There is a common bond we all share through this presence which is God. No matter what the time or where we are, we are linked, and it transcends any of our human concerns that we fret about and believe are of such imminent importance.
Today, after a life journey that has equipped me to be at least to some extent a scientist and a particular kind of archaeologist, I would like to settle back and sift through these sensations, these feelings, this constant sense of something else, so near and just beyond our grasp. I am not a scientist by training, but it is in the spirit of scientific curiosity that I settle in now to examine these feelings, this awareness, and track them as nearly as I can to their source. Along the way I will suggest what all of this implies for who we are and what we are becoming, unbeknownst to ourselves. Surely we are in a spiritual Dark Ages and must now consider how this has happened and how we might reconnect with the excitement once evident in this elusive, frightening area that slices into the most intimate substance of what we have been and are becoming.
Since my youth, I have felt this stirring within me. As I stood beside my Ford Fairlane on some of those nights long ago, standing there in the driveway, I would look up at the stars and feel this quiet descend upon me as though I were being visited by something, and I knew it was this presence and I knew there was something being stirred within me, that this spirit was sitting upon me and moving within me. One of the thoughts I was beginning to have is that we are creatures not unlike those poor hosts in Aliens--that science fiction movie starring Sigourney Weaver in which people became hosts for alien creatures gestating within them.
In many ways we feel a terror regarding our spiritual being. It may be that some portion of human reluctance to really grapple with God and allow this spirit that is God to take root within us and grow is that we are scared. After all, God is so far beyond our ability to fathom the incredible depths and implications of this Creator that he is in a sense alien. This is especially true since we have never really understood this presence, this entity. We are like stubborn adolescents pouting and rebelling.
Is it not true, though, that we are hosts for this spirit that is God within us? We might even say that we are toddlers, infants, in our understanding. We are in a Dark Ages of understanding. Really. We are. And there is something that frightens us badly, something we feel bump, stir, in these places we have scarcely acknowledged within us. So as I stood beside my car and let this presence spin down and within me, I lifted my face toward the heavens, felt that familiar awe and yearning toward the constellations and all the secret, unknown future they imply. And I breathed, longing for a future I felt I was being called toward, when I would possibly begin to explore and communicate in words what we—every one of us—sense at some time or another.
But what is it like to have an intimate relationship with this presence we so awkwardly call God? There are many ways to discuss it, this feeling. And I would have to concede that it is not a frightening experience. I would like it to be somehow dramatic, the way it is usually imagined in the cinema. We sit in neat rows, all of us becoming shadows, nearly like mannequins in that our focus is transferred from ourselves to the the experience of what has crept across the screen, a watercolor wash, liquid and full of shadow and dusky light when something ominous is evoked. It is augmented by tremendous sound thrummed from hidden speakers and we experience something larger than ourselves.
In this context we seem to understand that the concept of this presence requires something that suggests the unknown, and fear lurks nearby, breathing in that deep, regular way that reminds us of our own mortality and scares us even more because it reminds us of the frail, vulnerable organisms we are, subject to debilitating disease or subject to some violence that may maim or kill. Barring some disease, our fragile biological forms are destined to shrivel, weaken, and ultimately to disintegrate. Come what may, death is inevitable.
Perhaps, then, our association of this presence with the ominous and the dark is more about the fears we have, and the reality of a relationship with this presence is more about calm and the certainty that--regardless of our fears--we will be okay. A relationship with this presence ultimately removes fear of death. Or at the least it provides a new perspective that helps us see the world and our place in it from a new perspective.
My ideas regarding this presence, the living God, have clung to me for decades. Begun long ago as one of those unconscious glimmers, it is something deeply interred within me, like a tickle. It is the understanding that we must find a way to ease forward and learn to consider more of what the Bible emphasizes concerning the living reality of this presence that is with us here in every moment, in our very breathing and interaction across this incredible planet, this Earth, which he has created for us to begin our first steps upon.
I began to sense him as a young child, and when I grew into my twenties and thirties, I felt it powerfully as a need, an awareness that there was something I was supposed to find and develop, ideas concerning who we are in relation to this entity, this presence. I could not have expressed it then. It has taken many years, nearly four decades, for me to learn how to put into words this powerful interaction with the one who has birthed us here and who is preparing to bump us toward new challenges, now that we are nearly ready. Even now I feel inadequate to the task.
If I had my way, I would just ease back and enjoy what must surely be the final decades of my life. I am not a young man--sixty-five years old as I write this. I can only breathe and consider that I will definitely continue to grow older, and I would just as soon ease back and let the years drift by like beautiful winds, the pastel hues of the sky, the calm of a day's end when we experience the sensation of work well done or of a time when rest is well earned.
Sometimes, as I sit in my chair and breathe, as I feel so content to just relax and ease into this other time, I wish I could be left to enjoy another dimension this presence has allowed me to understand and to live within. I'd like to ease back and let it surround me. Trouble is that God won't allow it. I have been prepared for this and now it is irrelevant to this presence that I am sixty-five and have advancing age ahead of me. I understand that I must convey what I have experienced and begin a conversation about who we are in relation to this presence, to what we are becoming, and to what is surely directly ahead as we contemplate events of what is now the twenty-first century.
