Other Side

I'm pretty sure I've never blogged about this.  At least not in any discernibly direct way.  But I'm going to give it a shot.  This blog is primarily a way for me to process thoughts or feelings.  As such, it tends toward the confusing and angry, occasionally the mystical.  But that of course is not all I experience.  It's just that times of clear understanding or emotion don't need processing; they're just experienced.  So I don't write about them.  This other side makes up a significant portion of the contemplative Christian experience, at least for me and for many I read about and talk to.  It's hard to describe, so I'm going to muddle on.

Right now, I'm coming off a brief mild illness.  Just a cold.  But it follows a stressful period and I have received it gratefully as an excuse to rest.  I've been overwhelmed by a sense of peace in it.  Just a deep soul-whisper of "thank you" for bringing me into the rest I could not give myself.  Throughout it I've felt at ease.  I've felt cared for.  The back of my mind has been haunted by strains of music of a gentle love toward me and from me toward my God.

Please know that for me, this word 'God' is loaded very differently than most may use it.  It's like the deepest self-giving love you may feel for a loved one, combined with an awe or respect given a hero or excellent father, and a sublime (look this word up) reverence as if looking into something huge and vast and powerful, yet gorgeously beautiful.  There is nothing of punishment, nothing of justice.

Jody Foster echoes it in Contact when she cries in the fetal position in her journey.  CS Lewis describes it in the Pevensie children burying their faces in Aslan's mane.  It is a safety and a rightness found because of the power sheathed in gentleness, like a small Tarzan baby sound asleep in a gorilla's arms.

This is not why I became a Christian, but it is why I stay a Christian.  This is why I can't accept any form of Christianity that takes away from this.  This is irresistible love.  This is looking into the dark chasm of the universe and finding everything you've secretly hoped for and never even admitted to yourself looking right back at you and smiling with a face that is more human than your own.