God's Revelation

I do like Calvin's term, "spectacles of faith". If I have faith I can let go of myself just a little to consider that God is in charge and God doesn't want to crucify me personally. He did that gig with Jesus, his son. I sing the song, "Were you there when they crucified my Lord" and admit I was all the players in that play. Not just Jesus. I have to get out of myself and over myself and yes, think of things from the position of myself not as the central player in life's drama. I may be in my own. As the saying goes, I'm not much but I'm all I think about. This is narcissism. It's the essence of the psychopath and self gratification. It's the me first reality of the "infant terrible". It's the teen age drama queen. It's the 50 year old acting like an 11 year old. We intuitively know it is and even if it's politically incorrect to say it. We think, grow up! Self centeredness, even if it gets you riches and cosmetic surgery doesn't bring you closer to humility and spirituality. It's definitely not community awareness when you don't care for others and God is just another name for 'other' or even 'neighbor'.
So imagine God. The supreme being. The great Kahuna. The other who is not just there but really isn't out to get me because for all I know I may be a microbe on the face of creation. In the multidimensional reality I may be a dot or a line or the tabula rusa. I might not even be anything more than a puppet. It's my contention for the sake of this ego that I'm in charge. But face it, I can't make oxygen. Humility is reality. I'm completely unaware of creating this creation so if I did who is it that makes me unaware of what I do. In the Eastern sense of maya, or illusion, who makes this illusion, this life.
So let's hypothesize a God. And rather than many, just consider one of these and myself as the other. Who came first. Did we co exist. That's the proposition of self and overself. I am the "little me" and not the 'higher power".
But if there is a higher power is there a relation. Am I the gnat on the elephants ass or a child of this God. Is this God trying to communicate with me. I certainly am now trying to communicate with God. I'm praying as unceasingly as I can. Often I'm saying, stop the world, I want to get off. Help me, I can't stand a noter day of beaurocratic stupidity. Save me from the propaganda of media. Protect me from the bullies that gang with other idiots and want to hurt me and who ever else they can. Please God don't let microbes plug up my nose. Save me from cancer. Help my family and friends.
Lets face it I acknowledge I need help and I turn to this other, this infinite as compared to my finite, self. If you have ever had a foxhole prayer then you are a theist and all your blather in safety about aetheism is just hypocricy. I consider quite possibly my arrogance of humanism is just that, child like development, the adolescent mind that alienates and isolates. Me first. It's the feminist, masculinist in me. It's the divide and conquer, dualism of my deceptive mind. It's the limits of my capacity to "know" , "grok" God. God may know me but I can't contain the infinite in the finite.
There are no atheists in foxholes and if you haven't got religion, then go to sea. The book, Denial of Death, addresses the whole of societies work to distract itself from the reality of "dust to dust'. Even Napoleon was born between shit and piss. At bedsides, the fear is of death, the afterlife and suffering. I don't worry about crosses and Romans but nurses and doctors run by profit motive greedy rich hospital CEO's who took a weekend course on slow euthanasia and how to save money by cutting back on toilet privileges. I've seen so much of this evil in my life. I don't need cloven hooved winged miscreants and dragons. I've had my fill of stupidity.
But I simply admit my fear. My fear calls out for a protector from the lightning and the big cats. I'm in my cave and I'm man enough to say that I'm afraid.
So I'm not alone and rather silly of me I believe in a God. I'm certainly crying out to that God. That's my spiritual 9-11. Skip police, fire, and ambulance and put me through to central management. Why am I in this soup and who are these hairy faced men and women, long necked women and boys, stirring the broth. Am I the the eater or the food. If I was buddhist I'd be saying, wake me from this nightmare.
As a Christian I'm saying, wake me.
My sweet Lord, I want to know you. I want a relationship with you. I want wealth and health and guidance and honor and peace of mind.
I want to be awake and know and not just be distracted. I don't want to ask, "what is this hand basket and where are we going anyway?".
So maybe when I shut up and the hysteria dies down and I stop my thrashing and running in circles and screaming the 'skies falling', maybe when I put on the "spectacles of faith", I can actually believe in not just an infinitude but another, a higher self, a God, a Lord, a Creator who would like to speak to me. Maybe he's revealing himself to me now,
Even as I sit in this present moment of self if I just relax and trust and love and believe, maybe God is 'revealing' himself to me. Shut up and smell the roses!
I'm a whole lot of nano seconds alive, a whole lot of seconds, I'm a whole lot of minutes alive, a whole lot of hours and days and weeks and months and years. When will I accept the miracle of love and life that says that despite my belief countless times that things were ultimately doomed, it's been okay. I'm still here. Why would I think any different. Why must I believe that when people die they don't just go to sleep and wake in a reality that I don't know but is their new reality. I have no knowledge of ending and 'yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou aren't with me."
I didn't even have any say in the way those people called parents carried me when I was a mewling baby and I didn't have any say in the neighbors picking me up or their dog sniffing me on the lawn or the encounters with wild animals, floods, blizzards, broken machinery and bad food. I somehow survived. Rather than believing negatively that that's just the exception and the shoe will drop and my ass will be in a sling, maybe I could believe that God's in charge and God, as far as I'm concerned, is doing pretty good and has done pretty good by me but I've been pretty ungrateful and expected a rocket ship for my next birthday so had a few little ego disappointments. Further if I really look at the real crap moments in my life and ask sincerely what I had to do with getting there that day or setting the course to that crash a week or two ahead I can usually find a point where I 'did it my way'. I'm deluding myself I'm a victim. I'm more often than not a volunteer. I might well have been a sperm captain on that biblical escape from Egypt through the Dessert to the promised land of Canaan ovary.
I may have been a fool to volunteer. Certainly the leadership I've known locally has been all for me charging machine guns with my single shot rifle or sometimes just a broom when really all I wanted to charge was windmills and come home to Dulcinea.
But God has been revealling him/her/their/itself. I believe God, thyself are trying to reach out and touch me. I'm in love in Thompson's Hound of Heaven. Despite my cynicism and negatively and unwillingness to be exploded by the joy that caused Daniel to dance naked in the streets I'm touched by joy. I'm surprised by Joy as C.S. Lewis said.
I'm alive today. I could be fully alive but my fear of criminals, police and state and terrorists and poverty and corporations and mental hospital and looking silly to the kids limits my expression of the reality of creation. I'll Mona Lisa smile and let my eyes twinkle. I'll hold this kernel of happiness with in me. No matter what happens today I'll protect the little flame of God that burns in my being. I'll blow on that flame and think that God blew life into this dust of me so I'll blow life into god.
God is revealling himself and the more I reveal myself the more closely we'll meet. It's called love. God loves me and I can't explain it anymore than why I love my little dog but my little dog has more faith in me than I have in God. Yet once I loved my parents more than I love God and today I'll practice loving as a child does. I won't spend my time being so mature and 'reasonable' and 'smart' and 'clever' and 'paranoid' but rather I'll quietly shout hallelujah. I'll know the revelation of God and maybe God will reveal more to me. Hallelujah!




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