Of Faith, Life, and Paradigm Shifts

This is a continuation from my post in October, and it’s a long one, so my apologies up front.

After my conversation with my friend, I decided to take my friend’s advice, and prayer the prayer beads using Buddhist prayer and breathing. I did a quick online search for Buddhist prayers, and the first one I found was “Om mani padme hum”, which translates to “Hail to the Jewel in the Lotus. I had to grin at the conspirings of the universe, because this instantly reminded me of how in a previous blog, I had described the ‘origami beauty’ of God. I thought it quite fitting, then, to use this prayer as I breathed and meditated my way around the beads.

I lay in bed, picked up one of two sets of beads that I had (the other is a hematite set I made myself and had my priest bless). BACKGROUND: This set I’d picked up to use had been given to me, and wqs a Roman Catholic St Jude set with green beads (my favorite color), but the person who gave them to me was not who he had initially claimed to be (a reverend, “with faculties in the Catholic Church”), and I later learned was a profound and grandiose liar. When I realized the truth of his life, I confronted him, and he stated that he needed his fantasies to feel special, and that I had ruined his life by calling him out on his litany of lies. He (quite literally, I believe) cursed me because of it. He then informed me that he’d given me the beads because St Jude was the patron saint of lost causes — like myself.

I felt that, while I didn’t particularly want his former gift, since it was given in deceit, I was very fond of the color, so I went against my gut and kept the set, but it remained in a drawer for a long time. Over a year later (back in August), I ended up disassembling the rosary, and making it into Anglican prayer beads, without the St Jude medallion, and put the remaining beads on a cord as a bracelet. I then started using this set and wearing the bracelet a lot.

So I’m lying in bed, rosary-cum-prayer-beads in hand and a fitting Buddhist prayer in mind. I fully expected to fall asleep praying the beads, as I was sure I’d relax into unconsciousness as I breathed meditatively. Boy was I wrong.

I started with an “our father” on the cross, followed a personal request to God for guidance on the invititory, and started on the first week (a sequence of seven beads; [trivia:Roman Catholics use rosaries that are arranged in sequences of 10 beads called “decades”]) with “Om mani padme hum.” I only got onto the second bead in the week before I felt a sense of unease, of dark. I wasn’t relaxing, and I could swear someone was standing over me next to my bed, menacing. I felt hatred coming from this area, and I felt–strongly– that I need to stop using these beads, and start over with the ones I had made for myself out of hemiteit. I almost heard a voice, feminine and separate from the malevolent force, saying, “These beads aren’t for you; yours are.”

So I put the green set down post haste, and picked up the set I had made for myself. As soon as I touched them, I felt the presence of God, and I felt the malevolent force/spirit pull away as if forced back by a spreading dome of protection. I felt much more relieved, but still unsure, and still somewhat depressed as I prayed Our Father again. But this time, the personal prayer was deeper in meaning somehow. The connection I felt with Life, the Universe, and Everything (42–sorry, couldn’t resist, lol) was stronger. Now, normally when I use the prayer beads, my thoughts readily wander, and it takes will to keep on track. But this time, I felt my feelings wander, and my thoughts became detached, as if I was witnessing myself pray.

At first, it was a feeling not unlike plodding. I felt unsure, uncertain, like I was taking careful cautious steps. First bead: Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Om mani padme hum. Second bead: Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Om mani padme hum. Third bead. When I got to the eighth bead, the first cruciform, I followed the same in-hold-out-pray pattern. And the feeling changed. I felt such a feeling of love, I started crying. I had to take two breaths before continuing on.

The second week of beads was no longer plodding, but flowed smooth and deliberate, charting a course to something. In-hold-out-prayer-move. In-hold-out-prayer-move. The second cruciform gave me an was an electric shock when I got to it, and a stronger feeling of love than I felt with the first cruciform. The right side of my body (I was holding the beads in my right hand) started buzzing, but didn’t hurt, as if it was feeling the coursing of a tremendous amount of energy. Tears were still sliding down my face, but they were not the tears of sorrow and self-pity I’d shed earlier that day.

I stepped off onto the third week of beads with a bounce. Each week bead was a thrill to join and share a few seconds of worship before I met the new one. The third cruciform rendered to me a feeling of much more subtle, but extremely deep love–like a high mountain lake. It pushed me forward, into the fourth week of unknowing.

