Loser

Ok, so I have been a bit gripy in the past few posts. It's been a rough month so far. I'm starting to feel like I'm over it though. Certain things really rub me the wrong way because for me, my faith is a very real and active thing. There is a lot of religion that I find silly, or just plain wrong. What I find foolish or misunderstood, I don't adhere to at all. If people want to follow something that only affects themselves, I am content to let them work it out on their own. That stuff doesn't bother me.

But when it comes to things that I do believe, I truly believe them. There is no middle ground on those, just like I have no doubt that I am typing on this keyboard and sitting in this chair. And just as I have no doubt that Japan does in fact exist because I have been there. Just as certain as these things are, so are the things I believe about Christianity.

When someone starts trying to teach others things that I do not believe to be true. Things that go utterly against the character and nature of what I hold dear, I have a hard time. It isn't about intolerance, as I have said above. I respect people's rights to believe and to think for themselves. But just like no man would suffer someone to insult or defame his wife or children, so I feel about my God.

Why is this so serious for me when so many can breeze in and out of churches and it never really burns them down into their core? I don't know. I can speculate, but I'd prefer to speak from what I know.

I am a loser. Plain and simple. The lost sock. The guy who just doesn't get it. The one that stands on the outskirts. The one who doesn't like what everyone else likes, or talk like everyone else talks. I have seen the futility and the wrongs in this world and I have seen my inability to change myself or anyone else. My inability to do anything about the wrongs. My inability to make sense of it all. To someone like me... and I am not alone, there are many of us... there are few choices. Nihilism and hedonism are two of the biggest choices. My dark and ascetic nature leans more toward nihilism, the lack of belief in anything, than toward hedonism, simply because I can't lie to myself like that. To seek pleasure is to live blind to my speeding end and the pain around me.

It is a depressed and bleak existence. But what else is there with no good, no God, no hope. I unfortunately, could not blindly ignore the obvious and hide in my trinkets and drugs and sex and fun. I have sucked on a gun barrel more than once. I know what a knife blade feels like on my wrists. The only thing that kept me from doing it was the simple phrase, "what if the Catholics are right?" What if I did it and there was suddenly a God there condemning me to hell for eternity because of my suicide? I was already in hell, I couldn't take it for eternity, even if there was a glimmer of hope. Give me oblivion or heaven. So I lived in a way that disregarded my health. I would not eat. I would not wear a seat belt, even when I had a jeep with no doors. I hung out in seedy places, just waiting for my number to come up. I cut myself to make the inside pain ease by feeling it on the outside. I carved designs in my skin. I worked at a nursery and pruned roses bare-handed and carried cactus by the stalks, letting the needles pierce deep in my shoulder and hands. I smashed my head into mirrors just hoping they would shatter and cut me. I was walking dead. Then came the psychosomatic illnesses. The feelings of wretching and dying in the stomach. The spasms. The worst pain ever and it wouldn't stop. I probed into the occult, looking to see if there was something beyond this misery and pain. There I met more misery and pain. I began to be tormented psychologically. Demons tailed me and mocked me openly. I even came within inches of killing someone for cutting in line once. My hands shook so bad I could barely hold a fork, so I ate even less. Reality began to unravel. My death was coming, I could tell.

And then one day in desperation, I broke, with a soul scream so deep that it rippled shock waves through the room, crying out for help. I was at the end of myself. And suddenly Jesus was there. He was real. He was holy. His presence like a nuclear bomb. And with a whisper from him the demons were gone, the world blew away, and I was in perfect peace. I thought I was finally in the oblivion I sought, but slowly the world reformed and over years I learned to breathe and walk and eat again in a new world, in a new way. The Bible suddenly made so much more sense. It was informed by my experience. I can hear the depth and desperation in the words...by grace you are saved...I bear on my body the marks of Jesus...mercy, not sacrifice.

The old me is truly gone. I have participated in the regeneration of man by merging with Christ. My soul is his. I gave up myself into oblivion and found that there is no void...only Him. And he gave my soul back to me, repaired. The me he created was reinstalled, my spirit, my soul. My body and mind are still in process. They are still imperfect and still sometimes wracked by the terrors I have known.

