The Inside Moves

It's hot tonight.  Hotter overnight temperatures than most of my Northern Hemispherean friends will see at the height of their day that is beginning as mine is ending.  My old but working air conditioner chugs coldness out into my darkened lounge room.  It is a sheet and no doona night.

We move toward the solstice in less than a week.

I am greedy for the light.  So greedy that the approach of the solstice fills me with sadness because it is downhill from here.  If that's not the voice of a seasonally affectively disordered person, I don't know what is.  The desperate grab of addiction, there never being enough light.  Bemoaning the downward dip.  As if the light is suddenly going to start dipping out of the sky at 5pm by next Friday :)

I love the way things go.  The way the seasons blend.  The grace that is held within the steady downward sweep of light into dark and then back into light again.  I keep looking around at older women.  I am fascinated by older women.  We see the downward sweep from light collagen to dark death but we do not often think that there is light collagen out the other side of the door.  Our culture has taught that it is life/death but that is simply not true.  Everything around us has life after its death.  And yet that is not something that can be proven scientifically, or rationally.  But right down to the very cells within me, which have all renewed themselves several times over before my own physical death happens, I feel that this is true even with us, even with everything.

My friend Jane and I sat on the weekend talking about how gravity and ageing brings you up against issues that in your twenties you thought you would never contemplate.  Boob jobs and botoxing and dying grey hairs.  And yet we are both resolute that we shall age as gracefully as we can.

And anyway, we talked about true beauty being that which shines from within.  That is so cliched as to sound really poxily wanky.  The reality of that inner beauty is something much more mercurial, delicious.  But it probably wouldn't even be called beauty even though it seems to be the absolute essence of what beauty is.  The outward facade of attractive and beautiful people is a smaller version of it but we have made it everything.  So it doesn't seem all that strange to me therefore that in our society even young, beautiful girls are looking more and more overdone.  (Or perhaps I am just getting old :)  But there is so often a harshness about beautiful girls and women whose beauty would be so much more awesome if it wasn't ramped and trashed up. 

The beauty that comes from within bubbles.  I saw my friend Ed in the health food shop on Monday.  I have known Ed for quite a few years now and he has helped me immensely find my way back to some semblance of good health after having CFS for so long.  We have the most wonderful conversations.  We talk spiritual matters.  He tells me where he's been at and what he's seeing.  Like the free Living Now magazine that graces the stand underneath his counter, some of Ed's ideas have veered toward the more fruit loopy of New Age ideas.  And yet, even within that, we always - always - find room to be able to swim in the Isness of Truth together, despite how differently we are seeing.

It's some sort of grace.


I had had a pretty strange last several days, all told.  They saw me up all night on Friday night with an infection and then saw me in a delirium of courage on Saturday afternoon, after two hours' sleep, scaling the wall of prayer and meditation into wishing someone well who had bewildered me, out of a situation where I felt so much hurt and confusion and rejection.  Part of that whole scenario is the reason for this blog move.  I do not want him to read my words, as he has so avidly done every single day for the past two years, if he does not want me in his real life.  Enough said about that.

Where was I?  Yes, Ed and Monday afternoon.  When I go and visit Ed in his health food shop it's always a long enterprise.  We have so much to catch up on and share about and the customers coming into the shop needing help for their health issues mean that for long periods of time I walk about the shop trying not to buy anything else.  On Monday I sat on the comfortable cushioned wicker chair and sort of meditated, eyes open.  I was feeling truly blissed out even within the midst of this grief and this health issue that was still stealing my sleep.  I cannot really explain it except to say that that wall I had climbed over on Saturday afternoon of "may the best outcome win" and letting everything go just sent me off into this bliss where I just felt like what I didn't have I didn't need it now, and that my life held as much promise and prospect and wonder in its future as I could open my arms to.  It has been the most wonderful sort of a comfort.

Ed has moved on now to A Course in Miracles and was enjoying, inbetween customers, telling me about the Holy Spirit and Jesus and how it's all about forgiveness.  It was funny hearing Ed talk about Jesus but it was good (it was an advance on last time we talked where Jesus was a load of hokum invented by someone in the fifteenth century.  I have no need whatsoever to convince Ed about anything.  I have no hesitation in saying what I believe.  It is a rich field, and beautiful).  We talked about forgiveness and how you fall into it and how it's everything and at the end of our talking we both had tears in our eyes, and it is true.  It's all about being as empty-handed as you can, of loving each other.  It's very, very simple indeed.

"Look at you, you are just glowing!" Ed sad in wonderment to me, which was hilarious because I felt fucking awful.  But that is grace too.

Because beauty is really not about how you look.  Not ultimately.  We have all had the experience of seeing a person who is not particularly good looking but who manages to have all eyes in the room upon them.  There is a grace about them a confidence.  It is some sort of inner beauty.

And right now, I feel beautiful.  When I live in this space, I am 25 years old.  It will never, ever fade.

Grace

Although we must continue to speak on behalf of those who are oppressed and warn oppressors, my willingness to forgive them is not dependent on how they respond. Being able to extend grace and to forgive people sets us free. We no longer need to spend precious emotional energy thinking about the day oppressors will get what they deserve.

What I am learning about grace lifts a weight from my shoulders, which is nothing short of invigorating. When we can forgive and accept those who refuse to listen to God’s command to do justice, it allows them to hear God’s judgment without feeling a personal judgment from us. Which, in the end gives our message more integrity. The ability to give grace while preaching justice makes our witness even more effective.

Spencer Perkins

Great article about grace to be had here.

Grace is one of the reasons why the concept of an eternal hell where you are punished for your unrepented sins sounds more like a concept arising out of the ego of a man who doesn't really understand what grace is than out of a God who calls himself Love. Punishment for the sake of getting rid of your own anger and fear seems such a human device. God seems so much more creative than that.

