I am in Purgatory. I am being given the chance to really let go of my will and embrace the will of God. I do not want to do it. I want only what I want. I cannot see down the road. He can. I did not create myself. He created me. I have no other option but to surrender. I have to sacrifice this. I have to put it on the alter because it will quickly become between Him and me if I don't. Maybe I'm overspiritualizing this, but I don't have any other option. If I don't see this through a spiritual lense I will never surrender it. And I must. Not because of what she doesn't requite, but because of what He requires. In the past I was in Hell and had no choice in the matter. Now I have a chance to choose Him and step toward the denial of myself and sanctification. I keep asking why You gave these to me, now I know it was so I'd have something to give back.

I'm not sure if this will be like pulling off a band-aid or crashing a car. Either way, I don't want to look.

I need to get out, I need to get out.

Oh God, I don't want to get out.

Dude.

Haven't done this in a while. Blogging, that is. Then again, I haven't typed anything in a while. Probably why I'm so slow at it. I've been reading Sir Trenton Bowen's blog from Ghana (radical stuff, by the way) and it has inspired me to perhaps share a bit of what my life has been like over the past seven weeks. So my official title is Lost Canyon Property Intern-Ropes. This basically means that day to day I am responsible for the safe and effective operation of Lost Canyon's high ropes elements, namely the Ropes Course, Zip Line, Pamper Pole, Climbing Tower (better known as The Heist) and Giant Swing. I love what I do. I daily get to see the Lord shape the lives of kids by meeting them in the most vulnerable and terrifying situations and walking beside them or guiding their steps. But I think what is more important than what I get to see God doing in kid's lives is what I get to hear. I have never really been the kind of person who heard God as any kind of audible voice. God typically has guided me through some kind of internal leanings or desires and through advice given by people who love me. But recently God has spoken to me differently, and the things He has had to say as of late have been far more simple. As I attempt to do my job and lead kid's to the feet of Jesus through the ropes elements, there are certain things that I hear myself say, or that I hear others say that God wants me to hear. It's as though the Spirit were simply whispering to me to listen to what is being said and hear it as God's word, spoken to me.

"Just look at one thing at a time. Don't get overwhelmed by looking ahead."
"Here's my hand if you need it."
"I know it looks scary, but you just have to trust me to catch you."
"You're stronger than you think."

I have heard the words of God daily.

Let us just be honest. None of us really has a sense of direction. "You are a mist that appears for a while and then vanishes." Whatever we do, we do it because we have been given a desire. Where the desire comes from is the significant part. Some desires we have are of the flesh, or the uncircumcised heart, or the body of death. This Law of Sin that is present within us is the root of all discord, and has only the power that we allow it. The more weight I ascribe to this Law, the stronger it is, and the more attractive it seems, and the deeper I am buried underneath it. This is my experience. Other desires come from the breath of life, or the sacred love, or the circumcised heart. This is the Law of the Spirit, from which, and through which, and to which we experience the sanctification of our lives and will experience the glorification of our bodies. It is the desires given to us by the Law of the Spirit that lead us to life, eternal life, in the fullest. What we obey is up to us.

Note: If this seems confused, contradictory, senseless, you may be onto something. I am trying to make it seem so. I am trying to embellish the sense of conflict this whole "Spiritual Mess" has left within me. And I am trying to practice speaking in terms and phrases and sentences that do not naturally lend themselves to being grouped together. And I am trying to eviscerate my thoughts so that they may be examined separately, and their connections made known. Bear with me.

I cannot fathom how I managed to miss all this. God’s sovereignty is shouted through His word and His creation and yet I have refused to see it. I have ignored it as though I had some measure of power that I might exercise over the circumstances of this world. I have complained about injustice and suffering as though my perceptions and definitions of such happenings were the standards by which the God of the Universe would be compelled to act. “Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?”

No. It cannot be so. As the serpent says, “You surely will not die.” It can’t be this way. I must be in control. I must decide what is just and unjust. Right and wrong must depend on my own intuitions. [Maybe this is the cause of all ambiguity and disagreement concerning moral reasoning?] Even now I feel this tension. I AM NOT GOD. But it is my desire to be that is the blackest part of me. It is not insulting my brother or the lustful look that marks me guilty. It is that urge to take God’s place that marks me a sinner.