But deep in me, when I turn silent and contemplate reality, there is my savior, his holy wind surrounding me. The one that owns me. The one that reformed me from the ashes of my own destruction. There is no sex, no meditation, no flow closer or more complete than this presence. Without him, I am lost. I know the horror of my self and of the world.

So you see, for me, Jesus isn't about making my life happy. It isn't about success, or complying with religious prescriptions. If that were the case, I would have no hope. It's too late for me in that. But as much as someone may believe those things, I know they aren't true. I hang entirely on him. I couldn't possibly deny him. And I would gladly go to my death over it. So I can't bear to hear anyone who claims to represent Jesus say or do things that would turn souls like me away from who He really is.

It's hard to say these things. Hard to commit them to writing. I seriously thought I was psychotic for a long time. But they have been confirmed. They are true. Perhaps this month has been about teaching me just how true and burning off some latent fears about expressing this part of me.

church

Last night, I spent a good long time writing a blog only to have it glitch and disappear on me. That is the most frustrating thing! But I have to assume it just wasn't supposed to be published. Honestly, I've had that same glitchiness save me many times in the past when I would be writing some invective or other. Then, voop! It's gone and the energy is expended. The fire is out. And fortunately, I didn't send it to anyone. But last night, was not an invective at all. In fact, it seemed one of the more poetic and beautiful things I've written here...shows what I know, right!

Well, lately, I've been thinking a lot about something that I think I need to process here in writing. I don't really know where this will go. I've been bugged to death lately about certain things that happen in church. I don't get the authority structure. I've tried to buy in, or at least sit down and shut up, but it just isn't clicking. I don't believe it. People keep trying to "educate" me or bring me along, but I just want to stand on the table and yell BS! I mean, I love the people. I know we're all just working our faith out the best we can. I know the motives behind it even. Here's what I mean:

I grew up in a very evangelical nondenominational church with conservative roots in the Presbyterian end of the hall. The church was run by a group of elected elders, the pastor was one of them, but had no single control or leadership role. His job was to teach and guide. This church was drunk on scholarly knowledge and quenched spirituality, and plagued by politics and in-fighting. My Dad, one of the deacons and later, elders, used to come home and frustrated over the drawn out arguments and ulterior motives. They were stifled in it.

Now I go to a church that is the polar opposite. Nondenom. with strong Baptist roots and its a cult of personality. Run by one man and his vision. The rest of us are supposed to jump on the band-wagon and make it happen or get out of the way. I have to say this is efficient in some ways. Things get done. There's no politics. But, man, it's a his-way-or-the-highway setup for anyone under the pastor and his team. I am confident from talking with him and other pastors in the leadership there that this is not his intent, nor even his understanding, but that's the message we get from the lackeys! I've watched so many people leave angry or upset because they couldn't get even an ear to hear what they had to say.

Well, I can play that game too. What if I were to say that I was as much of a visioned leader and prophet of God's will as they make this guy out to be? What if I was to say, I'm the crusader sent by God to be the voice of the trampled, the unheard? A modern voice crying out in the wilderness? I've got as much claim to it as anyone!

But I'm not saying that. It's pure ego to do so. Why is it that those who claim to follow Christ so often abandon his example in favor of made-up institutions. The body of Christ is the people. Churches, the Ekklesia, are people, not organizations. Jesus defied the leaders of his day that lorded their power over others in the name of God. He derided them openly. He never spoke that way to the "sinners". To the hurting or confused individuals. Only to the self-righteous religious.

Sure there are authorities that are in place and for good reason. People need governance and guidance. But no one is entitled to their title. The first shall be last. And the greatest shall be the servant of all. I know this pastor and his team would agree. But they need to call down the religious zealots and flatterers that are running amok telling everyone that God put them in authority and they are allowed to issue orders. If not, their negligence will be their downfall.

God is merciful, so people wil be fine, but no single church is some great bastion of the Elect any more than any other. We're all right about some things and wrong about others. All have sinned and fall short. The real church, sits crosswise through all of our institutions. And to pervert plain words and common sense in God's name will quickly be seen as the falsehood it is. People will leave...and the fact is pastors, your people take care of you as much as you like to think you take care of them. Don't forget that. churches are on every corner and you delude yourself to think yours is that different. Just look at any church website. They ALL think they're different. Don't lord power or let it be lorded in your name.

