Tag: God

in the wilderness

Last week I talked a little bit about purpose, and walking my path with purpose, and as I develop that thought further I know that in the past, I’ve followed my path through life a little more closely. I got shaken off my narrow path by a few things and got lost in the bush… but I’m working my way back.

Leaving my path was reactionary. At first anyway. Some punches got dealt to my family that we had to roll with, into uncharted territory. I’m (still) not going to get into it in great detail because the stories aren’t mine to tell, but ultimately we did the best with what we had at the time.

After that, I joined a 12-step group for overeaters anonymous. I can honestly say I tried it with all the energy I had to spare at the time and although the merits of the recovery communities are widely lauded by many (including me) I have since concluded that the group I was in was not for me. I learned that the way I’m wired is a little different, and what really resonates with me is moving forward. I’m not sure if it’s the group I was in, or if all groups are like this – but constantly living in the downtrodden stories of relapse and regret did not help me to endear or relate to anyone so much as it slowed my progress.

It was also the first time I’d ever heard the term “exercise bulimic” before, and although you could probably paint me with that brush to some extent, I maintain a level of safety and awareness in my fitness regimen that excludes me from that. Furthermore, if I have in fact transfered my addiction to something positive and helpful, and for the matter, manageable… and rather than compulsively drinking my face off, I compulsively work to enhance my diet and overall health… well, I guess I fail to see the problem.

Regardless, my point was that the group of spiritually like-minded people I was spending time with did not help me on my path so much as they pulled me onto a different one.

So now I’m working my way back.
How?
Well…

One of the things I used to never be able to do was “trust my gut.” My gut was sick and full of garbage most of the time. “Following my heart” was equally trepidatious, as my heart wasn’t in any condition to lead me anywhere… which left me with my brain – the organ solely responsible for overthinking, that had also been pushed to its limit in multiple ways.
… Not a great situation.

Since getting my health on track, my gut and my heart have been a lot more trustworthy, and work well in tandem with my brain – so when I hear or see something that speaks to me, I am ready to listen and willing to implement change where needed. This, for lack of any other appropriate term, is how I hear the voice of God. It comes to me through compelling conversations with friends, through podcasts, through autobiographical books, religious texts, song lyrics, stories from friends and strangers… and I am usually in a physical state of being able to receive the voice of God, because I am sober and nourished (though there are other factors, such as environment and frame of mind to consider.)

From there, I have to trust my three brains – the head, the heart, and the gut – to allow certain pieces of information to resonate.

Could I be led astray again? Absolutely. There are salesmen everywhere.
Will I allow that to deter me from trying to expand my consciousness? No. I hope I never do. I’ll strive to sit somewhere between skeptical and naive.

My path is taking me somewhere. I can’t stop here.

So I probably said a bunch of words people don’t like to think about much. “God” and “sober” are likely a couple of them. All I can say is, please try not to let singular words get in the way of the message. I’m not a religious zealot and I don’t aspire to be one, nor am I here to judge people for their habits around drinking or substance use.

This is just a blog. But if it speaks to you then I hope you’re ready to receive whatever message you got.

high powered

The community I’ve joined to help me contend with my brain’s propensity for malfunction requires the acknowledgement of a higher power. This is not foreign to me, given my churchy upbringing, and it’s not a far stretch to acknowledge that I am not the most powerful force in the universe.

As I’ve cited more than once – if I am the most powerful entity, and this whole societal simulation is loaded for me and me alone (narcissistic as that sounds), and I am ALSO unable to control myself around a box of donuts, then by definition, that box of donuts is the highest power.

And that’s fine. What I have is more powerful than all the powdered sugar in the free world, but I struggle to name it. God feels funny, as that term feels like it’s spoken for already, and The Universe feels a bit unspecific. Terms like ‘Great Spirit’ don’t feel like they’re mine to use, and most other terms feel ingenuine or dismissive in their lack of power.

“God” is an obvious placeholder, I guess.

Biblically, God famously said “I am the great I am” which tracks well for me, as I do like the idea of God being within all of us, whether he was invited in or not. It aligns with other phrases I’ve heard that I identify with, such as “you are the one you are waiting for” among other introspective and possibly cliche sayings.

In recovery, I was told to essentially make up a God. I think that’s funny as I type it, but I also think that making him up is what makes him real. I believe that Odin exists because the Norsemen decided he should, and that’s that. It would be difficult for me to say he’s not real at his point, as a person who can and does sit down with a pen and a notebook and conjures a song into existence when moments before, there was no song. Any artist does this, really… I mean, how many brush strokes does it take to turn a canvas into a painting? I digress…

The prospect of being made in God’s image is also of interest to me. First off it tells me that The Creator made me a creator. It also indicates – and this will piss a few people off, I’m sure – that God almost certainly has darkness in him, as he has certainly created some dark things for us to dwell on, as well as dark forces that keep things in balance… and really, that’s fine.

There’s an element of selfishness in any good deed done that I think needs to be acknowledged – not to the point that we should relish in taking selfies of ourselves giving money to homeless people or anything particularly brazen, but just the fact that it feels good to do good. It might not be conscious in the moment, but when I pull over on the shoulder to help some stranger change a flat tire, or I boost a coworker’s car, or drop some of my girlfriend’s baking in the lunch room at work, it feels good to know that these things are appreciated to the point that I’d be inclined to do it again because I felt some reward. This is in it’s very nature, selfish.
It feels even better to do something for a stranger.
But can you, or I, do a truly great deed for a total stranger and never have them find out who it was? Would we be able to contain that level of joy in ourselves, realizing of course that to share the experience would only accentuate the selfish act?