The whole wanting to see people get what they deserve thing is one of the biggest prisons there is. It speaks just as much about the person mouthing the words as it does about the person who has committed the crime. I do not understand how some people are so dead-set on vengeance as they think it is anything other than a dead-end for them personally. It does not change anything at all within your own soul to see someone be punished, even if that crime was perpetrated towards you. It will not make you feel safer. Nothing makes you feel safe except knowing, really knowing, that we are capable of anything that those we hate and demonise are. And if we don't know that then we don't know how far down we stretch beyond our conscious knowing, both for good and ill.

"Vengeance is mine, I will repay" says God somewhere and for a long time I used to see that as a threat by a somehow deficient God and now I see it as a sigh of relief.

On our train system there are different sorts of artworks stuck up on the walls. "Moving Melbourne Through Art" they say. I think it's a good thing. Yesterday I saw a poem which contained a line about, "First enlightenment, and then go do the dishes." I laughed when I saw it again in the post above: "“Caring for each other, forgiving each other, and keeping the dishes washed."

I do not think enlightenment always produces amazingly lofty results. Surely the most amazing but seemingly most mundane is the way our eyes are opened to how truly amazing a single person is, how low, how deep, how fucked up, how dreamy and beautiful. The most basic and life-altering result of enlightenment is taking seriously how deep the changes go when we care for each other without insisting our personal agendas be consented to. Liberating.

Riding the Wind

I read this yesterday from Kent. Then I went to my art therapy class yesterday and Maggie said in passing something about being free to ride the wind. And it was like I felt it rustling through my insides:

Let go of the mistaken notion of certainty and the false sense that it in some way makes you secure and you might be surprised when the familiar "fixed" view you have had of things begins to be dismantled and following the Spirit who is like the wind begins to look not only doable...but actually exciting and awe producing in it's simplicity.

I am so aware - in awe, really - of how much there is that I do not know. Of how much things change when you are willing to sit with the disparities of what is. The beauty of small steps, of small things, of lives lived quietly, of the beauty of solitude and the warmth of friendship. Of the wonderment I spy, sometimes, of an everyday life, of the way it is right for my life to fit me.

The beauty that flows underneath everything is like silk, like chocolate, like strength, like love, like discipline all rolled into one. We become ever so incrementally mouldable under its gaze.

Pic: Never Alone by aussiepatches

A Different Path

It’s not, “If I am moral, I will someday achieve union with God.” That’s backwards. We must put the horse before the cart, and not the cart before the horse. Union with God is objectively already given to everyone from the moment of their creation. Who else created them? All we can do is awaken to it. We cannot achieve it. Once we live the life of union and abundance—not hating ourselves and apologizing for ourselves every minute—then we start living in our inherent dignity, a dignity that no behavior has given to us and no one can take away.

Then the horse is first and the cart comes along. Not “If I am moral, I will be in union with God, but when I live in union with God, morality will come naturally and powerfully!” A completely different path.

Richard Rohr

The Good News

Here is the Good News proclaimed by our Lord Jesus Christ:

Jesus began to preach in parables.

The Kingdom of God is like two brothers who were called by God to give up all that they had and serve humanity.

The older responded to the call generously, though he had to wrench his heart from his family and the girl he loved and dreamed of marrying. He eventually went off to a distant land where he spent himself in the service of the poorest of the poor. A persecution arose in that country and he was arrested, falsely accused, tortured and put to death.

And the Lord said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant! You gave me a thousand talents' worth of service. I shall now give you a billion, billion talents' worth of reward. Enter into the joy of your Lord."The younger boys' response to the call was less than generous. He decide to ignore it and go ahead and marry the girl he loved. He enjoyed a happy married life, his business prospered and he became rich and famous. Occasionally he would give alms to the poor.

And when it was his turn to die, the Lord said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have given me ten talents' worth of service. I shall now give you a billion, billion talents' worth of reward. Enter into the joy of your Lord."The older boy was surprised when he heard that his brother was to get the same reward as he. And he was pleased. He said, "Lord, knowing this as I do, if I were to be born and live my life again, I would still do exactly what I did for you."

Anthony De Mello, from The Song of the Bird, as seen and stolen in its entirety from Brian's The Beautiful Heresy

Grace

Grace...

whispers of
relentless affection
singing us all
into healing

~ Paul Young

The earth, too. Except maybe we help to sing that one into healing.

My enamour of boiling hot weather has cooled somewhat after about five hours' sleep. Again, today, it is going to be 43 degrees, as is tomorrow. I lay on the couch this morning, once I'd woken up feeling sick and realising that going back to sleep is now something I mourn after for the rest of the day, praying for rain, visualising rain, telling the clouds to form. Because I'm really very nervy about the bushfires that won't be able to help breaking out in such ridiculous weather. It is the nuttiest hot spell in a century.

How unbalanced the earth is, groaning, waiting for the sons and daughters of God to be revealed (whatever the hell that means. And I don't think it is as factionalised as we would read it, somehow, but let's see).

I had a conversation last night with a woman called Andrea, who is writing a book about sustainable development within the framework of a biblical reading of God. It is very exciting to be able to enter into something like this with somebody, in an area that makes my mouth water. It is also very exciting to work within "God's economy" as she calls it. She has very little money to get this baby going, but still she asked me about financial recompense. I shrugged it off as being one of the less concerning aspects of the whole situation, considering I don't even know what this whole situation entails. And I guess that is where the freedom comes from, the freedom of people coming together who may not have the slips of paper or the experience to prove it, but who are brought together anyway, and who go on funny little trips together, with no idea of where they shall end. How do you discuss financial recompense in such situations? You don't. You just sit back and see what will come of it in the end. It is a far more exciting way to go about life, as far as I'm concerned. And it has the whiff of God about it. And I think we shall see more and more of it, and it shall be beautiful to watch.

I don't think we have any idea how much we are to enter into the renewing of the earth, in a direct way, sinking our hands into the soil. I can only but dream and hint and ponder about what all of that means, and how healing it will be for us as people, removed as we are from sister earth, slightly insane in the process, to return to the dust from which we came. Not to die (yet), but to help the earth do what it is was made to do ~ give life.

What is it?