Jesus is humble and gentle in spirit. Not self-seeking or self-exalting. Not flattering, but gritty and real. Sad that so many good people will be deluded and then delude others. Better to teach those who will listento think for themselves. To evaluate and weight the words of even yourself. Don't revere leaders, whatever they have is what they have received, just like us. All should be equally respected, regardless of station.

Contemplation

So, I've been trying this blog out for several months now. It was an experiment originally, in reaction to the death of a long-running message board and to the rapid-fire bullet thoughts from the sites that took its place.

I find it very helpful to process my thoughts in writing. To discover my own ideas. The blog has been extremely effective for this. But the second part of the process is the sharing of those thoughts. I also find it very valuable to read others' reactions to my own, and to move forward in conversation, dialectic. That is where the blog has not been so great.

The reason for this is not surprising. I figured it would be the case. People have to actually take the time and interest to read a blog. And this one is far from interesting to most people. I recently bit the bullet and posted a link and an invitation to read on Facebook. The responses confirmed this.

But that's ok. I don't expect many people to like it. Still, in case anyone else does happen to find this, I wanted to talk a little about what Contemplation is to me...not the blog, but the practice. It is a way of life. It's more than simply musing like many modern people, including many bloggers, use the term. Contemplation is a term that to me describes a life of circumspection. A constant attempt to live simply and in unity. Ideally, there should be no real distinction in my personality at work, home, church or any part of my life. My faith and intellect and emotions and physicality should also all be unified. Body, soul, spirit. Contemplation is the way of life that helps accomplish that.

Since all good things proceed from God and we are unable to fix ourselves, it only makes since that the primary goal of Contemplation is to know God better. This is the dry explanation. The actual experience of it is much harder to explain. It truly is a very romantic sort of thing, better described through metaphor than empiricism. I'm sure many people have actually experienced something like it at one time or another, or maybe just echoed it in a movie or book once. It is a world of emotions, overwhelming, confusing, magical, concrete, all rolled together. Truly the best metaphor is that of a lover and his beloved. Like Romeo and Juliet, Jack and Rose, Edward and Bella. Contemplatives have written love songs and stories about it for centuries. It is not the kind of thing to really be understood, but experienced.

If you are on that path, if you have had that kind of experience and perhaps not understood it, or if it simply intrigues you, then this blog might be interesting for you. And I would love to hear from you. If you don't want to comment, at least use the one-click reaction buttons at the bottom to let me know what you think.

Fasting

What a topic. I'm beginning to understand that this may have been way over-spiritualized. In the basic sense it means simply going without food. From there, it has branched and diverged into a thousand types of fasts and purposes.

I admittedly do not understand this discipline well at all. What I do understand is that it can be used for health, to save money or resources so they can be shared with those who don't have them, or to humble oneself before God when facing a particularly troubling problem.

Once on Richard Foster's advice, I tried to incorporate it into my weekly routine by skipping two meals in a row, one day a week, but ended up passing out one afternoon. I also tried it once as a sort of purification before what we expected to be a particularly difficult prayer of liberation for someone, but it turned out that the initiator of the whole business decided not to do it at the last minute and only I ended up meeting with the person to have a what turned out to be a very normal conversation.

Just recently, my church asked us to join a 21 day fast that is being promoted all over. I'm totally unclear about why we are doing this. I looked it up and found nothing helpful. So I looked up some general stuff on fasting and found instructions, but nothing particularly helpful about the ins and outs, whys and wherefores. So I committed to drink only water, to cut out some entertainment, and to closely monitor my speech to avoid frivolous talk. The talk is extremely difficult to accomplish since I communicate for business...much of communication occurs in the "small talk", so it can't be avoided in my context. Then my cousin of 17 died in a car wreck and I couldn't possibly avoid small talk and jovial speech around the family...this is not frivolous in my mind. Not to mention, I tend to be pretty witty by nature and find myself expressing affection and mood through speech. So that went out the window.

That leaves the entertainment, which I have had no trouble with at all, so what is the sacrifice? And the water, which is driving me crazy, simply because I can't have a glass of juice or tea once or so a day. I already drink mostly water! I've been trying to pray about it, and basically I feel like I am doing this for all the wrong reasons. I even resolved to give it up and had a glass of juice following the funeral, but then felt that I should stick to my commitment, so went back on it. I have a week to go. I can't see the point. I don't appear to be getting anything valuable from this.

