I often wake on Sabbath mornings, after a week of writing this blog in my head, and open my eyes to completely new ideas. I think I know what I want to say. I think it will all be just a matter of touching fingertips to soft-worn keys. But this is rarely... perhaps never... the case. Because we may know what we want to say or do... but then there is that moment when Christ tells us what He wants.
So, instead of sitting down with a hot mug of coffee and an apple to tap out my pre-composed blog, I skipped breakfast and went to the gym. It appears that Sundays are very good days for getting in the ring with very angry opponents who aren’t too happy about the work week starting all over again.
Speed takes on all new importance.
And I return home looking a bit like I might after a car wreck... but feeling like the warrior I was raised to be.
"I saw a tree by the riverside
one day as I walked along.
Straight as an arrow and pointing to the sky,
growing tall and strong.
'How do you grow so tall and strong?'
I said to the riverside tree.
This is the song that my tree friend sang to me...”
I feel so... *discovered.* You said this to me once, recently, and I repeat these words to myself over and over again. I hear them like they were whispered to me. They become a riddle. Not truly even connected to you or us any more. They become universal. They could have been said by anyone I know. But my ears were meant to hear them and my heart to process... to *unlock* this riddle.
*Discovered.* Not exposed, revealed, uncovered, or betrayed. Discovered. As in:
I touch black paint to white canvas for the first time, and my breath catches in my throat and I feel God’s light surging through my body and I feel *discovered.*
As in:
They lift him up, and he is longer than my torso even at ten minutes old, and he is reaching for me blindly, but I see him like I see nothing else, and I am changed forever, from woman to mother and I am *discovered.*
As in:
I walked and I walked and I just kept going and I couldn’t stop and I couldn’t turn around because that would mean going back and I didn’t want to go back – good God! – I wanted so badly to just go forward. And then, suddenly, there came a clarity in that darkness and I knew what I needed to do. I was *discovered.*
As in:
You speak to me of the soul eternal and the path of Christ and your love for me and the heat of desire becomes my second skin. I hum at a new frequency and want you and I know passion as I have never dreamed it would burn within me and I feel so... discovered.
Beneath the eyes of our Christ, in the eyes of each other, we are not born once, or even twice with the rebirth of baptism. We are continually born and reborn, made and remade. Leveled up. Upgraded. Reset, recharged, redirected. Return to Go. Start again.
Blue screen blinks: Play again?
"'I've got roots growing down to the water.
I've got leaves growing up to the sunshine,
and the fruit that I bear is a sign of life in me.
I am shade from the hot summer sundown.
I am nest for the birds of the heavens.
I'm becoming what the Lord of trees meant me to be...
a strong young tree.'"
A family-friend asks me, “What do you talk about? Light and fluffy stuff into the wee hours of the night?” And laughter ensues among the gathered friends but I just smile and sip my chai. I am not so much an open book as people seem to glean from my blog entries. Though, in that moment, I thought to myself that many of my private conversations are just like these blogs. Several other good friends have even teased about getting me a t-shirt that read: “WARNING! I’m blogging this.”
GamerAngel: I used to think, you know, that you would go away... yes, especially on Sundays... and be immersed in your doctrine. Hitting a kind of “reset” button that realigned your thoughts and behaviors to best fit your religion. To be (re)indoctrinated each week. But after Monday, when we last spoke, now I know these moments have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with faith. They aren’t resets but rather steps. Like stepping stones across a river...
GamerAngel: ... no wait... it wasn't Monday. The night we spoke of leaps of faith? Literal leaps of faith.
Jo: It was Monday, baby. You're right. Continue.
GamerAngel: When Christ asks us to leap? When we leap for Him?
Jo: Oh, no... wait...
GamerAngel: Not Monday. Monday was... something else.
Jo: It was Thursday night.
GamerAngel: Yes. Thursday. That was the most powerful conversation. Memorable. The ideas bounce around in my head.
Jo: Oh?
GamerAngel: Leaping into ourselves. Not *inside* ourselves. But rather leaping into a reflection of ourselves. A reflection cast by the light of Christ. He says: “Look. I'm revealing this to you. Discover this about yourself. This thing that I have known about you since before you first drew breath. Trust me. Leap.” Leap into His arms to better know how to stand by yourself.
GamerAngel: And we leap into this reflected divine light -- which is not always golden but oftentimes dark and even a little scary -- and we leap into a new layer of ourselves. We add a new depth, like the rings of a tree. Because some of our rings are added by years lived and others are earned by doing this. By leaping.
GamerAngel: Is it a layer that's always been there? But is only visible, activated, engaged after we leap? We weren't ready before. Or we needed Him in some way to help us. To cast that reflection, of Himself really, that is also part of us as He is part of us.
GamerAngel: I... I just can't stop coming back to that. Of leaping when He says, “Leap!” Not the day after. Not after checking the logic and reason. He says, “Feel!” He says, “Go!” He says “Leap...” and then the rapture of discovery that follows the freefall.
Light, yes. Fluffy? Not so much.
"I saw a tree in the city streets
where buildings block the sun.
Green and lovely, I could see
it gave joy to everyone.
'How do you grow in the city streets?'
I said to the downtown tree.
This is the song that my tree friend sang to me...”
A co-worker says to me that Mormon scripture (basically) says that God gave us weaknesses and challenges to work through so we'd learn to turn to Him. To trust Him. And, if we did, and we took that leap into the dark, He'd make our weaknesses our strengths. She concluded with, “I've lived my personal life by that. Turn my problems to God... and be willing to change when He told me to. Because God won't speak to you if you're only asking for His opinion, with no intent on acting. You have to be willing to do what He says when He says it.”
NTC doctrine both agrees and disagrees with this, of course. I disagree with the former and agree with the latter. LOL! This brings me laughter because I have friends across (...counting...) nine doctrines. And I have 80% in common with all of them. The parts we have in common tend to be the parts that begin with, “I’ve lived my personal life by...” *grin* If you know anything at all about New Testament Christianity, you know that it is driven by personal revelation. Not the words on the page but the words Christ whispers in our ears.
I believe we – human beings -- give *each other* challenge and struggle. Christ gave us a perfect world, and perfect love, and perfect bodies. What we did with those gifts has resulted in challenge and struggle.
Christ asks, requires, that we live with hardship in order to come to love each other as He loves us. Because only when we see with the eyes of Christ can we truly reach each other (becoming one heart) and guide each other (coming to one path) out of darkness and back into original perfection.
We... discover... ourselves amidst struggle so that we grow stronger as warriors and are then better equipped -- sword, armor and shield -- to fight for one another. My doctrine raises soldiers.
And I am proud to be one of them.
"'I've got roots growing down to the water.
I've got leaves growing up to the sunshine,
and the fruit that I bear is a sign of life in me.
I am shade from the hot summer sundown.
I am nest for the birds of the heavens.
I'm becoming what the Lord of trees meant me to be...
a strong young tree.'"
Lord, you took me and awakened me to myself. With your hands you have lifted my face to the sun; I have felt its touch, pale and young with winter’s dawn, even as you close my eyes and allow me to rest, standing there before you—child, sister, lover, friend. And now, as the dusk of that same day—your day, sweet Christ—draws to a close and paints my Eastern-facing window with blues and pinks and sherbet orange—I feel you in my chest, in the pounding of my heart, and I close my eyes again and I see the faces of the soldiers who stand with me. And I feel so strong. And I feel so full of your love and their love.
And Christ?
I know that everything is possible.
I am discovered.
EJ
