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In reading about an author considered brilliant, but troubled, I came upon this quote (cited by me) a few paragraphs on. The fellow later committed suicide.

As having known a few (suicides), some of whom I have counted as friends, but not knowing the depths to which their troubling isolated them, I simply thought their lack of communication was just the common falling away to time and distance.

And it was easier, at that time, to just think estrangement was them getting on with their own lives and me with mine. Being rather peculiar myself, even to myself, collecting peculiar friends along the way just seemed the way of things. But news then comes…and the comfortable normalcy we may not know that has been worn as a blanket, even when in our some peculiarity, is upset or torn from us.

Suicide is a rather loud statement…with echoes.

A very strong sense of not normal often ensues.

And although my vanities may seem precious to me, how few of us like to consider ourselves blandly ‘normal’ as in that unwelcome weight the word often implies. Yes, we do, despite all telling otherwise…think ourselves special in some way or another. After all, the world is full of yous, thems, theys’ and others…but to each of us, we are the only ‘me’ we know.

And drawing our inclusive circles relatively big or small makes little difference here, as some already know. At any moment and in certain circumstance…the intensity of being that only ‘me’ known…can be made, or seem unbearable. It may be the most unique thing about us is the also most common…

“Each of us believes ourselves…unique”.

We are really quite like the everybody else in that.

And, may God help us here. Our commonality often decried as bane as we each pursue an individuality (fleeing, as it were, the terrors of being faceless in the crowd) no less beckons with all intensity, to community. We seem to need to be and know ourselves as quite singular (even by display) but are terrorized by the isolation the perfection of that estate would so plainly speak if sought relentlessly.

We may often ‘want to be alone’…but…not ‘that alone’ as would be to us too alone.

And even the company of other prisoners can sometimes make for us better situation than a continual and enforced solitary confinement. IYKYK

Being so called ‘spiritual’ or thinking we are, may often cause us to believe we are inured to this tension which, if left as only an estate assigned others, (a thing unthinkable to ourselves in such experience as hopelessness’ grip) many a saint has come ‘up against’. Yes, faith tells me I am never alone…why then does it sometimes appear so very much so? Even to such extreme as could be described as despair.

And God alone can spare us any condemnation in the sense of this. Actually the sense of despair itself (among the spiritual) seems to carry its own sort of built in sense of condemnation…yet…God is able to save. And thanks be again, to God alone through Christ, for both His ability and willingness to do so.

When days are bright and sunny how connected we may feel with bellies and larders full, never imagining any circumstance could shake our trust and faithfulness (as we experience even those joys of trust and faith). Job may be for us a ‘lesson’ of lesser or greater remoteness, or Christ’s words of a soul troubled to death, some hyperbole.

May God forbid I deny any bit of truth found.

For yes, we do have words of greatest comfort and encouragement, yet often failing to see from which estate such words were forged and burned into the bones of the speaker:

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It is good to hear from a man who has come back out from the dead.

And yes, it is good to find comfort and encouragement in the words God gave Paul, nothing doubting, but not without some healthy caveat…none of us are ever ‘above’ such experience of total helplessness of ourselves to help ourselves, as out from which such words do come. There is a recitation (not at all ever to be denied) and meditations upon (again, never to be denied)…and there is a ‘knowing’.

And no less (particularly as I find in my case) a temptation to a presumption of knowing as though realities of despair of self have been fully plumbed. God help me.

And God forbid any of this be seen as some beckoning or commending to experience of hopelessness, or excuse for suicide, as though such depths of hopelessness prove a thing to some triumph of depression, or even entrance into some suffering or loss to ‘prove’ a piety.

Paul also spoke of the vanity of our own precious (to us) attempts to enter into sacrifice that do not avail. We do not choose our own forms for the experience of the cross, only acknowledge that particular gifting of Christ’s gift of His, not denying such acknowledgement will include whatever and however God chooses to reveal by experience, our likewise participation. We do believe, if we do believe, we died there, and no less than He. So any striving to add to, or attempts at our own piety, are eventually shown vain and fruitless.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

It is enough we be ministered any portion to fill up. And such is never according to our own choosing of how. (Remember the pharisee who longed to go to his brethren after the flesh…but was yet assigned a field among the (once considered dogs) gentiles.

But, as to the seeming doing away with one’s self. As unlovely as suicide does appear, even if somehow we have been brought to see it as some ‘final act’ of trying to slap God across the face in all frustrations for having been given impotent arms too short…or even as some measure of spiteful screaming out in fullest act of finally taking matters ‘into our own hands’ (as is so easily resolved to the most ‘pious’ among us) may we not be so callously unlovely to consign an end where, to us, God cannot appear. God knows ends. We at best, surmise.

God can slow a bullet, God can appear as salvation in milliseconds to a jumper, God can insert Himself at any time before a poison or drug has completed its work. Do I say He always does this? God forbid. But surely if we only look on as outwardly, inserting our judgments, God knows whether soon we will be either wonderfully surprised or horribly shocked. But as aside, if you are not already in some of that mix of shock and surprise at your salvation, only God knows whether you may be awakened. But (or is it and?) there again, God forbid my own presumptions.

But God worse forbid, even far more forcefully forbid with all Godly power, that my observations of matters that lead to my own judgments of matters as always final conclusions of ‘how things are’ be rebuked. Or to say in all, or any sense, there are things God simply will not, or cannot do.

Yes, God forbid any denial by me of ‘how far’ mercy is allowed to extend.

Yes, for a man ‘like me’…that would be the very worst thing to believe ‘about God’, and quite particularly the God and Father of Jesus Christ. I tremble to consider such conclusion be allowed…to a man ‘like me’. For I am terrorized to consider where a man like me must appear if man is allowed to conclude the limits of God’s mercy in Christ.