When my friend Debbie saw the picture of the sculpture I did months ago, she said, "That's the nicest one I've ever seen ... what is it?" :)

Last Monday at art therapy I played with clay for the first time in weeks and weeks. And I came up with this ... thing. And even Maggie, who is the sweetest, kindest, most non-judgmental person in the world looked askance at it and said it was weird, LOL. I really don't know what the hell it is. I guess it explains partly why I have this trepidation when I think about going and playing with clay lately. Maybe I'm worried about the weird things that come out :)

And yes, yes, I know this ... thing looks very penile. Which was annoying, you know, when I noticed it, because I was right in the middle of my anger spew about men, where I could barely even look at them in the street, so maybe that's why I bent it in half, LOL (apologies for grimace inducement, blokes). Perhaps in Freudian terms this thing demonstrates some latent desire I have to be a lesbian, who the hell knows. The head reminds me of a telephone, but it also reminds me of that giant hammer in Pink Floyd's The Wall. The body looks like poo. The tail is obviously mermaidish. Maybe it is some uncsonscious allusion to shark fins (hammerhead = shark along with the mermaid tail) but shark fins hold no relevance for me at all, and why the hell is it sitting on a cushion? Maybe it is a representation of my incorporating some more of the male side into my personality, the ying - or is it the yang? Maybe I sound like a total tosser :) (I do love a bit of psychobabble, gotta say). I was wondering what you guys think it is when you look at it :)

Or maybe it means nothing. There's an idea!! To not try and work out the hidden meanings behind everything I do! But still, that is the whole idea behind art therapy, after all. I was actually going to work on this thing further, and I was going to maybe make a friend for it, but then I forgot about it and left it in the boot of the car and now it's gone leather hard. Still, it was just nice to actually make anything at all.

I have really lost momentum and confidence to explore in the past few months. It feels like it is starting to drip back again, very slowly. And with it has come an understanding and appreciation of how much I need to feel safe to be creative in this way. Like, 100 times more than I orginally thought. I clam up and it shuts down like catatonia and it amazes me, the way we do that for our own self-preservation, and how it is like a way of enfolding ourselves into ourselves. I like to think that God is in this ages-long-even-past-this-one process of unfolding everybody, in our own time and way, very very slowly, so that we come to it ready to fully immerse ourselves into the birthing task. Or alternatively, we come kicking and screaming and get through it anyway. Which I suppose is what birth is, right?

I am beginning to get on top of my detox now. The worst of the effects are behind me, and I am almost up to the maximum dose. Which is amazing when I consider how I felt when I had that first dose. But still, this is what I keep seeing in life in the past year or two, how it is that we can always go further than we believe we can. I can definitely feel some improvements in my health, although I've been so stressed out with other shit that now things are settling down I will really be able to see how far it's all come along. The whites of my eyes are getting whiter than I have seen them in years, which is really kinda cool. My anger has spent itself like a fish Gollum-slapped against a rock. This is a beautiful thang.

(It was interesting today, reaching Richard Rohr's book, to note his observation that maybe getting angry is often something that women need to do but find difficult - overcoming the "this doesn't look nice" thing - while grieving is something that men need to do but find difficult - overcoming the "I can't do powerlessness" thing. I can't vouch for men, but I would definitely agree it is the case for women. We are far too concerned with appearing "nice" to other people. It is good to be able to look back and see how all this anger spewed forth, old anger that I have had in me for years and have always been scared of expressing, you know? Always this fear that somehow it would come out like boiling water from a kettle and scald the entire universe. But it didn't. It came out safely, with no harm to anyone else. That is like some sort of a grace, you know? I plan on allowing anger to assume some sort of rightful place, where I can express it without repressing it and making it bigger.

You know, it's funny, but I always thought I had pretty reasonable boundaries. Like Mocca said to me the other day, people generally have a pretty reasonable idea of where they stand with me. And yet, there always seems to be a converse with everything. That is so, but then there are parts of me that are just all over the shop, and it is a real discomfort to really start to acknowledge them. Example. The other day a girl from down my street was standing in the street talking to me and Lester. And she came inside the front yard, to where a large yellow-flowered shrub lives, and grabbed an empty plastic soft drink bottle from where it had been thrown into the middle of the shrub. And she said, "I suppose I should get this. I threw it in here the other day." And I was thinking, "Yes, you little bugger, don't throw stuff in my front yard" - even though it's not really my front yard but the boys', but it's on my property, you know? And I was thinking, "Shite. People really do disrespect me sometimes. I didn't realise it before. But I'm not gonna just allow them to do that anymore." But obviously I was going to wait until next time to try that out, because instead of saying, "Yes, don't throw stuff in my yard, thanks" I said nothing in answer to her. Then, the weirdest thing, she just threw the bottle back in the shrub again. Like, as if because I didn't say anything it meant that I didn't care and it was okay for her to do. We people, we really suck. I walked away scratching my head over the fact that I didn't say anything to her, and that she threw the bottle back there again. And it didn't made me angry at all, but it kinda made me sad instead. It was like a demonstration of something I've been learning lately where we all take miles when people give us inches, and how it's like we all have radars on each other, and can spot the people with the deflated boundaries, and we just take advantage. And we do it without thinking, unless people begin standing up for themselves. Why don't they teach this shit in school as well?

Anyway. Tonight, when I turned into my street, I was thinking about how long it has been since I have felt that sense of optimism about the future, that bubbling of potential, the excitement of growth and having fun again. It's a different thing to hope. The hope comes from God, and it sits in the middle of the dark, not determined by circumstance. The optimism I always believed I would have, being of a generally sunny disposition, until the Great Desert Dwelling began. But there are glimmers again. So tonight, I tried it on again for size, that feeling of optimism. Driving down my street. Can I feel optimistic about my future again? And I felt it. It bubbled. I can feel it now, inside. I can see not only a light at the end of this tunnel. I can actually see, at least at times, the end of the tunnel.

