Too many words

As I attempt to scrape together my identity in terms of what I believe concerning a deity, I begin to open my mouth and utter the words that could be used to communicate my deity to another person, as humanity has been doing for ages. All I can do is begin to utter a word. My current state in relation to God is a stark contrast to having around 3,000 years of words to fill up the space of God.

The last couple of preachers I have heard have had too many words about God for the time they are allotted, and the books I am reading have too many words about a being that they claim to be mysterious and awe-full. I am currently wrestling with the idea that maybe silence says it better. To me this deity needs no words because all one must do is gaze outwardly, truly look outside of oneself into creation, and a deity is self-evident. I can squeak out a sound of effort as I motion outward, but no words seem to suffice. Silence follows as I search within myself for the right words... but to no avail.

While this inability to speak of God in any way that might be comprehensible to you or myself has been slightly annoying, it also leaves room to breathe. In the awkward silence, I breathe and I remember that the breath that I am taking is a gift and that my life is connected to so much other life and is at the mercy of other life, and there I find God.

We try so hard to speak of God and to speak to God that I think we often fail to give God room to speak to us. Perhaps if we leave room for silence we wouldn't always look for words to fill up the space of God. We would know that God is, well, God, and that we are people who cannot even begin to comprehend what God is or how God works because our words do not suffice.

My experiences of other times when words do not suffice hold true, I hope with great heart, attesting that God is there where I cannot fill the silence. When a friend suddenly loses her daughter who was only two years older than myself to cardiac arrest. The mother forced to burry her daughter and her world without warning.  Sure, I could offer her the promise of Christ that her daughter will rise and she will see her again but that does not fill the void today as she struggles through the silence left by a short-lived life. In the silence of the hospital waiting area, however, we looked out onto beautiful pink sunsets and peace was found. The vast beauty of creation offers us peace because it reminds us that we are small, very small, and there is something much bigger than us that we are a part of. If nothing else we know that once our life ends we can offer ourselves to the beauty of creation that has offered life to us so that others might have life until they, too, are swallowed up into the vast beauty of creation, into the great mystery for which words do not suffice.

One might suggest that silence is also a very dangerous way of finding God as silence has left too much room for monstrous acts of humanity, but I am not suggest that anyone be silent in relation to matters of humanity. Rather, we refocus our words of God and use the room that is made for words concerning matters of creation.

So, in too many words, this is where I am currently standing... and breathing; not being suffocated by too many words.

Peace.

Discernment Disasters

It has been about a month since my studies at Luther began. Despite my attempt to make this be right, when Josh half-heartedly suggested we move to California next year a great wind of relief swept over me. The wind of relief abandoned me fairly quickly as I began to panic.... I might actually need to figure out what I should do with my life. One would think that as a student in seminary on the path to ordination I had already figured that out, but, this is not the case. As I began to express the situation to those who have walked along this path with me, nobody seemed to be surprised. In fact, many were just waiting for me to come to the realization that the track I was on may not be the one I am meant to walk. My discernment process started early, but over the last few years it has become less and less stable, perhaps in a good way. My call to ordained ministry has been one that I have interpreted as being temporary, something I would do for a while then go and do something else. I couldn't shake the idea of ordained ministry because it was what I expected of myself, and, what I thought others expected of me. However, I believe I have mistaken those imagined expectations for a calling and, thus, limited my access to what I was being called to "after" ordained ministry. It seems very real and raw to me that my calling is towards something else now. What that is... I may just have to let you know when I get there.

However, my hopes are that it is a ministry of God for God's people. By this I mean that I hope it is a ministry that overcomes the boundaries of religion as an institutionalized practice. One that sees all religions as completely valid ways to interpret the interaction between what is real to us, creation, and that which is present but not fully fathomable to us. Institutionalized religion seems to get one caught up in doing what is traditional and expected of each religion rather than fostering one's spirituality with the tools that have been passed down by generations. Rather than freeing people to live, and really live amongst other life, it offers a doctrine of life that may or may not limit one's understanding of the divine. It seems that the best way to understand the divine is to looks out into the creation one can fathom, where-within the unfathomable divine is present and active. Through different religions we gain access to the presence and interpreted activity of the divine which offers light to our paths of understanding; both our fathomable reality and the unfathomable being of God.

Well, here you have the recent perils of my discernment process (at least a glimpse of it). A couple pieces of irony in all of this for your muses... it was the message of Christ that enabled me to look past Christianity. While I feel as though I am struggling with the identity of being Christian, my identity as a Lutheran still makes sense to me. That is all for now folks. Peace.