Limitation is, to me, the bitterest. Experience has been the easiest — Jesus is with us in all sorts of ways, places, people and moments… and reflection feasts at every meeting.

I've been preoccupied lately with my involvement with Katarokwi Ansihnaabe Enji Maawnjiding, an in-formation indigenous centre whose work and intentions are exposing me to an experience of extraordinary forgiveness. We have so much to learn.

Day 35: Monday | Celebrate the Person and the Healing

I wondered about this and started getting into thoughts about people in whose shoes I would not want to walk… they range, on the one hand, from the two British Standard life directors who each took two million pinds (Stg) in income last year, to the people of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug in Northern Ontario, on the oher: people who are coping with devasting living conditions and poverty, wrought by duplicitous treaties and their invisibility to Canadians who could change their lives overnight. From both I am distanced — one by disbelief, the other by grief… grief and disbelief… understanding? Appreciation? I guess in both cases, I am drawn to compassion by the love "god" feeds me in regular exposures to beauty. "God" loves… so should I. Grief and disbelief are both swallowed up by love… swallowed up and erased. And we are left with courage.

The insults, hostility and impoverishment imposed on aboriginal people in Canada irritate me deeply. I hear time and again how "open", "tolerant", "unprejudiced" and fair-minded Canaians are. And, mostly, among their own, they try to be "nice". But inclusion is a terribly distant idea in the experience of many, many aboriginal peoples whose cultures have been all but stamped out, whose natural resources have been hugely appropriated… there are more native children in state care now than there were during the Residential Schools nightmare. Aboriginal cultures have been stripped bare then beaten into corners. 

We are ALL "Treaty People" — there's no "opt out" clause — and it is blatantly obvious that the treaties are not working. Non-aboriginals have benefited so amply from the land; the relatively few aboriginals are so widely deprived. Justice doesn't just "happen" as an outcome of tolerance… justice has to be intentional; it has to reach out to those who are denied it. Being "unprejudiced" has to be intentional: the powerful have to reach out to the disempowered. It's not about "nice": it's about necessity.

What I am doing to ease my anger is to serve in every way I can the establishment of Katarokwi Anishnaabe Enjin Maawjiding: an indigenous cultural centre that's opening its resorces to "all who express a sincere interest"… something I find an enormous gesture of forgiveness. My motivation is that, as an "incomer", I would like to be able to feel truly Canadian. And, in the company of the elders directing this centre, my anger is alleviated and turns to love.

Whether we ca make it happen, we will see.

Mostly I'm aware of gratitude. Joy and gratitude, though, along I think with experiences of beauty, love and awe, though different, are strangely indivisible… notes of a singular harmony. 

I sense a kind of "holy network" that forms from the traceries of experience.

It is tensioned by out emotions, and it can be played, almost like a musical instrument, by way of our actions, thoughts and ideas. It HAS to be "played".  It plays in the experiences to which we open, the experiences we seek out by way of the choices we make and it has to be tuned (by prayer and reflection. It's the secret of being "comfortable in our skin" : the secret of finding inner peace and delight. We can tune to discord and cacophony, or to excitement and joy; to lovingkindness and peace, or to greed and rapacity — pretty much regardless of our physical state. 

It is the "holy inner network" that determines whether we are happy or sad, angry or forgiving, fearful or trusting, cruel or kind — and it turns the external world into a kind of mirror-world instead of a storm of controlling forces. It frees us, in other words, to be what we most deeply hope to become. This is the place where "god" raises a "kingdom" and Jesus' teachings heal and  "save" us by making us "whole".

Often:  my life has been turned upside down painfully often.  But, in the end, good comes of those dramatic changes: not the good I might have wanted, but good anyway.  My faith has been part of my for so long, it is difficult to say how it has made me different.

I've been having computer problems and haven't been able to spend as much time with these as I want to, but I have the book and have been reading it daily. A lot of the reflections are kind of hit or miss for me. There have been some great ones. Others didn't do much for me. I meant to commet on them all, but I guess I can't catch up now!

About today's question. When I was a lot younger, God came into my life and completely turned it upside down. I went from no religion to an entirely new life in what seemed like a matter of weeks. It is hard for me to describe what happened to me then. It happened more than 30 years ago, but the feelings are still fresh and real.

Now I find myself wondering what happened to me. God came into my life with a sudden rushing wind and everything was new. Why doesn't that happen again in my life? Is being "born again" a once in a lifetime expereience?

I guess the main factor is that then I was open to God and whatever he wanted for my life. I was open.

Today, it feels like my life is so upside down already. I don't want anybody to make it worse -- bad enough already! I've got a lot of bad habits that I kind  of like, and I don't want them taken away. But I don't think I have shut the door to God. More like we are in this misery together. In spite of the fact that I'm not that happy, I don't think God has left me, nor are we at battle. We're co-existing, living together, each waiting for the other to make a move.

A long time ago, when my wife, Sue, felt her call to ministry, I was an atheist. I had a career I deeply enjoyed, and plenty of self-confidence. But I realised that I needed to come to some kind of accomodation of this startling, out-of-the-blue development. I was (and remain) deeply in love with Sue.

