God in a Box

Sorry for the quietness – I had a few things going on that required my attention for a bit. All good. And I’m now a year older!! I turned the grand old age of thirty – and feel better than ever before.

So there’s been a recurring theme in my conversations over the last few weeks – the R word. Yes, relationship, particularly with God. But it seems that I’ve been talking the talk about being in a relationship with God without really knowing what that looks like, let alone feels like. In fact, I would say I don’t really know what a proper relationship with anyone is, and ‘proper’ I would define as one with another person based on mutual unconditional love. I mean, I’ve been in relationships, but I’ve always had a reason to be in them. My Mum fed me, my Gran gave me money at Christmas, my friends kept me from feeling lonely, lovers…well, you know. And then God provided me with my ticket to heaven (at least I’m hoping he has).

But heck, that’s come at a price. I’ve discovered God is so incredibly boring. A relationship with God is not particularly exciting it seems – there’s a lot of toeing the line with an inordinate amount of lines to toe.

Or is that just the way I’ve been looking at it?

Turns out it is. Turns out I’ve had this idea that God is boring. Not only that, I’ve been thinking that I’m boring too. How about that? No wonder I was so glad when my world came crashing to an end a while back – it was dull. And as I’ve been sorting through the wreckage of boxes that remain I came across a particularly battered and shabby one. I looked inside and found boring old God.

But I’ve learnt that God hides in the mundane, the boring, the awful in order to reveal the party, the fun, the dance to those who seek him. 

A short conclusion to what has been a bigger journey – more to follow, I guess.

“God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so we should not waste too much time protecting the boxes.” Richard Rohr

 

Monkey See, Monkey Do.

I met a wonderful couple this summer from Hong Kong. Jack and Alice are just amazing – big smiles, dancing like you wouldn’t believe, and an obsession with all things Disney! In between lots of stories they told me of this experiment scientists once did with monkeys, then drew me a picture (see below).

The experiment goes something like this: the scientists put some monkeys, let’s say four, in a locked room. The room has a staircase and on the staircase is a bunch of bananas. But if one of the monkeys climbs the stairs to get a banana, sprinklers turn on and all the monkeys get wet. The monkeys apparently don’t like this very much, so eventually stop climbing the stairs no matter how badly they want a banana. Poor hungry monkeys!

But next the scientists take one monkey out and replace it with a new one who knows nothing of the sprinklers. So when this new monkey spies the bananas he makes a bolt for the stairs. But before he gets there, the other monkeys, who have just dried off, quickly get together and pin him to the ground, stopping him from stepping on the stairs and getting them all soaked again. But what none of them know is that the scientists have already turned off the sprinklers so there’s no chance of them getting wet. Still, the new monkey figures he gets punished if he tries to get a banana so just looks longingly at them instead.

Then a second monkey is taken out and replaced with another new one. The same thing happens when he sees the bananas, but this time the afore-mentioned monkey who is still staring longingly at the bananas now joins in to stop this newcomer with as much gusto as the others, even though he has absolutely no idea why.

Eventually all of the original monkeys are replaced one by one until an interesting thing happens: none of them makes any effort to get the bananas. Apparently it’s just not the done thing around those parts. No one knows why; that’s just the way it was, is and always will be. You just don’t go for the bananas.

I thought this was fascinating and it got me thinking about all the stuff I’m not supposed to do and have no clue why. Like why’s it bad to sleep in church? Why do I have to dress up smart to go into some churches?  Why don’t we go naked? And why when I want to follow my desires do lots of voices in my head say “Oh, you shouldn’t do that!” “That’s just not the done thing here!” “Stop that now!”

By the way, I don’t propose going to church naked – just to make that clear. It would be pretty dangerous to just do what you wanted all the time. But it feels like much of my life I’ve been doing what other people have wanted me to do or not doing what they don’t want me to do. And sometimes I just don’t know why. 

Did you ever think why the Ten Commandments didn’t work? Why did God give us such a hard set of rules when he knew we would never be able to keep them? And Jesus just made it worse when he said being angry at someone was as bad a murdering them, or thinking about sex with that extremely hot girl was a bad as doing it with her. Seems to me he was proving a point. Rules are rules, but without a relationship they mean nothing. Rules are just burdens without love, burdens we were never meant to carry.  

Maybe God made us to like bananas. Maybe once upon a time we weren’t meant to eat any bananas. Maybe now it’s OK that we do. One thing I know is this – God goes bananas over us and longs for us to feel the same about him. I learnt this summer that it’s OK to desire God. And in so doing I’ve been getting rid of the “shoulds,” “musts,” “have tos” that go on in my head about life. He takes me as I am. 

