Action/Reaction

We’ve been conditioned to believe that nothing can ever be left to the whims of chance. Thus we do not question that there is now a rule, regulation or manmade law to govern each and any action or thought. At any given moment everyone is probably breaking one or more laws by simply standing in his/her house.  For the cause of a variety of good sounding reasons, like safety and health, everything must now be calculated, anticipated and controlled. Perfection, as defined by some mysterious all knowing entity, has become the newest golden idol to be worshipped and appeased. There is no room for happenstance in a perfectly controlled world because that would suggest we are not in control. No surprises, no accidents allowed.  

Though we are determined that we must be in control, unfortunately, we don’t realize that not only are we not qualified to be in charge, more often than not, we make things worse by trying to do the job we are not smart enough to know we are not smart enough to do.  

Breaking News...humans are not gods. 

Over time, in our frenzied scramble to prove to others and ourselves that we are god-like, and therefore masters of our destiny, we have learned just enough to be extremely dangerous. After we figured out that the sun, moon and stars were just objects, that natural laws are reliable enough to expect quantifiable outcomes, we discovered that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. 

Not long after that revelation, we forgot it.

We went from getting smart to getting too smart to getting dumber by the minute. Action/Reaction. The result of our stubborn willfulness to become our own gods is an artificially constructed reality of all things being controllable which, it turns out, is the exact opposite of actuality. It is in no way achievable and the harder we try the bigger the mess we make.

What we have wrought in the process is our own destruction. But we are so busy building the illusion we haven’t figured this out yet. Someone just needs to say it.

Action: split the atom / Reaction: poison the planet until it is uninhabitable 

Action: control the weather / Reaction: reap the whirlwind

Action: outlaw everything / Reaction: make all people criminals

Action: modify seeds / Reaction: destroy natural health 

Action: create drugs to cure bad health / Reaction: enslave a thousand for every one freed

Action: extend lifespan / Reaction: kill babies to keep population down

Action: combine DNA to create perfect babies / Reaction: predictable disaster

In real time what is unfolding before our eyes is not happenstance. Happenstance occurs when God’s natural laws are left to work exactly as they were designed to be, predictable with infinite room for variation, both the happy blessings and the tough challenges. Human arrogance, prompted by satan’s whispered encouragement, cannot allow that things are perfectly imperfect, sometimes serendipitous, that life is meant to ebb and flow, rise and fall. Humans refuse to accept that we are often better off and much improved when we are allowed to overcome naturally occurring difficulties on our own and that we only make things worse with useless attempts to orchestrate ways to completely eliminate adversity. 

As if...

For Him,

Meema

(Colossians 1:16) for in him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and unto him;  (1:17) and he is before all things, and in him all things consist.  

February

It’s Sunday, the last week of February 2014. We have a respite in the winter weather. Last week we were recovering from snow and ice. Today the boys are out shirtless digging, running, swinging and soaking up some natural vitamin D. This is fairly normal here in the south where we can expect small waves of real winter in between breaks that mostly serve to confuse the plants. It only takes a few days of this and the trees will be budding out and the crocus will pop up to see what’s going on.  Regardless, it's still a little early to be proclaiming spring.  We’ve had snow storms as late as mid-march, although that is somewhat unique. Nevertheless, the tree frogs aren’t waiting. They’ve been practicing frog chorus since before the snow was fully melted. Apparently they have their own internal clocks that have nothing to do with the weather. Much the same as the geese. They have begun to pair off. Soon, there will be a nest on the island. 

I was sitting here on the deck, inhaling the panorama of this preview of the changing of the season. Bird songs dance in the still gentle air. Geese honk, dogs bark, boys whoop and holler. Suddenly I had the strangest thought. I had a small achey spot that wished this moment could somehow magically stay for longer than 24 hours. It was so not like me. I’m fairly good with things moving along as they should. Every day is sufficient unto itself. 

But this came from someplace deep. I recalled a poem I wrote when I was nineteen, pretty close to fifty years ago. I dug around in my library for the little volume of secretly composed poetry and prose I titled, Shadows Speaking, that I have managed to keep all these years.

February Woods 

These brown February woods in which I walk,

are asleep.

Of what do they dream?

Perhaps of spring,

And green,

And blue.