So, unless this next week brings some grand revelation, I think I have learned this: Fasting should involve food, that is the simple meaning of it. It isn't required of those with dietary or health issues, so I may be exempt on those grounds (remember the passing out thing). Fasting is of no value unless you know why you are doing it. It should only be done when I feel the personal urging of God to do so...in the case of a spiritual fast.

Lastly, I am one of the least luxuriant people I know. The attitude fasting is of little benefit, since I have already stripped away many vanities and unnecessary lifestyle aspects. The only place to go from here is into plain asceticism, which has almost killed me in the past. I am prone to venture too far onto the plain of the tough-minded. To the contrary, I think this should be a very personal walk, not the same prescription for everyone. For me, I feel that I am being shown how to allow myself some pleasure and enjoy the bounty that I have been given, instead of feeling guilty for it.

At risk of sounding haughty, though you can see that is not my intent if you come at it from my point of view, I feel like a monk being led out of the abbey. It is tough to have such severe mental attitudes in a culture that barely engages the ideas let alone understands them. I know that I must relax and that I am allowed to be.

Brother Lawrence, pray for me, I am inflicting myself and need to know grace more. Or am I so self-deceived...no, the yoke should be easy, the burden light. Perhaps it is not more discipline that I need after all.

Charismania

This title is no doubt going to provoke some people...that is if anyone actually reads this. But if you're offended, keep reading.

I just saw one of those videos that someone made splicing a song over some other video footage. This one was of a famous televangelist that like to knock people over set to an awesome agrorock song about Columbinesque feelings. It was extremely well done. It almost seems like the song could have been the original sound track for the video.

But it got me thinking about the nature of such events. I am not knocking spiritual gifts. I've had enough weird experiences in my life to keep me from condemning anyone else's. But I've got to be honest that most of the "charismatic" events I've been at were highly influenced by textbook mass hysteria, worked up through music, a charismatic speaker (to use the term correctly, not in the denominational sense), and a willing audience...or they were just plain faked, even if the faker actually had deceived herself into believing it was real. More likely, she had seen it in others and wanted something authentic bad enough that she self-fulfilled. How do I know it's fake? Because no communicative language uses the word, "shamshala" to mean no less that 5 different unrelated words in translation...I counted. That word would have to have at least related meanings, or tenses, or something, there couldn't possibly be a language with that few sounds and that many meanings. No one would know what anyone was saying!

Nevertheless, what struck me most about the video was that I was more disturbed by the evangelist and his convulsing victims?proselytes? than the song. It was like some orgiastic pagan ritual...just add some blood-letting and we've gone full circle!

But the song, I get. The way people can be marginalized and made to feel hopeless and freakish. I've seen this firsthand. It breeds anger and if left to itself this anger can fester into rage until it twists all sense from a poor soul's grasp and heinous evils occur. The song, by speaking to it, draws attention to it, helps prevent it by letting many know they are not alone and by giving an outlet in the music, in the thrashing dance. I've seen the therapeutic nature of this kind of music firsthand as well. It has saved many.

Don't get me wrong, I have had more than my share of the weird and creepy. The crazy spiritual experience. There are truly dark forces that seek to corrupt and devour what they can. there are also awesome, terrifying holy forces (again in the true senses of the words) that can rip us from our perceived reality and torque our three dimensional bodies and minds in all kinds of ways. Sometimes, either side abounds in places that wouldn't seem likely. Honestly, if you pinned me down and forced me to choose between the evangelist and the rockers, I'd say the rockers in their honest examination of human conditions are far closer to the holy, while the god-like evangelist with his cultic orgies more likely a feeding ground for the dark eldila.

God correct me if I'm wrong...after all, what do I know.

Light of Mind

I recently had the opportunity to watch an old Japanese animated series that I haven't seen in awhile. It's one of those deep, classic ones from the 'golden age' when there was money and creative freedom enough to produce some very artistic and sometimes controversial works. Every time I see this one, I learn something more and like rereading a good book, am retouched by the whole thing.

I once wrote a lengthy treatise in college about this series, so I am not going to rehash all of that work here. If you want to read that, let me know and I'll post it on worthyofpublishing.com or something. Rather, I want to explore an aspect of the series that grabbed me again.

