Letters for Edification

Email to a friend October, '09.

     I'll expound on the shape my life has taken.
     I lived in Colorado for a year, attending Colorado Christian University, and it was good. At the end of the first semester (this is fall '06) I knew I wouldn't go back for a second year. This is unfortunate because this private institution charges 26k a year - a wasted investment? I hemmed and hawed unsure what to do with life as I still had no major and virtually no direction and in that vacillation between something (because I occupy space and a thing will ALWAYS be happening to me) and nothing (because the spiritual state of The Lost is so whelming that I can quite literally be undone though here) I made a call to my Brother in Law who said 'there's always room here.' So I went to Alaska, my homeland, to Commercial fish for the summer. I discovered that the local community college, an extension of the University of Alaska, was waiving out of state tuition in a program to increase enrollment. So I went there, getting a full year's credits for 1/5 the cost of my first year - paid in cash, no less (fishing money). I live in my sister's garage - and have done so since August '07.
      I may tell you about being engaged someday, but not right now. I'll tell you that I've had to learn to grow up in 'the real world' instead of on college campuses, but in this I've had a protection that most kids our age don't get: supervision by men who care for me. That is, I'm part of a church body which gathers pretty much constantly. It's a home church of about 9 families and there are elders who have wisdom that comes from experience and from God, not to separate the two. For lack of parents, having adults in my life to whom I can turn and say 'insurance what?' and 'how do I change my oil?' and 'you're GIVING me this vehicle?' and 'you're showing me how to build a house?' and 'you're being watchmen as I grow spiritually affirmed in who I was and you're facilitating the development of me into the mighty man of God I will be and actually am?' is something most early-20's don't have.
      That said, not much has happened since I've been here. Rather the events have been changes that occurred in me, and they have been...multitudinous. Enough to fill a book like .. the bible. What I know is that I've found a God who loves me, and won't compromise His Word or his unending affection for me as he brings me what I've asked for: perfection in Him. I've discovered that I had no idea what love was - I had poor models (divorced parents), movies, and tv to go off, and we know how great these portray reality. Love on tv is affection and building music and chases to maintain these emotions, but what is left when that fire ends? It's boredom and desire for more of the same and inability to engender it because familiarity leads to searching elsewhere for entertainment. But God's love is uncompromising: it presents truth and lets me choose between it or something else. What's cool is that the word of God is divisive and clear once you learn how to hear it, that is, with ears for truth and without judgment. In any given second you're either in God or you're not. And when you are, it's flippin' fabulous and when you're not, it's made plain, so you can recognize something's off. The problem is that we've been  raised in the world's ways (not in God) so we are used to where we've been and what we've been of, we like the things we do and how they make us feel. So when God comes to say 'mmdear? you're in hell...' we think he's judging us and we spit at his feet and head into greater judgment because we've cursed the one who made us. This is what makes the walk tough - when we cling to our life, our rights, saying that we've been correct. God doesn't judge where we've been and what we've done - he forgets it all and does not hold it against us (that's one of the most difficult things in all of the cosmos to believe, but it really is true). He comes to shed light on the muck we've called faith, hope, love...faith as lip-service, hope as desire, love as compromise and worldly affection. They've been perverted. It's not our fault, we just get to learn to hear the call of the one who desires to lift us up. My father will not forsake me: this I've learned.
      He is near, he is a God of power, he is a God of grace and favor. We have so many mindsets and so many impressions of the way things are and we hold to them, maintaining our worldview and strengthening the idols we worship: body image, politics, money, music, sex, drugs, intelligence - anything that has a hold on us. But we don't understand this. We try to figure God out when we think he's big and judgmental and wrathful and far off and he inflicts all the woes of the world on me even though he's impotent and why won't he save me? 
      God is everything good and perfect - peace, patience, caring, understanding, love, longsuffering...all the fruits of the spirit. Perceptions. He waits in faith knowing that though I reject Him, He is the cry of my heart and I have said yes. My walk will bring me to know Him as I give up myself and the things I've elevated over Him.
      People call our church a cult because a few of the families left a local church at the same time and we meet in homes. Nobody asks questions, so they slander. It's really weird - but to be expected. When they come face to face with the Truth (the voice and word of God) and reject him, they rise up in offense saying 'how dare you blasphemer!' and 'that's not the God I know' and it continues.
      It's in His power to change us, but he won't take that place - he's not  a tyrant or overlord. He gave us free will to choose him or not. He is jealous, God, but he's jealous as a husband for a wife.
      I have identified with the stuff that has ruled me calling my very enemy myself. "I'm sick. I'm stupid. I'm not very fast. I'm not as good-looking as him. I could never approach her." So be these things unto me. When God comes to show me these are not how he made me to be, he comes with fire and vengeance upon my enemies, but I call them me: I protect them and so I get burned rather than they, and then I curse God. This is way of things.
      I have discovered a more real reality, a surer foundation and a more intimate love and life than I could have imagined.
      We can reason all we want, but that comes from an impure heart, not coming under the Lord's order to receive - we try to find the pieces and assemble God the Puzzle. But God is like a seed planted in the ground of the heart - it must come from above and it must be received. We can't take the bits we like and make a collage of who we want God to be: we'll be disappointed and then angry when he's deaf and dumb. But this is what we do.

