“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.
Who looks outside, dreams;
who looks inside, awakes.”
C.G. Jung
“There is a spiritual loneliness, an inner loneliness,
an inner place where God brings the seeker,
where he is as lonely as if there were not another member of the Church
anywhere in the world.
Ah, when you come there, there is a darkness of mind,
and emptiness of heart, a loneliness of soul,
but it is preliminary to the daybreak.
O God, Bring us, somehow to the daybreak!”
A.W. Tozer excerpts from various sermons…How to be Filled with the Holy Spirit
So it has been brought to my attention, over the last week or so,
that perhaps some of my recent posts…
posts that I’ve offered as reposts, along with those penned as recently as this week,
seem to be skirting around a central theme…
a theme of the forlorn or even that of the melancholy.
Some have even asked “are you ok?”
Well…I think I’m ok.
And I think the posts have been timely…as perhaps it is
the times in which we are finding ourselves which is rendering
that underlying sense of the forlorn and melancholy.
But I suppose I should confess that I have been spending a great deal
of time recently thinking about loving and being loved.
I’ve been thinking a great deal about breaking and being broken.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the implications of giving while receiving.
And I’ve fiercely been wrestling with the whole notion of Grace.
Do you know that giving Grace is one thing…while
feeling worthy of receiving such is something else entirely?
Or so I’m learning.
And so I’m faced with the nagging question of how can we freely offer others
such if we find our own selves feeling less-than when needing to
receive the same in like turn?
It is indeed a conundrum.
A conundrum of self.
And thus I have actually been finding myself looking backwards.
Not so much because I’m afraid of going forward, or that I wish to be morose…
rather I’m looking back in an attempt to better understand the now.
Or maybe I should say “my” now.
And no, I’m not talking about looking back through the lens of some sort of
historical context, a political context or a cultural context.
Heck, I’ve purposefully been distancing myself from my obsession
with all things news…avoiding the latest barrage of current events
all of which leaves me more depressed than hopeful.
I am finding that I need to declutter from the world for just a bit
in order to make some sense of the bare bones of this thing we call life…
I’m finding that an interior life issue is far greater than the Border Crisis,
a Pandemic, Dr.Fauci, President Biden, a broken chain of supply and demand,
inflation, vaccines…the list is endless….
and the list is a massive distraction and not the real issue at hand.
For the real issue is that which lies within.
And maybe that’s part of the point.
Avoid the real issue by being distracted by the world’s issues and madness.
And what good am I to myself or others if I am consumed by a world’s madness?
Introspection is a fine line when walking through one’s memories.
We must tiptoe through the effects that those memories have had on our lives
as well as the lives of those we’ve carried along the way.
We must balance such with both clarity and wisdom.
Depression, regret and sorrow are never far behind…dark specters who
nip at our heels while we embark on such a journey.
Such a journey that often becomes an endless void, much like a black hole
that pulls all energy and light into its darkness.
So we must be careful that we are not consumed.
One thing I know about God is that He is often a deconstructionist.
Meaning, He is one to break apart before rebuilding what was into
what needs to be.
I think I’m in the middle of some much needed deconstructing.
Deconstruction, like breaking, is an often hard fraught process.
It can be painful yet oh so necessary if one ever hopes to be whole.
Yet we must remember there is a difference between being broken
as in left in pieces vs being taken apart, dissembled, in order
to be rebuilt anew.
For what God opts to take apart, in order to piece back together
as only He sees best, is indeed to be made more perfect.
It is a journey…and not an easy journey…
but if you ever want to find peace and truth, it is
a journey that must be taken.
So here’s to the journey!
For the bad and then the good!
An excerpt from a post written March 4, 2016
When excavating the locked chambers of the soul…
that quest for the missing piece to wholeness…
The path is narrow, fraught with both emptiness and loneliness
And the darkness will be exacting.
It is a journey few care to traverse…
Isolation is a key requirement…
The striping away of all exterior noise and distractions…
leaves exposed the innermost secrets of one’s very being.
God is exacting.
He is a selfish God, who wants all and will not settle for any less.
He wants not that which is freely offered, willingly given…
He wants, nay demands, that which is desperately held back.
The re-union of created and Creator is inevitable.
There are those who eagerly seek the synthesis, the rejoining…
While others vehemently fear it…
The fragility will shatter…into a million fractured shards…
Out of the mire, the sucking and suffocating quicksand of death…
The spirit longs to reach upward, yearning for home…
Yet it is in the depth of death’s vast darkness that the fractured soul searches…
While the Creator waits…
Bring us home oh Lord
Strip us of that which prevents us from being with you..
Deliver us out of…
the brokenness,
the loneliness,
the emptiness,
the isolation…
of self
Bringing us to the daybreak of You…
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