Am I?
Yesterday I sat watching a storm tumble in as they can do only in this region of the country -- catapulting, cranky and fast. There were spiny shards of lightning, whipping sheets of rain you could see approach from a distance of 30-40 miles, and a thunder roll that had three large dogs shaking behind my legs.
I was mesmerized. I gathered up the dogs and went inside to watch. It was not a small storm. It brought hail, the noise of nightmares, darkness and ferocity.
And I had this unbidden, strange, delicious thought: I am created. I am a creation.
It seemed more like a letter addressed to me than a self-generated idea and what it appeared to be telling me was this simple and magnificent thing: I am not my own. I no more created myself than the thunderhead before me or the mountain with which it collided.
Now, to me -- as much as to you -- that is a very strange idea. It is almost a cultural betrayal. Like everyone else, I have told myself many times that I am very much my own. I have not only told myself, I have repeatedly taught that idea to others. I was told to believe in myself, so I cultivated that belief. I was told I am my thoughts, so I have aimed to think well. I was particularly told to think well of myself and have developed what is generally considered to be a healthy sense of self esteem. I own my home. I have a career. I build friendships. I am ME. I am MINE.
But then the storm said, "Well, not exactly..."
It went on to say that I was not my own, certainly not in the way I had thought. It said I was God's. That, like the thunder, the lightning, the birds taking refuge in the trees, I was His creation and that it was all constantly unfolded, rolled into motion and kept in existence by an act of Will that was not by any means mine.
Given how I was raised, trained and educated, I would have more than expected that thought to be anathema to me. What do you mean I'm not my own??? It was an odd moment overall. But when I think back to other moments of great understanding or fragments of Grace, I think much of what has been shown to me has been odd. Some were real head tilters. I imagine they made me look like my dogs do when I start talking to them. And in some ways, those experiences weren't much different. It was as though I was hearing a language I'd never heard before except that I could understand it -- just not with my ears or my conscious mind. And this was no different. It was very strange and very big. Much bigger than my body, my mind, or anything else I considered proprietary.
Looking back I would've normally expected myself to be either a bit frightened or annoyed; it surprised me to find out that I was actually relieved. If I was created, my existence not only had meaning, it was personal.
I finally began to understand what "self-esteem" alluded to but never gave me: a sense of belonging. In that storm, a new truth was revealed; none of us -- not me, not the dogs, not the mountains or the rain -- stood solely for ourselves. All of us in unison pointed to Something Else, a Magic that was deeper than magic, a single Breath that filled the lungs of all life. And all of it inhaled, hoping for more. Self-esteem had never been enough.
Not for a moment in that reverie did I feel as though belonging to Another had stripped me of the ability to choose. The moment came with an invitation, not an ultimatum or a compulsion. I could continue to rely on myself -- or not. I felt perfectly free to choose what I did next: ignore the message, dismiss it as unscientific, laugh at it, write about it, sit with it. The possibilities presented themselves and later that evening I chose (as you can see). And as I wrote, trying to sift through the sensation (because it was quite physical) of being actively, consciously and purposefully created, I found that it made me more than I was, rather than less.
A bit of history might help you understand why this is such a great relief for me and why I chose to write to you instead of to ignore the experience.
Most of my life has been spent in fear, fighting fear or treating fear. Of what? Of everything. Of death, of life, of loving, of losing, of being well, of being sick. The why's are too numerous to go into here (maybe another essay), but suffice it to say that it was exhausting, at times incapacitating. It's been many years since then, but the body memory can be recalled with ease.
The natural result of all that fear was -- for me -- the futile attempt to control my circumstances. If I can "just" drive this way, or I can "just" get him to do it that way, or if I can "just" keep my schedule in "just" the right order, all will be well, I will be safe, I will be loved.