Does that mean we can never adjudge seeming ‘sad’ end? Again, God forbid. But there is a great difference between sad and bad. One may arouse a compassion, at best…another may provoke us to assuming an already assigned seat to which we have no right.

So, it is this quote written by the deceased author, which struck me. Yes, it is far too easy to ‘spiritually’ assume suicide is the final act of a soul so given to rebellion and spiteful resistance of God to be the last and final act of all and any party to salvation. Forgetting the ‘parties’ to salvation are reserved to Christ and His Father alone, as though believing that allows me to insert myself to a just position for the choosing of its objects to fall upon. To be ministered to. I am beneficiary, not benefactor.

God forbid.

We have many wonderful words providentially written and preserved for us as testimony to the goodness and faithfulness of God. May we fully embrace them.

But to those who have had some taste of a dungeon that seems inescapable, even prisons of flesh to some seeming enforcement of an unbreakable solitary confinement from which relief is most direly sought, may they understand we are very common in experience…and how often we are just moved by what appears to us in only ‘lesser’ of two evils presentation. We might be foolish to believe in our own capacity to ‘choose good’, rather than another’s intervention, another’s sole intervention…to keep us, even prevent us (often!) against our own will…from ‘the evil’.

This is the quote:

“David Foster Wallace once wrote something in Infinite Jest that explained exactly what he went through. He said the person who jumps from a burning building isn’t choosing to fall. They’re not suddenly attracted to death. They’re simply choosing the lesser of two terrors. The flames of depression get so unbearably hot that falling becomes the better option. Nobody watching from the ground can understand that choice unless they’ve personally felt those flames licking at their skin.” End quote.

I will not lie. It is often unbearable for me to be me, though I sometimes forget. I have no doubt my being is also unbearable for you. But it really is in the jumping to flee the death we cannot but conclude to ourselves and of ourselves as for ourselves…another is found. Even when it appears for a time as only the choosing the lesser of two evils.

Christ has even shown Himself willing to bear that appearance for us, and that without complaint. Christ, our Christ, Jesus the Lord and Christ of God suffered (and may even yet continue in some measure of it) the bearing of comparison.

We may yet have so little understanding of His having endured being “cut off”…for our sakes. May appreciation…even in smallest amounts as ‘less evil’ than denying, have its full course in us to His conclusion.

What do drunks do?

Well, besides being instrumental in the obvious havoc of which most, if not all are familiar to whatever extent they are that drunks cause; it is most often consequent to some undertaking in an estate hidden from the drunk. He earnestly believes in his own capability. Not only is he not as drunk as others may tell him, but also that new vistas of expansive opportunity for success now lay open for his proving. Why do we all too well understand:

“Watch this! Here, hold my beer” (?)

We can talk about relaxed inhibitions, or a reality being presented and accepted as skewed by the effects of alcohol upon the senses; and/or all the findings of molecular biology and neuroscientific discoveries. But at base remains that thing Eliot acknowledged (as mentioned in my previous blabbering) as present and active, the need to feel important. Necessary. Even singular.

To reiterate his quote:

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

(Drunks will often beat dead horses, as you may well see in me)

In the simplest terms I am allowed to apprehend and express there appears a resident something of “I need to be more than I sense myself to be, or am perceived to be by others; and to whatever extent remains this irritation I must express a better-ness…and not only so, but by whatever means of capability have it acknowledged and knowingly accepted of others”.

And again, in short and no less, “I have the goods to prove this”. (Or, “I will get them”)

And schools are forever churning out papers to staple to once candidates for affirming their now better-ness.

I hear the plaint. I hear the cry. I know the not so latent or vague rationale and argument. And God knows I cannot deny in any measure my participation and approval extended to “How else can any know who is qualified?!”. (I myself did not last see a YouTube dentist for paining teeth)

To quote another of perhaps less note than Eliot, but whose words were puppeted on a silver screen

“My hypocrisy knows no bounds”. (That scriptwriter probably knew something)

And what would any imagine is the very first impetus coming to fore in any who may have the slightest inkling of this but “I will show I am not a hypocrite!? (Here, hold my beer!)

Is it laughable? Condemnable? Too pathetic and embarrassing to consider or admit?
Just too plain and obvious that its mention is itself an embarrassment to any speaker? Is this news…to any?

Man…seeking to prove himself…and in so doing making full display of all his inability. We do find a quite manifest limit to flight, and as near to the sun as we may care to show ourselves we soon discover an inverse square formula relentlessly at work in heat and distance.

My need for singularity is all my undoing. And mostly I am convinced I can only speak to, or with, those who have either some inkling of this, or are familiar by experience. Science does not offer advice except by implications to be inferred (if they are). “Waxen wings melt at a certain temperature” is all science can say.

Take from that data what one must, or cares to, in regards to flying with them.

The arguments always and only arise from any contentions implied, directly or declared universally, that all fly with only those. There will always be at least a one or a some who will pipe up with the better-ness of their equipping exempting them from any necessity to acquiesce to a universality pronounced, and not subject to the declaration of some other. The “But I have aluminum wings!” stating and proclaiming crew.

Not knowing the melting point of aluminum will also soon be calculated.

Science has a lot to say in regards to the state and estates of things, even to where solids become liquids and liquids become mere vapor. And vapors disperse quite invisibly, now unhindered by bonds once maintained in a warm, comfortable, but frail…frigidity.

“I will show you whom you should fear…” is recorded as being said by a man who either knew of what he spoke…or did not. A distilling all of all fear, even all of terrors that might be known, surmised, or even yet obscure and unconsidered to the drunken…and in that distillation to find a purity for deposit toward a one, alone.

Some claim to believe him, or believe in him, and still another many find him of mention with only the greatest of disdain and mockery. So be it. All is precisely as it must be.