Today, after a life journey that has equipped me to be at least to some extent a scientist and a particular kind of archaeologist, I would like to settle back and sift through these sensations, these feelings, this constant sense of something else, so near and just beyond our grasp. I am not a scientist by training, but it is in the spirit of scientific curiosity that I settle in now to examine these feelings, this awareness, and track them as nearly as I can to their source. Along the way I will suggest what all of this implies for who we are and what we are becoming, unbeknownst to ourselves. Surely we are in a spiritual Dark Ages and must now consider how this has happened and how we might reconnect with the excitement once evident in this elusive, frightening area that slices into the most intimate substance of what we have been and are becoming.
Since my youth, I have felt this stirring within me. As I stood beside my Ford Fairlane on some of those nights long ago, standing there in the driveway, I would look up at the stars and feel this quiet descend upon me as though I were being visited by something, and I knew it was this presence and I knew there was something being stirred within me, that this spirit was sitting upon me and moving within me. One of the thoughts I was beginning to have is that we are creatures not unlike those poor hosts in Aliens--that science fiction movie starring Sigourney Weaver in which people became hosts for alien creatures gestating within them.
In many ways we feel a terror regarding our spiritual being. It may be that some portion of human reluctance to really grapple with God and allow this spirit that is God to take root within us and grow is that we are scared. After all, God is so far beyond our ability to fathom the incredible depths and implications of this Creator that he is in a sense alien. This is especially true since we have never really understood this presence, this entity. We are like stubborn adolescents pouting and rebelling.
Is it not true, though, that we are hosts for this spirit that is God within us? We might even say that we are toddlers, infants, in our understanding. We are in a Dark Ages of understanding. Really. We are. And there is something that frightens us badly, something we feel bump, stir, in these places we have scarcely acknowledged within us. So as I stood beside my car and let this presence spin down and within me, I lifted my face toward the heavens, felt that familiar awe and yearning toward the constellations and all the secret, unknown future they imply. And I breathed, longing for a future I felt I was being called toward, when I would possibly begin to explore and communicate in words what we—every one of us—sense at some time or another.
But what is it like to have an intimate relationship with this presence we so awkwardly call God? There are many ways to discuss it, this feeling. And I would have to concede that it is not a frightening experience. I would like it to be somehow dramatic, the way it is usually imagined in the cinema. We sit in neat rows, all of us becoming shadows, nearly like mannequins in that our focus is transferred from ourselves to the the experience of what has crept across the screen, a watercolor wash, liquid and full of shadow and dusky light when something ominous is evoked. It is augmented by tremendous sound thrummed from hidden speakers and we experience something larger than ourselves.
In this context we seem to understand that the concept of this presence requires something that suggests the unknown, and fear lurks nearby, breathing in that deep, regular way that reminds us of our own mortality and scares us even more because it reminds us of the frail, vulnerable organisms we are, subject to debilitating disease or subject to some violence that may maim or kill. Barring some disease, our fragile biological forms are destined to shrivel, weaken, and ultimately to disintegrate. Come what may, death is inevitable.
Perhaps, then, our association of this presence with the ominous and the dark is more about the fears we have, and the reality of a relationship with this presence is more about calm and the certainty that--regardless of our fears--we will be okay. A relationship with this presence ultimately removes fear of death. Or at the least it provides a new perspective that helps us see the world and our place in it from a new perspective.
My ideas regarding this presence, the living God, have clung to me for decades. Begun long ago as one of those unconscious glimmers, it is something deeply interred within me, like a tickle. It is the understanding that we must find a way to ease forward and learn to consider more of what the Bible emphasizes concerning the living reality of this presence that is with us here in every moment, in our very breathing and interaction across this incredible planet, this Earth, which he has created for us to begin our first steps upon.
I began to sense him as a young child, and when I grew into my twenties and thirties, I felt it powerfully as a need, an awareness that there was something I was supposed to find and develop, ideas concerning who we are in relation to this entity, this presence. I could not have expressed it then. It has taken many years, nearly four decades, for me to learn how to put into words this powerful interaction with the one who has birthed us here and who is preparing to bump us toward new challenges, now that we are nearly ready. Even now I feel inadequate to the task.
If I had my way, I would just ease back and enjoy what must surely be the final decades of my life. I am not a young man--sixty-five years old as I write this. I can only breathe and consider that I will definitely continue to grow older, and I would just as soon ease back and let the years drift by like beautiful winds, the pastel hues of the sky, the calm of a day's end when we experience the sensation of work well done or of a time when rest is well earned.
Sometimes, as I sit in my chair and breathe, as I feel so content to just relax and ease into this other time, I wish I could be left to enjoy another dimension this presence has allowed me to understand and to live within. I'd like to ease back and let it surround me. Trouble is that God won't allow it. I have been prepared for this and now it is irrelevant to this presence that I am sixty-five and have advancing age ahead of me. I understand that I must convey what I have experienced and begin a conversation about who we are in relation to this presence, to what we are becoming, and to what is surely directly ahead as we contemplate events of what is now the twenty-first century.
No comments:
Post a Comment