Uncertainty predominated in this week of beads. Not the anxiety associated with a confused unknowing, but the quizzical kind you get when you don’t know what’s on the other side of the door, but you know it’s nothing bad. When I reached the fourth cruciform bead, I felt such an impression of closing, of ending–of death. But the death of one long loved and long lived, content with their life and their place in the cosmos.

Traditionally, I would now move down back to the invititory bead and finish out the prayers on the cross. However, I felt rather than heard a whisper from the still-present protective feminine presence, “Go around again, you’re not done yet; illumination awaits you.” Praying the next (fifth) week of beads, I felt a sense of release, of letting go, and reforming. Then I felt the same same feelings I had on the first round of prayer, but it was clearer, sharper this time. The first cruciform was again that deep sense of love, but this time, I felt the love of a mother kissing her child’s forehead as he lay sleeping; I can still feel where her lips touched. The next week gave me the assurance given by youth and the protection afforded by loving parents. The next cruciform was the electric shock of a true love’s kiss, and the orgasmic feeling of true and utter completion they bring to your soul. Then the week following was lost in the bliss that was brought from that, the warm glow of a deep and loving relationship. I felt the warm touch of a grandmother’s hand when I stopped on the next cruciform, and the deep but subtle love only given by one long lived. And the last week was greeted again by death, but this time there was no fear. It was a sense of completion, of joy and love, of having broken down and built up again, and willing to seek the next adventure and to move through the last doorway to the the joy of infinity.

Now this time, She gave me the calm but knowing smile of a wise mentor, and I knew I could end the prayers. And I felt her presence much stronger, and she exuded the presence of my beloved grandmother (long since passed), and I felt the color light blue associated with her; it was like the Blessed Virgin Mary, my grandmother, and the power of the love and protection of every mother since time immemorial were all together in this same presence with me. So my prayer on the invititory bead was a prayer of gratitude for being given the gift of seeing even a small portion of God’s true shape: a truly awesome beauty, ever changing, but yet always constant.

And I wept with joy and adoration.

Angel, derived from latin angelus, Greek angelos, and possibly Mycenaean a-ke-ro, is the English word used to translate the Hebrew mal’ākh, meaning “messenger”. We see this word throughout the canon of scripture and in ancient writings on spirituality and worship. In order to be a messenger, you need three components: a message, obviously, but perhaps more importantly, a sender and a receiver.

It is this last component that we (I) tend to forget when we think of a messenger, especially if we are the receivers of the message. We tend to think of ourselves as a passive participant of a deliberate action. After all someone else created the message, and someone else conveyed it without my input. But we forget that to receive is a deliberate act. We could refuse the message, to even hear it. We could reject the message if we disagree with it. And we can harken to the message. In each way, the choice of our response to the message, both the contents and its mere existence, is entirely our choice.

Returning back to depictions in scripture, angels are often described as milling about, singing praises and giving glory to God. This seems somewhat benign and perhaps counter to the other group to which angels are ascribed to, that of the heavenly host–the army of God. One description brings to mind peace and tranquility, the other its complete opposite. And yet, I think the juxtaposition of these two descriptions is note than apt for a messenger of God.

I take you on this academic tour in order to convey, hopefully, a deeper understanding of what I myself realized tonight. One last piece of academic thought that might help fit these pieces together: in the ancient history of the Near and Middle East, there was considered no distinction between the messenger and the sender. In fact, there was so little distinction between them, that in the Hebrew bible, the phrase ‘angel of the LORD’ could equally mean, and be translated as, either a messenger or the LORD themself! So when ‘an angel of the LORD walked before them’, this was understood as to mean simply, ‘the LORD walked before them’. Wherever an angel was, so there too was God.

Many of us have heard that there are angels in our midst. The people that help us when we need it: paramedics, police, the random stranger who passes by a broken down car and helps. We know when we need these angels. And we recognize them. But do we recognize those angels that appear when we don’t know we need them? How can we receive a message if we aren’t expecting one, or told that what we just were handed was a message?

And so, in my rambling way, I take you to the fact I realized. Angel=God, heavenly host=army of God=praisers of God. Therefore, fighting for God is praising God, but more importantly, praising God is fighting for God. And if there is no distinction (semantically speaking, not necessarily literally or theologically) between an angel and God themself, when we encounter an angel, we encounter God. So maybe when someone unexpectedly tells you that you are more capable than you give yourself credit for, God just planted themself in front of you and gave you what you needed, even if you didn’t know it. And that seemingly simple comment was a way for that person to show that they recognized the image of Christ present in you, and that became a moment of praise and giving glory to God: God has fought the dark on your behalf, and continues to fight for you, for that is how God praises and gives glory to you.

