This week, one of God’s most courageous warriors passed from this life into the Kingdom of God.

And I had the privilege of knowing her.

If you were to have met her, you would not have noticed anything extraordinary about her appearance. The only hint to her inner holiness was the simple claim printed on the key strap around her neck: “Jesus loves me”.

To some, this might have given the impression of oddity rather than sanctity, both in the wearing so many keys and in the bold simplicity of the proclamation.

As I came to know her better, I began to understand that for her these words were far more than a dime store slogan. This strap and these words were more like a “coat of arms” that she carried bravely into battle on a daily basis.

My description of her as a warrior might create a false image of her as one of those aggressive believers who accosts strangers to ask them if they have been saved. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, as she told it to me, people were always coming up to her.

She could not understand it, she would tell me. She could be in a public place minding her own business and people would just approach her needing healing. She might take a seat by herself on the bus and, despite there being many other seats available, the next thing she knew, someone was practically sitting on her lap, trying to get near her or touch her.

Many of these strangers were very grateful for her touch or kind words. But there were others who seemed to be possessed of a fury with her, despite her never having seen them before. Why did she draw such people?

It all seemed to have something to do with love and its healing power. Yet it was a funny thing about this warrior and her outlook on love. “Sometimes”, she said, “I don’t even want to love them but I can’t help it.” Sometimes she did not want to love, she indicated, because love was just so painful.

Why call her a warrior, this kind and ordinary-seeming woman who involuntarily loved and drew the afflicted to her touch?

It was from this “ordinary” woman that I first came to really understand that we are indeed at war. I am not talking about tensions in the Middle East or the violence of city streets. I am referring to the war of good versus evil, of the followers of the Lord Jesus versus those enslaved by the prince of darkness. (See my previous article Spiritual warfare.)

How she taught me is almost impossible to say. I am sure she did not set out to do so. I feel confident of this because, to her, the reality of spiritual warfare was so obvious that it did not need to be taught. It would not have occurred to her to tell me this anymore than it would have occurred to her to tell me that I needed to breathe.

What was so interesting about the lessons I learned from her was that I had to overcome obstacles in myself in order to grasp them. I had not set out to do this. Initially, my goal had been to understand her and help her find healing from the considerable pain she carried within.

In the course of this journey, however, every now and then she let slip something that sounded, well, kind of crazy… And I would have to stop and puzzle over it. Was it possible that I was being taken in by some elaborate delusion?

I ran into this wall a number of times as I got to know her – and always landed in the same place: no, she wasn’t crazy. She was right. She might not have been right about the details of a particular situation (she wasn’t terrible savvy with regard to worldly matters) but she was right about the spiritual realm.

She once said to me, “I don’t claim to know everything, but what I know, I know.”

I was quite struck by this remark. I’m not sure why – but perhaps because the things she knew were things that I wished I knew instead of merely believing.

“I’ve always known there was a God, even as a young child.”

Could I say that? Can I even say as an adult that I know there is a God rather than merely saying I believe it?

I realized at the time, I could not. But now I can. I can say it now because I prayed that it might be so – I asked God to help me to truly know Him and not simply believe. And I’ve increasingly learned how completely He answers my prayers. Why have I been so afraid to ask?

But, returning to our warrior. I do not think I have ever encountered anyone who so much lived in the world but was not “of the world”. I do not mean by this that she did not deal with practical matters or that she was detached from others – certainly the latter was not at all the case.

She simply didn’t “get” the ways of the world. However, the ways of God she understood as well or better than many a preacher or priest.

Sometimes it seemed to be my role to try to help her better make sense of this world and the people in it.

I explained to her once that some people who have their doubts about God do so because they cannot accept the evil in our world. They assert that because God created all things, God must have created evil too and is either powerless or unwilling to stop it.

“Really?” she exclaimed incredulously, wrinkling up her nose. “They think that?” She could not imagine how anyone could believe anything so ridiculous.

It was also sometimes hard for her understand that not everyone had the same spiritual gifts that she had. For example, she complained that when other Christians visited the sick in the hospital, “The people are still sick – and some of them are even dying.”

When I explained to her that it was not unusual for people in the hospital to sometimes fail to get well, she said that when she visited the sick and prayed with them, they always got well. As a result of this, people often wanted her to pray for them. She didn’t mind doing so – but she struggled to understand why they didn’t pray themselves.

But all of this does not really explain why this dear woman was a great warrior.

Perhaps the best way I can explain it is to say that she was born on the front lines. When I explained that to her, I admitted that I did not know why God allowed her be born in such a terrible place, a place where the warfare was so intense and so very dangerous.

