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...

Good Question...

My son asked a deep question recently.  He asked, if God knew everything was going to go wrong with his creation, why did he let it?  Some form of this question has been debated for years.  The truth is no one but God knows for sure.  He hasn't told us.

But when he put out this question, I felt it deserved some response.  I first told him I wasn't sure.  Then quickly opened my mind to God hoping he would fill it as he's done in the past when the need arises.  This is what then came out of my mouth in answer.  I'm surprised by it myself, because I truly tell you I have not thought this before.

Before I get to it, I need to establish a little background though or it won't make sense.  First of course is that God exists.  There are proofs, but I won't belabor that here.  Next is that God is almighty.  He can do anything and nothing can stop it.  And if there's anything he can't do, it is truly impossible in the most literal sense...like cease to exist or something.

Next is that God is good.  This has to be the case or he would be no God.  A god perhaps, but not God.  Because good is clearly better than bad.  Every serious religion, minor or major, and even hardcore athiests believe this.  So God can't be a lesser thing or he wouldn't be almighty.

So here we are.  How could this type of God let things go so badly if he knew it was going to happen?  Wouldn't it have been better not to make it all rather than make it so it could destroy itself?  So there would be suffering and evil?  Doesn't sound very good, does it?

But here's what came out of my mouth: 

Maybe he did it to show something that has never been done before.  Maybe he did it to demonstrate to the universe that he is almighty.  That even a creation which owed its very existence to him, could not live apart from him, but which chose to annihilate itself...even this most evil of evils he could work out to be good in the end.  That even the worst thing that could possibly happen could not stop him or thwart his goodness.  He WILL save his creation.  He WILL NOT allow it to be lost.  Even that which is given free will to go its own way even to the point of denaturing and destroying itself...even THAT, he can and will make right.  EVERY wrong will be righted.

Wow.  That did not come from me, I know that.  Thank God for this.  Both for it being true, and for how he revealed it.

I believe more than ever that God is not what most of us have been taught.  He is closer than our own thoughts, more loving than we can imagine, more powerful than we can fathom.  Everything we call good is epitomized in him.  If there is anything that can be trusted it is him...or he would be no God at all.

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.

Behind

We often react to situations based on our emotion or perception.  Is it possible to step back and withhold reaction until we know more?  Can we take the time to step inside someone's head and see what motivates them?  Perhaps it would enlighten us greatly.  Perhaps we wouldn't be so quick to take offence or to come to our own defence.

Maybe we would see what makes another person take the shape and tone they do.  Maybe then we could regulate our reaction to be appropriate.  If we could see inside people we could perhaps bypass the outward and seemingly magically speak to the real issues.

Today I watched this happen.  I saw someone melt down over a very frustrating issue.  We had both been tense over these things beyond our control, but not with each other.  I had been reacting in my usual way...perhaps a little more loosely since I consider this person a friend.  But in this moment, the frustration turned on me.  I was not sure where it was coming from but I could see several things.  My friend's facial muscles were giving away the depth of his emotion as he tried to assert control over me.  I realized it as an attempt to grab control over something in a situation that had overwhelmed him.

I thought of reacting in defence, but forestalled it miraculously.  Instead we retreated to a private place and talked.  Apparently, he had been taking my verbal expression of frustration as personal attack.  This surprised me since it had never even crossed my mind that these things were his fault.  I had never even directed comments at him.  in fact they had all been calm and rational comments to the effect of, "I wish we had a different way to do this.  I hate being locked into a single path and dependent on ___ conditions."

So again, I could react with anger, point out his wrongs, or I could dissuade his frustration.  To my surprise I found myself doing the latter.  He calmed and we worked it out.  He even seeing that he had taken things too personally.

But then I began thinking of how he had arrived at that moment in the first place.  I tried to further understand his perspective, using the facts I knew.  Gradually a picture is forming.  I'm beginning to see how to communicate with him.  How to shape my flow to his in an edifying way.  To come alongside and build up as we move forward.

But this requires that I step outside myself and find the truth behind this facade.  In how many other ways can I do this?  What will be the effect?  Can I become as collected and cool as Card's Speaker for the Dead?  Knowing how to speak truth into any situation and gently manipulate myself for the betterment of the people I interact with?  To shape people and situations by reshaping myself?

I think this is possible.  In yielding there is strength.  In gentleness there is power.  It's not the same as slimy kowtowing or political manipulation.  It's a fresh wind, a folding brook.  It's the essence of the Spirit Lord.

Speak

Today as I was reading George MacDonald, a scene leapt off the page and pierced me right through.  I could quote it, but it wouldn't possibly have the same effect as when it happened, so I won't bother.

Let me start at the beginning.  I'm reading At the Back of the North Wind.  From the very first, the description of the North Wind was remarkably like a sort of person I envisioned in a story I was writing once before.  It was not so much a story, but a vision that seemed to want telling.  Sort of like CS Lewis' image of Aslan that sparked the Narnia series.  Of course I didn't know about Aslan and Narnia at the time. 

Anyway, I tried to write a story about it, but the story wouldn't carry.  It was really just this impression of a person.  It's uncanny that more than a hundred years before, George MacDonald wrote a story about a character who looks nearly exactly as the one I saw.  But muses and all...

