Walking in conviction

I have a wonderful new friend who is from a strict Muslim country, and when discussing my plans for my day off today, I felt that I might have made him nervous when I said that my meeting with my priest has been rescheduled. I am certain he was a little set off, and even defensive, as he went on to talk about atheist philosophers and the doctrine of absurdism.

So after promptly wishing each other a good day I later followed up with him, asking if he was disturbed, and he said whatever makes me happy is good, and it made me consider the idea of happiness, and how our beliefs and values contribute to that.

It makes perfect sense to adopt the attitude, if it makes you happy, go for it. But nothing is without limit. When I trespass on someone's security, I am no longer in the "right" to do what makes me "happy". My faith and commitment to my religion is generally an autonomous one. I very rarely make my affiliation public and I most certainly don't try to convince others to see things "my" way, unless I am writing something of an evangelical nature, and in that regards people can simply choose to not click on my links.

I am so grateful to have the Bible as a measuring stick. I live in my head a lot of the time, or in a community of like-minded people. A hive mentality can be just as misconceiving as a lone mind, so I always go back to the Bible to ensure it connects, and then I know it's true.

Of course it hurts when my convictions are confronted. I was in the spirituality section last week buying a book by C.H. Spurgeon and I recalled the memes I see where "The Bible" is in the fictional section. But this is where we, as believers, must train. We must be ready for the onfalls, which will happen, and happen without warning.

To have faith is to have strength, it is to remain steadfast in the face of adversity and to remain connected to our values in the waves of weakheartedness. It is to show confidence under pressure, and will in fact be demonstrated though success of various forms in mundane existence.

This is a reason why, as I mentioned in yesterday's piece, it is so important for me to read the Bible from front to back, because I require the fine details for when I am met with doubt, from within or without. There are some horrific events in the Bible, as well as sublime stories that don't make much sense, so I am in no way baffled as to why, especially in today's cultural revolution and the hyper security in our social media climate, that more and more people are not only leaving their family traditions, but actively opposing them.

Still, there are a few of us who continue to study, and who actually take the actions too. Prayer, fasting, meditation....that which are crucial for any revelation that is required for continuity, but also for the spiritual discipline to have the agility to stand up to opposition. Opposition that I do believe is not usually made in malice, but in frustration.

I'm back to chatting with my new friend; we have found different topics - literature and dance. He talks about Russian and French novelists and I respond with Russian and French ballet companies :) There is no reason why we who walk with Christ need to compromise. Ever. If a timeout is needed, by all means, that is in all likelihood God's will to refuel us with new inspiration anyway. May the peace of the Lord be with you always.

After the storm

After a month of spiritual confusion and sorrow, righteous conviction, restitution and finally reconciliation, I am on a huge roll of unification with God and my peers. It is a reboot and I knew it was coming, but wasn't expecting the peace that would accompany it. But with this serenity comes a sort of naivety that all can be rainbows, and I use this word with complete intent.

I am behind my One Year Bible readings and with renewed energy am (attempting) to catch up now. The Word of God is strong in this segment on my Path and I don't want to jump ahead to the current day. I want to really chronologically read the Bible, so when I am inspired by evangelists, or any sermons for that matter, I can feel confident that I know the context of the passages used, and that their teachings can be trusted.

So in my serene little bubble this morning I struggled to read about God's regret for humankind in Genesis chapter 6, and I had to stop as Noah was introduced into the epic. Mankind has acted out of control, and is about to be violently wiped out. But then within a minute, I thought of the moments when I am not serene. I recalled the violence that lurks below the surface, when my instincts are threatened. A wild horse still needing to be broken to a state of humility where I can give to God that which I use to take with force.

And this is not about self-flagellation, this is evidence of the state in daily existence, should we be so fortunate as to really be a part of life. When resources are absent or low, the untamed nature arises, and great evils are committed. But there is a hope that comes in the form of reflection, discipline, sacrifice, and committed connection to self and others. This is a training that can instead surface in times when instincts are threatened.

This doesn't mean that I am righteous, it doesn't mean that I am cured of a soul sickness that plagues all people, but it does mean that I have a chance at not only choosing God in times of trouble, but in fact being diverted from difficulty and obsession altogether. I can learn to live on less, talk less, judge others less, and fight my own faults less. For me this is the true meaning of contentment, and are methods that I can use when I am feeling inadequate, other-than, and fearful.

Apprehension and conflict, which come in the form of anything imaginable, are lurking around every corner. But with God and friends who have the same goals, I wonder if it is possible to create and reside in a world that supports harmony and justice.

The Blackness

I couldn't make a place for you where
you would want to return
And so I set off on my own way
Determined to endure.

Of all that I could give to you,
now lost along the way;
Like the deadened lilies of my youth
How could it not have been the same.