But, I told her, I could see that He had given her some exceptional weapons (gifts) that not many other people have. With these, she had been able to not only survive, but become a vehicle of His grace, healing and love in the places where evil seems to thrive.

Her life had more trauma in it than most people could ever imagine. She struggled but did not talk much about it. Yet, perhaps her biggest struggle was that she feared for the fate of the souls of those who had betrayed her, beaten her and even tried to kill her.

She worried about whether she had done enough to try to bring them to salvation. It was hard for her to let it go – to comprehend that anyone, if shown it,  could refuse the love of God that was so alive in her heart.

When I learned this past Sunday evening that this great warrior had been beset by an aggressive cancer, I was at the hospital Monday morning. She was not able to speak but she knew that I was there.

After greeting her, my next words were, “I heard that something evil has gotten inside your body and taken over.”

Neither of us were going to pretend that this horrible cancer had come from God. God does not do that sort of thing to His beloved.

Since she wasn’t able to say anything, I settled in and spoke some more. I asked her if she wanted to be healed, acknowledging that sometimes people are tired of fighting the fight. I indicated that we both knew perfectly well that God could heal her of this disease, regardless of how severe or advanced it was.

However, I continued, what we were to pray for was what was for her sanctification and the sanctification of those she loved. And thus, the glory of God.

While admitting that my vote was for her staying here – because I wanted her here – I readily admitted that my vote didn’t count for anything because I am not in charge. “God is in charge,” I stated the obvious, “and we need to trust in His wisdom”.

I sat with her for a while, reading from the first Letter of St. John and the Gospels. She was clearly in pain but her face relaxed some as she listened to the Word. Her hand rested on her heart and her breathing settled into a more restful rhythm.

Less than 48 hours later, she was with God.

Courageous warrior, faithful servant of Love, be at peace.

And pray for us.

Amen. Alleluia.

(Having recently read Fr. Stephen’s post at Glory to God for All Things (click here to read), I felt moved to write a bit on “progress”. Certainly my aim is not to contradict any of Fr. Stephen’s excellent points – but rather to take the discussion in a slightly different direction.)

Is my soul making progress on its way toward God?

O yes it is – it is!

How can I be so sure? Well, let me tell you what Jesus said:

Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asks for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asks for a fish? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him. (Matthew 7: 9 – 11)

Jesus has taught me that His Father is my Father and that I can ask Him for anything. Jesus even invited me to be on intimate terms with our Father, so intimate that I can call Him, “Abba”.

And so, every day, I call upon my Abba. I thank Him, I praise Him and I ask Him for help. I ask Him for many things, for myself and others. I ask for the Holy Spirit to bring His gifts, to work in me and through me.

I cannot imagine that my Abba does not give these good things to me. (If He did not, that would make the words of Jesus untrue and that cannot be.) Because He is my Abba – and I am but a child – I trust that He knows what I need and exactly how to take care of me.

I do not know, but He knows.

Of course, my Abba wants me to find my way to Him. This is why He made me. He never wanted me to get lost like this – but He hasn’t given up on me. If He had, He wouldn’t have sent Jesus to find me. And He wouldn’t have sent the Spirit to teach me.

So I trust that my soul is making progress. The funny part though is that, with me being but a child, I don’t always know when I’m going forward or when I’m going backward. In fact, I’m the worst judge of this there can be.

Sometimes my Father has pointed this out to me, a bit sharply even, but always with love.

I might think proudly that I have made great progress because I am praying often and with great joy. (I might even secretly think that I am holier than the others who don’t go to church or pray.)

But Abba has a good cure for this pride of mine. He takes away all the joy! I didn’t realize at first that He was doing this – it didn’t seem like the sort of thing my Father would do. But then, slowly, I understood.

It was His way of showing me how I did without Him. Ugh. That should have been enough to teach me not to take credit for His gifts!

Unfortunately, however, me being but a child, I learn slowly and make the same mistakes over and over. Abba is so kind and loving though that He doesn’t hold back His gifts for long.

When I repeat my mistakes and am struggling in the joyless place, sometimes I think I have gone backward. I think I am getting farther from God than ever.

But I am no judge. From what people tell me, these times may be when I am learning and growing the most. If God were teaching me to swim, I’d be learning more when my feet were kicking and my arms were swinging than when He was just holding me up, now wouldn’t I?

Not being able to make sense of all of this backward and forward stuff, how can I know I’m making any progress toward God at all? Could I be such a disobedient child that I will never find my way to Abba?

Such a thought sure is scary. I know I can be pretty disobedient at times – even though sometimes I don’t realize it until later, when He shows me what I did.

But I’ve learned that I don’t really have to be scared. Jesus told me that I just need to keep asking and our Father, who loves me even more than my earthly parents, will give me what I need.