But he did not leave any without recourse to experiment…himself the utmost of the scientific in the strictest application of that word in regards to a knowing. He knows what he knows not as data points accumulated, but as source of any true knowing that even precedes all experimentation.

If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.

He tells that a man can know.

But what?

God alone knows how I have tried. What I have tried. Whom I have tried. And in these very words I have no doubt He finds me trying. And if you know me at all, I have also no doubt you have found me trying.

And God forbid any mistake (for I now know only God alone can forbid such) that this mumbling be taken as, or for, testimony of my diligence in attempt. As though I am presenting many many strivings or labors for some approval or proving, or in anyway pointing to either a beneficial motive or some weird sacrificing into a matter for any note. As in “See how hard I have tried!”, as the plaint of a victim’s soul. Yes, God forbid. That is not what is meant, at all.

No. If it could be more clearly stated it is only this in regards to trying…I have burdened a thing. Actually I have burdened everything, tried everything in a creation for some achieving as though by using rope to move a stone I have impelled it to some weakening, brought it closer to failure than it was in its prior estate, or if using a machine have shortened its service life, or more pointedly in regards to other beings like myself used something up of their being to justify my own being. That I did this in a blind ignorance, which some might find excusable (for blindness often offsets to a mercy) does not make it less grievous.

But what does indict in a way blindness does not (as it does appear pitiful) is the promotion of a lie, and that adhered to quite diligently, promoted tirelessly, advanced often in a brutality (as lies do to justify their virulence) is this:

“I have believed I have had something to add”. That innately in, and of myself, there has been a something for which creation has both waited, and waited with need.

This accusation I cannot dodge. It has drawn from the grossest of presumption(s) and misaligning of understanding…

“I am here, therefore I must be needed, here”.

That I myself am not a drain on all, at all; no, I am here to present as a stop, even a stop of the draining. I have the goods to end a deterioration, a means of ending (even if by small addition) the operational entropy observed and identified. I can add to! Not detract from!

O! the folly and pernicious nature of that lie. I…am…needed. I am needed to reverse a degrading! (And how stupid it sounds when so clearly seen and stated)

But it may be the most pernicious of all lies, if not also given to a ubiquity some far better versed have stated. TS Eliot said it this way:

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm—but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves”. 

“… because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves”.

A poet, huh? A poet cum philosopher? Sociologist? Sadhu? Prophet? Neuroscientist? Seer of unseen motives…but able to identify them with an uncanny accuracy? Would you like to sit with him over tea…and tell him who and what the world needs? Or doesn’t need.

Risky for you?

Maybe you are not convinced.

That would not be surprise.

For that may well be indicator of how it can remain the rarest of surprise of all. Exceed only by such relief as comes from learing…it is not incumbent upon you, nor ever was “to think well” of oneself.

Drunks do it…all…the…time.

Well, here you are now, in a real pickle. Liberty has lifted you up as it must and you barely know, or remember, how to move. In fact, you feel pinioned. Even the smallest of movements seem to require the greatest of will, where once was all undertaken at almost mere whim. What is this strangest of experiences in response to liberty’s wooing?

Did you follow wrongly? Did you chase a phantom…a myth? A specter of your own mind’s devising’s? Or, did you go too far? A bit like Icarus? Have you brought this upon yourself? In enjoying flight and seeking ever greater ascent now finding all your strength spent trying to pull up against a recalcitrant elevator control in what feels like a death spiral? A flat spin? Again, have you brought this upon yourself?

(I have mixed metaphors galore, not limited to feathers vs airframe controls)

O! But who knew how much power flight takes! Who knew what is required to stay aloft?

Yes, who?

In this circumstance who knows anything of anyone, or anything for that matter? As the only thing in seeming sight is the ground approaching with gaping maw to conclusively end in final swallowing.

Am I falling toward it, or is it rising to consume? References for fixing positions, for mapping out, for the gleaning of advice from, like handbooks or flight manuals (read at leisure, even if with great interest)…are useless here…this is not a scenario, it is real, and too real. This is not on paper. This is not imagine…”but what if…”

Has it always been chasing me?

Dirt, was that you in all my dreams…pursuing? Was that you always menacing? In all the faces macabre? Are all masks off, now? Am I too, just all and only…dirt?

My God! There might not even be enough left to identify! Dirt from other…dirt.

Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani.

From where, or whom…do I know that?

Yes, who?

Or whom.

A substantial part of any ‘being used’ in the Kingdom for the growth of the church, if we would know ourselves so, is to the end as Paul described in all giving of the gifts of ministry in the church.

But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.

Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.

(Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:…(Eph 4:7-13)

We learn a great part of this work toward us which we apprehend in differing measure is often that, when coming to some light appearing new to us, the area is already clearly marked and that we are indeed ‘not crazy’ (except to the world). We are neither alone in this seeing nor understanding…the territory is, and has always been the Lord’s. We just neither knew nor understood.

Now this would, at first glance, seem to steal some of the newness or freshness…even wonder of it…but it does not. On the contrary, the assurance(s) we may find there are themselves no less than marvelous and breathtaking in seeing a path clearly laid out and already tended for us to bring us here. Yes, that is a great marvel. Our ‘being guided’ never gets old in either experience or the beholding of the hand and heart guiding.

And it especially rightly deals with any solipsism and /or tendency to self exaltation or a unique specialness feeding a sense of superiority to any others. As though we are the ‘sole-est’ of seers…ever.

As to the crazy (or drunken) the world might seek to hang upon us comes Peter’s “this is that!” on the day of Pentecost. A thing written once of some obscurity but now made manifest. A matter kept in holding (for Peter ‘kept’ that scripture) but not quite understood till the fullness of it had come. So it is with us…of the many things written, and of which we too have read (and perhaps hold, even dearly)…that when seen as very present before our eyes in unmistakable light…we too are astounded.