I think I have named my blog well, you know. A discombobulated head, but also a discombobula of thoughts. Thoughts that ramble too far that they seem to not fit into the same life. Nice thoughts, evil thoughts, right thoughts, wrong thoughts. Embarrassing, gauche, socially inept thoughts. Cool, calm thoughts. Thoughts that veer from poo, and whether I am horny or not, to ethereal mysticism and blatherings about how I love God. The two cannot fit, can they? Sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I feel embarrassed about what I write. I have often thought maybe I should split this blog into two. And yet, all of these things are me. And so all of them fit. Not necessarily cohesive or comfortable, but this is what encompasses me. So I shall keep it all messed up together, like it or lump it :)

Today I took Lester and Elly to George Schofield, dog chiropractor extraordinaire. Lester danced around with his muzzle on trying to box it off his nose, and growled at George when we was manipulating his front legs. But didn't try to bite him this time, which is good, because George is 89 years old, and you don't bite 89 year old men. This man, however, is still able to lift a large dog's back legs with ease, and lean over their back to realign their spines, and generally get about doing physical work like someone 20 years younger. He just inspires the socks off of me. There is this feeling walking into George's place, a feeling I get from certain people sometimes. It's like he's just where you know he should be. And because he's there, where he should be, he occupies the space better than anyone else would. He fills up all the molecules to the full. If someone else was here instead of him, if he had taken a different turn and went somewhere else, then that person would fill up 97 % of each molecule and it would be fine. But it wouldn't be as fine.

Perhaps I am a bit too overly idealistic in my thinking. Perhaps it's because I'm reading The Alchemist at the moment. But some people just really seem as if they are just where they should be, you know? As if the desires of their hearts and the universe have colluded, and so the very molecules of the air surrounding them waltz in the extra oxygen. As if inhabiting their spaces to the full, they create extra pockets to walk through.

But then, maybe this sort of unity is something far more everyday for us than this ethereal blathering I am so given to spouting :) Not so Christianish that it is all sweetness and light and suppress the dark. Maybe this unity is all around us, like a river we can swim in, in a fashion that is real and attainable. In a fashion that includes tears, despair and boredom, the darkness and the tares. It must be. If the dark cannot stand, has not been redeemed, then the light and the wheat cannot stand either, in a fashion that we can walk in and still be real and broken. At least at this point of time.

In other times all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. But until then, I'm sure George Schofield wakes up and is bored shitless being George Schofield, wonders what would have happened if he'd become a farmer instead of a greyhound breeder and dog chiropractor? I'm sure he has crazy personality defects that cause certain family members to dislike him (this seems impossible in such a man as he, but who knows?)

I don't think there is just one path for us all. Surely there must be as many paths as there are ways to turn. Not just one heartfelt desire but many. Not just one chance at following those desires but every chance whenever the sun comes up, whenever we breathe in. Not so much a place that we need to be in, as a place that we are in, if only we can recognise it.

What a great mystery it is ~ even while we draw breath and live, it is not enough ~ we must choose life. We must continue to choose to be born, even as we age, even while we wake and eat, cry and shit, laugh and make love and wail and screech and glow and yearn and hope and pray. Even when we are behaving badly and missing the mark, losing the plot and fucking ourselves over, we still get to keep walking into the grace fields. This is the space God has stretched out for us.

Image: A Dream by arkano3

Like staring at the back of a TV set for 20 years

In a letter to Wayne Jacobsen on The God Journey, someone said:

In trying to explain this to others [the difference of a life lived in God rather than a life lived to try to placate God], I've used this analogy: it's as if I've been looking at the back of a television for the last 20-odd years, wondering if this really is all there is. All of a sudden the TV's been turned around and I'm beginning to experience what I was meant to find all along.

Wayne:

Boy, if boring doesn't describe religion, I don't know what else does. It's like looking at the back of a TV set for 20 years.

Hehe :) Now, just to reiterate, I'm not talking about every Christian who goes to a Sunday morning meeting that is boring or 'religious'. Neither are all of the meetings themselves boring or 'religious'. But most of them are, for mine, not out of bad intentions but just because most of them are so bogged down in ... I dunno, tradition, religion, fear, that the life only gets to poke its head up here and there throughout the service before, oops, it's time for the fourth song, or you can't say that because you're just the congregation, or you can't have those problems because you're a believer, bathed in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, the Lord Jesus Christ ain't stopped me from having a whole lot of shit happen. In fact, all the Christians I know that I like best, both online and offline, are the ones who are having a whole lot of shit happening to them. Because they're admitting it, right? 'Cause they can. 'Cause the religious folk are having bad shit happen to them too, but they can't admit it because it doesn't fit into their religious paradigm. A paradigm which has basically nothing to do with God, and everything to do with the way people have related to him since forever. The religious system is not about God. It doesn't say anything about God as much as it says everything about human beings and why it is that we need God. And that counts for every single bloody one of us.

I said on Erin's blog the other day that I hate Christians. Actually, I think I said I fucking hate Christians. Which is pretty harsh, really. But I do, because they are some of the ugliest people on the planet, the overtly religious person who doesn't realise it. They come out of all religions. But the extent of my anger really probably says more about where I'm at than anything. 'Cause I might have spied out some good land, and even rolled around in its grasses, and I might be having some sort of a relationship with God that has actually got to the point where I feel safer in him than I ever have ever in any human person, and which has achieved a depth where, like last night, I can be driving to the video store and have this moment where I just felt this communion that brought tears to my eyes at the thought of him.

But I'm still the kind of person who 10 minutes later was bored, who has still got a whole lot of critical, judgmental things going down. And the place I can see that the most is in the way I treat my brothers and sisters, even if it's "not hurting anybody", even if it's only in my own head. 'Cause really, if I'd rolled around in the grass enough, I'd have come to the conclusion that it's not all about me, and about scoring points off other people even if it's in my own head. And that sucks just as much as being a 'religous' folk does.

Well, almost ;)

Loser

Sometimes I catch myself trying to work out the intricacies of certain things in my life, to find the magical key that will rev them up, move them forward, get me to where I want to be. This is despite the fact that I know that the best parts of my life happen when I'm not orchestrating them. Not the one driving my life so much as playing all the instruments in it. Involved on the deepest level, but not the author so much as the narrator.