But thanks be to God that His justice reigns and not mine. For otherwise I would obtain what I deserve. The only road to salvation is that I lay aside my view of justice and accept that God is in control. For if God subscribed to my view, I would surely perish. But with God as the ruler, He has decided to make known His Glory by preparing me, a vessel worthy of destruction, to be glorified through His Mercy and the sacrifice of His Son. “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the Glory forever!”

It seems we all become what we hate.

I have not felt this satisfied with my existence in quite a long stretch of time. Truly, most assuredly, it is the gift of God. I simply cannot produce this state of peace and rest of my own accord. When I attempt to it is hallow, it is weak, and it is often quickly shattered by those who wish to keep me always striving and never arriving at a location that does not exist, and if it did I would not really want to be there.

Now I can move in all directions, but I only want to move in one. I have every possibility open, yet there is only one door I step through. That which has bound me no longer binds me, and I am free to be be bound to another. Ah, such fantastic contradiction! We are never free until we give up our freedom. We never live unless we first die. I have always seen this, but only now do I perceive it. I have always heard, and never understood. Now I find myself rejoicing in how I have been crafted and squeezing out every drop of myself, not to be empty, but to be full.

Now you hear me, Barn Swallow; you hear me. All this madness must now come to its end. You cannot simply go flitting about all the time, all the while I remain in my place (I remain chained to my place). Each and every time you tuck and twirl it only reminds me that I am bound. And I do not care for your freedom. No, I do not rejoice in you, nor do I despise you for what you possess. I only despise what you possess because it rings my chains. I do not want to be like you. I do not want to be like me.

Note: who could have known? Not I. I could not have known what a Barn Swallow really was, what a Barn Swallow really meant. Or maybe the hidden places of me are more clever than I thought.

Someday there may be brought about a woman who loves me enough to ask me how I came into these scars. And if I love her I will tell her. But if I love her I will not want to tell her. All I can do is everything I can to make it the case that they are indeed scars, and not wounds.

Not all these were spoken by me. Not all these were spoken to me. All of these speak to me.

"She is your sister. You are supposed to protect her."

"Maybe this sword has an inside edge so that I might be forced to use it precisely, and not merely hack about wildly with it for fear of cutting myself."

"What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!"

"Drunken words are sober thoughts."

"Shielding myself from the feeling of death does not make me any more alive."

"God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy."

"There may come a time when you will not be able to pull yourself close enough to the ground. But it is not this time. Stand up."

"Jesus was not a great moral teacher. He is the Great Judge."

"In the greatest battle of your life you may never fire a shot. Sometimes it is merely a matter of holding your ground. You may not be required to take any."

"You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness."

"Put your full commitment into following the orders of the Living Commander, believing fully in Him, and do not be distracted by orders of the Dead Commander."

My last entry (well, my last real entry) had a heavy Kierkegaardian influence. I say influence because it was mostly the subject matter that had been affected. The style was, well, the style was something like his, but much less sophisticated (or maybe I'm confusing sophistication for confusion?) But the whole idea of faith, and what it is, and where it comes from, and what it's good for, and how you lose it, and how it might grow or wither, and what it's opposite is, and how it might change me or how I might change it is all of primary importance to my mind (soul?) right now.

I guess we use the word in different senses. Sometimes we say faith to mean a person's religious (spiritual?) beliefs. Faith becomes synonymous with religion perhaps because we see one as a product of the other. It can go backwards or forwards. But I think that one can have faith without religion, and one can practice religion and never really have faith. /And so quickly I am taken from my first place and placed somewhere else entirely in my mind. Are there two halves of me?, am I missing one? What is this stress and tension that wills me to tears? It is a black hand reaching into and gripping the very heart of me. So often I feel the jolts as It merely flicks It's wrist and stirs me from my thoughts and carries me away. My incessant distraction to keep me from thinking all worthwhile thoughts. My malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning. It has got...It has got... Suddenly I know not what I say, I know not where I am. I can neither move forward nor keep from looking back. All my focus is within and helpless. I am helpless. So every great thing I might become forgets what it has been doing. These men are all now just confused and displaced, unable to see their beginning or their goal and so stuck trying to assemble the pieces of each others puzzles that are all a jumble and mixed in with the rest. So one might now take another's path and find it useless and still another might take the paths of two others and now they have nowhere to go. They grope around in darkness. Where was I? Where was I? I do pity them.