We so often let our circumstances dictate our personality. We become what we perceive others think we are, or a reaction to it. While we need boundaries to help define us in a real sense, we must remember that our entire reality is mediated by our perception. If the lens is cloudy or flawed, the image will be as well. And we so often only see "as through a glass darkly". It is a common condition of humanity.

But perhaps it is only in pain, suffering, and difficulty that these illusions are thrown into sharp relief. Perhaps that is their main purpose...to wake us up and drive us on. In difficult circumstances we cannot stay where we are, but must move, must change. In the moment of that metanoia, we can see clearly if only for a moment. We can reset our path, go another way, repent, to use the archaic word without its religiously skewed connotation.

Here's the trick, though. If our world is a construct of our perceptions, we can truly change it simply by changing our mind. We can turn the process around and drive it within our own being so that our self is not made as a result of the world, but our world is made as a result of our self. In this set-up, the light of mind-- the seat of our soul, that space within each of us where no others should enter, is sacred and uninvaded. It exudes from the soul and fills the space around it, keeping those that would harm our being at bay.

Alas, we don't have the power to do this, even in the best strength of our own will. It will always come to some perversion. I think this is one of the messages of the series that I had missed before. "The tragedy of the project is its people. And I am one of them." Misato says.

Enter here that which is not of our world. That which is alien to us and beyond us. It can challenge us, invade us, understand us and remake us...not in a coddling, cushy process, but in blood and fire. How else could a whole world be brought down? Only in the razing of those constructs can the heart of the matter, our perceptions, be laid bare and be remade. Thus that which is evil can be used for our good. Thus in the kernel of our being, at the root, we find that we are not what we perceive, nor what others perceive, but something other that is not defined by ourselves or our circumstances. Something original. This is the source of the Light of the Soul and Mind. This is who we are.

Lion

Prior to Christmas this year and following Avatar, I was lying in bed one morning, as I often do. It was too early to get up, but I am such a poor sleeper that I spend a lot of time awake in bed. I often try to fill this time in the morning and evenings with prayer and contemplation, which are not two separate things, but very much intertwined.

Anyway, I was lying in that state between fully awake and fully asleep and rolling over the ideas expressed in Avatar, what was beautiful about it, what was True amongst the commercial stuff...see the former post for more on that. I was wondering how much of a metaphor it could be for our time and what kind of metaphor that would be. This led to thoughts about metaphors in general and how they are powerful tools. How I've spent a lot of my life looking for metaphors to express Truth precisely as I understand it. How I had never been able to find one that I could really bite into. Some have come close...but like Bono says, I still hadn't found what I was looking for. And as Jack says, it's hard to beat the rich fertile metaphors we find in the Bible. At that moment, I had a vision...or a dream...or both, call it what you will. Jesus appeared to me as a lion...as Aslan from the Narnia books. Nothing was spoken, but something was communicated. It lasted only a moment, but in that dream-time, so much transpired.

I don't know that I could fully explain what I learned and gained from the experience, but I'm not sure that I should. These things are often meant only for the one who receives them and I only chronicle it here as a reminder, a remembrance to myself more than anything, that it did occur.

Just like the Galadriel experience posted in the early entries of this blog, I was profoundly humbled, overjoyed, and ashamed of all that I am not. One thing I can communicate is known to those who have these kind of experiences. There is a profound sense of unworthiness, like being embarrassed to be flesh, acutely aware of all my flaws, every time I've failed to be what I am created to be, of the true depth of my rebellion and helplessness. Like being totally inappropriate in so many ways. Going to a state dinner directly after mowing the grass in August only approximates an aspect of what I mean. But in that very moment is a deep unbounded love. And at the very moment that I think, "I'm so unworthy."
The reply comes, "I know; I'm choosing you."

Why Aslan? Why a fictional character? It has to do with metaphors and the role the extended metaphors of Narnia and Aslan have played in me. I am convinced that Aslan is far more than a fictional character. Jack must have known this image, this face, had seen it and felt it, and then wrote about it. Truly, it is cited this way in the biographies. Good God, the power of these moments falls so flat in writing. Imagine stepping into a story and finding with every step you take that it is far truer than you ever could have imagined. This is my life. It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.