WHAT IF . . . .

What if God is love? What if the core of the divine reality is love?

And what if love is “paying attention?” 

Does this mean that God is paying attention to creation? Does this mean that God is listening to creation’s groaning and laughing? Does this mean that there is a divine spirit that attends to each of us and to our friends, the birds, the horses, the caterpillars?

And what if the Apostle Paul is right and love is eternal? What if he is right that words about God will pass away, that emotional feelings about God will pass away? But love never ends.

And what if love is unconditional? What if love pays attention to us even when we don’t love, even when we shut ourselves off from attending to others because they hurt us or we hurt them?

And what if we quit trying to get love to pay attention to us and opened our hearts to see where love is already coming to us?

What if love is eternal and the creative energy for life? What if we started looking where it is rather than lamenting where it is not? What if we savor it when it comes rather than complaining because it doesn’t from where we want?

If God is love and love is paying attention, maybe the way we know God is to love God by paying attention to where love exists and joining with that love in the world.  Maybe this is what it means to be in communion with God—to participate in the acts of love (God) as they get acted out in our world.

And maybe if this is all true, we can live with more courage, knowing that nothing can separate us from love. Maybe we don't have to be afraid.

CONVERGENCE

Converging experiences provoke unsolicited thoughts. Deborah and I watched the space movie "Gravity" the other night.  In the midst of exploding space ships and storms of space garbage, Sandra Bullock traveled perilously through space trying to survive. The eerie silence of the sound track provoked thoughts of vast emptiness.

This past weeks scientists reported discoveries through telescopes at the South Pole that they now believe can prove what happened less than a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. They described the rapid inflation of the creation instantly after the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago.

Here I am reeling from the impossible task trying to comprehend this expansive space and the eternal sense of time and I went to a church this morning and sang hymns and heard a sermon about God. And I sat there aware of how incredibly inadequate the human mind is and even less competent is human language when it comes to speaking about the vast mystery of reality. I once read somewhere that words are terrible miners and even more terrible astronauts when it comes to trying to describe the unspeakable mystery of creation (and I would add, the creator).

And yet, we have  no choice. It is a part of the human character to be conscious of ourselves in relation to the fullness of creation. And it is our blessing and curse to need to understand in some small way our relationship to all that is around us. To be human is to be a meaning maker.  We have a compulsion to make sense of life. That is what drives science and religion. As inadequate as we are with words, we have to keep trying.

So, I sat in church today and gave thanks for those who have the courage to try to help us understand. I felt grateful for those who dared to guide us in getting just a glimpse of possible understanding. To form a word and cast it into the vast silence of time and space is such a foolish and courageous act that I was in appreciative awe. 

Funny how convergence of experience messes with the mind.

GOD'S EYES

“Do you know what those round balls are?” Michael asked me as we were standing at the hotel door beside the 12th century city hall which made up the front of the hotel.

He was referring to 2 beach ball sized spheres which each had blood shot looking eyes on the circumference.  The balls were hanging from the railing on one side of the kidney shaped crystal pool.  

“To keep the birds away?” 

“Right.  They think they are the eyes of a predator.  It scares them away from the pool.”

I wondered.  “How many times have I been scared away from something that I wanted to do because of the manufactured eyes of a predator?”

It doesn’t seem to matter if the eyes are blind or not.  It they appear to be watching, do I run from something that is potential nurturing?

And, I wondered, “How much of my early childhood was spent worrying about God’s eyes watching me as some predator who might do me harm?”  

I was raised in a family where the eyes of the divine were used to scare us into good behavior.  Did I believe God was a predator who could do me harm if I didn’t stay on the straight and narrow?  Or, were they simply dead eyes who were filled with power because of the imagination of a scared little boy who projected onto them the power to see and the strength to harm?

And how many times do I fail to act with bold brashness or courage because I believe there are eyes watching me and might do me harm if I act?  How many times do I fail to speak because someone might judge me or hurt me if they didn’t like what they saw or heard?

If God is our ultimate concern, then the sighted or blind eyes of what we care about most take on power to control our behavior.  And they keep us from trying the new, the risky, the unusual, the bazaar.   

So, I guess the theological question is, “Are God’s eyes just round beach balls with blood-shot pupils painted on the circumference which are designed to scare us away from an interesting and exciting life, or do they live with a sensing sensation, observing us with tender tears, feeling with us the ache and pain of mistakes and the delight and joy of love?”

I don’t know, but I wonder.

TALKING, LISTENING

Why do people seem to need to talk when they are going through a significant loss?  As I said last week, one important reason is that we need to try to put our world back together. When our relationships have been dismembered, we need to find a way to re-member them so that they can continue to exist in us as part of who we are without creating too much dissonance.

But, it is more than that.  Talking things out and telling the stories of our life and our loss is also about rediscovering meaning in life. When we lose someone or something significant, we lose touch with the construct of meaning that we have created. When we were in relationship with certain people and played a certain role in that relationship, our meaning was wrapped up with the existence of those relationships. When they end the meaning we made of our life is challenged. "Did  my life really mean what I thought it meant."

And we remember and talk our way through the loss because we also try to figure out what our life will mean in the future.  By telling our story, our life and our loss, we try to stay in touch with what we know about ourselves.  As we rehearse my life, we discover things about ourself that we think are worth developing in our future.

At it's core, this remembering and meaning making is about reconstructing faith.  We place our faith in that which helps us know how we relate to the world and what we mean to ourselves and others. This is why these losses often produce a crisis of faith. "Can I really trust that life is good, or that God is good?" "How does God really interact with this world?"

This is why it is so important that we find good companions who will pull up a chair and patiently listen to our rehearsal of our life. The re-membering of who we are and the re-constructing of meaning and how we relate to the world around us is hard work and requires all the love and support any of us can give. 

GETTING AWAY FROM IT ALL

I recently felt overwhelmed.  There was just so much going on. Friends and family hurting, anxiety about the stock market, war and refugees filling the TV screen.  I just wanted to get away from it all.

And I am  not alone. Most people I know have those times when they just don’t want to deal with it all.  The world presses in and the soul can’t absorb it. Our daily skills of filtering the variety of experiences that come to us seem to have deserted us. 

But, one thing I have discovered about getting away from it all is that it isn’t as easy as just leaving home and taking a vacation.  I have discovered that “all” accompanies me. While I packed my suit case and intentionally left worry and stress in my sock drawer, they would not be denied. When I unpacked at the beach, there they were, waiting to re-enter my mind.

It was then that I realized that getting away from it all is getting out of my own mind and heart.  For you see, what I deal with is not all that stuff around me, but the “all” that presses in and threatens to suffocate my spirit is my response to all the stuff around me. And the reason I can't get away from it all is because of my love. It is my love for my family and friends that keeps me connected even when I am not there. It is my love for humanity that makes me wrestle with international issues of war and pain.

So, the issue is not my family and friends, the world and its suffering, the security and insecurity of money and life.  The issue is how I carry these in my heart. Do I cling to them and tangle with them in such a way that they posses me?  Or, is there a way to love and care for each other that allows us to hold each other lightly?

At times, I trust my ability to worry and fret and believe that the more I do that, the less problems there will be and the more likely peace will come.  But, that only exhausts me.  When I get overwhelmed, I have to trust in the power of some spirit outside myself to hold those I worry about. Some say that they have to turn it over to  God. I am not sure who holds my concern and worry, but I want to believe that it is a beneficent power who is stronger than I.