Of warmth

And summer noises?

How foolish you say, that woods could dream.

It was only a thought.

I know that trees and soil and rocks have 

no human capacities.

But these inanimate objects can comfort me

Sometimes unlike any human.

There it was. Comfort. It is what we all want, even more than wealth. I was so young when I wrote that but even then I knew I needed something. Everything was still all ahead of me. The good, the bad, the fun, the tragic. Every thing great and small had a reason to be.  I made mistakes, took wrong turns, and yet, The Comforter was always there waiting for me to reach the end of myself so that He could be the sum of all I needed.

For Him,

Meema

“The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven’t yet come to the end of themselves. We’re still trying to give orders, and interfering with God’s work within us.” ~A.W. Tozer

Revelation and Wisdom

One can’t speak of understanding of revelation and wisdom without appearing narcissistic so I dog paddle lightly in these deep waters.

The best way I can describe what it is like to receive wisdom from revelation, that can only be acquired by deep emptying of self and all preconceived notions coupled with the overwhelming desire to know what is true and therefore cannot be shared except with those who have also had the same gain, is this:

Imagine you are a savant in an average world. You have limited social skills but you understand quantum physics like a third grader knows his ABCs. You understand that most of what people see and grasp as truth is like an island that only reveals the tip of the mountain that rises up thousands of feet from the ocean floor. But just because you see it and know it is there–the greater truth that holds it all up–does not mean you can make others see. In other words, it is knowledge that cannot be taught, it has to be experienced, personally and individually and then only by permission. 

Four years ago, forewarned and fully realizing up front that it would be a burden and that what I would learn could not be unlearned or ignored, I still wanted to know, so I started asking for wisdom, which is the greater message (truth) behind “ask and ye shall receive” (having nothing whatsoever to do with prosperity and BMWs). In spite of the inevitable downside to receiving the gift of a word of knowledge, I wanted to know anyway because that’s how I am constructed. I have always just wanted to know what is true about anything and everything. True. Not sorta kinda true. Not good enough true. Not true for the moment or according to current interpretation. True. Plain ole true. Even if it’s harsh. Even if it demands I step up to something that makes me a pariah. 

What I have learned and continue to learn (once begun it does not subside just because it causes problems with social interaction) is that there is a rock solid, immoveable foundational truth at the bottom of everything we think we know and it doesn’t matter if we like it or not.

So, four plus years in, I find I was right in my instincts. Wisdom is indeed a burden because it makes me even more a stranger here in this world than I was. I am now an officially definable misfit, not just mildly out of step, and this renders me largely unable to participate in the minutia du jour that the world loves, the feel-good zeal that is steering the boat into the reef while the passengers are distracted in spiritual passion mode. Now, because of what I know, there is a dearth of common ground for me with anyone except my closest family and friends who love me in spite of myself. While it is mostly frustrating it is also painful sometimes. But, thankfully, less so as I age, spiritually and physically.

What has happened to me, in my quest to know what is true, I am now proficient at seeing through lies. It’s like having an app in my brain that I can tap and suddenly be able to see all the ugly underneath the glittering mask.  And make no mistake ugly is everywhere parading behind goodness in this dying age because this is Satan’s ground right now and his best, most successful tactic is to build a grand good-looking lie on the tiniest fleck of truth. Pretty lies are much like snowflakes, all sparkly with a speck of something less pretty at its core. And since, for the most part, people prefer their sorta kinda truths and outright illusions to God’s less glamorous foundational truth, man-made doctrines and philosophies easily fill this preference which makes them flourish and spread like a virus.

For me to even speak of this is a breach of my own first rule of silence. So I conclude with this:

Wisdom that comes from revelation is not the same as proclaiming to know the future, which I am always cynical of anyway. And because I am not special I am the perfect example of why anyone can receive revelation and wisdom. You just have to know up front, it changes everything.

The most important truth we are subject to is that salvation does not depend on knowing higher truth. Salvation comes only through admission of sin, repentance and acceptance of the grace of Jesus’s sacrifice. This is really all we have to know. A simple servant’s heart is what God requires of us. Not head knowledge or even high spiritual understanding. 

There will be plenty of time for that when He wraps up this reprobated age.

For Him,

Meema

(Ecclesiastes 1:18) For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.