God, please stop talking to me through the Internet. It’s very passive aggressive.
Far greater than YOU’VE been told, maybe.
Just watched the preview for “I AM”. I’m intruiged but the voice over of someone saying “We’re far greater than we’ve been told” kind of made me scoff. The bubble that non-believers live in must be made of steel with no windows. How this could be a revolutionary concept is beyond me. I’ve been told this as far back as I can remember!
But I guess when you see the universe as a random accident of numbers and atoms where nothing really matters and even the thought you’re thinking this very moment is just the random firing (or misfiring) of an organ inside bones that have evolved from an ape ancestor making you really not that much more special than chimps, realizing that we’re all connected and that we each have only scratched the surface of what we’re capable of is an astounding discovery.
As a Christian, as someone who believes in what’s “behind or beyond” as C.S. Lewis put it, this concept is as everyday to me as ketchup. Of course, I have to be reminded and I forget it more than I should. But to hear “we’re far greater than we’ve been told” makes me feel like I’m watching something from another dimension or another planet. I couldn’t relate to that statement less. And neither could millions of other people, not only Christians but anyone who believes in a higher power, I would think.
At any rate, thought that was interesting.
If we understand that no artist—no maker—can work except by reworking the works of Creation, then we see that by our work, by the way we practice our arts, we reveal what we think of the works of God. How we take our lives from this world, how we work, what work we do, how well we use the materials we use and what we do with them after we have used them—all these are questions of the highest and gravest religious significance. These questions cannot be answered by thinking, but only by doing. In answering them, we practice, or do not practice, our religion.
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Wendell Berry (via austinkleon) Wow. PTL. |
What limits people is lack of character. What limits people is that they don’t have the fucking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it.
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Tom Robbins Still Life With Woodpecker (via womanofsteele) (via bbook) Oh, boy. God is speaking to me through the Internets again. Just when I was ready to go to bed defeated, too. Poop. |
This Just In! Intangible God Makes Contact!
Right now I’m imagining God on one of those cartoon deserted islands where there’s only enough mound of land for one person to lie down and roll over twice before slamming into the island’s only palm tree.
I’m imagining that our sins - committed knowingly and unknowingly, and all the times we’ve pushed God away, ignored Him, blamed Him, tried to kill Him - all of that is the sea.
We’ve walled him in. Sometimes on purpose. Sometimes without realizing it.
But this Stranded God has ways of getting messages to us. Messages in bottles or tied to a bird’s foot. Stone thrown in the sea that causes a ripple to float into our backyard tributary hardly noticed but somehow internalized.
I know this matephor doesn’t really hold up for very long. But this image or idea of God being somehow banished, trying to communicate with us with the few avenues we’ve left available to Him has been circling my mind because…well, because I’ve had a rough couple of days. No one knows this. There are things you can’t say. To anyone.
Super Christians will say, “You can say it to God.” But I’ll be real with you - sometimes that feels about as fruitful as saying it into your pillow. This is something I said to God only just yesterday. I said something like “What is the point? You know what I’m thinking. And that’s great and all but there’s nothing tangible coming from your end.” I wasn’t angry or complaining. Just stating what felt like the facts at the time. Yep - me telling God how it is. (How’d you get on that island again, Lord?)
And then this afternoon I got an email from my mother-in-law. She sent me a funny picture (and it was actually funny!) and said I popped into her mind while she was praying today. Then she encouraged me by saying something she’s never said to me before. Something she couldn’t possibly have known I needed desperately to hear from someone. Something that really was a very tangible response to a somewhat intangible emotion that had overcome me recently and that wells up from time to time.
You want to know who God is or where He is or IF He is? That’s Him right there. Whispering. Saying, “I do know what you’re thinking and feeling. And I do know that I can seem intangible. So, let me make myself tangible to you. Let me show you that I’m listening.”
And if you want to know what love is - that’s it right there, too. He cares. He is Love.
This is the first time in a while that I’ve been kind of astounded by that love and, boy, does it feel good.
I don’t usually get too Christiany on this particular blog but I felt like I had to share that. Do with it what you will.
I got a 14/15.
I missed the question about the Ten Commandments. That’s kind of embarrassing.
14/15
I missed the First Great Awakening question. Oops!
Some of these numbers are embarrassing in general. White mainline Protestants and Black Protestants are not doing too well….Glad I’m not either!
My friend (and at the time, foreign exchange student from Spain) Maria and I with the Twin Towers behind.
I spent 9/11/2001 on a college campus in Pennsylvania, within radiation blast range of Three Mile Island, the most likely target of the United Airlines Flight 93 that, Thank God, went down in a field instead of a nucelar reactor.
I spent it in tears and shock like most did but I also spent it glued to the phone waiting to hear if my paternal uncle was alive - he worked in the WTC, if his son was alright - he worked nearby, and if one of my maternal uncles was alive - he worked in the Pentagon.
They all survived but they were most certainly changed forever.
And so am I.
At 9:11 am or pm, I still say a prayer for those who lost loved ones and those who survived.
I still look for the spot where the towers used to be when I drive or fly into NY.
I will never forget what evil did that day but more importantly, I will never forget what my God did that day for everyone who headed His voice. Like my uncle - not really a church-going man - who heard a voice say to him as he ran to catch the ferry that morning “What’s your rush? Catch the next one.”
There are countless other stories, of course. And many who would say, “How could God let this happen?” The short answer is because He gave us Free Will. People chose, and choose every day, to do evil with their free will but God did what He could for those who “had ears to hear”. We make our own choices in this life - He’s not a magician or a puppeteer. But He is a Rescuer who sent a Savior.
Generally speaking, my favorite name for God is El Roi - The God Who Sees Me*
Now, if only I can be The Child Who Listens.
9/11 - Never Forget.
*This is the first time in the Bible that someone names God. It is given to Him by (perhaps ironically) Hagar, an Egyptian servant of Abraham & Sarah who gave birth to Ishmael and, as it is generally considered, began the Arab nation.