I know that I am making progress – I’m not just spinning my wheels. But I know this, not because I’m good or because I’m getting better in some way, but because I trust Him. I trust that He’s doing in me what He promised to do. He’s making me a new creation. Without Him, I’d never be anything.

He is my Abba and I love Him. But even this is true only because He loved me first and is now showing me what love means. He sent Jesus to find me and now He lives in my heart. And His Spirit is always here with me. I’m never alone.

With all of these gifts, even a lost child like me cannot stay lost forever. He just keeps drawing me closer and closer – as long as I ask.

And I pray that I never stop asking. But even if in my foolishness I do stop asking, He will come knocking at my door. That’s how much He loves me.

I just can’t help but trust Him. He is my Abba…

I lived most of my childhood in a lovely house on 12th Avenue in south Minneapolis. My earliest childhood memory is walking through the back door of this house for the very first time at age 3. It was a splendid new place with lots of room, a yard and only a few dark, scary places in the basement.

As a young child, of course, I had no understanding of what it meant to have to fix up a house after moving in. I had no particular standards for how things should be, as long as Mom and Dad were there, the house was warm enough in the winter (barely!) and there was food to eat. Our survival was never in question and I was blessed to feel secure in my new home.

However, as time went on, my father did a lot of fixing up. Again, it wasn’t anything I thought about. It was as normal as snow storms in winter. I used to spend long hours watching him at work. Some rooms had wallpaper on them that my father scraped off with great care. It didn’t matter how many layers had been there. It came off.

My father did a meticulous job. Perhaps this was because he was a chemical engineer whose career revolved around paint. Perhaps it was just his personality. In any event, if there was old paint on a window frame, it all had to be scraped off before any new paint could be applied. This meant the application of a paint stripper and the painstaking scraping of every little groove. Sanding to ensure a smooth surface was often a necessity as well.

I have fond memories of the summer the garage door had to be painted. Now that was a big job, approached in quite a different manner. Naturally, the old paint had to come off first. Endless hours of fascination ensued, watching my father wield a propane torch, then scrape; burn, then scrape. He was always very careful and, as much as I’m sure I would have liked a turn with it, I never got one.

It wasn’t until my early adulthood that I came to realize that not everyone approached a paint job like my father. When I moved into urban neighborhoods, typically older houses that had been divided into rental units, I discovered all sorts of horrors. Not only were there many layers of paint piled one on top of the other, there were places where people had obviously painted over flaking paint with little or no attempt to scrape.

How could this be? It did not take me long to realize that most property owners (of decaying properties in decaying neighborhoods) simply didn’t care to put in the work. They just wanted to touch things up enough so that they could move in new tenants.

Strange that all of this imagery should come to me this evening – while celebrating Eucharist with a small group of the faithful in Cleveland’s near west side. I was blessed tonight with the privilege of proclaiming the Scripture from the Acts of the Apostles (5: 17-26):

Then the high priest rose up and all his companions, that is, the party of the Sadducees, and, filled with jealousy, laid hands upon the apostles and put them in the public jail.

But during the night, the angel of the Lord opened the doors of the prison, led them out, and said, “Go and take your place in the temple area, and tell the people everything about this life.” When they heard this, they went to the temple early in the morning and taught.

When the high priest and his companions arrived, they convened the Sanhedrin, the full senate of the Israelites, and sent to the jail to have them brought in. But the court officers who went did not find them in the prison, so they came back and reported, “We found the jail securely locked and the guards stationed outside the doors, but when we opened them, we found no one inside.” When they heard this report, the captain of the temple guard and the chief priests were at a loss about them, as to what this would come to. Then someone came in and reported to them, “The men whom you put in prison are in the temple area and are teaching the people.” Then the captain and the court officers went and brought them in, but without force, because they were afraid of being stoned by the people. (emphasis mine)

In another translation, the emphasized words read, “tell the people all about this new Life”. Last year, in the Easter season, I wrote of this very same passage (The new life). But what strikes me this year is the need for the stripping down to nothing that must occur in my life before I can fully receive the new.

And this is where the image of my father entered my mind unbidden. Stripping, scraping, burning, sanding away every last bit of the old paint before he applied the new. He didn’t just slap another coat on over the old – to hide its flaws or dinginess. No, he worked with great care. Remove the old. Then apply the new.

In His grand design, our Father in heaven works with a similar level of care. Once we left His way, falling into sin and death, His plan was neither to abandon us nor to simply cover over our brokenness with repetitious rituals, hiding from us the reality of our true state. No, He made a plan, born of Himself, to give us a new life.

