March 19, 2010
Happy St. Joseph's Day!

1 Peter 1

That looks weird written like that.

I love the image here of a "living hope," but I admit what has the best chance of sticking with me, especially after yet another Dan Kennedy "why are you religious" conversation (this time initiated by me as a somewhat desperate attempt to avoid doing the work I had brought with me and not conducted drunk), is this image, "so that the genuineness of your faith - being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire..."

And, on second read through, it doesn't call faith perishable, but it is a thing that people lose, that people let grow stale and that people let turn sour. Why is it a thing in our world that can go so wrong? It is so beautiful, faith and hope springing eternal? I admit his conversation made me feel judged as falling for some hoax in a way no other person has managed - perhaps because he himself seemed so open minded and non-condescending (saying several times that I and other Christians in the program were smarter than he was) that I couldn't dismiss him. I don't like the feeling. It doesn't shake anything, but it's weird to be in that position.

Because it's something you can't explain, and if you try you end up sounding like Peter in this chapter, a lot of fancy words flung about weaving around very simple truths. And goodness knows I can spin webs of words with the best of them (or, you know, the very good of them), but it's never something you can explain to someone who doesn't feel it, who doesn't know it.

And the funny thing is that I think at one point or another everyone feels something like it. It's the way I've experienced love - as a given, as something that's just understood and omnipresent. I wonder if I should examine it more, how I know, and if I don't because I don't have to or because I'm afraid I won't be able to - won't be able to find a "reason" to believe and will extend this feeling of not being able to say why and wondering if that means anything.

Because it doesn't. These are the inexpressible things. These are the gifts from above, the Gift of Certainty - it's never felt like a cheat or a shortcut before.

Tomorrow it won't feel like that, in all likelihood, but I wonder if my foundation shook for the first time because I couldn't find the words or because I've never tried seriously.

Honestly, I lean toward the latter, because if I haven't even tried to express it, how could I ever share my experience with others? And how can I ever expect to share my faith if I can't express it?

So here's a start:
I've always felt God there in my life. He's taken care of me, He's spoken with me, sometimes with more clarity than others, and there are things I've known all my life, coming from Him. Sometimes when it rains, only a few times a year, I feel it like a call out to me, and I go stand under an overhang and the world is quiet except for the sound of the rain and occasionally my laughter or my voice, but He's there.

I say I can't start crying in front of people (not an absolute rule, but I wait until I'm in a room alone and then suddenly I find myself sobbing - sometimes I knew I wanted to and sometimes I don't), but really I think I got spoiled on being held in His arms when I'm mourning.

And that's all personal, and if you say that to someone it risks sounding like He's more active in my life than generally, but I think He's just waiting - waiting to come at you in any angle that you'll accept.

And the greatest story ever told, the sacraments, the gifts and the love - well, could a collection of ragamuffin humans, by committee spanning thousands of years, ever tell a story that beautiful?

We've been telling similar stories since Eve bit the apple - stories of gods coming down to do mischief and wreck havoc and punish those who do not honor them in their guise of normal mortals, stories of gods dying every spring through their representatives the high priest who also gets to get laid first, stories of holy men sacrificing, but only once, only once ever this: God Himself, the Creator of All, came down and limited Himself, made himself a man. And he suffered and died Himself. For us, to save us. Because such is His great love.

This story is different, and it's far more beautiful and shocking and unfathomable than any of the stories we've been telling ourselves.

And every believer is likely to agree, and ever nonbeliever is likely to think I'm full of shit, but it's true, in the way faith is true. Blessed are they who believe and have not seen - not because their virtue in doing so will be rewarded, although I do hope to get to heaven someday, but because we have a piece of heaven here now. The Gift of Certainty is a reward reaped every second on Earth, a blessing for this life. A preview of the next, when all shall know the Name of God.