I've heard it said that for some people, life begins at thirty. Well, I'm still three years out, still languishing on in the end of my twenties.
A painful decade it has been, frocked with the utter depths of loneliness and longing, yearning to find who I really am and where I really belong, with no emotional support and no affection all along the way.
The clouds have not yet even begun to part, but I can sense a clearing not too far ahead, at least I hope. I can't live like this much longer.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Winds of Spirit
My life of the past almost decade has been colored with shades of pain, depression, anxiety, loneliness, fear, deep longing, and all kinds of other feelings that I can't place or describe. The feelings cling to me like mud on a pair of shoes. I walk around every day, broken. It's become the only thing I know.
Where ever you go, there you are
How I've longed to get away, to escape. But I know it would only follow me.
Sometimes, when I lie down to take a brief nap, I get a snap of clarity in that instant of time that the mind shuts off and I pass into a dream state. One such time, I lied down with a burden of pain on my chest. In this moment of clarity and for a moment I felt like I descended into a place of inner purity where the heaviness of these feelings could not touch me. It was as though they were oil, and when I descended into the waters of sleep they stayed afloat above the water and I was safe from them.
It made me think about the promise of Jesus and the prophets, that rivers of living water would flow out from us. If rivers of water flow out, that must mean there has to be water within. But what is this water, and what makes it living? And more importantly, how do I make that water come to the surface so that I don't have to be in some kind of consciousness limbo to perceive it?
Every so often, a strange influence passes over me. Usually, it occurs when I am driving on a road I've never driven on before when I have the windows down and the weather is nice. I suddenly feel as though I am a million miles away from where I've ever been before, that my life is new and unfolding in a way that is completely fresh. My heart feels pure and my thoughts renewed. Whenever I pass back into the familiar, however, the feeling passes with it.
Every so often, I see the subtle hand of God working in my life, but I never really comprehend it.
I once read a strange analogy concerning the relation of our lives with a higher dimension....
Say we lived in a realm that is only 2 dimensional instead of 3 dimensional. Say we were all flat people living in a flat world in a flat universe. Flat is all we know. BUT, there is a third dimension that we are not aware of. The third dimension can pass through this flat dimension, but all the flat dimension knows of it is the impression it makes at the point of intersection.
I know some readers are thinking jeez what a bunch of gobbledygook. For those, let me put it this way. Pretend our world was as flat as a sheet of paper, and we with it. The only shapes known in that world are flat shapes. Circles, squares, triangles, tetrahedrons, whatever. All flat.
Now.. above that world there exists a third dimension, but the flat world cannot comprehend it. In this higher three dimensional world world there can exist more complex shapes. Spheres, Square blocks, and whatever else, but in the 2 dimensional world, there can only be flat circles, squares, etc.
If a sphere wanted to interact with those flat world people, it could intersect that world. It would be as though a sphere were passing through a sheet of paper. Wherever the sphere touches the paper, it forms a circle, but only one flat portion of the sphere can interact with the flat plane of that 2 dimensional world.
So, wherever the sphere interacts with the flat world, the flat people can only comprehend a circle. Likewise, if a pyramid wanted to appear in the 2d flat world, it could only form a triangle there, even though the rest of the 3 dimensional form would still protrude into the 3rd dimension beyond the flat plane of the 2 dimensional world.
I know I'm probably making it sound more complicated than it really is.
The truth is we live in a 3 dimensional world, or 4 if you count time as a dimension. But there are higher dimensions, the only problem is we cannot perceive them because they exist outside of our dimensional jurisdiction, or comprehension. Just like a sphere cannot exist in a 2 dimensional realm, only a circle can. In the 3 dimensional world, the sphere can exist. How many further dimensions are there? What exists in them? Nobody knows, but science knows they exist.
The bible says God has planted eternity in the hearts of men.
I was just thinking earlier about my experience today eating with my "pastor." It was just a simple time of hanging out and taking bread together, just like Jesus hung out with his 12 disciples and ate, drank, and slept along with them every day. Every day was a divine moment, them, Jesus, and the fullness of God that dwelt in Him.
The seemingly mundane was of divine and eternal significance.
There is a scene in the movie Waking Life which deals with that idea. Two men are seen sitting there discussing it, and the scene drifts away as the faces of the two men become two huge clouds, making it seem as though their faces together was a lot more significant than it was before.
It just made me think. All these moments of loneliness, mundaneness, and whatever else, are they really divine moments? Moments that have the full attention of God and every supernatural being in the entire universe?
What is man, that you should be mindful of him?
The wind blows where it wills, no man knows from where it comes or to where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.
One thing that I have been made keenly aware of, is that God works in mysterious ways. And often those ways seem weird. We only see a part of whatever he is doing, but there is more to the complexity of his "shape" than we can comprehend, because the rest of its dimensions lie hidden in the reaches of time and circumstance, extending into the hidden hearts of other men, relationships, events, etc. His divine wisdom is interwoven into everything, and all we can ever hope is to catch a glimpse of some small part of it.
