More Meditations on our Scary Freedom

I love this quote, from Paul Young, the writer of The Shack. It speaks to me of the freedom and the time that consists in God, where there is no hurry because everything he wants to accomplish shall be accomplished:

"One of the main differences between my journey and the journey that the book character (Mack) experiences, is that I never turned my anger against God. Many do, but my journey was a little different in that respect. Now that does not mean that I was at all convinced that he loved me, and I ran the performance wheel most of my life, but for whatever reason, even as a child, I instinctively knew that the issue was the heart of human beings, not the character of God. As a sexually abused child, the biggest piece of my anger was self-directed anyway and the shame kept me on a tightrope that existed between the tension of perfectionist performance and suicide. Again, I always believed that the ability of human beings to do terrible things was an affirmation of both the respect God has for his creation and the magnitude of his resident image in each person. It takes a powerfully created being to do the kind of damage that we do.

"Now, having said that…there was a 50 year process before I ‘knew’ in my heart that he tenderly, compassionately, overwhelmingly loved me. To ‘love’ is Papa’s character and the healing process in our lives is to restore the damage incrementally, bit by bit, so that we begin to live in the truth and are not so lost in the lies. That process, at least for me, almost killed me. It was brutal, full of blood and terror and loss, until I was dismantled to the point where the only thing left at the edge of the cliff was a single, tiny, solitary seed. Then the rebuilding, slowly painfully exchanging one lie at a time for the truth. I will tell you this…there is no part of my being, or my theology that hasn’t been significantly tampered with. One thing that must be stated loud and clear: at no point in the process is Papa perplexed, angry or disappointed in us. It is a process, and he seems to like process: it seems to be something scheduled for us all."

Happy Saturday, everybody. I plan on doing a bit of housework, a bit of writing, a bit of pondering, a bit of praying, a bit of playing, a bit of walking up the shop to buy today's paper (I have sorely missed it over the past few weeks; my friend Michael Leunig is always a welcome addition to my Saturday).