Dear God,

I have a few questions for you.  If you don't mind.

?  Firstly, my usual standard question: why, when I am convinced of your love, goodness and power, do I look around and see so much suffering?  Yes, I know - not a very original question.  Is this the biggie, the one you are asked the most?  The one that keeps the most people from you, shaking their fists?  It must hurt you ... but really, you can't expect us to think any differently or be less frustrated, can you?  Us being on the side that we're on, living in the only world we've ever known, you being an omniscient being and all that.  Seriously, I know you operate on a different timeframe than we do, one day being as a thousand years and vice versa, but honestly, sometimes you seem awfully tortoiselike in your responses - and when you don't respond at all?  Well sometimes, we just get the impression that you are totally uncaring.  You know?

?  Secondly, on a personal level, is it possible for me to have any time soon a season of reaping and fruitfulness?  The sowing and the fallow fields have been going on for so long ...

?  Thirdly, what on earth are you doing in me, and can you either (a) speed it up or (b) stop or (c) tell me what on earth (or in heaven) you are up to?

?  Fourthly, wasn't Buddy Franklin's 7 goals yesterday wonderful?

?  Fifthly, what's that all about, when you lead us down a certain path which looks so promising and which ends in frustration?  Does that mean it was wrong?  Does it mean that we hear you wrongly, when that happens?  Or do you really work everything for good?  Forgive my many questions, but you just don't make any sense to me.  The further I go on, the more mysterious you are, and sometimes it really frustrates me and I want to lash out at you like a two-year old, pummel you in my pain.  But you don't mind, do you?  Sometimes I even think you are laughing at my tantrums.  Which is a frustration in itself, but then again ... you God, me human and all that.

?  Sixthly, my other favourite question: why is it, when I am in the throes of dark nights and unknowing clouds (so often my landscape, as you promised yourself would be the case, but still ...) why do you seemingly whizz off at the speed of light and sound?  Why is that?  Oh, yes, I know - it's my perception that you have gone anywhere.  But still, isn't there some way you could overcome those perceptions (all arguments of freewill aside), at the moments when I feel most alone and most abandoned?  Isn't there?  Just once?  Anything will do - a divine visitation, angelic light flooding my room, visions, third-heaven visitations ... or even something smaller, a shaft of light falling just the right way, a weed growing out of a footpath crack.  But still, while I'm here and putting in requests, can I have a divine angelic visitation, please?  Perhaps something like that will put me back in my place, stop me asking you questions in this tone of voice once the fear and awe hits ;)

?  Seventhly, do you mind me asking you so many questions?  I personally don't think so.  You did, after all, make me this inquisitive, and surely if I was going to ask anyone questions it would be the Lord of the Starfields.  I guess my question really, then, is do you mind me asking you so many questions with such a petulant air?  That's what I really want to know.  Because seriously, God, I am feeling totally fed up with this stupid life and this stupid world, and I really want some answers to some longstanding questions.  And yes, I know petulance is a most unbecoming thing in a woman of 36 years old, but that is also partly your problem, being so eager as you are to mess around in my innards moving furniture, poking and prodding. 

?  Eighthly, will you forgive me for doubting you?  Because I do, you know.  Often.  And I know one day when I am seeing more than I do now, I will feel sad that I couldn't continue on doggedly, in the knowingness I have, of your past goodness and your assured future goodness.  But I am, after all, just dust.  And you know that.  Better than I do.

PS: Notice that I am calling you the more formal 'God', rather than the more intimate 'Papa', which, as you know, is becoming a name I am increasingly liking to call you.  But I'm annoyed and frustrated and so I'm going to take it out on you.  Are you alright with that? 

One of the writers who inspires me most about writing, Madeleine L'Engle, died on the 6th September in Connecticut.  Good for her - she was 88, so she had a good innings and I'm sure she was hankering to go off and do more exploring unweighted by age.  Go well, Madeleine. 