When Peter spoke of Paul’s words often described as ‘hard to understand’ he was leaving that room that not all is either easily grasped or available immediately to all. Paul did indeed speak ‘very much ahead’ of things, lining a path with light(s) but also in such manner that not all was immediately lit to the disciple. He understood the benefit of such appearing as even prophesy, knowing that in many things he would not be understood…but nevertheless given to endorsing such form of sight in writing “seek that you might prophesy”. It would not matter at its lack of general reception…if it is the Lord He will confirm His word.

Now, I know our views are so often influenced in matters of biases of which we are not even aware. Paul’s letters come to us in great leather bound volumes, handed down over a great length of time as sure…so that we easily think that, and no doubt, in ‘his day’ everyone would have been flocking to him, his ‘cred’ beyond reproach, and so on. But his own words tell a different story.

“If I be not an apostle to others…” he wrote, for obviously something was being called into question for which he was constrained to write for establishment “yet doubtless I am to you…”

No less is he pressed to write Timothy:

Whereunto I am ordained a preacher, and an apostle, (I speak the truth in Christ, and lie not;) a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity.

A man only protests his honesty when a question of it, or his legitimacy, is already about.

And now I am writing this for that some of you who may read…that some of you who may even be experiencing entrance into ministry, or some (even) seeming successes in it, or delights of many things being manifest before your eyes as promised and that must never lose their wonder. Even a ‘grand acceptance’ or endorsement of colleagues and brethren in some recognition of your calling. You may even much like “amens”. Or, ‘not like’ rebuff.

But, for those who already know, you know. God is showing you things that are even in some ways ‘hard’ for you to accept, and would likewise be almost laughable (or you would think so) to ‘the many’ at large. Things perhaps of which you may even find it ‘not lawful to utter’.

I make no claim for myself. Yet, I am persuaded some have gone…and are even ‘going there’ as this is written. And some of you may be so locked up to Him as to seem to have no notable earthly presence, nor influence…at all. I will not tell you have valuable your prayers are, their weight is already measured in a blood far too precious to be calculated.

Yes…God can so set free a man to be locked up to Him…and without a care as to being understood to his own satisfaction ‘among men’. And deliverance and salvation take on a much different hue than once observed or understood, but which is as real and true, and more so, than previously able to experience or describe. And part of the wonderful matter of it all is that you may not even know, or care, who you are, at all.

But what you know, you know.

“If I were hungry, I would not tell you…” speaks the psalmist by the word of the Lord. It is an hypothetical established by that leading “If”.

“If such a thing was or could be” the Lord is saying, “this is my disposition in it”. And although it goes on in all reasonableness of extrapolation that is totally consistent with any thinking man’s consideration of a supreme being; that is, that as the ‘maker’ of all things, the all things are already his and in his power of, and for, disposition, saying:

“…for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.”

Of course that makes perfect sense. The One who makes and sustains all things to which He grants being of whatever sort, is never in owing to them for anything, and could never be, nor brought into, an owing to or for them. They can exercise no matter of need, nor even lesser, i.e. of desire, as though ‘over Him’ to some exertion. For if we conclude rightly that any consistent consideration of God is that of all supremacy with nothing ‘over’ Him in His sovereignty as both Creator and Sustainer, we could not even rightly say God ‘has to’ create, or sustain. That He may show Himself as Creator is not owing to His having to prove it, or anything to anything…in the creation. Much less sustain. He has nothing (again) over Him of force to either create or sustain. We may learn a little bit of some care in saying anything even slightly akin to “God has to” in any regard…or even that He ‘has to’ be, as we may resort in argument. These may be our ‘have to’s’ that in folly we have been all too comfortable in projecting.

In most short…”He does as He wills” with no requirement to explain Himself. For requirement, as need would have to be ‘over’ Him to make Him occupy place of necessity ‘is not’. Nor ‘can be’. (We will presently leave off the even deeper quandary of saying ‘nothing’…as though in our minds there is even a ‘vacancy’ over God’s head, unoccupied…for even all we might consider as ‘nothing’ must also be ‘in Him’, not around, not above, not beneath) But let us touch this before our ‘leaving off’. Of whatever things we may, either presently or one time or another consider as nothing…may have more substance in God than any man can imagine. Our ‘nothing’ may be turned to a ‘great deal’ of a something in God; if or when eyes are opened. As one (perhaps even as myself) could be fully convinced the square root of -4 is neither problematic nor not really found ‘in Him’. As is even all our disposition to ‘play’ with numbers…with mathematics; which we believe most often, our purest attempts in, and at, perfect reasoning. A ‘system’ able to be shown of all consistency. Or so we think.

Ha! “The numbers don’t lie!” Maybe think again if able. For to lying man everything is also…lie. (too much? or maybe just too soon?)

And it is not without recognition of my own estate in part, that I write. I cannot justify my ramblings. Nor can I anymore make full claim of knowing my estate, having learned in part what a liar I am. Even that has some presumption that may be found in it. For a man would implicitly be stating he has had some exposure to truth that has shown him to be liar.

But who (even if so) has had or has…enough exposure, or any knowledge of truth to justify his being? Much less speaking or writing? There is only one manner of being justified in all (His) being, that is not in requirement of justification. And that cannot be ‘in’ a created thing…it is either given, or not. The peach can say “I am”, but for it to say “because” will only betray all attempts (and assumed quite rightly) as being in some form of requirement to justify itself…for its being. A very present odor of self serving. Who would believe it…when so obviously given to self serving? And I am no more nor less than any other ‘thing’ in creation. Unable to justify, even if in some way awakened to its own being. But talk about a quandary! Among men (if I might ask) and that particular form of being we recognize as man, who, or what is not so fully devoted to some form of justifying their being? Their ‘right’ to be? We give many many reasons ‘for’ the why of our why we are, or the ‘way’ we are, do we not all…do that? Even if we might say “I am only here by happenstance, I am only product of chaos or some ultimate and random throw of dice”, have we not ‘shunted off’ our reason for being as being ‘owed’ to a something? (too stupid? or not stupid enough to make sense?) For in all, don’t we mostly operate so far above these first assumptions as a priori(s), to not even consider them?