My internal monologue: I should write a blog post. Nah.

Let's get one thing straight: time does not heal anything. Sure, everyone says it does, hell, even I say it does. But time does not do the healing. Time is the medium through which healing is allowed to take place. It is a necessary piece of the equation, but it is not central. On second thought, it is not a piece of the equation. It is merely the paper on which the equation is written. We cannot help but factor it in because we are trapped within it. Now my thought is in proper order.

The equation of healing is about faith and understanding. The two are interconnected, so that the one is necessary for the other. This can often make it difficult to get the equation started. One might ask "where should I get this faith?" and the answer is "through understanding." Next one asks "but where should I get this understanding?" and the reply "through faith." And so it cannot come from within us. One must first come from the outside and from it the other can follow, either from us working it out or from it being similarly implanted or imparted.

For me first came faith. This is the faith that God's hand is at work in my life to shape me and mold me and bring me to the realization that I am first and foremost a son, and all other things secondarily. This is a faith that does not come from any of my own abilities. Truly, the more I tried to cause it within myself, the farther it seemed to be from me (for citation see all previous posts).

Following faith is understanding. This is the understanding of what it means to be first and foremost a son, and all other things secondarily. My understanding has come as a hybrid of implantation and basic deduction. Understanding being a son leads to deeper faith and deeper faith leads to better understanding of being a son.

This model of healing is a skeleton at best. But bear with me. It is a fresh concept for me. The terms are defined in a hazy manner, and the connections may be tenuous in places, but at least it's a start. And you gotta start somewhere.

It is not for us to decide who lives and who dies, who stays and who goes. Why should the pot say to the potter, "why did you make me like this?" I guess I never understood that question, I never understood the rhetoric. One thing I do understand: my mind is twisted now. There is nothing now to do but sit, and wilt, and wait for something to come into me and fix what I cannot undo. Fix this mess I have made myself to be. One solution leads to many problems, so that I may never be undone. What lies in the shadow of the statue?

But I am him. I am him who says "what about me? what about me was so wrong?" And there is One who says "yes, what about you?" And so I am shamed. And I am disgusted with myself. And I take out my knife and drive it deep. And still, "what about you?"

"There is no one righteous,
No, not even one."

You are all right, but only because I want you to be. I just want to sit here and keep crying about it, because then I really feel it. I lost my ability to feel the good and bask in it. So I am numb unless I am tortured. I am lost.

"There are two sides. One is Light, one is Dark."

Stick to the basics. Don't get caught up. Stand strong. Stop picking at the scar just to be sure it's still there. Have some hope. Every man dies, not every man really lives. This too shall pass. Stay focused. Find something to focus on. Breathe. Keep your head out of the clouds, keep your heart off the ground. Just breathe.

I suppose he was right when he told me that we need pain to get where we are going. But I can only suppose. I'm sure I won't know for sure until I get there or until I'm satisfied that I am so far from there that I can never reach there. But for now at least, my suppositions can get me through this night, and probably through the next, and before I know it I will have forgotten all about this night and probably about the next.

We are so fragile. Like a mist we are. I wonder what it feels like to die: to live one moment and not live the next. In that last live moment, what will I think of how I have conducted all the moments leading up to it? I believe in part, and I know in part, that I will look back on this night, and probably on the next, and feel either that I had wasted so much time thinking only of myself or that this night's pain lead me to all the moments connected by time and spirit to the final moment. Even still, it is of little consequence. What will be, will be.

I'll wake up in a fog. In a mist I'll find myself. A gentle wind softens my vision. I will be soaked in calm, steeped in slow breath, drenched in understanding. All this when what will be, has been.