It's funny but I haven't actually read a whole stack of her stuff .  She wrote a lot of science fiction/fantasy-type stuff and I've read a couple of those.  But it's her talk about creativity and spirituality that really roped me in.  I have a couple of books of quotations of hers that I often delve into because I just love her vision and her faith.

So Madeleine, may you be wondering in delight at many of the things you once thought and suspected and are now seeing in front of your newly-opened eyes, a grander, greater reality than even you could see ;)  May it be that your socks are surprised right off your newly-young feet.  Here's to you.

Aristotle teaches that that which is probable and impossible is better than that which s possible and improbable  But this probable-impossible is often fraught with risk.  And risk implies the possibility of failure and death.  I'm worried that we live in a climate where we are not allowed to fail and therefore we are encouraged to take fewer and fewer risks.  For all human endeavor is set by risk, as the physicist Franz Kernig believes.  Freedom risks its own abuse, thinking risks error, speech risks misunderstanding, faith risks failure, and hope risks despair.  The risk of life is death, and man is man only by virtue of his risks of the future. - Madelaine L'Engle: Herself

When I am constantly running there is no time for being.  When there is no time for being there is no time for listening.  I will never understand the silent dying of the green pie-apple tree if I do not slow down and listen to what the Spirit is telling me, telling me of the death of trees, the death of planets, of people, and what all these deaths mean in the light of love of the Creator, who brought them all into being, who brought me into being, and you. - Walking on Water

I keep coming across references to this Jacques Ellul dude all the time.  You know when that happens?  It's like when you buy a new car, and suddenly you see them clogging up every road.  Maybe there are always heaps of references to Jacques Ellul flying around in the air at any given moment, and it's only that I'm turning my focus on him that I'm noticing them.  Kent from Faithfully Dangerous has a great quote by Ellul on the differences between belief and faith.  Good stuff.  (Note to self: *must* read some Ellul, as soon as I get through the backlog of the 20 books I'm reading all at once at the moment).

Regarding noticing the same thing popping up everywhere, I think it's true that there is just so much stuff going on every day that we must filter a great deal of it out or spontaneously combust.  This explains why, when we turn our focus to a particular thing and bring it from the backburner of our minds out to the forefront, that we begin seeing references to it everywhere.  But sometimes, the random seeings are deliciously found in such disparate, out of the way places that it almost seems like someone is trying to tell us something ;) - that's when my toes tingle. 

I've been thinking lately about what it is that spins my wheels.  One of those personality tests I did a while ago said something about how a sense of wonder is central to me, and how living in the world as it is is often depressing for me because it so little reflects my idealistic standards ;)  (or something like that anyway).  Now, these personality tests I do definitely take with a grain of salt - I don't know if I really am a true INFP anyway, or if the hard stuff that's happened in my life over the past several years just has me behaving as a depressed ENFJ - or even if we can so easily categorise ourselves - but this sense of wonder thang is definitely a truism for me. 

If I come across an interesting tidbit that gets me excited, adds a tiny piece of jigsaw piece to the puzzle of life, helps me understand myself or others or the world better - I can run for hours on the adrenaline of that sort of thing.  It's always been that way.  I think that's why I've been drawn to reading.  Always wanting to find out, find out, find out.  I thirst for a cohesive, comprehensive view of the world - but like a good postmodern girl, I wouldn't dare impose that on anyone other than myself ;) (and you, dear reader).  I do, however, believe there is a general ultimate reality out there - I just think it's wider and fuller and more paradoxical and Alice-in-Wonderlandish than we have tended to think in the West.

My sleeping patterns are beginning to change.  This happens every year.  Just as they go haywire when the Winter months lessen the light, so when the light returns I begin going to bed earlier.  I think it's something to do with having been sick, but I have gone to bed at 10.30 for the last two or three nights - a complete rarity for me.  So is waking up at 7.30 without an alarm and not being able to go back to sleep.  Still, it means that I can spend my usual two hours online before doing anything at all and there is still time in the morning to do other things before I get ready to go to the football and see my team get beaten (well, that's the standard line I'm telling myself; there is a smaller, flutterier, hopeful voice that says that we are a chance.  But it's too fragile to display to the world.  Still - go Hawks.  We weren't even meant to be here, so we have nothing to lose whatsoever.  Go eat you some Crow).

