H,
It has been a while since we
spoke. I do not want to dwell on the details. I would rather focus on the
recovery: the idea that we can get back on track and restart the honest back
and forth in our pursuit of what is true and if that holds true through all
things and is in all things.
We have always had a growing
distrust for formula and fixed views of God. This is not because of any
inherent distrust of the well laid paths of old. I think it is because we have
seen formula fail and stoic views come up against reality without any real
movement of the latter. If what we believe has no real take on present reality,
if it does not answer to the real state of things and if it does not bring
light to the darkened rooms of everyday life then, as A. Paul once noted: “we
are of all…most miserable.”  We know from
experience that mere religion, the objects and tenets and practices of any one
single expression of our faith, cannot speak to all shades of the human
experience. We know that one word here can be used to enslave some and another
to empower others. We know the high price that has been paid by countless
individuals throughout history as mad men, despots and mistaken prophets try to
summarize truth into the petty box of the human ideal. There has to be more
than chapels to make Christ real.
And beyond the high sprung
ideas above about the nature of being there is the very personal struggle of
attempting a life of value. We know the pitfalls, setbacks, surprises and ultimate
failure of our demi-god state. We are more like lustful Zeus than noble Elohim.
We cannot get away from the
ordinary life that daily calls us to be better than we could ever possibly be
by telling us to let go of fear, to connect the great prose of the spirit with
the full passion of the human heart, not for balance, such a dirty word, but to
be fully alive and awake. To be in life and in love.
This daily encasement of our
frail state needs breaking through. This is the first of a few letters on how
we break through the stifling nature of our present states and reach out to be
the fully realized bastions of grace and love we were always meant to be. It starts
and ends with the most basic, and so most important, discipline there is in the
inward sense: prayer and this as connecting with God, every day.