Thursday, May 17, 2012

Not Sure Where This Is Going

Ever get the feeling that the life you are living is not the life intended for you? Do you ever feel disconnected from the everyday and deep down certain that you have a higher calling that just isn't being fulfilled?

I trudge on, day after day, through what could be a very beautiful life. I am fed and safe and healthy. So are my children. I have the freedom to live life as I see fit -a privilege many women around the world can only dream of. And yet I feel fearful and trapped.

I used to think I knew the difference between right and wrong but these days I cannot make heads or tails of the decisions (or lack of decision) in my life. Am I doing what I am doing out of guilt? virtue? laziness? fear? love? selfishness? I cannot identify my own motivations. Perhaps there is a little truth in each.

I pray and I wait but there is no inspiration or certainty. I ask for a sign and wonder if I'm perhaps a little unstable mentally. What if there is no response because God, as I have imagined God to be, does not exist. Then I start to rail against the small gods I have created. The Father Christmas with his naughty and nice lists, the physician who prescribes bitter medicine for my own good, the loving but impotent old man, the intelligent but impersonal energy that connects us all. How can I believe in all these gods and none of them at the same time?

Intellectually I am aware that God is beyond understanding but emotionally I cannot accept it. Unlike carbon that is transformed to diamond under heat and pressure, I seem to reduce God to one of many juvenile caricatures when spiritual stress sets in. Aware of my mistake, the big fear then sets in: what if no one is watching? What if I have been comforting myself with nothing more than a psychological crutch. Deep down I think I know what I believe, but some days even that comes into question. Am I regressing? Am I losing my faith or just growing up? It seems as if I've been at this place too many times before. Perhaps it's not God but Christianity that is failing me. I mean, other than the life and teachings of Jesus I find it hard to understand let alone respect the God I encounter in the Bible.

But I digress.

If it seems as if I'm all over the place lately it is because I am all over the place. Everything is up in the air and I'm feeling rather foolish with all this juggling.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Not So Delicate Awakening

I want to sit up straight, suffer quietly and break a sweat. I want to work out my salvation with fear and trembling. I hunger for righteousness but my laziness overtakes me. My distractions are plentiful and intoxicating. I am a slave to the meaningless and I knowingly subscribe to the illusion, momentarily satieted by big shiny lies. I eat heartily until the sun sets and then groan with regret when I lay down on my pillow at night. It's so quiet. Too quiet.

What if it's real. Really real. What if every prayer is heard and every hair numbered? How can I account for my behaviour other than to say, I just didn't know. Because it's true, I don't know.

I'm haunted by the thought that God is even more than the thought that God isn't.

Are you hanging on these words God? Do you hear you deaf old bastard? Sometimes I hate you.

Apparently only a wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign. So be it. I never claimed to be anything but. And yet I don't want you to move a single finger in my direction because I suppose I know which one it will be and I don't need the confirmation.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

I Know This Much Is True

There is an infinite and timeless love pulsing through the universe. There is a source of light and mercy and hope and miracles that flows like a river. I am a giver, receiver, creator and destroyer of miracles. There is a conscious, intelligent spirit guiding me. I choose to participate and cooperate with divine wisdom or I choose not to. I can heal and I can wound. God is not separate from me. God is a part of me, bigger than me. God is my source. God is growing and I am helping God expand. God is more than I can begin to define or understand. God is not a He or a She. No religion owns God. No religion owns me.