In this plan, we have work to do. Much like the “strip, scrape, burn, sand” of my father’s toil, we must labor to remove the layers of old life, of false life – of what is broken, sick or damaged. We must strive to strip away everything that is not Him.

Is there anything I would not give up for the Lord?

This question both haunts and inspires me forward in the labor. Not just thinking of the possessions in my life, though certainly there are too many of them. But what of other aspects of my life? Would I be willing to give up my reputation? My career? My family? My intellect? My ability to walk or see or hear?

It is not that I anticipate God asking me to give up all of these things – but the surrender of any or all of them could be part of the plan at any point.

Is there anything I would not give up for Him?

Of course, of myself, I cannot do this. Hence, even the effort to strip myself down to nothing for the new life is not something I can accomplish without the help of His Spirit. But I must be willing. Even more, I must want to with all of my heart.

If all I want is a quick coat of paint to hide my defects, the world will give me that in a hurry.

If I want a new life in Christ, I must offer myself to be stripped down by His love until nothing remains but the bare wood.

The bare wood of the Cross.

My life, my hope, my salvation…

I have been a bit neglectful of this blog because of giving much of my time and attention to the book reflection at Here to Pray. However, in the Catholic tradition, today is Divine Mercy Sunday, a special day for understanding, receiving and becoming the Mercy of God on this Second Sunday of our Easter celebration. (I am aware that my Orthodox readers are still in Great Lent but God’s Mercy is, of course, every day.)

I am not going to write of the Feast or the saint who experienced the revelations related to it – for I have not studied them in depth. But I do know of His mercy – and need to know it more and more until I am transformed by it. I long for it, I desire it more than anything.

I asked God this morning if I could have a little something today – some words, an image – to express this wondrous Mercy of His. He gave me the simple crayon drawing below, which I share with you. It is, of course, completely inadequate as any effort to portray Him will be. I made no attempt at His features, only to draw His love – as though that were possible…

Wash in His Mercy, bathe in His love. Rest in Him who alone makes all things right, no matter how wounded or broken they be. Allow Him to give you everything you need and be forgiven of all. Allow Him to take your heart into His and transform it, that the light of this moment may shine on and on…

Better bloggers than I (not to mention theologians) have taken on the topic of God’s Justice and Mercy – and with a great deal more scholarship than I would dare attempt.

I really know very little. But my commitment is to write what God gives me to write and so I proceed.

Regular readers may recall that several months ago I wrote a post on The Wrath of God. What I write today is consistent with that article but approaches this great mystery of God from a somewhat different angle.

Perhaps one of my favorite spiritual books is Christ the Eternal Tao, by Heirmonk Damascene. In the discussion below, I will refer to “the Way” (or Tao) which the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu described as “the Way, Path or Pattern of Heaven, the Course that all things follow”, the name of which he did now know (p. 31).

Before going further, however, I think it important to be mindful of what God’s Justice is not. Poor humans that we are, we are confined to our words and the associations we have with them. “Justice” naturally draws our minds to the notions of laws, court systems and punishment.

To our human way of thinking, justice demands that the wrong-doer be punished and that unfairness be corrected. When these things do not happen, we have another word for it: injustice.

Our word “mercy” tends to evoke an opposite association, i.e. a granting of clemency when one could have punished. Hence, one may throw oneself on “the mercy of the court” in hopes of more compassionate and lenient treatment.

There is nothing inherently wrong with these ideas. However, I think we will find ourselves very confused if we try to apply them to the Justice and Mercy of God.

Although it is natural that we tend to think of God as a Being like ourselves only greater, there are significant problems with this – unless, of course, we are considering Christ our Savior.

One of the greatest problems in this manner of thinking is that it gives the impression that God is created rather than Uncreated. God, as Being itself, is eternal and unchanging in His essence. Thus, we must always be mindful that nothing we do changes God.

Our sins do not change God, making Him angry and wanting to punish us. Our prayers for His mercy do not change Him so that His anger relents and He forgives. We are simply not so powerful that we can alter the Source and ground of all Being.

What I would like to propose is that God is His Justice and Mercy – and most certainly in a way that is beyond my ability to comprehend or describe. And I will further posit that, in Him, there is no difference between them.

There can be no tension in God, “Shall I be just or shall I be merciful? Let Me listen to the prayers and then decide.” That sounds ridiculous to our ears if we say it out loud. But sometimes we may find ourselves praying as if this were the case.

Allow me to suggest a different way of thinking about these matters.

Returning to the notion of the Tao, “the Pattern of Heaven, the Course that all things follow”, we might consider that “God as Being Itself” is perfect Being. As Creator, His created beings all have a course or a “Way” which, if followed, enables the perfection of His Being to continue in and through them.