So today I read a scene where North Wind says something that I very nearly said verbatim last year.  Lest you think it's a common phrase that would naturally repeat, I'll tell you more.  In the book, North Wind is leading Diamond (the child) across the high ledges of a cathedral.  He's afraid he'll fall and she chastises him for not trusting her.  He tells her he's not trusting because he may falter.  And she replies that even if he fell and she lost her grip, she'd be after him such that she'd catch him before he hit the ground.  And last year as my Goddaughter was afraid of falling out of a boat, I assured her that if she began to fall out, I'd be in the water before she got wet.

But this is only the precursor.  A sign post that had me taking notice so I wouldn't miss what was coming.  In this same scene, the words then jumped out as Diamond and North Wind talked of previously being higher and unafraid, but now being afraid of falling into the deep empty church.  The lines were as if spoken to me.  I know what they mean and it is beyond the story.  This is exactly my apprehension of late.

But then North Wind leaves Diamond to make his way on his own, saying "Come after me".  He is afraid, but then she blows a gentle puff in his face and he draws strength and moves forward.  The blowing increases always gentle, but fortified with strength, and steadily infuses him as he moves.  Right here is where it pierced like an icicle of light right into my brain.  My eyes welled and overflowed.  God was speaking these familiar words directly to me in that moment.  I know the voice.  I know the reaction.  Call it crazy if you want, but it happened.  It's not the first time.

This can be confirmed because it is timely.  As I face trepidating circumstances, struggles with my place in the Kingdom, concerns over being alone, comes this necessary and direct comfort speaking to all of them perfectly and deeply.  I don't expect you to understand, and I don't seek your approval or acknowledgement.  Call me heretic even.  This was for me.  God speaks.  Not just through some systematized list of methods, not even through one collection of writings.  He speaks whenever and however He chooses, to whomever He chooses.  And His voice is unmistakable. 

I go no further than this.  But no less far.

I don't know where or how, but I am linked to George and Jack and Henry and Theresa and Francesco.  And I hear you God.  I am coming after you across the buttresses and ledges and spires.  I won't fear falling, nor the empty church below.  My place is in your wind, whipping full around me.  Help me never forget.

Horse

"But a false sense of power, a sense which had no root and was merely vibrated into me from the strength of the horse, had, alas, rendered me too stupid to listen to anything he said."

The quote above is from Lilith, by George MacDonald.  In this scene, Mr. Vane has been defeated and tricked by Lilith, and Mr. Raven is taking him to his house from which he fled in the first place.  Mr. Raven summons his horse, which is dark and spectral yet powerful beyond knowing to ease the journey of the weary Vane to his house where he must sleep.  Vane and the horse instantly bond and once on his back, Mr. Vane decides to leave Mr. Raven against his advice.  Raven cautions it will be to ruin again.  And then this quote.

The book in general is already one of my favorites ever and I haven't even finished it yet.  It has been speaking to me in so many ways.  But this line struck me today.

In this blog, I have recorded mere months ago the sense of triumph and power that I had been feeling.  While I had known it was from God, and not of myself, I, like Vane, couldn't help feeling as if it was mine.  When in fact it was only borrowed...no, not even that much possession.   The power was no more mine than is the strength and stamina of a powerful horse on which a man happens to sit.

Even then, in my deep heart I knew it would not last.  But how my vanity has cost me.  What damage I may have wrought in myself, my family, and those I love.  Feeling emboldened like never before I took actions and harboured feelings of authority that were not mine.

To the casual reader, this will seem different than it is.  I don't mean that I did any overtly egregious thing.  In fact, like Mr. Vane, my intentions were all honorable and above board.  I would fix what was wrong where my influence fell and would use this power to do so.  I didn't even "fall from grace" in the sense that we use it for leaders who make a public mistake.  No, it is far subtler.  Far more difficult to see, and therefore all the more damaging.  Like the loose screw in the engine that is so easily overlooked and yet once failed, will bring down the entire machine.

And yet in this realization, I am not even crushed.  Repentant, yes, falling on the grace which saved me, and intent to be better and to learn, but resting in the knowledge that it is ok.  My failing has not one bit thwarted the will and plans of my God.  He will right all wrongs and preserve His children from undue harm.

Perhaps I am also McDonald's stupid philanthropist who would use the grace given me to spare those within my influence from the very thing most needful: that which would be the vehicle of their healing.

All traces of my vanity must die.

Answer

Today I've been surrounded by awareness of God's presence.  I don't know why.  I'm aware of what He's saying and feeling toward me more than usual.  This morning He impressed upon me that someone was praying for something and that I was the answer.

No, not that I, particularly, was an answer to someone's prayers in the cocky sense.  But quite the opposite.  It is tremendously humbling to think that someone has cried out to God to provide something they need desperately and that in answer, He sends me.

I don't know if this refers to something that has already happened, something that will happen, or just a parable-like lesson.  Maybe it's a combination of them all.  But I am honored and humbled.  I know my own flaws.  I know my own inadequacies.  I also know that I asked God to use me, to send me where He will.  I figured I'd be part of something or more likely a voice in the wilderness declaring God's message.  But to think that I, messed up and willfully rebellious, am the medium of God's answer to someone's cry from their heart.  It's so personal and tender I can barely allow myself to process it.  I'm trembling and crying as I type this.  I don't deserve to do it.  How can I represent God in the flesh?  How can these hands and this tongue convey a fraction of His love.  It's so far beyond me.

I know I am nothing more than the vessel.  What good comes from me is not me, but the Spirit Lord in me.  So logically, I know I can do this.  But I don't even feel capable of conducting this kind of power.

I will go, though.  I will do it.  Maybe I am, or already have.  Good God!  Thank you for using me.