So adieu to you, how I wish I left
with a semblance of a grace
but that is how it ends sometimes,
when a girl has been misplaced.

When faith is not enough

Today's My Utmost for His Highest reading talks about God's provision for us - that we do not need to worry about our needs in our day-to-day living:

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?" Matthew 6.28-30

And yet Oswald Chambers teaches by way of this passage that when we let the cares of the world in, we do not permit the grace of God to enter us, thereby not receiving what we need, or blessed to experience abundance, either.

But for the mentally ill, who cannot simply think their way into happiness, or relinquish what little, if any, constructive instinct they hold, in trustful abandonment to God, being able to follow Jesus is impossible.

So what is the solution? What I have found is that accepting my devastating mistakes, I can then finally allow God's radiance to permeate me, and then I can experience peace. Jesus said that he came to give us peace that the world does not know (John 14.27), but for the afflicted who cannot reason accordingly, that peace is evasive, even though a person might truly want to yoke with Christ.

We think that if we admit a mistake, we forever seal it into our being, chaining ourselves to it; but really the opposite is true. When admitting a mistake, we are then ready to be made anew, rebuilt in God's fashion. In confession we are actually freed of error: God wipes our slate clean (Hebrews 10.16-18).

When I admit my delinquencies, they no longer have power over me. When there is an ownership I have the right to give it away, because it is mine to give. And when I do give it to God I become brand new. And that is true love of God:

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." - Romans 12.2

I can't renew my mind by faith alone, because my mind is debased. But when I can say to anyone who is willing to listen, yes,  I missed the mark, that is when I can be accountable and someone who God wants me to be - a disciple who can practice real worship, real renewal to a pre-fallen time. And that, dear friends, is for us all. It is real redemption demonstrated through a peace that this world cannot give. Amen.

Memories of the West

I have a disease of perception. It is the Great Deceit that first plagued the world from the very beginning. It has manifested most noticeably with the complete inability to recognize my blessings. To never have enough, to never get what I wanted. And it is true, there was lack, many times over. But I always came through, I always got what I needed in the last analysis.

And today, with a broken heart and spirit, I recognize the incredible gift I was given in my life, which was to go to one of the best post-secondary institutions in the country. But at the time, I didn't know it. I knew the campus was beautiful, I relished in being viewed as smart when I went back home to Toronto, hiding that I was scraping by with D and C averages. But again, the prestige wasn't enough. I was one year older than my peers after upgrading my high school diploma, and I buried that insecurity for my entire first year. I also acted out routinely, actually thinking that I was hiding it, doing things with people who I had no business doing things with, instead of staying safe in residence and building real friendships that could have lasted a lifetime.

But I think the worst was feeling not good enough. And looking back now I can clearly see that I had squandered the best opportunity I have ever had in my life, but my perception was so skewed that I was utterly oblivious to my good fortune at that time.

I wasn't in business or the sciences, which were the elite and popular programs, respectively, and so in my mind, I was not as good as my peers. But today I know this was in my head. Now that my disease is in remission, I can see how well I had it. I studied my passion at a stunning Ivy League school. And while I was tormented for not being in the "right" buildings on campus, it dawned on me the other day that the buildings that I was in are the landmark colleges on campus. They are the ones that are featured in every article that the university puts out. It's not the science buildings, it's not even the famous business school - it's the arts and humanities buildings.

I really shouldn't be so shocked at my insanity though. The Serpent is the craftiest of all God's creatures and he tricked even the most pure and beautiful of God's design. So how could I, in the pinnacle of my infection, have recognized it, let alone resisted it. It's times like these, the world doesn't make sense - how corruption can consume. But it's also times like these I see the grace of God shining down on me. I was never really hurt: I wasn't ostracized, I wasn't arrested, I wasn't expelled, and though it took some extra years, I did end up graduating.

It has taken fifteen years to have forgiven myself for my absurd behaviour and missed opportunities, but now I remember the beauty of that enchanted world, a campus that was unto its own, a city. A fairy tale that I intuitively knew I was living in. Today I know through and through that I was truly a part of that community, and that glory. And now it is a part of me. Amen.

A fork in the road

I wonder how the idea that my concerns and petitions are not good enough, important enough, significant enough, to take to God. I was never taught not to pray, I was taught that God's Son loved me, that He died for me; and I intuitively knew there was a place in the heavenly realm for me.

In my tradition of the strict Protestant faith that I was loosely raised in, we didn't talk about saints who intercede on our behalf, or about angels who had our backs. So it wasn't until decades into my life where I felt comfortable approaching these divine and effective beings. I was terrified that I didn't have the discernment to know the spirits - I felt more safe to just stay away completely.

It was a double-whammy:  I couldn't go to God, and I couldn't go to His angels. I believed myself too much of a nuisance who didn't have the spiritual maturity to connect to the celestial. Really, it was all Pride keeping me away. Self-preservation and the determination to "Go it alone" ruled my every day and night.