However, if that Way is not followed, there are consequences. Not consequences as in imposed punishment, but consequences as in how perfect Being “works”.

If I carelessly knock over a glass, it breaks. Its brokenness is not a “punishment”; it is simply what happens, based on how things work. Similarly, if I have a lamp that is plugged into an electrical outlet and I unplug lit, the light goes out, another consequence based on how things work.

If I am created pure and holy, yet carelessly “drop” the Way for which I was made, I will end up broken. If I am brought into existence connected to LIght and Life but “unplug” myself from them, I will be in darkness or even death. How could it be otherwise?

This is not the punishment of an angry God. It is how things work. It is what happens when one chooses to live outside of the Way of God’s perfect Being. It is, in a word,  Justice.

What then of Mercy? And why would God create beings capable of stepping outside of the Way of perfect Being, if such terrible consequences result?

Let us begin with the latter of these two questions. Though there is much that we do not understand about God, there is one thing about which we have been given considerable information.

It has been revealed to us that God as perfect Being is Love.

We are told in Scripture that God is love. In Trinity, we are shown that God loves within His own Being. The Creation that surrounds us and is us offers many hints about Love as the ground of Being as well. Even secular science is beginning to see that all living things are connected in some mysterious fashion. Although there is no way to quantify “love” on a biological level, this interconnection certainly suggests something love-like about how life works.

Thus, for God as perfect Being to design creatures capable of the Love which He is, it is inevitable that He create them able to make a choice. They have to be free to step out of the Way in order to choose to stay in the Way. If they are not choosing, it is not a full sharing in His Love.

And, of course, we know the rest of the story. We have stepped out of the Way. Rather than obediently accepting the Way we were given to follow, we wanted to create our own path. Thus, the sin of Adam and Eve.

Our ancestral sin is so deeply ingrained in our cultures that our earth is no longer recognizable as the Paradise in which the Way was the Path all of creation. The brokenness, the darkness, the death of the path we and our ancestors have made is only too clear.

And in them, we see God’s Justice. We see the consequences. But where then is His Mercy?

If God is Love, His Mercy can never be absent.

Indeed, five thousand years after Lao Tzu wrote of the Tao (or “the Way”), the name he did not know became known. For, at that time in history, a man named Jesus was born into the world and announced, “I am the Way”.

Those of us who know Him know that He has always been in the loving unity of Trinity, never having been absent. His coming into our history as one of us occurred so that we might know the Mercy that was always there.

God’s Justice is inherent to the Perfection of His Being. His Mercy is inherent to the nature of His Being. They cannot be separated or at odds with each other. We have come to know this through Christ our Savior, Who is the Way leading us out of darkness and death into the Light of His Love.

But if His Mercy is already given and unchanging, why our unending prayers for mercy, in our repetition of the Jesus prayer or other pleas for mercy?

I am but a poor sinner who knows very little. But this is what I believe: I pray for His mercy both because I need to and because God wants me to.

I need to because it is only in my prayer that I can realize in the depths of my being how very lost I have become.

I need to because it is in my prayer that I choose anew and learn to follow the true Way.

And God wants me to because He is Love. He is not just a fountain of Mercy where I come to drink or bathe. No, He wants me to come to Him in prayer so that He can give me to drink, so that He can wash me clean Himself. He wants me to experience directly and personally His deep, deep love for me…

To Him be glory forever.

Indeed, I am.

When I first learned that this admission of the apostle Paul was also a regular prayer of Orthodox believers, I was puzzled – for we do not say this about ourselves in the western Church.

Perhaps we should.

However, my initial reaction was, “How can everyone in the congregation say this and truly mean it?”

First of all, it is not possible that each of them can be the worst. Only one of a group can be the worst (or the best) with anything, if the grammar of the superlative is kept true.

But furthermore, it would seem unlikely, looking upon the grievous sins committed in the world, that the very worst of sinners would be in attendance at a particular church. If I were Orthodox, I thought at the time of this first encounter, I could not say this prayer. I am a sinner without a doubt, but I could not honestly claim to be the worst of sinners.

However, now, though I remain a Catholic, I can say it quite truly. I am the worst of sinners.

It is hard to explain how I know this and I admit quite honestly that much of the time I do not feel it is true. Much of the time I think that I am not so bad or even better than most. But that is what the enemy wants me to believe. When I am thinking this way, he has the upper hand.

Some time ago, I cannot remember when, God pulled aside a curtain for me – just for a moment. I recall that I was in church during the celebration of the Eucharist. Just for a moment, I was given a glimpse of what was behind the curtain of my soul – behind my delusion of “good person”.

