thanks.

One time, awhile ago, I was in a church in Slovakia, I don't remember where, and I had one of those experiences that slip in between you and the rest of the world. What I mean is, one of those experiences that reminds you of the weight of everything, that remind you that no matter what else happens afterwards, you were close to something that you'll spend a long time trying to figure out. The power of human voices resonating off of cold church-stone is something I won't forget, even if I forget everything. That feeling, that lover-caught-mid-laugh, that ache-rising-to-the-surface, that music-off-cold-stones, is something that I can't find  much to say about, but I feel it. I feel it all.

Sometimes I wonder if all we are is simile and metaphor. I read Genesis sometimes, but not as often as other parts of the Bible, and I don't leave my reading of it knowing much more than I did when I started reading it. I do, however, leave understanding more. That's a real distinction, the one between knowing and understanding, because I don't leave early Genesis knowing much about how this whole existence thing got started, but I do leave understanding more deeply that there are some things that are incommunicable. I don't care how the world was made. I care that God understands the weight of everything. He is content to be mysterious, to leave parts of Himself to metaphor and simile. Most of Himself, actually. He is only clear about a couple really important things, and what flows out of those important things are word-picture explanations of other facts about Him. He's ok with that, and now so am I.

It's not surprising that I'm as taffy-stuck and tongue-tied in other areas too. I try to tell someone what I'm feeling, and she tries to tell me, but really all we are saying is "it's like this" or "it's as if you were" or "you are a...and i'm a" or "i miss you". My heart stumbles over things it knows, but doesn't know how to say. Maybe that's how it always is, and we just get closer and closer to saying what we mean, to saying what we feel.

It seems that these days everyone feels a need to know everything about everything. We are afraid of mystery. C.S. Lewis said one time, I don't know when exactly he said it, that love is the enemy of lust. I remember that I went through a phase, not so long ago, where I would have liked very much to be an atheist, or at least an agnostic. I had some ok arguments I guess, but I wasn't going to embark on a showy "tell everyone everywhere how I've changed" campaign where I would have laughed at all the narrow minded Christians who still "believed that shit", like lots of people my age who become atheist or agnostic do. I was just going to be one. The really unfortunate thing for my aspirations, and the fortunate thing for me, in all of this, was that God came down and whispered in my ear that the only reason I was considering such things was because I was angry about some things and because I wanted to have sex with whomever I wanted, whenever I wanted. He also said that those weren't very good reasons. It took a couple months for Him to get all of that out, and for me to hear it, but He did, and I did. The most important thing He told me, though, was that I needed to become more comfortable with His mystery. I wasn't to go stamping about because He wouldn't be what I wanted Him to be when I wanted Him to be it. What I mean is, I needed to let Him be who He is, to let Him be mysterious in the ways He wants to be.

The thing is, C.S. Lewis was right, lust is so damn boring. x+y=z. So predictable. Love is something altogether different, something wilder, crazier, slower, deeper, more mysterious, and more real. God's love for us isn't predictable, but it's trustworthy. It isn't controlling, but it is invasive. It isn't passive, but it is patient.

When whatever happens after we die happens, and I come before the Lord, I won't have much to say except "thanks for your patience".

I don't know much about love, hardly anything really, but maybe when we tell someone that we love them, when it is true, one of the things we mean is that we are thankful for their patience.