Depending on my mood, this realisation is either cause for deep denial, or the best kind of deep relaxation. More often these days it is the second option. "I'm not in charge" breathes itself out of my pores, slows my heart rate, opens my eyes. If I'm taking notice, I see flutters of reminders - generally something whimsical or mystical, seemingly insignificant but which shouts to me. God knows how to speak to me so I hear. He shouts to me in colours, in the play of dark against light, in the juxtaposition of strange things. His shouts to me trickle into my soul like honey. His reminders are gentle, so gentle, like fingers tracing down a beloved's face, reminding me of what I already know. That I gain my life at the very moment I lose it.

In that knife edge lies an entire universe.

Billboards implore us to save our lives at every turn. They often couch it in terms of valuing our life, piggybacking on ethics, or love, or care, but it's still the same thing. Its counterfeit is so obvious, it's a wonder that we all fall for it many days of our lives.

Losing my life to save it speaks very little to me these days of ultimate destinies, of heaven or hell. I have battled long and hard with those things, working out my salvation with fear and trembling for many years. These days, losing my life to save it speaks instead to the eternal life that I am living right here in my body, to the choice that I have at any one time to try to swing my life into my own mould, or to fall into the wave of it and flow. The paradox is that it is 14 million times easier to do it the second way, and 14 million times easier to do it the first. And that is no typo :)

It's the best kind of cosmic joke - or the cruellest, depending on which side of the fence you're on, that the only way to life is through losing it. We lose our lives in minutes when we forget that we are immersed in minutes and in our lives. How frustrating it is, being stuck in the midst of the seemingly never-ending quest to save our own lives because we can't see how to lose them. What an unseen grace and relief it is when we have lost our lives, that we realise that God won't allow us to save them on our terms. What a relief it is to know that Love's patience knows no bounds, that this ongoing fight between law and grace, saving our own lives and losing them to Love, goes on for as long as it needs to go on, but that each tiny trickle is carving out the rocks of our souls.

Law is shoved in my face every goddamn day in countless different ways and forms. My fear shoves law in my own face. Grace hides in music notes, in a refusal to give us what we are screaming for. Or, sometimes, grace is hidden in giving us what we are screaming for when we fall down hard on our faces. Grace is found even within nose stings. Grace will pick up everything and use it to Love's purpose. That's just what she does.

"Trust that the clay knows its own shape," Maggie said to me the other day. It took the focus off me straight away. Gave me room to breathe so that the real me could stand up and shape something. The way I'm shaping my life. With one hand on the wheel and my striving packed away. I take it out and put it on again often, especially when I'm fearful or in pain. But it's always been an ill fit. It's always been too tight around the middle, cutting off my circulation, stopping my flight.

Heaven is important but it's not the end of the world

The concept of heaven is much less interesting to me than the concept of a renewed earth. This earth that sings to me under my feet, perhaps part of its song is redemption songs, songs about what it's going to do and be when it grows up, when God finally gets to do what he has been so eager to do, and we will be gobsmacked and probably silent for about half an hour :)

You know that New Testament verse that says we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies? I wonder what that one's all about? When I think about the verse that talks about a new heavens and a new earth, a renewed place where heaven has actually come on down to live on earth, God with us, Emmanuel ... well, it conjures up pictures of the heavenly me rushing around Back to the Future style trying to avoid the earthly me :)

I've been listening to NT Wright. Can you tell? I have been desperate for some hope today. Hope. It's the thing that keeps me going when I remind myself that all of this suffering I'm going through is for a purpose. It's easy to forget. Mr Wright is one of those people that just opens up the vistas for me, reconnects me to the sense of wonder that is always there really, if I can reach for the strands and let it pull me through to wonder. Sometimes that's just too hard but still, the wonder still sits even if I cannot see it or feel it, or God, and all I can see is what I'm feeling and it makes me lose my focus, and sometimes scares me that I'll lose my mind along with it ;)

Bishop Wright was talking about his new book Surprised by Hope, which I haven't read but hope to, and which Rob Horton has read and liked very much. Here is a portion of the book which Rob posted:

This brings us back to 1 Corinthians 15:58 once more: what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that’s about to roll over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that’s shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that’s about to be dug up for a building site. You are – strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself – accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God’s new world. Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings and for that matter one’s fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world – all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make. That is the logic of the mission of God (p. 208)

How awesome a reminder that is in these days of reeling to and fro like a drunk on a rollercoaster, when it feels like I am accomplishing very little of anything much at all. Hope. That we are building for his kingdom, not building his kingdom, as Wright says. The distinction between those two makes all the difference in the world. It means that everything belongs, everything fits, in this crazy little scenario we find ourselves in, hurtling from birth towards death, wondering what the hell it's all for at times. Everything belongs. Everything belongs.

Maggie Ross (first seen over at Mike's Mercy Blog), reminds us that sometimes, on our very worst days, our left hand may be doing things our right hand has no idea about, things which will astonish us when we see them weaved into God's new creation:

There are as many ways of intercession as there are moments of life. Intercession can become deep and habitual, hidden even from our selves. There is nothing exotic about such practice. What matters is the intention that creates the space and the stillness. Even something as simple as refusing to anesthetize the gnawing pain in the pit of your soul that is a resonance of the pain of the human condition is a form of habitual intercession. To bear this pain into the silence is to bring it into the open place of God’s infinite mercy. It is in our very wounds that we find the solitude and openness of our re-creation and our being. We learn to go to the heart of pain to find God’s new life, hope, possibility, and joy. This is the priestly task of our baptism.

Maggie Ross, The Space of Prayer III post

This post is encouraging me even as I put it together. These are necessary things to remind myself of when I feel like my life is counting for very, very little, or that I am "doing" it badly or, as is the case lately, that long-repressed hurts are spilling out the sides, terribly embarrassing as they hit the air, trying to tempt me to shame.