In a word, I was horrified.

Such a glimpse can never be adequately described in words, but it was as though I saw the tremendous goodness of God in all that He had given and done for me – and simultaneously, how I had twisted it all for self-gratification and self-glorification. I could see in that moment how even my seeming “good” deeds were mockeries of His goodness.

Although it was a relief when the curtain was let back down, I have sometimes wished to have another glimpse. It is too easy for me to forget how deep is the disease that afflicts my soul and how good is the God who has come to save me.

While there are many other people who have done bad deeds, their sins are of no consequence to me in light of this vision. I cannot see what they have been given or know what their choices were.

There is only one sinner in my world and it is me.

I am the worst of sinners. Please forgive me, my brothers and sisters.

May God have mercy on me.

An oral reflection for you in celebration of the feast of St. Polycarp:

 

(Quoted excerpts are from “A letter from the Church in Smyrna to the Church in Philomelium”, aka, “The Martyrdom of Polycarp”.)

Often, in my impatience, I have wondered why God does not tell me what He wants me to do.

This is particularly the case with those big life-direction kinds of decisions but it may be true in smaller day-to-day events as well.

I have never thought of God as the micro-managing type to tell us what we are supposed to do in each and every life situation. I confess that I used to think it a rather immature faith when I overheard others speak of praying for God’s will about what job to take or what school to attend. Were they not willing to make their own choices?

Perhaps this was the case for some people, wanting to be told what to do so that they wouldn’t get it wrong. The safe course. While a perspective that could benefit from some stretching, my own immaturity was equally evident in my judgment of them.

They, at least, were ready to be obedient. Was I? Quite probably not.

When I now find myself pondering similar questions, more often than not they come from a nagging sense that there is somewhere I am going but I do not know the destination. I want very much to go there and to make the trip with the One I love.

But it would be so much easier if He gave me the directions and told where to meet Him – instead of making me figure it out for myself. Why doesn’t He tell me these things?

One of the things that has become most clear to me is that God does not tell me what He wants because I seldom ask Him.

If I truly wish to please Him, why is it that I am not asking? Am I afraid that He will not answer? Or perhaps I will not like the answer that He gives?

Just the other day, I found myself mulling over a question in my mind: do I want to do this or do I want to do that? The interesting thing was that, in this particular situation, what I wanted should not have been a subject of interest at all. It wasn’t about me. But, out of habit, I was pondering the options as though it were.

And so I stopped and requested, “Help me to know what to do here, Lord.”

It is the beginning of a new habit. Sometimes in the early evening I become so tired that I feel unable to do anything. When this happens, I say, sometimes aloud, “I am so tired. What would you have me do, Jesus?” (Usually the answer is to get up out of my chair as a beginning.)

Already I have found this new habit yielding some fruitful results.

Perhaps the most important has been that I have been acknowledging that my life is not my own and have been putting it more and more into the hands of God.

Not too long ago, I read how my patron, St. Catherine of Genoa, received instructions in a mystical experience that she was no longer to speak of “I” but only of “we”, in reference to anything she did. No choice or decision was to be made apart from Christ.

How far I am from that! I can imagine that I entrust my life to God, but over and over, I discover the many ways in which I do not.

I am also finding that God does indeed answer. Now I know that these responses would be no proof to my agnostic and atheist friends. But I am beginning to understand that “answers” are not so much the specific instructions (“Do this!”) as they are the loving synergy of God directing and allowing things to occur in my life and my obedient acceptance of them.

It is a dance between the divine Lover and His little creature – He leads and I follow.

Not being an accomplished dancer myself, I know the feeling of being led by a skilled dancer who moves me through a graceful waltz. He does not do this by saying 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, repeatedly in my ear, but rather he simply presses my hand and gently guides with a hand to my waist.

And so it is with the Eternal God, the most accomplished Dancer of them all. He is so humble and gracious a God that He does not make me dance with Him. He waits for me to ask. But no sooner do I utter the words than He takes the lead.

Then it is up to me to follow. And a beautiful, joyous obedience this is.

A priceless thing…

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(Reminder: God willing, this Wednesday, 2/10/16, marks the beginning of our online book reflection group at heretopray.wordpress.com. Hope to see you there!)

A note to my dear readers,

God seems to have had me on sabbatical from blog-writing for the last month. I would have forewarned you but I did not know myself that this was going to occur. He does indeed work in mysterious ways.

He continues to be at work in me, for which I am most grateful, and new projects abound (though they do not always get completed!). One of these projects, God willing, will start next week. You are invited.