So it’s no longer monkey see, monkey do. I’m God’s monkey and I take my lead from him. He tells me which stairs are good to climb and which ones aren’t, which bananas are good to eat and which ones to avoid. Same goes for apples…but then that was another experiment!!

 

Pandora’s Cat?

OK, so I like melodrama. But it does really feel like my world has ended which, paradoxically it may seem, leads me to be quite happy – because since my world tumbled down, God and I have been looking inside some of those crumpled boxes. It’s been interesting to see what stories lie inside.

I met a doctor a few weeks ago and she commented that in her experience (she’s getting on a bit!) people are best to put their problems in a box and leave them on a shelf. It doesn’t do much good opening them up, she said.  ”Really,” I replied, “I think I disagree.”

These boxes don’t just go on a shelf and get forgotten – they become the building blocks of our lives, of our worlds. And they won’t just disappear, they can’t be ignored – problems scream at us to be solved. Problems desire a solution. 

I suspect Dr Holditin was a little scared to look inside such boxes in case they belonged to Pandora and all sorts of horrible things were released and she wouldn’t then be able to gather them all up again. I can see that being a problem. But what Dr Holditin doesn’t realise is that Pandora’s isn’t the only box that has something to teach us.

Erwin Schrodinger, a very clever physicist, also had a box in which he kept his cat. Now Erwin must not have liked his cat very much because he rather cruelly shot it whilst it was still in the box…or at least he tried to shoot it. You see, he never really knew if the cat was dead until he opened the box. Until then it was just a possibility, just as an alive cat was also a possibility. So, Erwin concluded, that until he opened the box the cat was both alive and dead. It wouldn’t be the gun that would kill the cat, but the fact that Erwin couldn’t resist having a peak (maybe he did care after all). Unfortunately though for kitty, Erwin’s curiosity got the better of him. You know the rest.

So what am I saying? Well, Schrodinger’s cat tells us that we are participants in the very thing that we are observing. By opening the box, we’re not just passively checking out what’s inside, we’re actually playing a part in whatever’s going on in there. Viz-a-viz, what we see very much depends on what we’re looking for. 

If I expect my problems to overwhelm me then they will. If I’m constantly looking for all sorts of nightmarish spectres from the past to haunt me, then that’s what I’ll see. Thankfully the flip side of that is that if I’m seeking the treasures contained in the darkness then I’ll be sure to find them. It all depends on what I’m looking for.

Eckhart Tolle tells the story of a beggar who’d been sitting on a box for years, when a stranger walked by. “Spare some change, mister?” mumbled the beggar. “I’ve nothing to give you,” said the stranger, “But why don’t you have a look inside the box?” “Oh, it’s just an old box – there’s nothing in there.” “Ever looked to find out?” asked the stranger. “What’s the point?” replied the beggar, “It’s empty.” “Why don’t you just have a look?” insisted the stranger. After some persuasion the beggar pried the lid open and there inside it was filled with gold. “See,” said the beggar, “I told you so.“

What the beggar and dear Dr Holditin obviously don’t know is that Pandora managed to close the lid to her box before one last thing could escape – Hope. There’s always hope in the midst of our problems. And as I look into the boxes scattered in front of me and see the stories I’ve been telling myself – stories of how I should look, who I should marry, what I should do, how I should behave – I see that these problems have only been pointing me to a better solution than the one I’ve been trying to build myself. 

Jesus said that if we build our lives on his stories then our lives will be unshakeable. Stories that say he loves me as I am, that I am more precious than all of creation, that he has everything I need, that he has been searching all day and night for me and is going to throw a great big party now he has found me. Now these are stories worth listening to.

So what is it that transforms our stories into his stories, that turns empty boxes into treasure chests, despair into hope?

 

I Used To Rule The World

OK, I admit it – I was wrong. The world didn’t end at noon on Tuesday.

It was more like 7.15pm.

Yes, my world has come tumbling down and I’m still trying to pick myself up from the wreckage. Little did I know as I was having dinner with friends on Sunday evening that such a throw-away comment like the world was going to end around noon on Tuesday would indeed come true, give or take 435 minutes or so.

It’s a funny thing your world tumbling down. Lots of boxes lying around. I had no idea my world was made up of so many. They’re everywhere. And you know what the really funny thing is – I really don’t like them. In fact, I hate them. All this time my world has been made up of these boxes and I hate them. I hate being boxed. And to think it was me who was stacking them up on top of each other, trying to build a life for myself, a life now collapsed around me.