Might they even be the nothing appearing things…that turn to be quite a ‘something’ in some other place?

“Of course!” we might say all too dismissively, “Of course men and man ‘do and say things”…never, or rarely considering if there be some ‘why‘ to it. But here’s the kicker, if you will. If you can. If you are able. You pretty well think you know the why’s of why you are, even some of the why’s of why you are the way you are (I am smart, I have done some investigating/experimenting/research/discovery/I am informed/ I see things rightly/My self would never lie to me about things perceived/ I trust myself to know myself…even as myself) And every man who is, who has ever been has had some conviction of himself being himself without question…and having enough understanding of himself…to be himself. In short…”I am smart enough to be me” I am sufficient of myself…to be myself. It really is all and only those others that need to justify their being…to me. And for being ‘the way they are.‘(too close to home? too close to describing…man?) We consider an Einstein or a Mother Teresa, a Lincoln…yes even a Hitler as having some justification in their being (even if it only be sole purpose of showing ‘what not to be’ as lesson)…but the obscure to us, the unknown to us, the smithy who lived 500 years ago in obscurity to us, the present woman in China drawing water from a well to carry home…to us it is very much as though, unless otherwise provable by them or by a societal pressure to know them for a ‘something’, they have little, or no reason to be. At least to some ‘us’. And in that same respect…as ‘we’ to her.

And if man has any brilliance at all, it may be in his most devout ignoring of connections.

But now you don’t like hearing how much you are like me. It’s OK. I didn’t like hearing just how much I am like you, either. At least at the first. I thought I was special. Special enough…to be me.

Just like everyone else.(too crazy? or just too soon?)

It is a rather difficult notion at which the mind rebels. That God would need anything. Or have any necessity to which he could, or would even make man privy, that would not undercut His being as God. The fullness of self existence and sufficiency would not but appear injured, if not out-rightly contradicted, by such.

A god with ‘needs’ is not merely philosophically untenable, or metaphysically repugnant, the concept of their being revealed to man (those needs) is likewise a betrayal of, and to, a certain ignorance of man’s observed estate; as one who takes full advantage, even in all cleverness of any necessity betrayed, to take advantage of it and by use of it to gain ‘the upper hand’. In short…need is weakness. And man the animal, as all animals do, capitalizes upon weakness. Gain is an expensive proposition whose only greater to man is loss.

Man only knows himself as in all owing to the necessity of gaining, and abhorrence of loss.

And we must find ourselves, if we care even at all to approach any concept of being honest broker; that disclosure of desire, though seemingly less in some magnitude than need or necessity would be apprehended, is as much akin to it in any form of considering absolutes, as to betray a mootness. Whether it be need or even desire in slightest form, we only know these matters as things impinging upon, or things ‘acting upon’ a personality.

They are, as desires, as needs, speaking to some form of incompleteness at which any concept of God as all sufficient, irreducible, and indivisible and beyond any subjection or being ‘subject to’ anything cannot but seem utterly incompatible.

And I had better tread more lightly here than I know how, revealing my necessity.

I can repeat or recite a thing I find in scripture as, no doubt, we all can. But if my necessity to show myself right is too plainly seen as opposition by an eye that sees and knows all things without sparing and having no respect to persons (but I am a ‘christian!’ I am allowed to ‘use’ the scriptures!) as mere extending toward a gaining ‘for myself’, I have had many assurances that He who sees, sees well.

Oddly, even as I reread these few words I see that great presumption in any stating of ‘no doubt’. Do not doubt it is God who allows, and God who can most easily prevent…even next characters from being typed. But the words are here, and the words are there, and let each hear and say as accorded their allowance by the only God able to allow and also prevent. There is an unquestionable folly to imagine it is ever anything other than this. Man supposes he shall or will or can…but God. God determines what is, and what shall be.

The mighty God, even the LORD, hath spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof.

2Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined.

3Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him.

4He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that he may judge his people.

5Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.

6And the heavens shall declare his righteousness: for God is judge himself. Selah.

7Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify against thee: I am God, even thy God.

8I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings, to have been continually before me.

9I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds.

10For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.

11I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine.

12If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.

13Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?

14Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High:

15And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.

16But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth?

17Seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee.

18When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.

19Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit.

20Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother’s son.

21These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.

22Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.

23Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God.

Psalm 50

“If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: …”

God help me but sometimes I think Christ a fool.

But, maybe it is not sometimes. Perhaps it is a more subtle attitude carried, betraying itself in thoughts and words that are at best only sometimes made more clearly discernible as to their etiology. Like a faint odor of rotting flesh where one may be at some loss as to how things ‘ought to smell’, but nevertheless has some conviction regardless, that that smell of corruption ‘aint it’…”That’s bad, that’s not right”.

Something stinks. Something is dead, here. I (or we) may not know every fragrance of true life, but something (or is it someone?) that allows that stink to be sensed brings some persuasion “You don’t want that to continue or grow greater”.

That foul miasma, more than just being noxious to the nose, is infectious. And for as much may want to trace its source, find its origin by seeking out its place of occupying for removal…any drawing nearer to it for discovery and action against it (as for its removal) only incurs a more dangerous estate by proximity. To ‘try to deal with it’ is the very danger.