     You needn't read this. You also needn't feel judged. This is for MY edification - you can take it or leave it. I'm just glad to know you. This is who I've become. Your friend asked if I was a bible beater. I'm not. At this point I just live as I know true. I'm not about converting people. The bible says 'all men are saved Especially those who believe.' To know you are saved is to walk in the liberty that comes with knowing you don't have to figure stuff out for yourself because you're loved no matter what. To not believe is to be saved but not have any understanding of the way life could be- that's hell.
So for me, I believe and get understanding and by Faith I find myself with God, in heaven.

Quote Me

The light will disturb us when we're comfortable, and comfort us when we're disturbed.
We turn to Spirit for help when our foundations are shaking,
only to find that it is Spirit who is shaking them. - Dan Millman

Act happy, feel happy, be happy, without a reason in the world.
Then you can love, and do what you will. - Dan Millman

What if you slept, and what if you dreamed,
and what if in your dream you went to heaven and there you plucked a strange and beautiful flower,
and what if when you awoke you had the flower in your hand?
Oh, what then? - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The important thing is this: To be ready at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. - Charles Dubois

The seed of God is in us:
Pear seeds grow into pear trees;
Hazel seeds into hazel trees;
and God seeds into God. -Meister Eckehart

The faithfulness of one taps a dam.
The faithfulness of two rings out loud.
The faithful gathered together dives down deep where no man can hold anything.

Change

I despise this post. I wrote it 30.Dec.11, and thought I might fix it up. It's rank and has some neat bits:

Change
A tradition of uniformity yields effective uniforms, both hallowed and respected. But old wineskins can't hold new wine. Reimagination permits the expansion of unheard of thoughts and ideas - new flavors wouldn't develop if the wine-process was flawless every time. Little variables become lifeblood and direction.
The Father's vision is 'wine' and Man gets caught in the (so limited) 'this wine, this way' mindset. The new flavors are not an abomination or departure from God's purpose - they're wine - just not the wine we may have wanted or expected. And yet through new notes and tones we are enriched in the variety he provides.
Evolution has a negative connotation in my head. I'd rather 'variation'. (Is this compromising the Word?)
I know the father is of one vision, a pure word that creates and imbues life. On the surface, it would seem that any modification to this word would be to detract from its purity and perfection. But He doesn't want us to be plain. Simple, yes, for ease's sake (a childlike faith). There are more than a thousand varieties of apples grown in the United States, bred and re-bred and altered. This is excessively amazing. We don't need this much variety, but it shows where our hearts lie. And this is a matter of heart. Why all that? Is it to exert influence so we can feel strong and in control of our lives and world? Is it to exercise creativity? An unforeseen accident is one thing: oh, the bees cross-pollinated our Granny Smiths with our Pink Ladies and aha: Granny Ladies!  Why invest in the science of apples when there is life in the Father to be had?! You might be called to breeding new apples, ones with a longer shelf life, more meat, or a natural bug repellent, and all these things are great and helpful, but how does this enhance the living of life?
All things are permitted, and in faith (submission) all things are life.
How does a true and simple thing become complex?  The hands of man take control. They wrest their 'freedom' from the hands of the greater one and run about fulfilling grand schemes. Like a teenager, like the prodigal son. Some live that way full-stop, and some repent and head back home. OR God sparks inspiration and the man seeks out its purpose and execution in humility, the intended end for the work. This life isn't about what's done, it's about the heart-work through it. We're only around to open, suspend, dissect, animate, reanimate, and suture what's been (and we constantly find as) a deadened heart.
No man, culture, or worship is better than another. Not in God's eyes, anyway. "Be with me in spirit and in Truth and I'll be with you." I think that's scripture. In me it is.

Tattoos and Light

I was subject to a ball of light today. It was a large sphere of pulsing yellow brightness with flares of light jetting out. It was so bright I couldn't tell whether it was heavy or super-light. And in a moment of clarity I realized it was potential energy. I had been put in a situation with eyes to see it, and the light was the energy that would become whatever I chose: negative (heavy) or constructive (liberating). There's no pressure in God, just a growing clarity to choose him faster, more often, and with greater ease. My world is in my hands, but I give it over to God; I can make my life, or I can let him do it. He's a far better creator than I. So I chose the lighter path, prayed into the Father, and any sense of burden I carried regarding the interaction vanished like vapor. The brightness of that light became me and I grew light. I grew lighter (less heavy), lighter (more transparent), and lighter (more glorious), all at once.

The Lord's tattooed me before: Righteous across my arms and chest from wrist to wrist, Faithful around my throat like a necklace, but today I received an intricate design. It is a tree whose roots begin at my groin, whose trunk rises up, narrow, through my navel and solar plexis, and whose thinly leaved branches extend broad across and over my pecs, leaving off at the tops of my shoulders. It is beautiful and becoming, instructive and living as I am living.