But you know what? I’m glad. I am truly glad that my life has fallen to the ground. I now see it for what it is; I now no longer trust myself to build it back up again; and I think the alternative is now much more attractive, even though I don’t know much about it.

I have a sense though that I’m about to find out.

Musical interlude

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. But everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.” Jesus

 

Bye-Bye Pinocchio!

My friend, Miss WJB, posted some great quotes about questions in “Shell Searching.” You should check them out. Reminded me of some other questions I’ve been meaning to ask. For now a story as promised.

Back in May I phoned my friend Shawn and said we should hang out. So we did…in a log cabin somewhere in the Canadian Rockies. Before we left he said he wanted to explore how to become his “ideal self.” Funny…I had been thinking about the same thing, only from a different perspective. “Shawn,” I said, “It seems like trying to become my ideal self has got me into lots of bother up to now. I’m not sure I think it’s very good for me.”

So while we were up there we talked a lot about our “ideal selves,” the images we had constructed about what our lives should look like. I realised this had become my “idol self,” something I worshipped and desired to be like. It meant I wasn’t really free to be me…even if I did know what that would look like.

The altitude, it seems, got to me. I decided to make a little wooden puppet of myself, with little arms and legs, all controlled by little strings. Then I was going to burn it. I wanted to demonstrate in some way that I was putting to death my ideal self and the way it had controlled me. Voodoo, I decided, was the way forward!!!!

But just as I had finished making my little Pinocchio-self, I felt really strongly that that wasn’t something I needed to do (funnily enough) – it had already been taken care of. I didn’t need another scapegoat, something to purge me of all my shortcomings.

My ideal self was crucified on a cross. My ideal self was killed and buried. And my ideal self is now hidden with Christ in God. Every terrible thing I think I am, Jesus has taken away. Every good thing I think I should be, Jesus has made available to me.

We’re meant to live in the Great I Am, not the Great I Am Not.

So what happened my little puppet? Well, I threw him in the river and as he was swept away downstream, I was reminded of John O’Donohue’s words, “I would love to live as a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”

This was the beginning of letting go of my ideal self so I can now be free to discover all that God has made me to be. So let’s not confine ourselves to our own constructs and boundaries of who we think we should be. We’re so much more than that.

 

The Gospel According to Luke…(Skywalker)

I want to talk about the Dark Side. I can’t help it, it’s just so inviting: instant gratification, untold power, world domination. Who wouldn’t be tempted?

No one, apparently. Not even Anakin Skywalker.

It’s the usual story: Jedi meets boy, boy learns Jedi moves, boy gets seduced to the Dark Side. Why? He’s pissed that he couldn’t save his Mum of course – thinks he’s wasting his time with all the Jedi rules, would be better doing what he feels like. After all, the Prophecy said he’d be the greatest ever, and what else are prophecies there for other than to give us permission to go make them happen, right? Right?

Maybe not.

And yet it seems we’ve been doing just that ever since the day we acquired a taste for apples. Well who wants to wait to be the greatest ever when you can have it now? I’ll take the apple any day, thank you. And the price – what price? You never said anything about a price.

You see, here’s the deal (maybe): you really are the greatest ever, you just think you can do it on your own. Me too. By thinking such a thing, we’re very much left to do it on our own. Or that’s what we think anyway. The problem with the Dark Side is that it’s…dark. And that’s the price we pay – we lose the ability to see. We lose the Light.

Well thank God for Luke Skywalker, oh I mean, Jesus – thank God for Jesus!! The greatest ever Son of God, Son of Light. He wasn’t seduced to the Dark Side, he didn’t rush to grab it now; he waited, he trusted, he believed that the prophecy would come in its own time. And sure enough it did, though perhaps not as he had expected.

There on the cross, bloodied, bruised, in agony, Jesus lost sight of his Father and was plunged into darkness: “Father, why have you forsaken me?” Did God really walk away, turn his back on Jesus? Or was it just the way Jesus saw it, the way we’ve been seeing it all this time too? Wouldn’t it be nice to know that wasn’t the case?

It’s not!! The Light has come!!

Somehow, and I really don’t know how, whatever Jesus did on the cross means that you never have to do life on your own again…ever. And you never have to try to be the greatest. With God you already are. There’s no one like you. Just open your eyes, see the Light.

“Your eye is a lamp, lighting up your whole body. If you live wide-eyed in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and mistrust, your body is a dank cellar. Keep your eyes open so you don’t get musty and murky.” Jesus (Luke 11:34-36, The Message)

 

A Snail’s Pace – the answer!

So my Dad, bless his heart, trailed through YouTube. Thanks Dad!!