being created inside what should be a place of life, a well of living water. Instead it was turned into a stinking sepulchre of religious bondage.

Jesus never spoke to people that way. Jesus went to lengths to be tender to people's needs. To meet them where they were. To explain and build trust. He even met with one scholar one on one to explain one of the seminal passages in the Bible! I'm sure he must have done it more, but we don't have record. He still does this today. I thought we believed he was a living and active and caring God. Yet speakers like this try to force their point on the masses who look to them for guidance through manipulative techniques like that. God, it would be better to have mill stones hung on their necks and be thrown into the sea than to lead those astray. The Bereans were commended for questioning what they were taught and searching it out to see if it was true, not expected to blindly repeat what they were told! It hurts me and makes me want to rend my clothes! And my only outlet for this is some lonely blog with one reader. I am thankful for that, don't misunderstand. But it makes my heart cry out like David, "How long, God?!" How long will this evil continue? God I want to see your mercy and grace poured out on these people, even the speaker.

And yet these masses will listen for a while, until the stench builds so strong in their noses that they know something isn't right. Then they leave as well...probably to be more disgusted with Christianity and less friendly to the one who came to do away with this very thing. Jesus only ever railed against the religious and self-righteous...with good reason.

Rabbit Hole

Lately more has happened. I feel like I'm approaching a convergence of some kind. A metanoia. I am really feeling a need to shed false pretenses and be who I am. the problem is that who I am is not widely accepted. It isn't narrowly accepted. It just plain isn't accepted.

This was highlighted by a recent exchange in which I revealed a bit too much in a setting where I thought it would be safe. Man, was I wrong. The bulletfire rained down on me, mostly from someone I considered a friend. Honestly, I don't blame him too much. I knew how he was and what set him off. As I have blogged before, when my true self leaks out, it is often denied, attacked, or hurriedly swept back under the rug because people are uncomfortable with it. Heck, I'm uncomfortable with it. It's an uncomfortable state of being! Made worse by the fact that I am so communicative and good at pretending.

I had once found a group of people that healed me in a lot of ways. They validated my outlook. They allowed me a space to be who I was. We were all misfits, so we welcomed the company. But that ended, and for good reason. It had become corrupted by our own problems. But I do desperately miss the ability to relax in myself. To not be guarded all the time. Even in my own home, I have to be guarded because my son is sensitive and easily freaked out. If the full measure of my personality came out, as has leaked, he loses it.

So for a long time now, I've had terrible dreams. Every night almost, I wake up numerous times and in the morning feel drained as if I've been struggling all night. The dreams vary, but often have the same issues leaking in. I can't determine where it comes from or what needs to be done. But recently, I became aware that this must represent some repression trying to break out of my subconscious. so I asked a friend who is very good at dream interpretation what he thought.

In a few sentences he explained things about me that I had not revealed. That he did not know. He acquired it simply from my description of the dreams. That was all it took to poke a hole in the damn. The trickle started through and I delved deeper into my own existence, making connections. I haven't sorted it all out. It just happened today, and this blog is part of that processing. But as usual, many things in my life have started to coincide...events, chance happenings, thoughts, memories out of chronology, etc.

It all has to do with my frustration at having buried who I am. What I need to live. But man, it's in deep. I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of it and I'm honestly a bit scared to. The last time I began down these paths, I nearly lost my mind altogether. Already, the doubts are beginning to attack the anchors in my reality.

...

I broke to read to my son before bed. We're reading the Chronicles of Narnia. we're on The Silver Chair. Wouldn't you know, Jack has come through again. What we read tonight opened a whole lot more to me. The whole book even fits so timely. So, I think I can write it now. Starting way back.

I've been confronted with the idea lately that God is a projection of my own mind. Sure, I've heard that before. But it's different reading about it, or apologizing against it than encountering it in action and word and deed. It seeps into my head like a dark spell...it might actually be. I find myself trying to remember why I thought God was anything else. What evidence I can cite seems always to be swallowed up nicely in the idea. "I subconsciously created it all. I longed for it, needed it, and it occurred. But this is not a bad thing", the spell goes, "only the same thing in different clothes. One is all, all is one...eternally God, eternally me, aspects of myself...I am God. God is me. As I face the truth, I will see it is so." Just like the Green Witch, enchanting the four heroes that they imagined any world but hers. So hard to fight it, it seeps in like music, like incense fills a room. My defenses become hazy as my mind is lulled. "And when I realize this truth, I'll realize that goodness is all there is. Move toward goodness, toward happiness, what makes me feel good, and I move toward God because I am God and my desire is for myself, so pleasing myself pleases God." It's an insidious poison. Just like Rillian lives in his enchantment happy and carefree all the time. But it is pain that brings the heroes out of it. Not just any pain, but the pain of the Marsh-wiggle, the melancholy depressive. It is he that is most resistant to the spell, and it is his self-inflicted pain that breaks the enchantment. Good God! Thank you!

This is why I hurt my foot. Even a foot like in the book. This is why my head hurts so much recently. This is why I've become acutely aware of the restrictive and deadening nature of my chair at work, which I am "strapped to" increasingly...and it's silver!! Oh God it's too much! This Rabbit Hole is deep and strange.

I am dark. I was made dark. I am gloomy. I am angry. I see things gravely. But it is this gravity, this severity, this darkness that is my nature and my grace. I didn't make myself. But I can be myself. I don't need to change. I don't want to heal from this. It is a blessing and a part of the Body. Is the mouth a foot? I am what I was made to be and can be no other. I am tired of trying. I'm sorry for denying the holy goodness of my own existence, even if the whole world denies it. I have seen the sun, I have seen the grass and the trees and the Lion. And with a taste of that, this world pales. Even if I never see it again, I choose that over this dark and hellish planet. I'm sorry, this life is NOT worth living. It is NOT beautiful. And I will stake my entire soul on the one hope that the Lion is real. That I did not dream up the true world.

