You Are Not Alone

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.

There are times when I might wish I were alone. Oh, to capture a few moments by myself away from the noise of people who want or need something from me. But I usually want back into my life in a few minutes, back to dealing with whatever it was I wanted a break from.

We aren't meant to be alone, and few of us want to be alone. Even on the cross, Jesus knew the loneliness of death: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It is also in that moment that Christ bore all our real loneliness, our alienation from life and God.

But we don't need to be alone. What we need is to not only develop a better sense of God's ever-presence to us, but the need for our our ever-presence to others.

You see, in those moments I seek for myself, I am not seeking alone-ness. I am seeking solitude, which is simply a way of using our environment to create the conditions that allows our personalities to reemerge, without the radiation and distraction of other peoples' influences. And in solitude - free from the immediate influence from others - we can see them as they really are: people who need our ever-presence, and people who need our prayers and empathy.

Take those moments when you are alone, and make them moments of solitude: rediscover yourself. If you can do that, you will never be lonely again.

The Ressurection and the Life

I am bringing my blog back from the dead. Hopefully soon, I can explain to you how and why that happened. But for now, I am simply rejoicing in the fact that I did it, and that I have a good reason for it.

So what should be the first thing that I will talk about? I think I've picked the cleverest topic of all, after such a long absence – ressurection, or if you will, life after death. I've been reading about Near Death Experiences tonight; and what is striking about them is that they show no religious preference. Atheists who neither believed in nor wanted an afterlife are as prone to them as the most devout believer.

A common facet of the Near Death Experience is the approach of a being of all-encompassing love. And while I haven't had that particular experience, I have had the experience of that all loving being, once a long time ago when my wife was pregnant. Even though I was not a believer, not someone looking for supernatural comfort, I got it - and I got it from a being whose love was so complete that it was both gentle (like a warm blanket) and so fierce that it could swallow you whole.

For a while, in my life and in this blog, I was sometimes hesitant to give that all-loving being a name. Oh, I was never hesitant in church, where I sang and played. But a bit fearful and hesitant of offending people outside church who are not Christians, I would avoid saying it – Jesus.

I've learned not to be, because I've learned that a God whose love is limitless denies nothing about any of these religions that is good. Nor does he deny anything good about a person who has no religion.

On the contrary, Jesus represents every dream, every hope any Muslim ever dared dream about Heaven – every great metaphor Muslims know for Heaven, it is all that and more, in the name of He who indeed is The Beneficent, The Merciful! Jesus is the fulfillment of every hope for reincarnation that any Hindu has ever had, since in fact he IS the reincarnation, and the life – a true rebirth into joy that in fact is the penultimate return of the soul made clean and whole. And He IS the very Nirvana, the enlightenment Buddhists seek.

He is NOT a denial of these pure and good things. He is their very fulfillment, the way in which this broken world meets its most noble aspirations. We dream big things, but we do not often have a way of getting there. Love – love itself, in name, is that way.

I've found the way, and it has been to my great joy. It is said the way is narrow, and perhaps it is. But I do believe the way is found at the conjunction where all the roads meet.

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be as well. Matthew 6:21