Living books

Barry over at Honest Faith said something that completely resonates with me and dovetails nicely some stuff that's been running through my head lately. He said:

I certainly don't believe that God dictated or directly inspired every word of the Bible. It was written by (mostly) Jewish men who had a profound understanding of God, and I believe that they wrote out of that profound understanding, which is what was inspired by God. I believe the words themselves came from the various authors, not directly from God. So the authors were inspired, not the texts they produced. That being the case, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that further writings could be regarded as on a level with scripture if produced by someone who has that same deep understanding of God.

I agree. You know when someone says something that resonates down to your core and you just know on some deep level that this word is deep and high and meant for you, whether you believe it's God or the universe or the flying spaghetti monster or the connection between friends? It goes on all the time. Knowing that someone is going to call before they do. Thinking of someone and then seeing them the next day. We are all interconnected in the very thread of the air that we breathe.

A few phrases from aforesaid book the bible have been rolling around in my head this week. One phrase was about books being opened at some point in the future and another about how we are living books being written. I don't know where those verses are. From memory one of them is in Revelation and the other is maybe in John or 1 John or something like that (I always have been drawn to John and his mystical "go deeper, it'll blow your mind" view of reality. The alternative is unbearable).

That idea of books being opened evokes images of a courtroom, a stern god, and a jury, and people being judged and found wanting unless their good exceeded their bad. But how could it be a punishment deal when it's obvious from our own judicial system that punishment doesn't achieve anything - but even further, if the god has absorbed all of the bad into himself, then how does he punish us for it? What happens if, like Tyler mentioned somewhere a few weeks ago we judge ourselves? What if it's not so much about external holding up to a certain standard and being found wanted in something we can never win, and instead is another process in the transformation by Love of that which it loves? A laying bare of the very fabric of ourselves. But not to shame, nor to condemn or ruin, but to rebuild, from the bones up?

I like what Erin said, in the comments of that previous post:

I think when not taken literally but understood as a book chronicling the evolution of human understanding of the relationship we are to have with our Creator, we learn something...we often do see (esp in the OT) God taking on the attitudes and personalities of the people who were writing about him...because that was the limit of their understanding of him at the time.

This really rings true for me. It terrifies me at times when I think of how much I have changed in the past several years since being drawn to that which resonates rather than what some powerful people tell me. How much freedom there is in this version of reality. But terror, too, on occasions in the middle of the night. What if this isn't true? What if God is actually a critical bastard as he seems so much in the bible? What if this way I am walking is just all about me in the end? What if I am creating a god in my own image who is just too nice? What about if what resonates for me is some weird demonic thing and I am destined for hell?

Well, you know what? I can't do it the other way. I can't live in the mindset that church meetings live in. It gave me claustrophobia back then, and even more so now. That way removes from me any ability I may have to be able to discern things for myself. It turns me into some sort of sitting duck. I feel more in touch with life these days. But the flipside of that is that everything in me is being exposed. It's exhausting inspecting the almost unbearable, so ugly parts of myself. How to stand up under the ugliness without resorting to self punishment? How to accept where I am in the grand scheme of things without resorting to despair? How do I do that without believing that God is Love beyond my wildest? How do I do that without thinking that s/he must be something so amazing that I would sell everything to find him/her?

I can't. And so if this way is wrong then so be it. At least I will have aimed towards something that seems real to me, something beautiful and big and inspiring instead of the shite little small thing that is the religion of bibliolatry. It helps me to be comfortable-ish with being written before my own eyes, wiht half written chapters. Unwritten ones. It means floundering towards walking out my own story, even if that story is unintelligible to some. It means being read. I love the concept of our simple little lives being something that other people read and see things that we can't. I like consoling myself with this concept because it helps to frame things for me. Gives me hope.

I often feel like I don't really know what I think about something until I write it. I also know that I know more than I think I do. Sometimes I will come back and reread something I wrote and there is almost this sense of, "Did I write that?" It feels both entirely me and also something beyond me. It is in this way that I think every human is being written by God and by ourselves. Co-authors. So often, after I have written something (like this post for instance), I will have consoled myself, calmed myself by writing - but not only that, I will have come to a greater understanding about myself. This is what I believe we will feel when we look at the written stories of ourselves. Then, after that, we get to start living. But that, that is for another age. First we have to get through this shithouse one ;)

The beauty of blogland is that we have space and room to tell our stories. The stories I love best are the ones told real, with their blemishes and despair, warts and all - those are the ones that inspire us the most, give us greater understanding into each other, that always tell more beyond the simple sum of their parts.