Everything belongs, and everything counts. I believe that. It is why I am inclined at times to rise above the pain like a woman in childbirth, clench my teeth and thank him for what's going on, no matter the pain, no matter the tears, because whatever is happening to me is leading me towards him, is creating further rooms in myself where he can shine out of instead of my shame. And I believe that, and yet it spills away so quickly when a storm of emotions pours in. But still, it beats within the heart of that storm. And it's counting for something. And so is the storm.

onward christian pacifist, marching into life

There is something sacred about shared spaces, even temporary ones. Being in the present to a conversation held across a table creates such a space, no matter where the conversation is being held in the real world, no matter whether the table is formica or cedarwood. Sharing life, sharing creativity, sharing ourselves perfume the air in the same way a forest freshens it and music and candles change its mood. But even better is sharing life within the forest itself. My heart responds to the life and creativity of that environment, resonates within me, drawing me (blessed relief) out of myself, out towards the other (whether the other is the environment itself, my dog, another person or God). I think all forms of beauty and creation have this effect of drawing us out of ourselves and into community, whether the forms come from the earth or out of our own hands and hearts.

Today I was discussing with Maggie, my art therapist, how it was that every single session of my art therapy so far has gone over time. Maggie's summation was that the answer to that was to just aim for a double session each fortnight, then. Some people, she said, just need more time than others, and it seems I'm fitting into that category, seeing every time we meet there is a flurry of talk, of activity. She knows finances are an issue for me at the moment so there is no change to the cost - and anyway, money is not the reason why she does what she does.

How generous she is (and how wise). Today, I drew with soft pastels onto large pieces of paper, standing up so as to get better leverage and a better rate of knots going. We discussed the inwardness of drawing as compared to the outwardness of painting, sculpting, of doing things that involve the movement of your body along with the movement of your hand. It felt quite exhilarating, standing up, throwing myself into it, drawing whatever, encouraging myself just a wee bit more to fall out into my expression because falling open doesn't mean I'm going to fall apart.

Small steps. This is hard. Small steps count. The kindness of others, especially when you are in numb places, fearful places, changing places, is a gift from God. Freely given, costing relatively little to the giver compared to the balm for the receiver, if able to be freely received.

Lester waited patiently in the car for two hours during my session. Afterward, we indulged in a leg-stretch at the Hamer Arboretum at Olinda, where Japanese cedars sit alongside oaks and gums and all sorts of wonderfulnesses. It was lovely, but cold and the night was edging in even at 4.30 so we didn't stay for as long as I would have liked. I plan to return when the days start lengthening once again. It felt mysterious and alive, enclosing, as we walked further down the trail as it got darker and denser. Almost like the Enchanted Wood :)

On our return back up to the car there was a park bench next to a large gum tree. Leaning against the tree trunk were two large sticks, perfectly sized to aid in walking the tree-rooted track, thoughtfully left by the previous users.

Small kindnesses. The most difficult kindnesses to learn are the ones that involve the overlooking of offences, the smoothing over of barbs and hurts, the turning of the other cheek, the offering of a hand, or the setting of a boundary, an outward focus and opening of ourselves to each other, heaven on earth, even when the other is undeserving.

That is the most difficult kindness because it seems to always come at a price for the learner. Necessary denumbings are so very painful. But do we miss out on the life that is out there because it's a hard thing to do? To walk anywhere but towards greater growth and greater openness and yes, greater vulnerability, is to walk nowhere, to walk into death.

Anyway, all the fun toys are life. Like carrots, they dangle themselves in front of my face, drawing me on, God-infused (he knows what I like), carrots like greater creativity, and greater wound healing. Carrots indeed ('cause he also know what a stubborn donkey I often can be :)

Death in life in death in life in death

Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?
to be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you're there!
If I go underground, you're there!
If I flew on morning's wings to the far western horizon,
You'd find me in a minute - you're already there waiting!
Then I said to myself, "Oh, he even sees me in the dark!
At night I'm immersed in the light!"
It's a fact: darkness isn't dark to you;
night and day, darkness and light, they're all the same to you.

Psalm 139:7-12


I was discombobulating my own head earlier this afternoon, sitting on the couch and writing my random thoughts about death which ended up coalescing into how totally spin-outish reality is, like those Russian dolls all one inside each other, getting smaller and smaller as they go. It makes me think I'd like to see with the eyes of God inside a grain of sand. But it would probably explode my head.

Was writing about how difficult it is to get going today (overcast again). Thinking about how time is a straight linear line when looked at from the outside, but how different when lived from within. How quickly some minutes pass, and how interminably slowly others pass. Nothing is really what it seems from the outside.

I sat down on the outside to do my standard three pages of freehand (commonly called morning pages but begun well after lunchtime). I began writing about death, because I was feeling a bit deathlike - stuck in the mood of the morning, the heaviness of the weather, the frustration of my frustrations. And began writing about death but got reminded about life in the process and oh, that's what I love about writing because it makes it all worthwhile when Life pokes his head up, intruding into my words about my own musings about death and surprises me with some bubbles. But of course, he's there, too, in death, isn't he? 'Cause he's been everywhere, man.

I was feeling frustrated when I sat down to write because today I really want to put my head down and my hand to the grindstone and just do instead of thinking so hard about what I want to do. Frustrated that on the one hand, I wanted to do the things I wasn't feeling like I wanted to do, like vacuuming and making pumpkin soup for my Mum's visit tomorrow and, on the other hand, the other things I wasn't feeling like doing either, like centreing prayer and writing, and lighting candles, and writing poetry, and doing a cool little ritual with autumn leaves that my art therapist showed me, and doing some drawing, and all of that cool creative stuff that opens up the world to me so that the minutes start expanding themselves out into double the time, but in the cool way, not in the dragging way that happens when you're sitting in a dentist chair and every minute goes for 14 hours. That sentence was way too long, but it stays.

Isn't that the most evil voice of all, when you're stuck, whether for half an hour or for a few decades, the one that whispers that you're stuck and you're never gonna get out of where you're at? That everyone else gets it except you, you stupid, useless dick. And it always feels like that, even though within this morning's version I knew that all it will take is a step or two and then I'm swimming in and drinking waters that I'm thirsty for and that change everything. And yeah, even though the voice still whispers even underwater, it's harder to hear it 'cause I'm immersed, swimming where the mountains clap their hands for joy. Swimming through repentance to seeing anew again (again, for the 14 thousandth time in one day) the life where God lives.