Happy birthday, Joy!

... and I don't even really care anymore.  I am not very much at all according to the standards of the world.  Crap job, broke, couldn't stay married, childless, small time drug habit, intimacy issues, cynical beyond repair, occasional passive-aggressive tendencies, independent beyond necessity.  On and on and on.  Yada yada yada.

But apparently I can see grace clearer from here than if I was mega-successful.  If I was mega-successful, I'd start getting this stupid idea that it was off my own bat.  I'd start thinking I was better than you (believe me, it doesn't need much for my ego to start doin' it's acrobatics).  I'd start thinking that because I believe a few choice things about some guy who lived a coupla thousand years ago that I deserve to go to his paradise and you, lowly worm, deserve to rot in hell  if you don't.  And that has to be some of the evillest kind of thinking that we humans are capable of.

I wonder what everyone around Jesus thought of him when he was, like, 32 and STILL wasn't married yet and hadn't really done anything with his life?  I am really getting weaned off being successful on the world's terms.  And what a bloody relief that is.

http://cheryl.collinsart.net/

George Dubya is in Australia at the moment for the APEC conference, which is stuffing up normal Sydneysiders' ability to get from one side of the city to the other what with all the blockades and no-go zones.  When I read the Alexander Solzhenitsyn quote below, I thought of Dubya:

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

I think you can come to a place where you are willing to destroy a piece of your own heart.  At least, you can be willing for several minutes at a time ;)  Or to have it destroyed for you, if only you could find a surgeon skilled enough to do the operation properly.  Especially when you realise that the surgery is a non-negotiable if you want to really, really live. 

But I don't think Dubya agrees.  His version of good and evil is rather less nuanced than that.  He is so very lucky that he falls on the good side of the Great Divide, isn't he!  I only wish he would stop mouthing off from his great pedestal.  He's going to get the rest of us nuked.

Here is a list of the lands which were at the top of the Faraway Tree.  The Land of Do As You Please sounds interesting.  And the Land of Dreams sounds way trippy, dude.  I've had a few flying dreams; they're fun.  My favourite dream has been the recurring one where I am able to jump really, really high, and so when the bad guys are after me I can just run and jump over 12 foot high cyclone fences and stuff.  It's pretty cool.

I imagine I would be a right insufferable pain in the arse after coming back from the Land of Know-Alls.  I'd be scared I'd go crazy and just demand to know everything, impatiently, like the way as a kid I used to be unable to not look at my Christmas presents at the top of Mum's wardrobe, so making for a rather less exciting Christmas Day (foolish child).

Silence is God's first language; everything else is a poor translation.

- Thomas Keating

Today I took Lester out for a walk.  It's the first exercise of any kind I've had in over a month.  And boy, did I feel it!  My stamina has dropped so much in the wake of this illness.  Where before I could plough on up hills reasonably well, now I'm puffing as I go (apart from hucking and coughing - but hey, I can cough now without having to hold onto my muscles with my hands, to stop them hurting.  Look Mum - no hands!  It's great!)

I walked along the river near my home.  There is a housing development in the process of being constructed, but building hasn't started yet and so it's still quiet enough to hear ... nothing.  Well, not nothing.  I heard rosellas and bellbirds.  And the wind in the trees. 

Enid Blyton has impaled herself in my head.  All of those afternoons as an eight-year-old polishing off Faraway Tree books have left certain words in me.  I stood for a minute trying without success to find a word to describe the sound the wind makes when it goes through the leaves of the gum trees.  Wishering was all I could come up with, and when I got home and looked it up - of course.  That was the sound the trees made in the Enchanted Wood.  Wisha wisha wisha.