That’s a powerful, and extremely humbling, realization. The God of All deigns to fight for you, praise you, showing within you that which is, and has always been, and will always be, part of God. I am not just a child of God, but part of God, and God loves us enough to continue to fight on our behalf.

So when the darkness comes for you, and you feel alone, and someone says to you, even if they use different words, that you are worthy to continue trying, to continue to be, see the angel in your life, and recognize the message from God, however you understand Them. God continues to fight the darkness on your behalf, and the angels in your life sing praises to you for continuing one more step, one more day. For you have God within you.

If that’s not Love, I don’t know what is.

Driving to Biloxi today, lamenting a budding friendship suddenly severed and my stupendous efforts (read: idiotic and embarrassingly counter-productive) to repair it (because I’ve been under the assumption that I did something wrong), I contemplated the concepts of love and worthiness. There are a lot of people who absolutely know that they are worthy of love from other people; you hear it all the time in self-help books, editorials, rom-coms, and throughout seasons of Will & Grace (old and new). Yet some of those people, and a whole host out of everyone else, question if they’re worthy of God’s love. They do this for multitudes of reasons, from being in a bad mood over rotten luck, to having cancer, or losing a child. This is the crux, I believe, of what ministry is supposed to be: reaching those people to assure them of God’s love, and showing that to them. But more on that later.

What I realized was, I am the opposite of these people. I absolutely know that I’m worthy of, and indeed, that I have, God’s love. I’ve had more than one encounter with Them to know that They love me, despite my flaws (probably because of those flaws–and I’m starting to think those flaws were put there purposely, but that’s also another post). But I constantly question if I’m worthy of another person’s love. I have enough self-doubt in that department to make Marvin (of Hitchhiker’s infamy) seem positively… well, positive.

I constantly question if I’m annoying a friend (and I have few of those, and no real bosom friends to speak of), or asking myself if they only like me out of pity. I read into ever look, every expression, word choice, and tone of voice, and I drop through the floor quicker than Elphaba at the very hint of what I perceive to be any hint of derision or annoyance. Which, many times, causes me to become a self-fulfilling prophet, causing annoyance by my being weird attempting to not annoy them. (Yes, I am an alien masquerading as a human, with only the most rudimentary understanding of human behavior and emotion– or so it would seem, from how I act. Oh the joys of depression, anxiety, and personality disorders.)

And my realization today was of the absolute logical fallacy of my question and belief. If I am worthy of the love of God, Creator Extraordinaire, to Whom my very breath I owe, how am I not worthy of the love of everyone else? Of course, the answer is a simple “I am worthy of their love”…

…but try convincing my heart of that simple Truth.

For those who may not be aware, I have major depressive disorder (among other mental quirks/disorders), and it’s managed by medication (mostly). Well, for the last couple weeks, I’ve been on a down cycle, and it really hit me last Monday. I was moping around my house all day, occasionally crying, and feeling like I was losing faith in God. Or that I was losing my belief in God. Which for one that hopes to be a priest, is not a good thing.

I was fretting over not having any luck finding a job, and fearful that my congregation was in danger of shutting down due to low attendance. I ended up asking a friend to pray for me to help me me keep faith. He chatted online with me, and our conversation ended up helping me articulate what I was feeling:

Me: Can I ask a favor? Your prayers to help me keep faith.

Him: Absolutely! Always! You are loved! I fear my depression has been feeding yours! You are destined for something greater, and will accomplish and succeed in ministry in so many ways.

Me: No, your depression hasn’t affected mine, I can assure you. Mine is entirely self-centered. I’ve just felt untethered all day, and it’s not a comfortable feeling.

Him: And that is ok. Allow yourself to feel your feelings. Be gentle and gracious with yourself.

Me: I’m normally so used to being able to at least imagine the end result of a path, and I can’t even do that any longer, let alone see it. And it scares me, and I don’t know how to prepare for the future, how to take care of what needs to be done in the meantime, how to ground myself. I guess I don’t really know how to trust, and that’s what I need more than anything, to trust that God will help and provide, guide and comfort.