Repentance or penance. Sitting with unsocked feet in the cold can seem like repentance but really it's just some kind of fleshly penitence unless there's life behind it. And yet some walk the street barefoot and wailing and they seem like penitent fools but in fact they are swimming in the best kind of repentance. And nobody from the outside can really tell you whether you are doing one or the other but your heart can tell if it's a love dance or a flesh flagellation.

The road to repentance doesn't need to be in sackcloth but can be swum down in joy. When you know God is good even repentance contains lifebursts. But the flipside of swimming down the road of repentance - not once-off to an altar where you ask Jesus into your heart, but in a dark and light life where you discover him anew there over and over - is returning again to our own versions of doing life which is really death, returning via the wind whispers or via our own death we carrying around in our bodies every single day until the day we ultimately die to live. The death I choose with monotonous insane regularity, my right to self-determination and my belief that I don't need God to see what I want and need, and that I don't need God to serve God. Which turns gold into dust in an instant, joy into despair, work into chore, and turns all my attempts to do for God into filthy menstrual cloths. Riches into rags.

At times it is hard to accept that unless I'm swimming in Life and living loved, that I find it very easy somehow to slip over into living as if I'm a pile of crap and what I do is unimportant to God and to me. Or, conversely, flipping over the same tiresome coin, I'm living in the strain and strife that what I'm doing or not doing is so important in the grand scheme of things that it renders me paralysed and, conversely, zoned out on the couch in front of the TV.

Death is unbearable when I'm half-living, living half-dead. Death is stingless when I'm living in the Life.

Perhaps this is all tied up in what Paul was talking about when he said that we are already dead. The whole bloody kit and caboodle, everything, is dead. We have died and been sucked into the God hanging on a cross, welcoming the shame for the life that follows. Thank God. Death in life in death in life in death.

The God lurch

I don't quite know how to explain to myself, let alone to anybody else, what this long, drawn-out season of my life would be called, this long, long season of a decade's duration. I guess after listening to Paul Young on Canada's Drew Marshall Show I would just describe it as being in my own personal shack (scroll down to the William Paul Young interview). It really is wonderful seeing what God has done with this bloke after he was so sucked down by his shame and pain that he wanted to die. Even more wonderful is seeing someone who has no secrets now, and who walks in the still painful freedom of that.

I can so relate to so much of what he says in this interview. I feel like I've been sucked down too, clinging like a husk to the sides of God so I don't blow away. It really is all about freedom being nothing left to lose. How sad that sometimes we can't fall over into freedom until there is just absolutely no choice left. I know I've already chosen freedom. I've walked along her paths somewhat. But I am not out of my own personal shack yet, unfortunately. But oh, the grace in having walked the paths. And they're not that far away.

I feel the hope that comes along with that feeling of being nothing more than a seed, a renewed hope and focus on God, even though the world is reeling and lurching just as much as I am. I guess we're all lurching toward God.

I'm feeling this morning again the lovely grace of God who is always present, even within my dummy spits. Those dummy spits are sure ugly, but they're sure necessary for me. And I can't help feeling like not only that God is wiling and able to put up with them, but that he is going to make something beautiful out of them.

He likes doing that, making life out of dead things.

Ordinary People

I sat on the train this morning, observed from behind my book the peoples (how interesting we are), the beauty in the ordinariness of people. The different shapes and colours of a disparate bunch of people of whom I was in the minority with my white skin. Arabs, undeodorised Indians, Asians. Breathed in the aroma of the ordinary. Looking at the people, the mob, mainly gazing unseeing or despondent out the window of one of the richest countries in the world, and thought, "You have the seeds of yourself within yourself, and they are more beautiful than you could have imagined" (well, I didn't really think that then. I rather felt it, but I think it now and write it so that thee, dear reader, can understand some of what I was feeling seeing there are no widgets I know of to stick 'this is how I felt' patterns on the sidebar of my blog. But here, have a fractal, instead. (A terribly slowly loading fractal, at least here on Samantha. It didn't take this long to load into my head, I must say, even in the morning). This is some kind of ballpark representation of how I felt when I looked at the ordinary people and thought, God loves them and some/most/all of them don't have any idea what that means.

None of us know. We really don't. Maybe dogs know, but even if they do, they don't know they know :) But one day we'll know.

And then Flagstaff Station loomed and yea, I stopped thinking philosophy and went to Capitalist Hell. Light and dark. Deep and dull.

Nobody is happy with how they look and most sit wonky near the edges of their skin, not centred within themselves, with their imperfection. And yet, if we could see the divine in each other we would fall at each other's feet, kiss the hands of lepers. No matter how gorgeous or ugly they or we are.

Sink into my heart, ponderings. Sink in :)

Freedom to be a lurching paradox :)

I was reading some blogs in my travels yesterday, comments from my blog friends talking about the freedom we have in God and how great the blogiverse is as a forum to be able to communicate with each other and share our journeys. Many of us seem to be going through the same sorts of growth spurts and freedom discoveries.

I have certainly had a great deal of growth over the last year or so. I am aware of the paradoxes occurring in my life - the battles within myself, and yet a greater and greater grounding and centering in God and a peace - growing creativity, with more and more realisation of how scared I am of my own creativity - growing awareness of the vastness of God's Body on earth and what it is doing behind the scenes, and yet a frustration that we don't seem to be doing much at all.

So many paradoxes. There are so many times I am tempted to delete posts I have written here because what I have said in one post is directly contradicting how I am feeling right now (and it works both ways, both in negative and positive things written). But surely this is what growth is? It's not some linear projection, ever onwards and upwards, beginning with a shiny happy person and culminating in an even shinier happier person, that can be forecast in a spreadsheet? It's life, birth, in all its mess.