This wasn't any kind of Enchanted Wood, unfortunately.  There was no Faraway Tree I found (if I had, I would have (a) eaten some pop biscuits then (b) found the Saucepan Man and hugged him.  But I digress).

But gee it was damn fine getting out and about.  In my absence the wattle has flowered.  Lester was so happy to be out in the smells.  I am jealous of him and his great sense of smell.  It seems to be so orgasmically amazing for him; I wish mine was the same.

But still, I used all the senses I do have and just got off on the experience and pleasure of being in a little bit of river wilderness while being five minutes' drive from my house.  And being in silence.  Where I live is very quiet, but there's something different about being out where the only noises are nature noises.   Food for the soul as well as the body.

"If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line--starting, say, in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceeding by logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King's Highway past appropriately named dangers, toils, and snares, and finally cross the River of Death and enter the Celestial City. But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circle or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I have deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led--Make of that what you will."

Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow.

I feel guilty because I have done something very naughty.  I'm not going to go into it here, but it's something I haven't done for a long time and didn't think I would do again.  It's always interesting and humbleifying when you return to the same mountain after a lengthy absence.

Several days ago I was reading an article where the writer was talking about how he came to terms with certain things from his past which were affecting his life by facing up to them fairly and squarely and being willing to really experience the pain, to let it bear full expression in his body.  What he found was that the resultant emotions contained layers, and that once he plumbed the depths of one emotion it led to another - from hopelessness to pointlessness to blankness, and finally to a peace which took him by surprise.

I have had a small amount of experience of this in my own life.  When I have faced a few of my greatest fears and traumas, and looked them in the eye, so to speak, and owned them, and all that other stuff, they mysteriously diminished and I found that somehow there was healing inherent in the process.

The Christianity that I cut my teeth on inadvertently taught me that I have to deal quickly with my sins, in the fear that God will throw me into hell if I somehow died in the next day or two and I had not repented of whatever the problem was I was dealing with at the time.  I'm sure almost all that I was taught was much more complex than that, but this is the essence and flavour and smell that I came away with, feeding out as it did of my own shame and fear.  So my confession became a fear-based undertaking to appease the God of wrath, rather than a process of resolution and healing and a dealing of my own guilt, rather than stuffing it down down down because I couldn't work out what else to do with it.

Today, dealing with my fresh sin, I have been wandering around with a vague sense of uneasiness.  Has God really forgiven me?  Is it really that easy?  Yes, it is.  Does that make me more inclined to go out and do the same thing again, because God apparently is a god more merciful and tolerant and in control of me and my foibles and outright evilness at times than I have been led to believe?  No, it doesn't.  In fact, the opposite.  If God really is that fine and that good, then surely it is his love and the healing in his wings which will change me.  Surely it's only within the relationship that my brokenness can be healed.  That is, if he is a god and I am a created being.  If I cannot come to him in my worst brokkennes, especially the ongoing stuff that rears its head up repeatedly, the stuff that makes you throw your hands up in despair and commit to indulging in a life of depravity, idleness, lust and LSD, then does he really deserve the title of god at all?  If he is not safe to be in while I am unsafe to myself and others - which is for most of us, even Christians, a vast majority of our lives, then what sort of a god is that?

Because the lie is that I can cure my own brokenness, or patch it up so that I can come to God on my own steam, off my own bat, in my own strength, in the ability to pick my life up and dust it off and make something beautiful of it.  That is an appealing thought because it means control lies fairly and squarely in my hands.  The whole problem with us dudes and dudettes is that we think that our life and goodness comes inherently from within ourselves, when that stuff has always come out of the very heart of God.

I'm committing myself to be willing to experience my emotions and drink them to the dregs.  It's very scary.  I'm scared of what lies beneath.  But what I have been suspecting for some time is that, like some kind of weird cosmic artichoke, the divine lies at the heart of all emotions.  If I can trust that, then there is nothing I can't be willing to face because there is nothing that does not have an end to it, nothing that ultimately doesn't have its ending in God.