Really, if doing good things for people didn’t feel good, we’d have wiped our species off the planet eons ago.

So even at our absolute best there’s a darkness inherit in our actions. I write songs and share them with as many people as I can but I want the credit for the craft… I’m happy to help someone reach their goals but it works best on my timeline, and if I feel truly appreciated. Even for someone to beat the odds of surviving a serious health diagnosis means that a lot of people have to get hurt or killed by the same ailment in order for that story to be noteworthy.

These are things we cannot control, and yet we celebrate them. That doesn’t make these things any less special for the recipient of a good deed, nor should the fractionally selfish component of doing a good deed prevent us from helping one another. As far as biblical text goes, God created Satan, and Satan didn’t create anything… and when Satan was cast out of Heaven, he was not cast into Hell. He was cast down to earth.

I’m rambling.

All that to say – if we are truly made in God’s perfect image, then it’s worth entertaining the idea that our flaws are by design, and that the balance of the universe is far too complex for any of us to ever understand… so we have to take God on our own terms.

So I am searching for balance, I suppose.
Light means little without the prospect of darkness, and vice versa.
Same with happy & sad.
Sunny days don’t mean anything without the threat of rain… and to further push the metaphor, crops need both. People need both.

So I won’t let the dark parts of me take over completely, nor will I ignore it completely and be happy-go-lucky all the time… both versions are balanced.

when it gets dark

First, a brief synopsis.
Then, analysis.

The book of Job is a book of the bible, that for all intents & purposes is sorta just wedged in there. We’re given no real parameters for the setting. All we know is that Where Job lives, in Uz, is far away from Israel, but we’re given no context of time, which seems intentional. The story itself starts with the introduction of the character: Job. He’s ultimately a good dude and is a righteous follower of God… and God says so. In God’s court; however, The Satan or The Accuser contests this and tells God that Job is only a devout follower because he’s prosperous, and that if Job’s prosperity were removed that he would curse God… and inexplicably, God plays this game and allows The Satan to torment Job.

This is where the record scratches off the turntable for most people. Why would God go along with this? Well, spoiler-alert – that question never gets answered. The book gets into more about whether or not God is just and fair. The assumption made by the humans (again, Job, a non-Israelite, and his non-Israelite friends) is that God works the same as most of our modern assumptions about Karma might work: Do good things, get good things / do bad things, bad things happen.

This means that Job, who is a good dude as the book states, is being unjustly punished – meaning that either God is not fair, and unjust – or that his punishment is not from God at all. Job’s friends disagree, and assume that Job has sinned against God, and even start to speculate how.

Another friend comes along and provides a third alternative explanation: God uses suffering to teach and build character. But – Job is choked and starts questioning God… and God shows up.

God makes clear the many unfathomable moving parts of the universe he’s created, not stopping short of the Leviathan and the Behemoth, (both of which are already namesakes for metal bands) in order to show Job the real dark stuff that still has purpose and beauty. Eventually Job apologizes, they reconcile, and Job is made more-than whole for his trials.

It’s not a feel-good story.

I came across this story through unconventional means, I suppose… through recovery channels, but being raised a church kid means I’d heard of the book of Job the same way I’d heard of all sorts of books of the bible that I hadn’t read. Through these channels I’d also learned of a series of drawings by William Blake that outline the brooding darkness of the Leviathan and Behemoth as he understood them to be. They are dark and brooding, of course, but not shocking in the way they would have been when they were new, like so many installments of Friday The 13th movies that gave kids nightmares in the 80’s and have become appropriate Saturday morning viewing for kids by today’s standards.

Upon analysis; however, Job and God look the same in these drawings. I naturally concluded that Job was created in God’s image, and that God is inside him as we’re told when we’re young.

However, if God is within us and God has created all these dark entities that we don’t understand then me must also conclude that the dark parts of ourselves that we stumble across from time to time are NOT ONLY there by design, but that they have purpose and function beyond our own understanding.

This might not help you to understand yourself at all, but it helps me to understand the many sides that form me. We all have a capacity for darkness but that capacity for darkness must then also be God’s… and that I am not waiting for God to save me so much as I am conjuring the power to save myself, because God’s power is also mine. I have had a moral compass within me all along, and what I needed to know is that when I struggle with loss or anger, that God holds on to the pain until I can carry it myself. It’s part of an internal process for anyone who’s ever said “it just hasn’t hit me yet” when coping with the shock of tragedy, for example.

In other words: I am the hero I am waiting for.

To go one further, I could also conclude that since these things are within me, that when I hear something that resonates with me and stays with me, allowing me to change or adapt, that this is either the voice of God speaking to me, or an echo of the voice of God, keeping me on my path.

God talk turns a lot of people off and I am sensitive to that. It turns me off sometimes, too, but if you read this far then I thank you. That said, I don’t really write this for anyone’s approval, and for all I know I’m dead-wrong about a lot of things.

I’m just working my way through.
Same as you.