MORE RUTHLESS TRUST AND FRIENDS

Today's thoughts are a mixed bag.
First, last evening I was able to just hang out with old and new friends. What a great time. After a lonely 5 year journey it was good to have my belief in community reaffirmed. To any of you that may read this, I hope you felt loved and appreciated also.


Next...the continued reading of "Ruthless Trust". More musing for the next couple of days in contemplation:


(to my artist friends)
"And what of the human heart's capacity to understand God? Here we need the help of passionate visionaries such as Dostoevsky. Sacred scripture is too important to be left exclusively to biblical scholars. Theology is too vital to be consigned solely to the province of theologians. To explore the depths of the God who invites our trust, we need the artists and mystics. "


"I pray that I may be quit of God, that I may find God." Meister Eckhart


And just to remind myself....The Beyond in our midst

TRUST

I like to collect names for God besides the ones we so easily use. I have a good list going. Here is one I just added today:
THE BEYOND IN OUR MIDST

I've changed my reading list. I just can't read anymore right now that has to do with theology outside of how it can affect me. I don't know if anyone will understand this. I have returned to an author who has so many times before spoken to deep places in me...Brennan Manning. I have just started "Ruthless Trust". When I saw this book sitting on the bookshelf I thought, "This is what I need right now, in this moment".

Here are just a couple of things that I will contemplate for the next several days:

"If God stopped thinking of me, he would cease to exist." Angelus Silesius-15th century

"The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future." Manning

HOPE SHINES IN THE DARKNESS

Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to "share" about the rough times in life than it is to tell about the hope that has come?
So I'm telling of my hope. Last Monday I felt I had kind of hit bottom. Too much doubt. Not knowing how to climb out of this funk. Spending way too much time and energy and spirit on why things aren't the way I want. But, not knowing how to climb out.
I hadn't really journalized for a while so I thought maybe something would be drawn out of me onto the pages that could assist me. You should see what happened. I took my black acrylic crayon and (almost using it all) made a complete black page. That was how I was feeling. Then I took an instrument and drew 3 very, very fine lines of the absence of black. Those represented the light I felt was in my life at the time. (ok I hate always making parenthetical comments but...I know my life is good, my physicality, but my spirit, my hope, my desires were pretty black). Then I just began to write. I must admit I wasn't very kind to God. It was more than a large page of unkindness. I just kept hoping God could take it. And somewhere in the back of my mind or the depth of my spirit I was hoping the Great Mystery wouldn't "smite me dead". Lots of tears but no real enlightenment.
But....(don't you just love that word sometimes) the next morning something had happened. No the house didn't sell. No I didn't win the lottery. It was just "something". The blackness, the void had somehow moved way toward the back. I love when God does this. Do I still fight? Yes. Do I still have moments of wishing for something different? Yes. But the overwhelming, all consuming, paralyzing blackness has dissipated. It's like one of those mornings on the Central California Coast when the fog is so thick and then little by little you can actually see the sphere of sun. It isn't bringing warmth yet. There are no shadows produced yet. But.....