It has been said, ‘a good friend will help you move.’ But a great friend will help you move a body. And there is a great friend.

And therein lies the rub. Both of the great friend and the dead body He is willing to help move. And anyone reading is far more than free to say ‘you do greatly err, that dead thing has already been removed, it is a finished work, a job complete, a fait accompli in Christ…” and to confess otherwise or hold any persuasion otherwise, or even broadcast some experience as otherwise (as could be inferred from this public writing) is not only heretical, but quite antichrist. Yes, I must bear that as possible accusation.

Somehow I am made not ashamed to air my dirty laundry nor even afraid to make that dreadful confession of sometimes being aware I think Christ a fool. For now at least, I do not think I can find a more base confession than that. But it would also be a pride (it too has an odor) to think I have plumbed to any significant depths of what a man may think of God’s Christ. As though I have touched to bottom of all things that may be found in man. But it might be enough for now (at least) that one who has rather ardently held to that name for succor and relief might confess to even greater weakness, debility, useless and mostly senseless babbling about experiences discovered.

And though pride is not excluded from present confessions, one more the fool would be inclined to say ‘I found out’ as though some diligent seeker, some trained explorer, some intrepidity accounted for that ‘looking into’…no, it just ‘happens’. “I spent many years following the Lord” or, “I was diligent in this or that” or “I prayed and studied much and have been rewarded…” No. God forbid, no.

My trail has always been to my most sincerest confession available of me (now), been one of self seeking. Interrupted at notable times? Surely. Contradicted at more notable times? Without doubt (to me). A someone unbidden showing up while attempting to ‘do’ the things foolishly thought to ‘make Him appear’? Absolutely (to me).

He simply keeps…interrupting. Unsettling things. And in that, time and again, shows Himself completely ‘unsubject’ to me or any of my pursuits. And more than completely immovable and untroubled by how He may appear as to such a one claiming His name…even knowing I would see Him as harshest enemy at certain times. He obviously is unmoved by what I think of Him. He is, who He is. No flatterer He. No ‘trying to gain’ nor fear of losing anything or anyone. No changing to fit my (or any) template to keep me from being offended at Him. He is who He is. Even the reality of what is-ing…is.

I can’t shake Him.

I could say, might say, might even be inclined to say “And I don’t want to”. But there is also a stink of pride in thinking I know much of my own wants. And God knows all the trails I have taken even better than I recall myself of trying to shake Him, or lose that tail (are the headlights still following?), stop something of a relentlessness that is often too troubling to acknowledge. I thought I was driving. But it was the headlights in pursuit that initiated every turn, every swerve, every careening around corners. I am the one ‘driving blind’ thinking I know where to go to ‘really’ find Him. He laughs. And there is too much of pleasantness and purity in that laugh that could deter from even the most ‘base of confessions’.

It’s a hot pursuit. By Him.

Wait, wait, wait! I believe I can hear. Aren’t christians, or isn’t a Christian (if in particular) supposed to be a someone so at peace in Christ and with Christ as to be completely untroubled with Him or by Him? And God forbid I speak otherwise. How to be at peace with someone in your home, your house, who does not subject Himself even to (as one might even, in their own house) subject themselves…is different. “Oh, Lord, that room is an utter disaster we never go in there; it’s such a mess we even prefer not to know what’s behind that door anymore” as He goes where He will. Flinging open doors, crashing through walls built for seeming safety, not afraid to touch and upset what was once framed to keep an identity intact, a self ‘humming along’ like a dynamo to its own order.

“Oh, but we love that picture of you on the wall!”

“Really? Do I look at all like that?” as He turns with eyes as flaming fire. And the picture ignites to ashes.

And that cross hung there Lord…please…it’s there for my gathering around to prayerfully consider in worship.

“Really? Do you think I worshipped the cross or around it? How about ‘from it’? As it, too, bursts into flames.

“Ahhh, I see you have a work room, let’s take a look!”

Ahh, maybe not Lord, it’s really really messy.

And the door gets blown off with “Hey, I thought you said it was messy? It’s the neatest room I’ve entered so far. Everything carefully filed and recorded, everything alphabetical and chronologically even ‘spritually’ cross referenced so as to never be lost…amazing work! It’s like you couldn’t forget each entry…even if you wanted to.

Every little insult you recorded as suffered for my name, every effort or labor you think consecrated to me, every seeming sacrifice, every delayed pleasure, any and every word spoken as in defense of me, every minutest detail of all you believe you have ever ‘done for me’ with a chair far too well worn to deny this room is visited often. Why, Imma guess you just pore over this stuff relentlessly and get a great deal of pleasure from it as shown by the meticulous care by which you have it arranged. Great job! Do you mind…?” As he touches but one page causing all of them to immolate with the most foul smelling smoke. “Oops” He says.

But that laugh! That laugh! Talk about infectious!

I have lost nothing, but the absence of that laughter! Can there even be more?

And there I am…left in what looks like it must be the last room, to me so far (anyway). I am by myself, I have retreated. Not so much accompanying Him around this house, but hearing a relentless beating upon a door, a battering of it too thunderous to ignore, to a shaking of all too unsettling to deny. The foundations, the foundations!

I ‘feel’ not as much with Him, but cannot deny His presence…it is at once the most troubling and unsettling of all sensations…yet simultaneous with a greatest comfort in the thunderously loud pounding betraying He is still at work.

It is where I have the body buried. Where I undertook to bury it myself.

Driven to this room as all others were filled with intolerable light, I have retreated. It is dark, it stinks and is dank. I dare not be found here. It is the place of all my dynamism, too keep that body buried, to hide it, to so totally obscure from view (both my own and others) with constant shovelings over it, endless, relentless, unyielding labors to hide a too shameful thing. It is to me my mainspring of all matters. Initiator of all doings. The stench affects me, the rot infects me.

