Life in this wonderful and scary place

     The world we live in is a beautiful and wondrous place.  Just look at the sky at sunset.  The light is refracted at just the right angle to paint the sky with purple and pink.  The same sky above us that, most days, is blue with fluffy white ice clouds over a vast sea of green that blankets the land.  The summers are warm.  The spring and fall especially, are my favorite times of the year.  The spring, when we get the first warm days after a long cold winter.  The fall, when the air gets crisp and I can put long pants and a sweater on for the first time after the long hot days of August. And we, as humans, are perfectly adapted to live through all these seasons through the tools that we have been given. I believe that the creatures of the Earth, including us, are even more amazing than the astounding Earth itself.  Think how complex an ant is.  How social it is.  How it lives and eats with a tiny digestive tract made of muscle and acids, directed by a simple brain. It is perfectly created for its place in the giant interdependent society of living things. And it is perhaps one of the most simple creatures at the very bottom of the created order.  It is almost unfathomable how complex animals become higher in the order of creation.  And all the ways they are adapted to life: physically, chemically, socially, and emotionally is truly amazing.  Just watch Nature on PBS.  I regularly find myself astounded.  And then there are the wonders of math and physics: the laws we have discovered that govern all of it, from the smallest subatomic particle to the vast infinite reaches of space and time. With even a cursory understanding of physics, I find that I am astounded at the interrelations of particles and time and the great vast galaxies that are as beautiful to behold as they are mind-bending to consider.

     But in this great garden that we live in, is also the greatest suffering.  Disasters, terrorism and the loss of loved ones, illnesses like cancer and schizophrenia and Alzheimer's surface in our lives. What is a man to do with such a beautiful world in which these things occur?  Many people find that they must distract themselves from it.  We all do it.  We have hobbies, TV, movies, magazines with the latest celebrity gossip, art and intellectual pursuits.  These things are not bad in themselves.  But many people take their interest in them to extremes.  So much so that they cannot sit quietly and alone in their rooms with their thoughts, even for five minutes without turning to something to distract themselves. In fact, I would say that this is true of the majority of people we interact with each day.  We are not taught how to sit quiet and alone in solitude and entertain our own thoughts.  

     I conjecture that most people in the U.S. find it difficult to do this because they have been taught by Western culture that suffering is to be avoided at all costs.  When you sit alone with your thoughts, you find out just how unhealthy you are.  It took me a long time to get past all my issues, years even, so I could get to a place where I just enjoyed solitude: true solitude - the absence of distractions. It isn't easy because everything in our culture devalues, even vilifies this practice. We don't want to suffer.  Buddhism, I believe, is the transcendence of suffering through detachment.  It can be very attractive.  It has a lot of good points.  But I don't think there is life in this.  Because the ultimate way to avoid suffering is death. Life, right here and now, on the other hand, is a messy business. I believe that we are meant to get attached to really live.  And when you get attached, you are going to suffer at some point. Because things are not permanent in this life. You are going to suffer loss if you get attached. Christianity says that we are not to run from suffering, we are to go right through it and overcome it with the help of God.  I believe that we are meant to get quite attached to this beautiful but fleeting world and life. Because God is quite fond of it. God, an unfathomable infinite creative force in the universe that binds everything together and has a personality and creativity reflected in the beauty of the created world around us. God, who divested himself of detachment by getting totally attached to us and came to Earth to walk through some of the greatest suffering that a man can endure.  Why?  So suffering could be experienced and overcome in our lives.  So he could identify with us and experience life as we know it and show us how to do it. So we could know how to live in this beautiful garden and enjoy it despite the suffering we all are acquainted with at some point in our lives.  So we could be known.  Known by name, and we could know who truly knows us down to infinitesimal detail. 

     It is a beautiful thing, to be known. And to know who you are.  Don't we try to do this with other humans?  We want to be known.  But at some point in life, I realized that another human can never truly know me.  Even the closest friends and loved ones only see snapshots of our lives. And they can never truly know our thoughts. Not like God does.  No, I am known and fully accepted and fully loved, with all my flaws, faults and failures.  This is the salve of Christianity. And it is the whisper of the still, small voice, that speaks directly into my soul: You are not alone. You don't have to be perfect.  You just have to be capable of receiving pure love.  For me, this meant I had to hit the dregs of life to truly come to a place where I was humble enough to be able to accept help.  I had to come to the end of myself to accept true love - from the greatest lover who has ever existed.  And it has been a long slow journey and I am so far from where I want to be.  But it began a journey which I never would have taken myself.  A journey, not around heartache and trouble, but straight through it.  Standing tall and stepping one foot in front of the other because I had help. I have such a very long way to go.  But I don't have to do it alone.  That is the essence of the Gospel. It is translated "good news."  That's pretty much all there is to it - it is for the simpleminded and the genius.  It is for the beggar as well as the king.  It's for anyone, and it was all done for you, individually, as if no one else ever existed, and corporately as creations of the living God.