Knowing we know that we know and that we don't ... know, that is

I was trying to form a response to Goodfornowt's pondering a few days ago about how the Chinese earthquakes could fit into a world where everything belongs.

I don't know. I don't know in an intellectual, word-based articulation. But I know, in a deep, bone level knowing (where all the good stuff lives) that I know that I know that I know that it will. It is a deep, Spirit whispered breathing into my shaking, shuddering, leaching bones that nothing is wasted from this life, no suffering that we encounter.

Which is completely irrational, not based on anything evidentiary. Richard Dawkins would laugh me out of the water. But the things of God sometimes never make sense to the rational, intellectual, evidence-requiring mind. But it makes total sense to my spirit.

How annoying that is :)

Edit: of course, when I say that earthquakes "fit", I'm not saying that they are okay, not dismissing the evil and the pain and the suffering. In fact, I am saying the very opposite - that this stuff all matters so much that none of it seeps into the ground without it seeping into God and ultimately being reconciled. Believing that, in the redemption of all things including the earthquaked earth and the crushed and broken people - every person - is an opening toward compassion and love to the least, in my very limited view.

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.

Socks and pyjamas and heaters and soup and unseen dimensions

Suddenly it's winter here ... well, just about. Well, not Winter Winter with snow and minus temperatures. People go on about how cold Melbourne is but really, compared to Siberia our Winters are a piece of urine. Still. Last night I wore pyjamas and socks to bed. The heater has been fired up. I am hopefully going to make a batch of veggie soup tonight if I can muster up the energy after a day of workish boredom. It's time for umbrellas (it's raining again) and coats and all of that stuff is nice and cosy (and a football team that is sitting on top of the ladder after round 1 and looks like some kind of amazing oiled machine), but I know it won't be long before I begin to pine for barefoot weather and dry heat. But in its time. It will swing back again.

I am feeling so much better. I have walked around for the past few days feeling content with feeling low-level crap because compared to Monday I feel great. Last night on the train home I stared out the window at the sunset and caught my reflection in the window, a goofy smile on my face.

After a few days of low-level crap, though, I'll start getting discontented with that and want more. The memory of Monday will fade and I'll be left with the memory of the day before. But really, when I look at all the bad health I've had over the past 10 years, the way I'm feeling at the moment is pretty easy to deal with. There's no doubt I'm on the upward trajectory; I just need to keep reminding myself of that 'cause every time I slip back my perspective buggers off.

I was thinking yesterday, if in some future age we shall be living in a time of golden light but no bad stuff - no death, no sickness, no causes of tears - then how shall the momentum be kept up? How shall we go on enjoying everything without getting bored? What would happen if constant joy became tedious?

Then I thought ... we have no idea what it's going to be like. Presumably we would be experiencing life in more dimensions than we do right now. And God, also (or maybe they're the same things). Those two things in themselves ... what do we have to compare them to? How do you envisage dimensions that you don't know what they are, and elements of God you haven't experienced? (Well, maybe the second is easier than the first, in some ways, if you compare the minutest touchings of God in this life, the whispers so subtle you can wonder whether they are you or God, the things that s/he has made, that gentle voice ... bring more on, whenever you like, Starfield God Dude).

A future of more God and more dimensions, a future of learning and continual growth (not the unimaginative sitting around on clouds in heaven crap but someplace amazing, someplace that takes all the best elements of learning and growth here and amplifies them out beyond belief. Someplace that makes the best music we have hear sound like a baby beating a plastic xylophone). It's a tantalising prospect to envisage ... and knowing that I'm nowhere near the mark is tantalising in itself. Like trying to work out what the amazingly wrapped Christmas present is that I'm not allowed to open yet. It adds rock-on edges to boring moments. The thought of how we could be ongoingly happy with no dark to define the light makes me think that the light is going to be very amazing indeed.

The kingdom of heaven is like ...

He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."