A hiding of what I know I have done, and who I am.

I betrayed and killed a friend.

And so I say the only thing I dare not deny as reply to the thunder, my last play (it seems) to keep at bay an exposure I do not believe survivable, an exposure that even slightest light could not but destroy. And open to only an endless void of abysmal loss.

It is not that I will go, or be gone, it will be, even is: “I am not”.

And so I cannot help but think it, cannot even keep myself from saying it…”You do not want to come in here unless you are a fool, you cannot want to be near or with such a one…unless you are foolish…for there is nothing but death here, nothing but stink and malice and all spite, jealousy, and anger in here with me…and any will at all in any to ‘come in’ shows you can’t be of sound mind.

No one else can ‘really’ live here.

The laughter. O! the laughter that takes place of thunder.

The “yet not I”…lives.

It is good to carry some desire that God speak to you, some undeniable craving to know the truth of matters, the true way of things. And we find often that interest and curiosity end poles apart. That curiosity, even if only first motive sufficient, cannot sustain; for an interest to be satisfied requires some investment, some form of willingness to give away in hope of gain. And unless, or until that hope exceeds all consideration of seeming risk involved in investing, we remain the simply curious and subject to all manner of dissuasion. If, or when it becomes (at whatever point) too hard for us, interest/curiosity turns to another place. Or other more agreeable and facile considerations. And how we may dress these up in all manner of pious garb as though it is sufficient to keep truth at bay.

As often as we may be convinced (and are) that in some gain of truth all we have lost to risk is illusions of no value anyway…we still do not know to any certainty how many yet illusory things in us masquerade as ‘too precious’ to put up. Light it appears, is always showing us another corner not fully illuminated but needing to be, relentlessly searching out no matter how ‘far’ we may imagine we have come in either adoption to it, or friendliness toward it.

Light it appears to us ‘has its own agenda’. And we may even be persuaded to whatever extent we are, this itself is eminently interesting…to find a thing not able to be made subject to us, a thing if even in any knowing and apprehending maintains an integrity ‘not subject’. For what form otherwise, of any form of knowing, have we not bent to our own ends, not found ’employable’ by us for ‘our own use’? What, except for this light have we not made…tool?

To get and to hold may also end poles apart, though all starts with another’s giving. We may find ourselves very weak at holding and often feel discouraged, this one may not deny. As C.S. Lewis once put too trenchantly:

“Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive”.

I can only say for myself the truth of some finding out of this after ‘preaching’ to others. After all, being preachy…is fun. (If one doubts this, visit most any bar or pub, there’s usually at least one stool occupied by one deep enough into his cups to ‘get preachy’). Thinking one’s self in some form, or holding some form of teaching…is also fun. But the cross, for all its depth and wonders…yes…even gloriously breathtaking work in completeness is quite another matter; and one that is ill fitting to anyone’s conception of fun. It is far far greater.

And this matter of the cross of Christ, this weighty substance of the Lord’s death in service to His God, even done for us to a cleansing, and that by the very light He Himself is to make us also children of light, is revealed to us. And here we may find fun and fulness of joy may also end poles apart.

Fun, like curiosity…even perhaps given, or allowed as experience for a start of sorts, cannot sustain. We must always be given a ‘more’. It is not that Jesus did not know how the disciples would return after being sent out. He knew well what effect upon them would be as they too discovered through His deputizing…(or do we think Jesus does not ‘know how men are’?)

But He had more to give, more to say. Even ‘set up’ by His sending in order it be spoken.

Notwithstanding, in this rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice because your names are written in Heaven.

but rather rejoice because your names are written in Heaven.

There’s some rebuke in that, isn’t there? At very least, reproof. “Rejoice not” and “but rather”. Is it to the end that Jesus is just a party pooper? A dampener? Or is it to, even if in some experience of that dampening of excitement, and toward the creation of a greater interest by what He has said to provoke to an interest in finding out what He means…and that by what He is saying?

“We saw” the devils subject…but this…well we don’t see this yet, know nothing about this really to even be a thing for rejoicing or even worth rejoicing over…but now that you have said it Lord…

Yes, the Lord is always ruining us for lesser things. And no doubt, even though this work be entirely miraculous and true (who doubts?) we have some care of causing injury to bruised reeds and smoking flax, for the Lord will use the very weakest ‘things’, and allow their use to the end of drawing, even the weakest thing of all to that end, self interest.

To hold some curiosity about the soul’s salvation, not only to some persistence to be shown possible by immortality, but also to a great flourishing in life, may also find first impetus toward interest in that weakness of curiosity as in “can this even be possible?…maybe I should take a look”. And so a care of weakness, and for weakness is ministered, for the Lord knows our frame.

But this man, who appears to have apprehended much in regards to the cross and its work, much in visions and revelations, much in experiences of both ecstasies while not withholding experiences of despair; came to a very particular, and particularly puzzling place (if one can see it) in regards to this impetus of self interest of, and for the soul. What would otherwise be of supremest interest to the soul, its ‘own’ salvation, the pursuit of it, the apprehending and holding of it, the rightest of “right’ things to be obtained in it, he was made ready to ‘let go of’ for the sake of others.

…For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh,…

What a place he came to. And for any who (this has been addressed before) are inclined to think this man spoke in hyperbole, or of some piety feigned ‘to get a point across’ and/or just relieve himself of some burdening…he begins this topical episode by saying…

I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost,

I hear “If you believe anything about me or from me, this has the uttermost endorsement I can render…” What do you hear?

Do you hear a man so consumed he does not even hold any care anymore for his ‘own’ salvation, his own ‘making it’, and not only so…but would even wish himself cut apart from the Lord, for the sake of others he knew ‘after the flesh’? And who knew more…since we so often resort to his words in instructions and impartation of revelations (do we not?) of the heights and depths of the glories of being joined to Christ?

