From
Hebrews 11:1-6
           
H,    
           
It has been a fair more than “two days” since I last wrote to you. It has been awhile. I am sorry. Your old messages were left unanswered as I went off the reservation first as a holiday and then as a sort of pilgrimage and finally just pure indulgence that only got interrupted again by grace. Yet, as you know once you have had the light, in any real way, nothing can take that place in your heart and life. You either stumble meekly through life in a state of obvious denial or you learn slowly the humility that comes from being loved and forgiven and always accepted back into the arms that hold the universe in its place. It is wisdom to always choose the latter over the former.
           
So, to which of your letters can I summarize all my replies? Well, probably the age old question raised in ancient doubt: why do we believe? It is the one I am less equipped to answer but most alive to talk about. I do not have a walking reason for looking up to grace and finding it full and beautiful. Well, I do but not one that rings through all ears and answers all questions. It is a deeply personal stump speech I have for my soul that is much more than dull words and it crosses the line from bold declaration into necessary consolation that happens to be truth. It is the way I dealt with or was led away from an existential crisis I encountered in young age that put my soul in inertia and caged my spirit of the wilds. The simple but critical doubt we all get about the meaning and value of life. When the answer was put to me, and accepted, as a benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God also known as love in full flow, a real deity and not one I knew but one that knew me, it answered all my questions and filled all my places of empty doubt at once. This may sound like an all-cure that frames life but it does not do the magic trick of numbing the mind or forever putting the heart in a vice. It is much too real for that. It is an entry point; a start on a journey that I believe will put everything in its place and tell us our place in everything. I have wandered from it a billion times and the thing I get every single time is not the defects that make me leave but the lack of imagination that takes me out into nothingness when fullness is on this road. I always, like that prodigal son, remember that there is nothing out there on that road of utter selfishness that compares to the freshness of the love presented to me and experienced when I meet the first of all principles: the reality of the love of God and what that will make all of us in time.
Amen.
           
P.S. two quick things have taken hold over here in the days of silence: the darn cold and the black hole of politics. On the cold I can tell you nothing about it, you are in the eye of the storm but these winds from the Sahara are a chill to any bones, the only question is the severity or the degrees. Keep warm.
           
On that second matter I can tell you even less. There is a great urge for change and there is bleakness about the cost of not having that change happen as soon as possible. It is a perilous time and those times always bring fear and quick feet. It may do good to be still. This ball keeps being dropped. Lives are swept up in frenzy and there is an unfolding tragedy everyday reaching fruition. “These are the times that test men’s souls”. Maybe we should just do all we can and should do to allow the grace of things higher permeate this low estate of being. May we all find those little steps that collectively signify a loud march away from the abyss.

 

Amen.