Double World Straddling.

Sunday 8 June 2008

Sometimes I can't believe how much my viewpoint can change on any one single thing, in the space of a few minutes, even. My views range from black hopelessness and helplessness, to a sunny belief that wonderful amazing things can happen. It's quite tiring, really.

Sometimes I want to get everything sorted before I walk forwards. I want the path to go on unendingly before me, surrounded with daisies and cedars and sun. And then I sense God, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or my own wisdom, or whatever, telling me that sometimes that happens, and other times the path gets forged along the way. Yes, that's what I've been trying to articulate to myself recently. Sometimes the step forward involves stopping and laying a few pavers yourself before you can step forward. I think this is the whole "narrating my life" kind of thing I've been thinking of recently. I'm not creating and authoring the path myself so much as dimly seeing one through the mist and getting that old gut feeling that this is a way to walk through, those little promptings of the noodly appendage to hey, go this way.

But of course, there is never just one path. Methinks there are actually probably about a million paths at any one time. But for a lot of the time, at least lately, I can't even see one path, let alone 100 or a million. Most of the time I'm okay with that.

Most of the time I'm not okay with that :) There is this ongoing battle within myself that I imagine will go on in some shape or form for the rest of my life, but which is deafeningly raging around me often still, these days, in so many of the things I do, a battle where sometimes dimly I do see two paths, and they both seem as relevant and necessary as each other, and both are entirely contradictory. It's a very surreal experience, straddling two worlds. It happens to us all so often maybe we take it for granted, but sometimes I get this vision of a load of people going about their business, and they're doing some heavy duty dual world straddling - but of course you can't see that from outside, and it's not anything you or anyone else can buy or sell so we may doubt its importance - and others are looking at these world straddlers thinking that they don't seem to be doing much at all, really. Because dual world straddling takes a lot of energy and effort, and the world can think you're just sitting on a chair for four hours but you're actually working out some heavy duty shit.

Well, I didn't articulate it anywhere near the way I see it. Maybe it's meant to be a short story, that vision. Or a novel (but no, can't go there with that thought for longer than a few seconds at a time. A novel is just too far beyond me at this point). Anyway, my point was that there is always so much going on with all of us that others can't see, not until a few pavers down the road when it starts manifesting itself. I guess it's another reason why we shouldn't slap labels on ourselves or each other. Sometimes the pavers we lay end up being large ones that gets us onto paths we couldn't see or imagine.

At least, that's what I was reading last night, those verses that talk about our eyes not seeing and our ears not hearing, and our hearts haven't perceived, what God's got in store. So I'm trying to hang my hat on that one a bit. Some minutes I can see it - I can see what I can't see. I can feel it around me, the pregnancy of it, the possibilities inherent in everything, the way everything and everyone we see is like a seed ready to burst open and show the world and its systems how blind and unseeing and unfaithful it is. To show ourselves.

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

There you go. I've cheered myself up this morning, reminding myself of what I do believe and what I don't believe, of how hard this whole damn thing is. This life journey thing is a serious mindfuck, pardon my French.

I think it's meant to be :)

2 comments

  1. Mindfuck? Now that's a good word for life. Me like.

    I can't wait until the craziness of life dies down and I can have the luxury again of actually reading and digesting your posts. Until think you will have to settle for my simple comments.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Simple comments for a simple mind *ducks*

    ReplyDelete

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