Not Gone

I thought I ought to say something so people don’t think I’m gone off somewhere in the boonies.  I’m here and am checking all your blogs.  I’m heavy into my ironman training, and it is going well.  I have just felt quiet in my soul.  Not quiet like dead, but quiet in a peaceful way.  There hasn’t really been anything real inspirational come to me lately.  I am reading for enjoyment, The Brothers Karamazov, instead of education or inspiration.  I just feel quiet, like my soul is resting.  It kind of feels good.  I’ll get back to posting soon.

Peace

My lovely wife posted on peace awhile back.  One of our mentors at one time suggested that the strange feeling we were having was peace, that we hadn’t had much of it and therefore didn’t know what it was.  I like that.  And I think it’s right.

I haven’t posted for awhile because I just haven’t felt all that inspired.  And I haven’t felt the need to be inspired.  My soul feels quiet, not in a bored or in an anxious or in a clamoring for more inspiration way.  It is in an, “I’m good,” way.  It just feels good to be.  To exist.  To see what each moment and each day holds.  I have tried to do some meditation, some focus on breathing, some focus on God.  And I have liked it.  It feels weird as heck to do nothing, but I am learning to do it.  I don’t know if my core has felt contentment before, but I think I am feeling it now.

So I am just resting in what I have right now.  No rushing.  No pushing.  No fitting square pegs in round holes.  No manipulating God.  No looking for “blessings in disguise to make me healthy, rich, and wise” (Derek Webb in Wedding Dress).  I’m just being.  And I like it.  And I am reading for enjoyment instead or reading to learn something right now.  I felt I needed a break from deep stuff.  So I’m reading The Brothers Karamazov and have Catch 22, Beowulf, Crime and Punishment in the wings (maybe not super light stuff but very interesting and certainly different that what I usually am reading).

So no other big things to say.  Just checking in.  And I can’t even remember what Ironman Training week I am on.  But I am ahead of schedule (2.5 hours on the bike, 2 miles in the pool, 11 miles on the run) and this is a cut-back week.  Rock on.  Peace out.  Hang 10.

I Don’t Think We Have To Earn It

Karmen has been reading a Brennan Manning book. It has the word “posers” in the title. I can’t think of the rest of it. But she often reads things to me from out of the books she reads (I have quit trying to keep up with her and the number of books she reads. I can’t keep up. She is like a bookmonger or something.  It’s freakish really.  She is reading one, and then before I know it, she’s onto another one.  I can’t match it.  She is a book monster.), and there is some good stuff in this one that has gotten me thinking about something.  It has actually refreshed my brain on something.  Not a new idea for me. Just a refreshing of an idea.  And an extension of an idea.

I have a friend who recently told me that all he wants is for God to tell him that he has been a good and faithful servant on that day when he stands to face God.  And I see him striving and toiling and straining to do things that he feels will put him in that sort of favor with God.  And I see him suffering.  The tasks that he has latched onto and in which he toils are those things he sees as advancing God’s kingdom in the world.  And I see him suffering there.  And I see his family suffering there.  And it pains me that he is suffering.  I’ve tried to talk to him about what I think may be a greater truth, but he is not in a place right now to really understand the heart of what I am understanding.  And I think his suffering is not necessary.  Here’s why.

I don’t think that we have to do anything to earn this favor from God.  God loves us because he made us.  There is nothing that we can do to make God love us more.  There is nothing we can do to make God love us less.  We don’t have to strive and toil to earn anything.  God will advance his kingdom in this world, and it isn’t dependent on my money or my effort or my toiling or my anything (and in a large number of cases I am certain that my “righteous” striving and toiling gets in the way, and he will advance his kingdom despite me).  God loves me because he made me, and all he wants from me is for me to be in community, in relationship with him.  And it doesn’t shock him when I fail (from Karmen’s book).  And he knows that I will fail.  And to be in relationship with him I think I have to slow down and do nothing.  I think I have to stop moving and stop toiling and stop serving and stop striving and stop working and stop earning and stop, stop, stop, stop, stop…  And that is the thing that I have such a hard time doing.  I don’t think I even know how to do it.  But I know that I need it.