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I know that yeast is most often a symbol for sin and corruption and stuff. I think that verse above speaks to that. I've heard it said that the three measures of flour is symbolic of something else, too. It makes me wonder, though - why would the kingdom of heaven be likened to something bad? I don't understand this verse very well.

There are more than one type of yeast, after all. The stuff that we are subjected to in the standard Western diet is the variety that has no nutritional benefit. How about that? Who would have thought? In the great dietary conference in the sky, everyone from history will look aghast at those Westerners who were so rich, and who, in the name of greater agricultural and financial yields, ate foods so many of which had been stripped of any benefit at all.

I take brewer's yeast, the kind you find in beer. It's actually good for you. It contains saccyromycees bacteria, and they're of the good variety that like living in your gut and killing off the more unfriendly forms. So not all yeast is bad.

But whatever Jesus was intending to say here, I am pretty sure that the kingdom spreads like a virus. My latest email update from Paul Young, author of The Shack, says that his book is approaching the 200,000 sales mark. This is from a spend on marketing and promotion of 200-300 bucks. Astounding. Unheard of. Completely and utterly the kind of thing that I imagine is going on all the time around the world. Kingdom stuff.

Not equating The Shack into the realm of the Word of God spoken (although I absolutely think that God speaks and has spoken through that book). I mention the book because it's an indication of how I think the kingdom works. It doesn't need money and power to do its job. We think it does, but that's just man's version which isn't nearly as free and pretty as the King's version.

God's kingdom spreads through the most everyday of people, blotchy people with unresolved sin issues. A grace-filled kingdom where we share in the spoils of the King he just loves us that much. A kingdom of us, where he is growing us into people who are safer and safer to be around each other

Just imagine that.

Play

As the Zen masters say, "When you eat, eat; when you walk, walk." Living in the present moment as fully as possible helps satisfy the itch to monitor yourself and still be yourself. As in theater, so in life — the true artists are those who are so fully possessed by what they are doing that they have no time to watch themselves. When they forget to be possessed in this way and give into the temptation to observe their wonderful performance, then they usually stumble.

Practice today the virtue of self-forgetfulness, which is at the heart of making love — being totally engaged in what you are doing or in another person. Those who make love daily by self-forgetfulness find ectasy in celebrating the love they have been making day by day

Seen at The Wild Things of God, from An Old Hermit's Almanac by Fr. Edward Hays

Creative work is play; it is free speculation using the materials of one's chosen form. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. Artists play with color and space. Musicians play with sound and silence. Eros plays with lovers. Gods play with the universe. Children play with everything they can get their hands on.

... There is a German words, funktionslust, which means the pleasure of doing, of producing an effect, as distinct from the pleasure of attaining the effect or having something. Creativity exists in the searching even more than in the finding or being found. We take pleasure in energetic repetition, practice, ritual. As play, the act is its own destination. The focus is on process, not product. Play is intrinsically satisfying. It is not conditioned on anything else. Play, creativity, art, spontaneity, all these experiences are their own rewards and are blocked when we perform for reward or punishment, profit or loss. For this reason, "Man cannot live by bread alone."

... The most potent muse of all is our own inner child. The poet, musician, artist continues throughout life to contact this child, this self who still knows how to play. "Whosoever," said Jesus, "does not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child shall not enter into it." Improvisation, as playful experiment, is the recovery in each of us of the savage mind, our original child-mind. Psychoanalysts sometimes speak of this recovery as "regression in the service of the ego." But it's not in the service of the ego, it's in the service of the total Self.

Full-blown artisitic creativity takes place when a trained and skilled grown-up is able to tap the source of clear, unbroken play-consciousness of the small child within. This consciousness has a particular feel and flow we instinctively recognize. It is "like tossing a ball on swift-flowing water: moment-to-moment nonstop flow."

Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art - Stephen Nachmanovitch

May your days and mine be ever-increasing in funktionslust. May we remember anew every morning that this playful Kingdom is the most real of realities. This is the spaciousness and wonderment of ultimate reality - not what we see outside our front doors.