The Force

There’s this desert scene that plays out in the old tales. Different characters, same unforgiving parched landscape. A sea of emptiness, one that feels like it wants to kill you. It happens with Moses, with Abraham, with Elijah, David and, of course, Jesus. A coming to the end of their rope; reaching a place of decision; where hell presses down its heat, its despair, and a voice hangs in the air, taunting, bullying, accusing.

I think it’s in so many tales because all us humans inevitably find ourselves in a desert at some point. Where faith is weak, where doubts reach in and dry your throat, your soul. Where the arid wind of disillusion pulls his voice away, smothering it in the roar of all the things that say he doesn’t exist, that claim it’s foolish to hope, to wait for him. Where you stand at that pit and have to choose what you see, to give in to the desolation, step off the cliff it makes, or hang on to a silly little branch of a wish that there’s more, that there’s good, that there’s Someone.

Jesus told me long ago, that if I chose to let him in; the real him, I would lose that cardboard cutout picture in the church sanctuary I grew up in of a white, long haired, and bearded Jesus holding a lamb. I would lose the safety of those easy answers, the memorized ones taught me in Sunday school. It would be like going into the wilderness down a bumpy, winding path with no end in sight. He told me there’d be days of pitch black road where I would have to feel my way forward inch by inch. He told me there’d be hills of green where I got to hear him, see clearly, but there’d be valleys too. Because knowing him means letting go of the boxes I had and still have him in. Accepting that he’s bigger than I could ever know. Finding out again and again through dead prayers and painful experiences that he’s not a tame lion, not a genie in a bottle you can rub, not a formula to work out to get what you want. He won’t tell me all the answers. I’ll never know the whys of what happens in this life and sometimes not the hows either. Or even the wheres of him.

When I’m with him, sitting in his lap, there is no questioning. But on all the other days, especially the desert ones, it feels childish to believe I know him. To think I’m loved as wildly as I want to be. To think he’s there beside me when I can never, ever see him or touch him. And I think of those favourites of his, Moses, Abraham, Elijah, David, Deborah, Mary. They all got to experience these amazing shows of his power, supernatural miracles and yet they doubted him. Doubted themselves. I want to rail at them. It doesn’t seem fair – if I were to see him in front of me I wouldn’t struggle like they did. (Ha.)

I’ve had so many voices in my life telling me what God isn’t. What God is. I’ve been told he’s not a being but a force. An it. Like in Star Wars (literally). I’ve been told he’s me. That there is no God outside of myself – I am God and thus God is the collective humanity – some kind of ocean while I’m a drop of it (or some kind of weirdness like that). A thing, an awareness. I’ve been told he’s a not a person, not a being you can converse with and get to know. That he’s – it’s – more like an alien who’s so foreign there’s no such concept as emotion in it, no language, no way to connect to it – a thing that doesn’t even think in a way that’s recognizable. Yes, it’s benevolent (see my eyes roll), but it’s not a being that can scoop me up when I’m tired, when I’m sad. I’ve been told by some childhood teachers that he’s not far removed from an angry Greek God, demanding sacrifice, ready to send the majority of humanity to hell. I’ve been told he’s absent. He’s a ship’s captain but he’s not on deck. I’ve been told by science teachers he doesn’t exist at all. That it’s a silly, childish thing to believe in a myth in this new scientific age of logic and reason. Where nothing’s real unless it’s quantifiable and material. My beloved Gramma echoed some of the theologians and mystics I’ve read saying romantic love is beneath him, and inappropriate for me. Recently I’ve read some dark stuff on the cross and how it’s all and everything and the only thing to look at and live out. How self is the enemy and sacrifice is the starting point to love rather than the outflow of being loved and the boomerang that happens when we experience it.

What a cacophony. Do you hear it? All the shouting?

I told him yesterday that if he’s just a force I can manipulate when I’m powerful enough, then I don’t care to know him. He can go vibrate in someone else’s search for magic and power. Then, in the throes of despair I told him if he’s sending the majority of the world to hell, he can go there too. First. If all he cares about is perfection – if all he sees when he looks at me is the rules I broke and still break sometimes then I don’t want to exist in his worldview. I told him if he’s too alien to get me, to share himself with me – and I can’t hug him, can’t tell him my secrets and have him joke with me, then I’d not care to meet him at all.

I tell you this now, with a laugh at the petulant tone of my voice when I told him off – but at the time it was tinged with wild, almost hysterics at the thought of any of those things being true. Or worse – of there being no truth at all. I can handle a both/and situation, where he can be (some of) those things: genderless (or as I like to think, gender-more), and scientific, and all other things not human, but he has to be more, too. I can’t handle an either/or.

You know why?

Because I’m in love with him.

I need him, in the way that he’s half my heart – an essential piece of me. It may sound dramatic put like that, but it’s true. And yes, I need him to be more than me. I need him to be bigger. I need him to know everything. I need him to have a plan for this world (that everyone thinks is falling apart) – for these people everywhere, the ones in pain, the ones hard and stubborn, the ones living in ignorance, and the surface butterflies. I need him to be Love. Wild and passionate and stubborn. I need him to be able to love me back.

When I go to meet him, when I slip away from this earth, I need that deep voice like thunder and waterfalls to say “Hi.” Not some formal greeting of a stranger. I need to be faced with that grin, the one he uses just for me – and he won’t even have to use my name – because we will have just been talking two minutes ago. I need him to run to me from heaven’s gates, grab me up in his arms and laugh, and he’ll squeeze me tight and when he’s done that, he’ll tease, “I’ve been waiting for you to come home, my little wanderer.” He’ll let out a breath of relief, like I will, that first breath of being home, and we’ll probably both cry. He’ll get serious and he’ll whisper “Finally.” in my ear as we hug and hug. And then he’ll take my hand, excited to show me something he made or is making. Or something like that. Maybe we’ll look at my life together so he can show me all the places in it where he stood behind me when I thought I was alone. But it won’t be to make me feel judged and less. He’s already judged me – when he put his breastplate over my shoulders, buckled it in place with swift, forceful tugs – when he pushed his hand against its metal over my chest so I could feel his weight, reminding me with serious eyes that he called me righteous.

It’s a simple as that. Being loved by him that way is the only thing that pulls me out of the desert.

Maybe that’s selfish. Maybe that’s childish. There’s a lot of need voiced. There’s probably a box or two I’ve stuffed him/her in. But it is more true to me than any vibration. It’s deeper than any formula for success I’ve ever read about. I need this hidden other presence to be a person type being who is capable of loving me. Who is all Good and True and full of Every mystery and kernel of Beauty that exists in this crazy universe and yet has the desire and the time and the determination to share himself with me, one small piece at a time.