For quite awhile, years really, I haven’t had much interest in reading the Bible or praying or going to bible studies.  I was taught (or at least it is what I learned) that it is so important that I have my “devotional” time or “god” time every day.  It was even implied that if I wasn’t doing this then I was bad, shameful.  That I wasn’t in God’s favor.  That if I didn’t just relish and cherish this time, that I was on the highway to hell.  So I tried to do it.  I tried to love it.  I tried to like it.  I tried to make it the cornerstone of my day.  I tried it in the early morning.  I tried it in the middle of the day.  I tried it at night.  I tried to get a new bible (or about 5 new bibles).  I tried to get new commentaries (or about 3 new commentaries).  I tried bible study books.  I tried randomly opening my bible and “letting the spirit lead.”  I tried.  I tried.  I tried.  I tried.  I tried.  And I tried some more.  And the advice from “them” was that essentially that I just needed to keep trying.  That God would reward my efforts.

Well, eventually I came to a point about 3 years ago where I decided that this was not working, and that I had tried enough.  If it was going to work then it would have.  If God was going to reward my efforts, he would have.  So either “they” were right and I was on the highway to hell, OR “they” were wrong and there weren’t all these hoops God wanted me to jump through.  There wasn’t some quota of trying or some quota of effort or some quota sorrow or some quota of toiling or some quota of distress that I had to meet to get God to “reward my efforts.”  So I determined that I was going to pray for God to show me how HE wanted me to relate to him.  I wanted to know how HE wanted me to know him.  I didn’t want to know how “THEY” told me I should know him.  What “they” were telling me seemed to be all about hollow religious speak that we all hoped was right and clung to the fact that it was right when it all seemed very hollow to me.  So I have been praying that for about 3 years now.  At the same time I determined that I was going to quit feeling badly about the fact that this mysterious love for my daily devotional time wasn’t working for me.  I trusted in my prayer and that God would answer it for me and that I needed to just quit trying and let all the hollow religious speak that was coming my way get out of my head.  I now believe this was the beginning of God prepping me for this radical 2007.

In the last few weeks I sense that he has been answering that prayer a little more.  I have come to believe in 2007 that not all of my thoughts are my own, some of them are God speaking to me.  If he lives in me as a spiritual being then why do I think that everything coming out of my head is my own?  Surely he is talking to me there.  So I have been listening more.  Over the last few weeks he has invaded my thoughts with the idea that I need to be quiet.  That I need to slow down.  That I need to do nothing and just be with him.  That I need to listen for him.  And this has been a panicky idea for me because I have realized that I do not know how to do this.  I do not know how to be still.  I do not know.  I have never done it.  My life is so full of activity.  I multi-task all the time, and I work like a dog sometimes, and I think all the time, and I push all sorts of time limits and deadlines (which drives Karmen crazy and is really inconsiderate on my part) and I have ESPN on all the time, and I have the sports radio station on all the time, and I have good rock music on all the time, and even when I am not working I am working, and I have 40 million things on my list to do at home, and when I get those 40 million things done I seem to come up with 40 million more, and even when I am not working at work and I am not working at home on my 40 million things I am working on  triathlon and running 10 miles or riding 50 miles or swimming 2 miles.  I never stop.  So when do I do it, this nothing?  Where do I fit it in (how ironic that this is one of the questions that I have to ask)?  How do I start?  How do I even do it?  I don’t know how to do nothing.  I like being busy, and I like being driven, and I like multi-tasking, and I do my best work when I somewhat pressed to the wall.  So I stay pressed to the wall most of the time.  So it seems impossible to do this, this nothing.  This just being with God.  But I know that I need to do it.  I have to do it.  It is the answer to this prayer that I have been praying for these 3 years.  And I want to do it.

In summary, I don’t think that I have to earn anything from God.  I think my friend is wrong.  I just have to relate to him.  I just have to be in community with him.  Which means that I just have to BE with him.  And which partly means that I have to be in community with others too.  Which is why I love Wheatland and my house church and my pastor and Heart Connexion and BT.  These places and people help me do this.  And I want to learn to do nothing and just be with God.  It is a new adventure.  It is a new wandering.  And I love wandering.