No, I do not say he knew the all, or even most (for I do not know)…but dare we deny his “lot”? And if so…in ‘daring’ to think him untrustworty in these declarations of which he can offer no greater endorsement than as he has as verified to his conscience by the Holy Spirit, do we not put all other he may have other written…as to some doubt? Don’t try to stand on someone your exposition of logic already shows of some doubt…even when you do not know it.

Yet, here is confessing his willingness to lose the all he had of that…

Yet…how much he sounds like another, made willing to be a curse…for us.

But who would ever ‘want’ of themselves to come to such place, by their own desire? Who not only ‘would’…but could?

And so I end as I began:

It is good to carry some desire that God speak to you, some undeniable craving to know the truth of matters, the true way of things.

We can’t help but hold our own view of the Lord. It’s all we have of Him in our understanding if He has granted any sight. We have seen only what we have seen in His providence.

We might even be so bold as to say it is the Lord Himself, in His manifestation to each, that apportions to each and all; and only as He wills according to His specific purpose. It is not that the Lord who is unchanging has given less or more to any in the giving of Himself to us and for us; or changes from one to another, as though He ‘is not the same’ Lord in all to His people.

Nor is it necessarily a particular function of ‘coming out of a blindness’ that is cause; as if it were ‘of us’ that this takes place…some being to whatever degree ‘more or less yet blind’ or more or less yet sighted. But again, the Lord has a very particular purpose in mind regarding the revelation of Himself.

It is to the end of loving one another as He has loved us, of having souls purified to a sincerity not of this world, to which an apostle testified in even describing the reality of the process:

Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently:

Who would deny, if having any awareness of Him, or any claim in being touched by that love of the Lord in experience…knowing something of the greatness of that love? And in this, our view of mercy ministered (in whatever way) and perceived, by the love of the Lord, particularly according to that view in experience, loves that ‘view’ of Him? Yet God knows how very easily we find peace with ‘our own view’. Can even be deceived to an unrighteousness in love of our ‘own view’.

And that becomes a rub amongst us, doesn’t it? That matter of ‘view’.

The world loves its own, the Lord issued as both statement, but deeper, as a mechanism to be understood in the ‘why’ of it. At base is what holds the world together temporally, the denial of Christ’s preeminence in all. There is an unspoken agreement, no matter how far all other considerations and disagreements may superficially manifest…beneath it all, the world is what agrees to oppose the Lordship of Jesus Christ. No, there is not material contract signed, (unless one finds ‘signing on’ to follow the flesh) no polling of each or any actually, but there is a plain line drawn by Christ; the world and His kingdom. And “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: (with its own notion of love and acceptance) but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

There is ‘an agreement’ in the world, which, if we claim to see, perhaps have tasted to whatever degree in its hate of a disciple; there is no less a ‘base’ of agreement among those ‘not of the world’. Jesus Christ is Lord.

Yes…something is ‘easy’ in loving one’s own, loving those with whom one finds all agreement. Having much in common or may seem to be. But how are we assigned to manifest being ‘His disciples’ to the world? He tells us. By the love we are to have for one another…and a love not dependent upon superficial agreement of views (which can be fund abounding) by comfortable preferences.

And such is to be unfeigned, not with clothespin on our noses, not with any ‘buts’ or our own peculiar litmus tests for some worthiness. Love one another as I have loved you. A new (even THE new and unchanging commandment) given to us for our benefit overall. For to seek after accomplishes something…to be done with dissimulatings, performances, pretense and pretentiousness, facades, and a purifying of soul takes place as we endeavor by grace to see that place of un-feigning in all, and abide as He abides.

And as surely as we find His love is not ‘sappy’, any claim that such would be the whole of it in result as ‘just a gooey sappy faux love devoid of discipline, reproof, rebuke…and yes, even end up denying the Lord’s obedience’…one may made able to think again. Learning to love, in whatever measure such light of heavenly love has been ministered (Love one another AS I have loved you…) has come with, and in, many attendant rebukes and chastenings. And many repentings.

Much repentance, unless a man deceives himself.

What do we find, especially when overconcerned (perhaps concerned at all if apart from grace) “What will this man do?” Or “What are ‘they’ all doing?”

To one He may say what He gives one to do, may be entirely different from what He may have for another:

Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.

Again, some will and can only see this as throwing the barn door open to all manner of heresy, horrible doctrines, and/or behaviors justified as ‘in the name of the Lord’…and quite falsely. Would it be fey to simply ask “Have you not already looked around”?

Of course we are more comfortable ‘around our own’, and none would deny the scriptures rife with warnings of our company kept and associations. And yes, it is to whatever extent we mask our own preferences in the religious garb of doctrinal purity (do you doubt?) or some justification for withholding of mercy if we see it called for, we will find ourselves opposing this: “Love one another as I have loved you”, forgetting all the dark places in mind, practice, perceptions, and conclusions from which the Lord patiently delivers.

That is, unless you are the one who ‘got it all right from the beginning’, never in need of chastening, many corrections, and repentance. And also eschewing those as though they are not appointed to the revelation of our salvation.

Yes, the love of the Lord. It’s easy to sit in some sentiments of our own imaginings as to purity and sincerity. But Christ would have it shown, not when we are all too comfortable in the amens of our agreements among those of some apparent commonness of either doctrines or experiences. Yes, it is no stretch that His purpose of apportioning Himself in some seeming difference to each, which some might call only a recipe for confusion, is itself a setting stage that love might be made manifest.

May some testimony come forth, even in sight of a world to which it is appointed to be seen “Yeah, they sure do disagree a lot (maybe even more than many) but man, they sure do love one another…”

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.