So I sat down and very thoughtfully, over a week or two, wrote down everything I felt I "believed" in, all my core values, my deepest most intimate attachments… I thought it would be a self-affirming breeze. But I came up with a list that, when I read it, appalled me: it was trite, vain, vacuous bullshit… it was embarrasing. I was a fool. I'd done a B.A. and read widely, I'd wrestled with the classical and fashionable philosophers of the day, from Plato to Marcuse and Fanon… I considered myself "good", "educated", reasonably "intelligent" and "conscience-driven" but what I saw before me incontrovertible evidence of arrogance, superficiality, moral pretence, cliche-ridden conceit… it was facile drivel. I felt shame and stupidity. So I read the Gospels… just the Gospels, full of contradictions, superstitions, inconsistencies and the rest. I didn't get a word of it… but…

I told Sue the only thing I could: that her "bullshit" seemed more promising than my "bullshit" so, as we had an infant daughter, I'd be the homebody while she went through seminary/theological college to become a minister in the New Zealand Methodist Church: Te Haahi Weteriana o Aotearoa, a denomination that was the first to enter seriously into biculturalism in New Zealand. Her call would lead us, we'd follow.

The Methodists trained with the Anglicans and there were some very able scholars around the college. After four years, I had assimilated a lot from conversations, arguments, debates and life alongside around 15 staff and 100 or so seminarians, Anglican and Merthodist. And I had some of the most rewarding years of my life as a parent-at-home. I'd ditched a career as a journalist/editor and have since found work as best I could wherever Sue's call has taken us. I've done my best to support her in her ministry which, in the Methodist system involved obligatory moves every so often (a requirement of "Itinerancy"). So we are well travelled, widely experienced, without savings, nearing retirement and facing certain poverty. 

We have become playthings of "god": and "god" has somehow — often in unforeseen ways — been very gracious, sustaining and considerate in a "god"-sort of way. Now I'm 65, work on the side is nigh impossble to find despite my feeling that at last I have the skills and (rather wide) experience that might actually come in handy to an employer. So I'm grateful to be an unsuccessful, unsung writer… it's at least a reasonably honest if innocuous calling… and I feel proud and privileged to be a useful-on-a-good-day supporter of a minstry I see as being very valuable.

Turning my life upside down? "God" is the only one who knows which way's "up" in my life; how am I a "different" person? Different from whom? From "me"? Somehow, I feel I am "me", I have made my way to "me", well, sort of… I can say I feel "right" in my life, in my skin. And that's an enormous gift. 

Aside to Mike........

Seems to me God not only called your wife - but you, also.

Your contentment, and joy in living continually spill over our Wondercafe screens.

Simply said:

"wonderful Jesus, .....how may I bless YOUR heart?"

Human joy is as fleeting and ephemeral as human life.

Godde's joy is the deep and abiding faith that all will be well, that all manner of things will be well. And Godde's joy is in service. So in service I might better reveal Godde's joy to others, and gain it for myself.

(And I must add my apology for not posting daily; I have been reading daily, but found this Lent an unusually busy time, with a couple of new roles, so I enjoyed reading - MikeP, love your observations - more than writing.)

I don't know the difference between divine and human joy… though I do think we often miss out through inattention. The universe is, to some, desolate, vast, cold, unendurably inhospitable and desperately lonely, I know that. And I guess that's reasonable enough if you really want to treat your consciousness that way. It's an approach I find unnecessarily ascetical and morbidly uninteresting.

When we consider how rare sentience and perceptal capacities seem to be — and therefore how precious and to be prized our faculties might be to the universe —  it seems to me we might let ourselves enjoy them. From this end of the telscope everything stretches deep into mystery, every moment is an exploration of awe. We are very strange stuff… we really ought to en-joy it  (Why? Because we can, and because experiencing joy is a creative act… ).

All of our senses can be knitted together into fabrics of divine joy… we allow it to happen when we fill ourselves with experiences of holy, joyous beauty by simply opening to it. It's everywhere, all the time.  We don't need to explain the taste of a sun-warm, perfectly ripened peach, of the sound of robins sorting out their territorial rights, of the sensation of a loving touch or the buoyant effervesence of plunging into ocean surf, or sight of a havest moon, a still lake or a veined leaf; nor do we need to have it all sorted out, to see the beauty of an inspired idea, or an admirable value, an act of goodness or an inspiring achievement… all of the wealth of "impractical" but deeply enjoyable experience, opened to, embraced and danced with, can become a network that evelopes us in the ever-present ambient joy of "god" or the "universe" or whatever we want to name the inspiration of our awe… the mystery too vast for human minds: it's a source of great empowerment and liberation but it is also a force that can, if we allow it to, will shape our attitudes, our values, our "morals", our intellect, our emotions… it can enrich our sense of personal responsibility and amplify our capacities to love and be loved.

Or we can shut off our awareness of it down, be as miserable, mean-spirited and uncomfortable as we wish. There's just no point in doing that, not that I can see, or ever have seen. 

So… I try to spread it around by encouraging others to open to it and delight in it. Mystery is a place for all that's good in us to party. 

HAPPY EASTER INDEED!