Needless to say -- and you all surely know this from your own experience -- it didn't work. I just spent more and more time trying to ward off an army with a toothpick. Controlling didn't bring love, never guaranteed safety (only the temporary illusion of it) and never made me well. If anything it called forth the opposite: It made me annoying, it put me in situations which I should have hastily avoided, and it weakened me so that I took sick.
As I watched the storm I began to understand that the fear had the power it did for so many years because I had felt utterly alone. Of course, I wasn't alone -- neither in the social sense, the psychological one, nor the spiritual one. But I felt alone, on my own the way a forsaken orphan does, one who mistakenly struggles against the world with the full load of survival on his way too narrow shoulders. And because of that I believed I had to manage everything. If I didn't, who would? I was convinced that it was up to me.
That is the price of separateness. I was mine. But, then, with that, so was everything else.
I'd like to share with you a wonderful idea. It comes from a book entitled "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton. In one segment, he talks about the Will that beckons us from behind every rock, breeze and berry tree, and how the perceived repetition of nature (the sun that rises again and again, the tides that rush in and out at the same time every year, the exchange of synaptic chemistry in predictable ways) is due not to a series of unimaginative scientific laws or a dull and insensate lifelessness but to a conscious vibrancy, "a rush of life."
He likens it to the way children kick their legs back and forth, back and forth, enough to drive more sedated adults to distraction, not because of an absence of vitality but because they have so much of it. He recalls also (who hasn't done this?) the way children will happily hear a story over and over and over, pulling on someone's shirt sleeve, "Read it again!" The adult may be bored to tears, but the child is enthralled every time.
Because of a child's unbridled enthusiasm for life, because they are still unfettered in spirit, everything they see bares the stamp of the Great Magician, all of living is an act of mystery, daring and surprise, every day is prefaced by the curtain being pulled up to reveal a new rabbit or an inexplicably empty box.
He says,
"It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. May be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy ... our Father is younger than we are."
He goes on to reveal that he has always seen life as a story, and "that if there is a story, there is a story teller."
I saw at least a bit of that story in the dark clouds and torrents of rain yesterday and finally, finally got a sense of the Great Story Teller Himself as he wet his thumb and turned the page and asked me, "Would you like to see what happens next?"
And my heart leapt and my lips said "Yes!" glad beyond words that finally I did not have to know the ending, that I could be a part of something much grander and beloved than I ever could have if I had tried to do the writing myself.
Follow Judith Acosta on Twitter: www.twitter.com/VerbalFirstAid
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life.
Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
There are moments, when clarity arrives; often from diligence, but occasionally from an epiphany. In reality, the source is unimportant, but it changes you. Your realization inextricably links you and your beliefs to life itself and that is truly important.
Your writing displays your talent for expression; I strive to emulate. Does that talent belong to you, to your God, to you both… to us all? To play off that ubiquitous, somewhat tedious “village” saying, we all do inhabit one big village, and the sharing of emotions, feelings, beliefs, fears, courage, values, anger, joy, appreciation, awareness, et al., constitute the relationships of advancement in our cultures; they determine the type of existence “we” will have as we evolve.
What I read was a revelation about your relationship with all other… I know that seems grammatically wrong, but, unless I missed your intention and your message, you relationship through awareness, with any “other” thing – rock, rain, puppy, person, God – as it relates to your relationship to yourself, has passed through a venturi of clarity and expanded, encompassing more than before: you see yourself as part of the plan, and you are not alone. And that for you and those around you is important too.
(Continued in reply…)
For those who don’t believe, of have their own unique beliefs – from a traditional God to some singular “spinner of the years” all the way to the utter aloneness of chance cosmic occurrence, I would say, play nice; be tolerant of the tidal forces in the minds and the hearts of those who differ!
About those who eschew your observations, feelings, writing, and conclusions: It seems they are unshakably sterile in their approach to belief systems. It is almost as if they don’t want to chance becoming contaminated with your joy and feeling of companionship. Consider this: remember those strange pictures that appear to be just a group of dots and little lines, but for some, when they look at it just so, a fully dimensional image appears. There are some who easily see the image, some find it difficult, and some never see it. For those who never see it, to say to those who do that it is not there, is an empty exercise, for they will always be doubters, and those who see will always be believers.