Fortunately, God designed me a mystic since childhood, which means not only would all Self-Destruction yield no results in the Grand Scheme, it more so meant that I didn't need to be taught or confirmed, I didn't need to be recognized or validated. I had the instincts to connect, though I didn't realize that's what I was doing. I was meditating without knowing it, and projecting protective energy fields without trying. I was always given spiritual tools to fight the cruelty of the spirit and material worlds from early childhood.

And this is why I suffer so greatly in adulthood. I battle two wars - the war against sin, through my own conflicts with Pride, Wrath, and Procrastination, and the war against Despondency, with a seemingly inability to find my niche where I can take off.

But today through faith and works, I have been dispelled from enough Envy and Resentment where I may enjoy a season of study, looking to a plethora of advisers and guides who freely give what I can now take without irritation. In turn, by the grace of God's good time, I will perhaps, when decided, pass knowledge-turned-wisdom, on.

The Little Scholar, by Johann Georg Meyer von Bremen;  1865

Levelled out

I have been a total brat. I could see it happening but still rationalized it in my mind thinking that it was acceptable to act out, because they were my feelings and therefore in entitlement of being "honoured" through "recognizing" them, and quite publicly, at that.

I made excuses, calling episodes "living authentically" and telling myself that it was simply me finally being able to  articular emotions. But the reality is, I just wanted attention and believed that was the best way to get it during this passage. It in fact wasn't articulation, it was crocodile tears, and it wasn't "finally" accepting and expressing my feelings, it was just a less dangerous form of attention-seeking than I am generally used to.

Now I'm left so incredibly humbled. But it's a good humility, it's a Godly humiliation. Because for the first time I really get it - I see the debasement in myself even though I believed I was entitled! I wanted to exclude even though I have been excluded. So now for the first time I understand how "humility" gets confused with "humiliation" - because the embarrassment that I feel before God, family and elders, well...let's just call this my apology letter.

No more words are needed at this point. I'll let my actions and connection to others be the evidence of my next level of regeneration. And it is a next level, but may I not forget that my life is not my own, and I have no right to claim any privilege. I will still work for all the success of mind, body, and spirit in one life, but I come from the underground, and this I now accept. Recognition of where I come from is what needs to be called to the surface, where I must stay, and where for now, I belong.

Vengeance is (not) mine

This Advent season the Lord has caused me to withdrawal from the arcane world almost to the point of spiritual aridity. But in my redemption story I now know that when nothing inspires me, it is because God has willed it, not because I am not working hard enough. And in this time of retreat, I have been given an incredible revelation that is so simple on the outside, and so fundamental, but something I could not practice because deep down on the inside, I didn't actually understand it.

And the lesson revealed to me is that vengeance is the Lord's - not mine. Most of my troubles have been because I was assuming God's role of vindication by utilizing anger and  malice, and I didn't even know it. I had no idea what it meant when people said to see the forest from the trees, but now I know that when I see a rotted tree, I try to burn down the entire forest, instead of letting God take care of what I perceive to be an ugliness. I refuse the Godly path of non destruction that I thought I had the right and privilege to reject when confronted with crisis.

Oswald Chambers said that the greatest crisis we will ever face in our lives is choosing between ourselves, and God. I thought I was choosing God time and again, but I was actually choosing myself by playing the role of Judge, when I was not appointed to be that. And this is the greatest sin of the world - to believe that we have been lied to, and that the hidden truth is that we really do know best, and are therefore qualified to make decisions based on immediate self-satisfaction.

How reprehensible the amount of pain I have caused others in self-righteous action and words because there was a tree in the forest which as we walked through I would find repugnant and then force us out of when it was not my business to navigate. I had no thought of feelings, consequences, or gifts that God gives which I was denying and even stealing from the experiences of others, and that theft is what hurts the most.

This revelation has been God's Christmas gift to me, that I might know to stop acting with spite, and start acting in the perfect idea of what God intends for me, which is love and that comes in the form of letting those trees which I find objectionable, be. Because it's not my right, my job, my responsibility, or my salvation to rebuke, correct, affront, or even discern their existence, or where other people's relation to them is or ought to be.

I thought that I could create my own happiness but now I know there are too many players, too many trees, and too many motives to have everyone and everything working in any sort of harmony by my own making. This Advent God has asked me "Are you ready?" and as the stars which showed up for duty, I reply, "Yes". Yes I am ready to stop hurting people when I am not pleased. Yes I am ready to not sulk when I am disappointed. Yes I am ready to take a deep breath before doing something I will soon after regret.

The forest might at times be haunted, but with the Holy Ghost giving the directions, there is no tree I can't pass by without fear or harm.