The plan is to begin an online book reflection group with the book, Orthodox Prayer Life, The Interior Way, by Matthew the Poor. Since this is a book to be prayed rather than simply read, my idea is that we may share it slowly over a longer period of time (how long I do not know).

The starting time is to coincide with the Western Church’s beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday or shortly thereafter. I have noticed that Western and Eastern Church calendars are separated by nearly a month this year. Since the book centers on prayer and not any particular liturgical season, our different calendars should not interfere with how we share the book.

For those not familiar with the author, Matthew the Poor, also known as Father Matta El-Meskeen, began his adult life as a pharmacist who amassed considerable wealth early in life. In 1948, he left the two pharmacies that he owned for the solitary life, spending the next 55 years as a monk in the desert of Egypt. He studied both the Eastern and Western Fathers, revived Egyptian monasticism and wrote 181 books and numerous articles. He died in 2006.

Here is an excerpt from the book’s preface:

“Whenever physical hunger turned cruel against me, I found my gratification in prayer. Whenever the biting cold of winter was unkind to me, I found my warmth in prayer. Whenever people were harsh to me (and their harshness was severe indeed), I found my comfort in prayer. In short, prayer became my food and my drink, my outfit and my armor, whether by night or by day.”

The publisher has graciously given permission for liberal online quoting of the book (but not pages or chapters) so purchase of the book is encouraged. It is available on Amazon (as of this writing) as well as from the publisher. I am setting up a separate site (Here to pray…) for this purpose so that unrelated posts here, should God give me any, do not disrupt the book reflection.

I look forward to sharing this experience, even if there are only a few people. However, please invite anyone that you think might be interested in joining in.

Please pray for me, as I do for you.

On another forum, someone posted this challenge: “Why do you believe in God? … Go ahead. Tell us all why you believe in a God.” I am not sure if this individual was seeking a serious answer but I have decided to write one. What better time than New Year’s Day to review the basis for one’s life commitment?

My belief in God – or perhaps better said, my relationship with God – has gone through many stages and much growth throughout my life and thus the answer to this question is not as simple as it might seem.

The best analogy I can give, though it is inevitably inadequate, would be if someone were to ask you why you loved a particular person in your life (parent, spouse, child). How could you possibly answer? You might try begin by listing the things they had done for you, their fine traits, the experiences you shared – but the response would always fall short of the lived reality of loving them.

The reader might protest at this point that I wasn’t asked why I loved but why I believed. While one who has not had this experience may well assume that belief in God can be summed up by a simple intellectual argument, it cannot be that for me. To me it is a living thing, a relationship. It requires the assent of my intellect but that is only the beginning.

I will come back to this assent in a moment. But first I think it is important to acknowledge that the limited human mind cannot begin to comprehend a God so immensely powerful as to create the universe. Such a God would be unknowable to my mind if He did not want to be known.

That being said, if I believe in Him, if I have come to know Him even a little bit, it is because He has wanted it to be so. It is only through the synergy of my limited human efforts and His revelation of His unknowable self that I can believe. It is not something I can do on my own, unless I just make up stories – something I have never been willing to do.

Now, back to the story of my own belief. When I was a young child, I believed because I was taught religious beliefs by my parents and teachers. I had the faith of a child. There was nothing wrong with that because I was a child. I experienced some profound moments in this faith but it was not enough to sustain me as I got older and began asking deeper questions about life.

“What is the meaning of life?” That was the primary one that hit me as an adolescent, some 45 years ago. “Is there really a God?” followed close behind.

Referring to the “assent” of my mind means that whatever conclusion I drew had to be something that passed the test of intellectual scrutiny. In other words, I wasn’t going to accept something as true simply because it had been taught to me or because it relieved my existential anxiety.

I had to accept God as an intellectually valid possibility – if not probability. While that didn’t make His existence true, it gave me a starting place – to either reject the notion of God or to explore more deeply His possibility.

My high school and early college education gave me a good foundation in the science of genetics and evolutionary theory and, unlike some, I did not find this disruptive to the possibility of God. Probably more difficult for me was comprehending Being on that level – Being that I could not see, Being so vastly beyond my understanding.

If such Being was, how could I know if it did or did not exist? I had no problem with God using evolution to create. The question that nagged me more was whether evolution could bring about the universe in its complexity without there being a God.

This latter, godless scenario, seemed to have two basic holes in it with which I struggled. First was the question of what matter was and from what it originated. Whether the universe Big Banged (or any other theory), how could anything come to be out of nothing? Or how could matter always exist if existing in time? (Yet my mind also wrestled with a similar difficulty in terms of God: how could any Being be eternal?) Both questions have to, in some sense, be accepted as unfathomable to the human mind.