To twist an old saying: For those who believe, no proof is necessary; for those who don’t, no proof is sufficient.
Thanks for the heads up! Well done; well written!
Lawson
::clap clap clap::
Louise :)
Love the Chesterton quotation. I don't think of the Creator as a person ("a consciousness but not a personality" is how Louis once described the Source) but that endless delight in life, that complete lack of ennui is exactly what I get from Spirit. I don't mean that's how I feel, here on this side; it's how life seems to be experienced at Home and I certainly get hints of it in memory.
The individual/connected part reminds me of one of my favourite lines from the book The Risen: "When Creator Source gives us the gift of individuality, it always gets it right first time." Now that was in reference to something slightly off-topic, but it does emphasise the importance of individuality within the whole, I think.
Thanks again for posting!
Louise :)
Thank you!
J
"The Blob" scared the bejayzuz out of me when I saw it as a kid ... (remember that? A youthful Steve McQueen, I think, fighting an outer-space blob that ate everything?)
Louise :)
To whom are they singing?
To whom do they offer their praise?"
A Voice from Nowhere
Anon
Louise :)
Your reply is entirely proper and lovely.
And you use such a beautiful, complex, observable phenomenon as an explanation for something that has no rational basis, no existence whatsoever that we can observe outside of the human mind?
Wish thinking of the highest order, and no more. An abdication of one's responsibility to own oneself and be responsible for oneself.
Dawkins has it right. There is nothing in science or philosophy that need be considered apart from poetry. Solon proposed what is considered the world's first constitution in the form of a poem. There is plenty that is poetic in the description of a storm without the appeal to a god, or requiring the abdication of one's sense of self or the ownership of the same.
"We are made of starstuff," said Carl Sagan. What could be more poetic? Forged in the engines of solar fusion, in the furnace of forces that laugh at our hydrogen bombs and biochemical fumblings, we exist all the same as the sole beings in our solar system able to harness and use the power of our reasoning minds. The sun made us, but we understand the sun, not the other way around. Poetry lies in understanding reality, not inventing ghosts to satisfy our insecurities about it.
Thank you for responding and thinking with me.
As for doubting what you see and feel, it isn't about your belief, or your feelings. Believing is not knowing. Belief can stem from knowledge, but is not in itself knowledge.
Your article is beautifully phrased and well-written, and I do not doubt you had a moving and vital experience. Inasmuch as your experience has harmed and will harm no one, I am happy you had it. I simply disagree with your conclusion and fear you miss the grandeur of what it in dreaming about what is clearly not.
Regards
There is a reason we baptize our children and teach them about God at such a young age; the conversion rate is much higher later in life. Maybe it is organized religion that heavily contribute to the loss of childlike wonder in which they first see the best in everyone and everything. Have you ever seen a young child resist someone for being gay, admonish a woman for considering an abortion, or tell someone they should change their way of life or risk going to hell? I doubt it.
A child doesn't care whether someone is Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or Atheist; they care that someone loves them. Then, we introduce religions, and it's all downhill from there.
God of the Day: Cloud and Rain
Today is the god of cloud and rain.
Today the Paisley airport light is obscured—
careless pilots will be lost and dissolve.
Today the god smothers the earth in
wetness and liquid. Small trees
bend in breezy submission.
Today the god smells of musty
meadow grass and pungent sage.
The god today hides the sun and the earth.
Only trees close at hand are visible,
the road out is short.
there are those (with much greater minds than my own) who have said that Magic is closer to Christianity than other religions with amorphous ideas about it all being "the same" precisely because of what you are saying--this face to face experience with the wildness, the sense of being awe-struck, of something immense around, under and above us at all times.
Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for sharing this poem.