Good stuff at stevenfranssen.com
I stumbled across a great blog by a musician and Christian. He has the cohones to admit that Jesus is the way - the principle by which we'll move towards wisdom, and the Light towards which we haltingly walk. If, that is, we've had the cataracts in our eyes ripped away by painful experience, or spent enough time in nature to know there is a God. More likely, some combination of both.
Franssen's article "Convincing People" hit me hard -- it was advice I've long resisted. I really appreciate it.
Since my first experiences with the Numinous, I've come running back to town, eager to share what happened. All this did was mark me as an unreliable but occasionally amusing person. It was so painful to see over and over the same expression on the faces of different people: the sense that they'd pegged me.
And then, I spent years masking my continued search for God behind psychology. I didn't want to see that expression any more. I wanted people to understand that there is something more. This led down all kinds of highways and byways...many books and lectures. I regarded it as a good thing that I could converse with Godless people just by naming things differently. So instead of Jesus, I'd talk about "the archetype of the sacrified god." We could all play in the pool of philosophical ideas and have a good time.
This is unsatisfying too, in the end. When you feel the breath of the Creator, you want to make expressions of wonder to it. And to converse about it...about that special feeling. However, I think that for every one person who feels that way, there are 700 who are ready to admit that the human mind is amazing and subtle, and to talk for hours about philosophy...and yet firmly close the door with pursed lips when we get down to the felt presence of God.
I've spent a lot of energy in that way. I want to repurpose that energy now. Anyway, so it was in this context I read "Convincing People," which begins:
When you discover the truth about something for yourself, when you’ve tested it through and it holds water, your first reaction in the early going is to turn to someone else and tell them everything.
Ah, jeesh. Yeah.
Maybe it’s sheer enthusiasm, though you learn quickly that most social environments don’t tolerate exuberance.
This is interesting. I'm a dynamo of enthusiasm, and, frankly, it doesn't do that much for me with other people. I like the way Franssen phrases it here...I never considered the environment itself being hostile to the enthusiastic person. This raises other questions in me: does my awkwardness in the world stem from ignorance about contextual rules in the social sphere? And I use the word ignorance pointedly. Because if I better knew those rules, I'd be even less likely to follow them. So I'm inclined to ignore, which means I don't see, which in the end, is what I've chosen.
I didn't know this though.
Maybe you’re driven to tell someone else because you need some validation. This one will linger a long while until you take care of it.
Especially at first, this was the case. When hints and glimmers are all you have, you want to use the recognition and excitement in the eyes of others to bolster your apprehension, then dive back into the work.
Finally, I realized I'd never get it. I'd get, at most, some kind of general noise of approval like "well, the human experience is certainly manifold!" which is a nice way of saying go and play outside with your toys. So I had to become independent of validation, and I achieved this by meditating longer and with more regularity. This creates a strong battery.
Franssen points out that the people who came together around you didn't do so because they signed up for your truth project. Fair enough. I have this weird idea though (maybe from my mom?) that the truth project is the vital aspect of existence. When I think of my friends, I imagine them busy with their lives, mostly...but I think that this work of "the life" is predicated on some earlier moment of found truth. And the things that grow do so because they are being continually infused with new evidence of that prior truth. When things wither and fall away it is because they aren't in alignment anymore. It might be a bad sign, or it might be good. Friends help us work all this out. If a friend says "guess what - this is the answer!" I will remain sure of one thing: I am glad that he searches, and I rejoice in his moment of finding. And by gosh, I want to hear all about this particular answer, because if it seems good, I want to grow by his experience.
Franssen points out that this kind of community is one you have to find and cultivate bit by bit. Actually, I've done that. My friends are few, far-flung, and true. We can speak after an interval of years and pick up where we left off. True, above I was complaining that some friends won't admit to the reality of the Divine...but more and more of them do. And that speeds us along and saves our energy.
Which can then be put into further contemplating the Divine! Nice! Anyway thats my wish and more and more, my reality.
This passage expresses why it happened that the social environment because less friendly to enthusiasm and earnest inquiry:
People don’t want to be convinced, anyway. That requires a kind of humility that we lost in the 20th century, when our culture went from folkish into neurotic. Folk and Christian pathways gave people lots of encouragement to turn to the truth. Now, in the digital age, everyone is on a lonely journey. Most everyone spends more time harvesting information from a device (and having their every movement harvested from them) than they spend time working the land, working in a factory, or in face to face conversation with other people. Think of all the social cues we gained from one another when we were folkishly similar and went to gathering places to spend the hours together. People can’t stand each other anymore. It’s not all lost. Something is coming to a head. But the road ahead is rough.
Wow...I grew up mindlessly chanting that diversity is our strength. Never a thought about what some relative degree of homogeneity gives us: it means when we speak to each other we ring chords in the other person, because there are vast strands of shared worldview.
But today we talk and everyone is affronted, insulted, finding things "problematic," or worse. This world is fraying.
To admit that cheers me up. :).
And this...preach:
The intellectual arguments you get into with the stubborn person have nothing to do with the intellect. The person is afraid of living. Why spend your breath on someone who is afraid of life? Go live your life! That is the best example. Why mammy people with the redpill? Why be so self-consciously explicit with those who have one foot in the grave? The struggle to life is greater than them. The dimensions of your expression lie in your artistic, civic, and spiritual fulfillment – not in bringing Bubba back from the brink. Instead, try walking around like the energetic force you are and see who shocks to life and who doesn’t – but keep on walking. Walk further into the mystery.
It's been real easy for me to regard people as "projects" to be improved. What a dumb thing. I walked around with an apprehension that I knew better, and spent countless chunks of energy wondering how to deliver a message just right that the person will get it.
To this now I apply Psalms 81:12 "So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels." That is, God gave me up to this wasteful idea, because I preferred it over Him. And only by flogging this idea to death could I understand this pointlessness of it. Franssens expression above makes me laugh and also say "damn straight."
And here:
You must love the truth more than you love the death poses others have taken up in anticipation of their annihilation. Don’t be seduced!
Yes. The truth is a lonely road, but the food is so filling. I have a few people in life who exude that "abandoned" feeling. What can I do for them? They feel misery and darkness, but they won't undertake the search. They remain inert. They propagate their own inertness into my inertness should I continue to sit with them.
I won't talk anymore about "theories" of God...constructing intellectual castles about alternate explanations. No. The truth of our Creator is settled, and energy should be used wisely. It should be used to discover what to do next. To cleave close to His breath. To listen, to ponder, and ultimately to do.
Anyway, it's a great blog with many thoughts. This is just one.