The second “hole” in the godless scenario, for my then 20 year old mind, was the question of consciousness. I found it nearly impossible to conceive of matter, regardless of how it mutated and naturally selected, endowing itself with consciousness. It seemed to me that there needed to be a Source of consciousness that was Itself conscious. This led my mind to its assent to the probability of a God, a Being of higher consciousness, the Source of consciousness.

In the 40 years since I had those thoughts, I have, of course, learned a lot more about the brain and its development and might offer some argument to my younger self. I might ask the question: is consciousness anything more than a highly developed brain, with its frontal lobes and other fancy parts that enable it to think higher thoughts? Evolution could perhaps develop that, given enough time.

However, my 40 years since have also exposed me to a lot of other knowledge and experience that suggests quite strongly to me the probability that human consciousness and its experiences are not solely bound to functioning brain cells.

If consciousness and human “experience” do transcend the biological function of the brain, this would bolster the argument for the God possibility. If we are more than our physical selves, where else could our “spiritual” consciousness come from but from a higher Consciousness?

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I’m back. I had to take a little break. I realize that this discussion may not be convincing to anyone but me – but the question was why I believe. I cannot answer why anyone else believes or tell anyone why they should believe.

But as I alluded to earlier, this intellectual assent was really only the beginning. To accept the possibility or probability of a God is not a life-changing experience. Okay, so there may be one. This is really barely a step beyond agnosticism in that it doesn’t claim any particular God nor does it establish any meaningful relationship.

As some of my long-time readers may recall, it was at this stage in my life, this stage of assent, that I prayed into the seeming nothingness, “God, if you exist, help me to know you.”

On the one hand, this was a totally logical thing to do. If there is a God and I want to know Him but cannot do so of my own powers, I should ask to know Him. See if anything happens.

On the other hand, it may seem to be a totally irrational act. If God is the creator of all of the universe – all of the people on earth and possibly intelligent life on other planets in other galaxies – how could my little prayer possibly be heard or make a difference?

That is one of the many obstacles that I have had to work my way through on this believing journey. Though it still feels intuitively “wrong” to me, I have accepted that vastness, i.e. infinity of Being, works both ways: taking in both the majestic grandeur of the billions of stars and the tiniest of subatomic particles. I cannot be too small for God.

This next stage of believing would take an entire book – or more – to try to summarize. And then I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to tell it well.

A simple answer, though surely unsatisfying to the unbeliever, is that God responded to that prayer and has helped me to know Him.

I have been blessed to know some of the most loving and wonderful people who have helped me see God in human form. Of course, I believe that only Christ was truly God in human form. But some of His followers have imitated Him very well.

People have come into my life when I desperately needed them and loved me in ways that I could not have possibly deserved. I have come across websites and books that I was not looking for that have led me to know God at deeper and deeper levels.

“Websites?” you scoff. Well, yes. I was rather surprised by it myself. It is not that I think that God zooms down from the sky and manipulates the Internet. But I have seen how thoughts have come into my mind, I have done a search looking for one thing, stumbled upon another – and had my life changed.

It is really not a great deal different than taking a stroll and, much to  one’s surprise, taking up conversation with a stranger over some incidental thing and finding that they have much to say to your benefit. Only very few people do that sort of thing any more.

I believe because I have experienced God answering my prayers. Often nonbelievers (and sometimes we believers too) can be skeptical of this. “Probably just a coincidence.” Yet I have found that the most astounding examples of this, the most rapidly answered prayers, were the ones that were most for my good and perhaps the least desired by me.

For example, in more recent years, I prayed that God would help me see my sinfulness. It was something that I thought I should have a better look at but I cannot say that I was anxious for a result. Wham, bang! There it was – and it surprised the heck out of me. I had thought I was a pretty good person.

There is wisdom to that saying, “Be careful what you pray for.” 🙂 In actuality, I am quite glad for the prayer and the response because I am learning so much. I am learning about my faults and seeing how much more work I have to do to move toward my soul’s desire – union with God.

So, as useless as this is as an argument, I must say that the primary reason I believe in God is because I know Him, I experience Him – and have for decades. Or, as the song lyrics by Don Gibson say, “My God is real for I can feel him in my soul.” (The Blind Boys of Alabama do an extraordinarily soulful version of this song.)

I acknowledge the possibility that I could be wrong. I might come to the end and find that there is no God and that I have lived a massive delusion my whole life long.

Should that be the case, I will have passed my existence believing that I was unconditionally loved, forgiven and healed. I will have lived my life with a spirit of hope and generosity, striving to love others in the same way that I believed I was loved. And I will have experienced and shared a boundless joy that emerged from some mysterious place within me that could never be explained.

I can think of no better way to live. So be it.