I will make changes. I will live in this understanding...God give me strength. I don't know how far down this particular hole goes, but I'm in. The crazy thing is (just one crazy thing?) that I can now see again how the real world is set crosswise through this one. We draw the lines in the wrong places. That's one of the reasons I am so misunderstood. When I deprecate this life, most people immediately jump to "suicidal", but that is not the case at all! My natural eyes see the same boundaries, but my real eyes see the true nature. (This is not going to make sense.) The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. Because the Earthly physical world is false does not mean that all physical is false. The Kingdom of the Air and the Kingdom of Heaven are not divided along the lines of physical and nonphysical, heart beating and not beating...

wow, this is too much. I have to stop. My mind is winding down for now.

Attack?

I have heard of parasitic personalities. I'm sure they exist. I've known some. But lately, I've really felt like I'm being attacked, which is different. Just seems like things keep seeping into my brain and life from strange places. Is it attack? Is it intentional from a person, or am I stepping into new unlit territory? That of course would increase pressure from negative spiritual forces to stop the incursion. Am I walking on my own and need to retreat, or do I need to press forward until it abates?

I feel like Ransom's friend approaching Ransom's house in Perelandra. Will the edilla terrorism attacks stop if I continue, or not. Am I Israel under Joshua's prime, or close to his death? In his prime, the nation was unstoppable. Near his death they were unable to defeat their enemies. Later on, God said it was a test to see if they would hold firm or look for ways out. So is that my situation?

It is here that I am reminded why I left those marshy places where moving is slow and muddy, standing still is to sink further, and all around is fetid and stinking decay of once vibrant organic ideas mushed and shapeless now as it mixes into a synthesized goo that resembles bits and pieces of the original, but has become something else altogether.

While rigid adherence to orthodoxy has its perils, it is also the lifeline through these marshes. The solid ground that allows a foothold. Venture off that narrow path at your own peril.

Community

This is such an overplayed word. It is actually quite cheesy by now. But I am not using it in the common sense. As with most words, I am using it in the older, truer sense.

I'm also speaking primarily to other Christians in this post, so if you are not a Christian, please do not think this is directed at you. I say that because only those who have claimed this faith are bound to it in any way. No one should expect someone who does not hold the same worldview to abide by it. Of course many non-Christians do a far better job of just what I am talking about, which is also why this is not directed at them.

I want more. I need more. What we call church, what we call the community of believers, is most often a sham and a shadow of what it is supposed to be. People in churches are swayed by politics, by personality, by money. Not that they are all evil, because they aren't. Many just don't realize or have never experienced what real unified fellowship is like. If you haven't, I would put money on the fact that you won't find it easily. Some say it is in home churches only, but this is not true. I've been a part of horrid home churches, some that were plain kooky, and some that were just as empty as the conventional churches. I've also been in conventional churches that were rolling with unity, so it has nothing to do with organization, structure, or locale.

It has to do with the people. With God ultimately. The Spirit, Kurios Pneuma, the Spirit Lord, Sarayu, is the one that enables it and He alone. But as with most things we can choose to allow it or shut it out. Please try this for me:

Take a piece of paper, anything will do. Crumple it up really well, just ball it up. Now take a thin sturdy sharp object, like a knife or a nail, whatever, and drive it right through the ball of paper. be careful, you don't want to lose a chunk of flesh. Now pull the spike out and look at the paper. Do you see the hole going straight through it? This is God's reality. His work. The paper is our universe. God has punched through our existence with His solid reality and it makes sense. A single solid line right through our perceptions.

But now uncrumple the paper. What do you see? Do you see the random assortment of holes? Some bigger, some smaller, at various angles, like there is no order. This is how we perceive our universe. What is actually a single solid precision dart appears to be a random assortment of happenings across time and space. We see it in this manner because of our perception of space. (See an earlier entry on space for more about that.)

So what's the point? Simply that God does not fit into our universe, our plans, or our structures. He is real and solid and definite and His purposes which are, of necessity, a unified action, a perfect harmony cut across and through our lives, abridging structures and institutions. Think this through, it's a fantastic visualization. In this case, we try to mold God's actions, His will, into our structures. When in fact, it is nothing of the sort. The Kingdom of Heaven is spiritual, we must be born again of spirit, and worship in spirit and truth. Throw out what structures do not work or are not profitable. Or better yet, simply ingore them and let them fail.

If God desired us to change the world through our institutions, don't you think the world would be a lot different after 2000 years of effort? Are we just that impotent? Or is God? Our opposition is defeated, it can't be his power that prohibits it! So don't feed me the next fad of, "if only we would..." I'm not buying. You care more for your pews, accounts, fancy shows with put on excitement, butts in seats...sell the stupid seats and let's sit on the floor so we can buy a well for the Malawi village! Forget your live music and hollow exhortations and hug that child desperate for attention! The man next to you needs a car! Will the church get him one? Will paying your Sunday morning multi-media extravaganza's exorbitant electric bill get him one? Oh, but I forget, the temporal doesn't matter, it's about saving souls. Bah!!

God does not desire us to "get with the program", to remake our institutions into more perfect alignment. He doesn't desire worldly revolution. He doesn't desire reform. He desires us to abandon our institutions and follow Him! Let them all go! They do not matter. They are impermanent. Think that through. Say it to yourself until the cleche falls off and the truth rings out of it, however faint. Live that way for God's sake!