Him: It is a process, and each day of our lives we are forced to learn to trust more. It is not a destination. God has been described as the Cloud of Unknowing. Entering into the unknown is never knowable. I have noticed in my life that the people God calls are insecure, want to have control, and are prone to spiritual masochism.

Me: I feel like I’ve learned to accept that I don’t need to know what God is anymore; that, theologically, I’m happy to enter that “sacred unknowing”, as Barbra Brown Taylor calls it. But when it comes to my personal life, I’m still so guarded and want to control everything.

Him: Yep…now you need to learn that you don’t need to know what the outcome is either.

Me: I feel like this is going to be the hardest lesson I’ll ever learn, and it honestly scares the crap out of me. I’ve told you what my biggest fear is: being alone in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean, and that’s what I feel like I am right now.

Him: Honey, you and me both. I am relearning that each and every day of my life. It is all about the journey. But you are not alone. God is holding on to you. Your friends and family are holding on to you.

Me: It’s hard to feel that, to be honest. I mean, I know you care for me, and want to help me. But something is basically screaming in my ear that this lesson isn’t about learning to trust those closest to me, because I already do, but to learn to trust God. And for a person that hates roller coasters, I get the distinct impression I’m being thrown on one just to be shown that I’ll emerge safely on the other side.

Him: But God is working through those closest to you. When you trust their love and care, that is trusting God. Remember, God is in everything.

Me: I don’t know what it is, if it’s the Holy Ghost instructing me, or if it’s just me being scared, but I feel like I need to somehow “let go” of everything I know that anchors me, and let this tornado pick me up and toss me across the rainbow, lol. It’s one of the strongest feelings I’ve ever had, but it’s so difficult to describe or pin down. Not that I need to physically do anything or go anywhere, but do something completely internal.

Him: I think you are on to something. I think you are on the brink of a spiritual paradigm shift.

Me: And if the trepidation is any indication, it’s the biggest yet. I think I’m being shown the broadside of the 2×4, lol. I just need to wake up and discern what it is.

Him: Your spirituality is being stretched to go beyond the rational. You need to translate you mental cloud of unknowing into inner cloud of unknowing.

Me: I’m wondering if it’s tied to the brief realization or thought I had yesterday driving back from EFM. That God is even much larger than just the framework upon which the cosmos is hung, but that God is literally every particle and energy, and God’s conciousness is the collective consciousness of all persons and things, that we are God already, just a small part of the whole. It was a mind-blowing second when I saw it, a whirlwind of colors and sensations.

Him: YES!!!!!!!! We just don’t realize what that means or looks like yet. I am finding that I NEED to spend more time in contemplative prayer and meditation. That is where we connect with the Ground of Being.

Me: It almost feels like now that I’ve seen that, I’m being told I’m ready for the next mystery, and that involves more trust than I’ve ever given. I need to learn better meditative techniques.

Him: Suggestion: instead of trying to pray the Anglican prayer beads with words, pray them with breathing. Breath is Spirit. Buddhist meditation practice is a great way to enter into contemplative prayer. Inhalations and exhalations. Keep focus on your breathing. If something else pops into your head, recognize it, let it go and go back to focusing on breathing. Move to each bead with breathing in through your nose, and exhaling through your mouth.

I felt calmer after talking to my friend, but still largely untethered. So, I decided to try his suggestion, and as I lay in bed that night, I picked up a set of prayer beads I had. My next blog will be dedicated to that experience; it’s almost beyond words to describe what happened.

Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last.
-Luke 23:46, NRSV

Scrolling through Facebook today, of all days, invariably brings to mind death and everything associated with it: loss, tragedy, grief, and fear. It’s difficult to contemplate some matters without trepidation, and the cessation of existence as we know it is certainly one of them.

For the most part, I’m not scared of death. To quote my father, “I love life, and death doesn’t worry me. It’s that transition period in between that worries me.” In that regard, I’m like my father. Mostly because I don’t want to feel pain when I die. One of the downsides to an overly active imagination and an empathic spirit is the unfortunate abilities to contemplate, and feel, the most grisly of accidents, particularly when watching one in a show or movie. (Final Destination is, therefore, a series of movies I refuse to watch.)

Realistically, however, the thing that terrifies me more than anything is… nothing. I mean that literally. That niggling question at the back of my head everytime I pray, worship, or think of my own mortality: “What if there is nothing after I die? That I’ve been wrong by having faith all my life?” To be sure, many books have been written on this topic, from all sides, and theories abound that proclaim that this is the central question that gave rise to many aspects of religion. Existential threats are the strongest blows against us, in my opinion. They can cause many, even of stout faith, to waver and lose hold of their rod of salvation.

