"Right Now" - Bright Light Parade

I was mowing the lawn, minding my own business, listening to my mp3 player (yes, I am a dinosaur who does not own an iPod), when the song "Right Now" by Bright Light Parade began to play.

I was captivated by the lyric, "I've realized there's more to life than hiding from what's inside."

In the context of the song, it speaks to allowing myself to express my love for God without concern for the opinion of others, to quit covering that up or excusing it.

None of us get there without first admitting what's inside that blocks this free expression.

Maybe we call it the Shadow, or Original Sin, or Illusion. I don't care what we call it, just that we see it.

There is a Me that I live with every day, and a Me that I want people to think I am. Like St. Paul, I say, "I want to do what is good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway." (Romans 7:19, New Living Translation [NLT])

So it is and so it will be as long as I do not invite God into that part of me. This is part of human nature. Scarecly a few passages into the Hebrew Bible, people are beginning to try to hide things from God. We read about Adam, "Then the LORD God called to the man, 'Where are you?' He replied, 'I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.'" (Genesis 3:9-10, NLT)

What a great cosmic joke it is for us to say God is all-seeing, all-knowing, and ever-present, and yet to think we could hide our nakedness, our realness, from God. God seems to play along, asking, "Where are you?" like a parent playing hide and seek with a child who covers his eyes thinking if he cannot see, he cannot be seen.

God has already seen our nakedness.

So, no more hiding what's inside. No more trying to cover up, medicate, numb, or compartmentalize it all away from God. We build a fortress of behavior and pretense around our weaknesses, which only locks us inside with them. No more pretending it doesn't exist! My part in the human experience is well-established. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I am flawed.

When I quit hiding from that fact, I can begin to allow God to see it, too, and healing can begin. I can tear down that fortress, but it can only be done from the inside.

"I've realized there's more to life than hiding from what's inside."

Pace e bene,
David +

Life in the Real World

Mistakes are made. Mechanical things break down. Good people experience challenging times. Results differ from expectations. Addictions, diseases, and accidents happen.

These are the circumstances of the world in which we live. Our emotional lives often mirror the natural world. Around us and within us there are calm sunsets and earthquakes, gentle, refreshing rains and hurricanes, bubbling streams and class 5 rapids.

Don't ask me why, I only work here. I don't get to set policy.

Our faith is not necessarily measured or demonstrated by the circumstances in our lives. "The rain falls on the just and the unjust."(Matthew 5:45) Our faith shows in how we respond to them.

Our faith is not necessarily obvious in the first blush of experience. We grieve, we regret, we get angry. We react. We over-react. Welcome to humanity.

Faith is like a steady beam of light that eventually cuts through the fog. Maybe I can't see how to express it immediately, but I hold onto it until I can.

It is time that we quit being ashamed of being human. Let's just be humans with faith, humans who look for the way to bring it all around to good, to love, to hope, to compassion.

Jesus was not ashamed of us. What a beautiful thought that God incarnated into human flesh, human conditions, a human world. God must not have been ashamed of us if God chose to dress up like us. Maybe God really fancied us. Maybe God thought, "I think I'll grow a beard. I think I'll experience a family vacation. I think I'll enjoy some wine, maybe even make it myself."

Maybe, just maybe, God is trying to tell us there is holiness in being human, sacredness in wearing these fragile skins.

I don't know, I just work here.

Blessings,
David