And so even though I feel rather vulnerable at times with this blog thang, despite not being able to see any of you, I don't want to delete anything. I don't want to silence and sugar-coat my journey (I have tendencies towards wanting to display that anyway). I have silenced parts of myself for a long time (which for those who know me in real life must be rather a humourous comment seeing I'm such a loudmouth but still - another paradox :) I have felt for so long like a second-class Christian because I am dealing with this thing and that thing and the other thing - but there is no class of Christian in God's hierarchy, as far as I can see. There are different classes of maturity and wisdom, sure - but even then I veer wildly across the spectrum.

So freedom. The real freedom is in Christ, in the Body, in all its permutations, both visible and invisible, here and now and stretching across the ages. The paradox is that it looks much more messier than the reality TV version of life playing outside our windows, but it's real. We're real. We're allowed to be. In all our mess.

Even me :)

The least of these (sometimes that's ourselves)

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

Rumi

(Taken from One House. Go check out their little corner of Blogopia, and especially the photo of this cool installation).

I love that quote by Rumi. It leads me on in my brain's convoluted fashion to think of this one:

"Everything is permissible for me" - but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me" - but I will not be mastered by anything. (1 Cor 6:12).

The issue is not one of black and white right and wrong. Life goes beyond that. Moving beyond narrowly-defined issues of "right and wrong" does not send us out into a field of licence (unless that was already in your heart to do so). It sends us out into a field that is so wide that it is big enough to enable us to begin to love the unlovable. It moves us beyond "us and them" mentalities, out to be able to love even those who are, shock, horror, walking in the dark, whatever that might mean.

It means being free to be able to discern, instead of Bible thump with our own agendas, what God may be saying to us about the people we come across who are in need in some way, and to be able to reach out to them with no prior agendas (even if that agenda is showing to them the love of God - he is capable of doing that without us). It also enables us to see that sometimes, as SaltSister said so eloquently on her post, what people need may not even be spiritual milk. Her analogy to a newborn baby:

They don’t even get milk at first. They get colostrum, which precedes the milk flow. It assists the immune system and acts as a laxative to clear out the digestive tract. It’s sort of a detoxifier. Some people are so messed up that it’s exactly an analogy of what they need before they can receive milk. Detox, droppers, milk — in that order.

Happy Saturday, bloggers.

Layer Upon Layer Upon Layer

We used to have this Sara Lee apple danish ad here in Australia in the 70s or 80s where the Austrian woman was waxing lyrically about the "layer upon layer upon layer" consistency of the amazing sweet she was eating. If I could defragment my brain's hard drive the way I can my computer, I would probably scrap that little memory taking up 10 or so bytes in my head, and move extra space to my short term memory so I can remember where the hell it was I left whatever it was that I've forgotten I've lost. But again, as usual, I digress.

I am much more aware of just how many layers I have. There are many. I feel like God has gone down to the depths of them recently. There has been so much going on in my layers over the past year, it's a good thing we can't see into the future because this last year would have appeared utterly unbearable if viewed in its entirety. The stuff me and God have been dealing with is the ultimate stuff. The really really big stuff. The core foundational identity stuff. The stuff that I have known has been there for years and years. And oh, boy, the pain.

So it hurts when you're changing and being changed and being healed in some measure. And so I've been angry. And my emotions have spilled outside of myself and overflowed onto the footpath. And God has felt more far away at times in the last few months than in, say, more heady spiritual times that have occurred over the past 10 years. But you know what, bloggers? It's alright. As painful as it is, it's alright. Because I feel in some strange way on some mystical level that I have agreed to allow Papa to do all of this. He knows what he's doing. It's a necessary process of disorientation. It's felt horrible because so much stuff has been dredged up. That's settling now, but I still can't really see what is going to come in its place. But God can.

Knowing that God is doing it is enough for me to trust him/her. And I do trust her/him. And the fact that he has grown me to trust him, with the father issues I have had, is a miracle all on its own. S/he is truly, amazingly creative and loving and kind in the way that s/he deals with us. If only we can grasp this, it will change everything. It will change the world. It has before.

(It is already - can you feel it?)

So in the past, when I would be going through difficult times or whatever, facing difficult things, working my way through stuff, on top of the discomfort of those sorts of situations I would have this horrible chain dragging behind me of thinking, "If I was a good Christian, would this kind of thing be happening to me?" It felt like that's what the Christian culture was telling me - that I should be doing it shiny for Jesus. It seems ludicrous to me now that I wouldn't be able to recognise that for the stinking religious garbage it is - all that is there is human power and control and refusing to lay down and die to your own thinking, your own stuff - but when you are in the midst of that garbage and haven't known anything else, you don't know any better. Even though the ache in your heart doesn't go away, the hope somehow if God is how we hope him to be, then maybe there could be a way for him to make all this stinking stuff alright. After all, look at Jesus, right?

I feel like I've come a long way since then. Tonight, I feel a lightness in my being that has many times been sunk in the past year. I seriously didn't know that life could be this painful. I have wanted to die at times this year ... and yet, at the same time, paradoxically, this joy has been there even within those times of despair. It's always there. But sometimes we can't see it and we can't feel it very well. And that's okay too. Because one of the problems of being made of dust is that when God moves around spiritual furniture, great clouds of ourselves puff up into the air, obscuring anything else. It's just par for the course, bloggers.

Don't let anyone make you feel bad about that. You get to rest even in the midst of your pain, as difficult as it is, as much as you need to scream. Don't let any well-meaning shiny happy people steal your peace by trying to make you feel like you shouldn't be in the place you're in if you are walking the right path. He's got you on your path. He knows the times when he's got you sitting on a boulder on the side of it for a respite while he does some stuff in you. He knows sometimes you're gonna run and sometimes you're gonna walk, and sometimes you're gonna sit down again and look as if you're going nowhere or backwards.

It's all okay. It's gonna be alright. Because not only are we made of dust. We are also made of stars.

Grace

"Grace rarely makes sense to those looking in from the outside" (The Shack).






I think this is why it's an imperative to learn to not fear (hu)man so much because no one else really understands where God is leading us except us and God. Thoughts?