Things are fragile right now for me.
I’m not really sure what that means, even as I’m saying it. My situation itself is remarkably stable. Overcommitted, but stable. I’m earning a very decent living wage, if not one that reflects the assumed value of my degree. If I’d gone to school for the money, I would have gotten an IS degree, with a minor in web design. My church has finally decided to become what I have hoped they would be for over a year now. My current “recreational reading” is a 1200 page theology textbook. I’m on page 120 after three days. Things are steadily moving in the direction that it seems to me they ought to go.
Yet it is my nature to fluctuate between the worlds. It is especially when I am most free in the temporal world that I feel most inclined to fade into the eternal world. I am, and ever will be, a reluctant mystic.
So I find that I am fading, like I am drifting off into sleep. Except I’m not so often asleep. It was Edgar Allen Poe who said that those “who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night,” and that’s about as good a summation as any of how I feel sometimes. Especially lately.
In the last few days, I have been feeling more and more aware of… something. Perhaps the Lord is moving. Moving on me, moving in me, moving around me, or through me—I don’t know. But… moving. Or perhaps I am only feeling. People do that sometimes. Wake up in the middle of the night… feeling… not even feeling what, but… feeling. I guess people do that sometimes.
Two days in a row now, I’ve woken up feeling as though I had done some terrible crime—and I had only just woken up. How many evil things can you do in the 15 minute’s space between getting up and taking a shower? Perhaps it’s some evil heinous attack by demons, trying to catch me off guard and throw off my life. Or, again, it could be me. I’ve been getting over my yearly cold this week, and it has been most unpleasant and most sleep depriving. Perhaps getting lack of sleep combined with improper medication can combine to simulate the sensations of mortal guilt. Stranger things have happened.
Or perhaps my experience is simply the normal result of the confrontation between an increasing awareness of a holy God and my own convalescent spirituality.
Much as I’ve been enjoying slogging through my theology textbook, I keep running into the oddest sorts of conflicts. Like this quote: “Different theologians and segments of Christianity have suggested various answers as to what is the abiding element in Christianity: (1) an institution, (2) acts of God, (3) experiences, (4) doctrines, (5) a way of life.” Of course, every element of Christianity tends to at least acknowledge all of these elements, but simply tends to emphasize one of them as the “key” aspect of Christianity, like feathers are the defining element for birds. I looked through that list of options and thought that my own preference would be whichever one our Covenant fit under. My Christianity is a direct expression of a highly defined relationship between me (and also us) and my God. However, I’m not all that certain which of the above categories that is, or even if the Covenant fits under any of them at all.
I suppose that dilemma is a direct result of the whole “It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship” creed. I don’t know if I could summarize my position quite so clearly, but it would involve a much greater emphasis on the subjective. Not Kierkegaard’s subjectivity, which insisted that a person felt passion on a subject in inverse proportion to the objective reality of that subject. I don’t believe that the most important things are the ones that are least likely to be proven. I do believe that the things that are the most real to a person are the things that they have the most direct contact with. To a child raised in deep space, gravity seems a very ephemeral thing.
In the same way, while it is absolutely true (and I suppose, important) that God is Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnipresent, it’s much more compelling to consider the fact that He is also El Roi, the God who sees, not only everything, but also me, in my situation; He is El Shaddai, the overwhelming, almighty God; He is Jehovah-Shammah, not so much everywhere as *right here*.
In these cases, it is not so much that the subjective is more *true* than the objective, as it is that the subjective is more *concrete*.
neumatikos 