For now we see as through a glass, darkly, but one day I shall know even as I am known.
Just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God, who does all things.
All I want right now is for that fresh wind to blow away the crustiness that has corrupted my life and my thoughts, and propel me into that new fresh life with fresh thoughts forever.
Where ever you go, there you are
How I've longed to get away, to escape. But I know it would only follow me.
Sometimes, when I lie down to take a brief nap, I get a snap of clarity in that instant of time that the mind shuts off and I pass into a dream state. One such time, I lied down with a burden of pain on my chest. In this moment of clarity and for a moment I felt like I descended into a place of inner purity where the heaviness of these feelings could not touch me. It was as though they were oil, and when I descended into the waters of sleep they stayed afloat above the water and I was safe from them.
It made me think about the promise of Jesus and the prophets, that rivers of living water would flow out from us. If rivers of water flow out, that must mean there has to be water within. But what is this water, and what makes it living? And more importantly, how do I make that water come to the surface so that I don't have to be in some kind of consciousness limbo to perceive it?
Every so often, a strange influence passes over me. Usually, it occurs when I am driving on a road I've never driven on before when I have the windows down and the weather is nice. I suddenly feel as though I am a million miles away from where I've ever been before, that my life is new and unfolding in a way that is completely fresh. My heart feels pure and my thoughts renewed. Whenever I pass back into the familiar, however, the feeling passes with it.
Every so often, I see the subtle hand of God working in my life, but I never really comprehend it.
I once read a strange analogy concerning the relation of our lives with a higher dimension....
Say we lived in a realm that is only 2 dimensional instead of 3 dimensional. Say we were all flat people living in a flat world in a flat universe. Flat is all we know. BUT, there is a third dimension that we are not aware of. The third dimension can pass through this flat dimension, but all the flat dimension knows of it is the impression it makes at the point of intersection.
I know some readers are thinking jeez what a bunch of gobbledygook. For those, let me put it this way. Pretend our world was as flat as a sheet of paper, and we with it. The only shapes known in that world are flat shapes. Circles, squares, triangles, tetrahedrons, whatever. All flat.
Now.. above that world there exists a third dimension, but the flat world cannot comprehend it. In this higher three dimensional world world there can exist more complex shapes. Spheres, Square blocks, and whatever else, but in the 2 dimensional world, there can only be flat circles, squares, etc.
If a sphere wanted to interact with those flat world people, it could intersect that world. It would be as though a sphere were passing through a sheet of paper. Wherever the sphere touches the paper, it forms a circle, but only one flat portion of the sphere can interact with the flat plane of that 2 dimensional world.
So, wherever the sphere interacts with the flat world, the flat people can only comprehend a circle. Likewise, if a pyramid wanted to appear in the 2d flat world, it could only form a triangle there, even though the rest of the 3 dimensional form would still protrude into the 3rd dimension beyond the flat plane of the 2 dimensional world.
I know I'm probably making it sound more complicated than it really is.
The truth is we live in a 3 dimensional world, or 4 if you count time as a dimension. But there are higher dimensions, the only problem is we cannot perceive them because they exist outside of our dimensional jurisdiction, or comprehension. Just like a sphere cannot exist in a 2 dimensional realm, only a circle can. In the 3 dimensional world, the sphere can exist. How many further dimensions are there? What exists in them? Nobody knows, but science knows they exist.
The bible says God has planted eternity in the hearts of men.
I was just thinking earlier about my experience today eating with my "pastor." It was just a simple time of hanging out and taking bread together, just like Jesus hung out with his 12 disciples and ate, drank, and slept along with them every day. Every day was a divine moment, them, Jesus, and the fullness of God that dwelt in Him.
The seemingly mundane was of divine and eternal significance.
There is a scene in the movie Waking Life which deals with that idea. Two men are seen sitting there discussing it, and the scene drifts away as the faces of the two men become two huge clouds, making it seem as though their faces together was a lot more significant than it was before.
It just made me think. All these moments of loneliness, mundaneness, and whatever else, are they really divine moments? Moments that have the full attention of God and every supernatural being in the entire universe?
What is man, that you should be mindful of him?
The wind blows where it wills, no man knows from where it comes or to where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.
One thing that I have been made keenly aware of, is that God works in mysterious ways. And often those ways seem weird. We only see a part of whatever he is doing, but there is more to the complexity of his "shape" than we can comprehend, because the rest of its dimensions lie hidden in the reaches of time and circumstance, extending into the hidden hearts of other men, relationships, events, etc. His divine wisdom is interwoven into everything, and all we can ever hope is to catch a glimpse of some small part of it.
For now we see as through a glass, darkly, but one day I shall know even as I am known.
Just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God, who does all things.
All I want right now is for that fresh wind to blow away the crustiness that has corrupted my life and my thoughts, and propel me into that new fresh life with fresh thoughts forever.
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