So this verse is of particular importance to me. The man and God whom I follow, who desired us to emulate his walk and faith, shows faith for two things here: that his, and by extension, our, spirit will exist after bodily functions have ceased, and that there is someone to take custody of said being. The first is comforting, in that snoozing-by-the-fire-while-buzzed-on-wine feeling. It simply confirms my faith, and reduces the fear that the niggling question brings to a barely discernible voice lost at the back of a crowd. The second is the most awe-inspiring, especially as I meditate on it today.

Our spirit is the most precious thing to us. Hence the reason that existential threats are threats at all. And here we see someone of such devotion, of such faith, that he is not just willing to hand over his most precious belonging to someone else (even if it is God), he seems to do so with knowledge and assurance that his spirit will be protected, loved, and allowed to flourish even, and ever, more.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. -W. B. Yeates

Dreams, so precious to us, that to give them to someone, to share it with them, is tantamount to rolling out the red carpet. We do so reservedly, cautiously, and with ample trepidation. And rightly so, for who among us hasn’t had someone sneer at or mishandle our dreams? How much more so is the value on our very being? Whom can we trust to care for such precious cargo, to handle it without damaging it, and to love it enough to display it, and not just hide it away? Jesus showed that he trusted the ground of our being, our God, as worthy of such an office. And that is truly humbling, and fills me with unspeakable love, knowing that I, too, have someone that will care my most precious being. Of all things to be written in the Gospels, this simple verse shows an example of such faiths such devotion, that, upon due reflection, generates truly righteous faith in turn.

Thank God for the example of Jesus, to quiet overthinking minds, and to show calm devotion and faith. Thank God that I now know, and not just hope, that I will exist, and be protected, after my earthly existence has ended. Thank God for God.

God, into your hands, I commend my soirit.

I wrote this 7 months ago on reddit:

I’m a socially liberal person — with an old soul. I converted to Mormonism at 14, and I liked it’s simplistic, reverential Sacrament Services. Congregational sermons interspersed with simple hymns and the all important Sacrament — the blessing of the bread and water — with an open form invocation and benediction. 

It was the quiet reverence and insistence that prayer remain open form and from the heart, to be spoken as the Holy Ghost directed, that I found appealing. While I questioned the hypocritical practice of the Sacramental and Baptismal prayers being recited word-for-word (and repeated if even one word was wrong), I didn’t let it faze me too much. I was taught that the church was the Restoration of what Christ established, and that blind ritualistic attitude was never part of the Early Church.

When I eventually left the church, I spent years searching for a new one that had the same quiet reverence. Due to my belief that prayer should be from the heart, and not scripted, I resisted the call to The Episcopal Church. Yet I found myself back again when I couldn’t find anything else.

After talking to the priest one day (a former Lutheran excommunicated for being gay) about my resistence to rote prayer. He humbly explained its benefit. He viewed the liturgy, particularly his role in administering the Eucharist  as “physical prayer”, and the set words as protections — particularly to ensure that the priest doesn’t deviate his flock with encroaching, of well intentioned, heresy.

Having always considered myself an intellectual, I did some research to learn more, and found, much to my surprise, that forms of liturgy have existed since the 1st Century. This changed my view. If liturgy was hood enough for the Apostles, why should I reject it. I spent days reading the BCP, its history, information on rites and their histories from around the Church Catholic, and engaged in personal prayer. I even made myself an Anglican rosary, in order to try this “physical prayer”. And I kept coming back to that congregation.

The Holy Spirit moved me, and broke the walls I had developed. Yes, prayer was to be personal, heart felt, and moving. But the recited prayers were not prevented from being incorporated into each congregant’s personal heart. The order was there, and we all knew what would come next, allowing us to focus our thoughts and individual meditation on it. There was no confusion or uncertainty of what would be discussed.

Most of all, I fell in love with the ceremony. The order, the procession, the clockwork movements weren’t done because it’s always been done that way. Like a re-enlistment or commissioning ceremony, the pattern ensured everything was present, and everything was done with singleness of of purpose. Every movement, every word, every sound was done in devotion to our Godhead.

I was baptized and confirmed a month ago at age 32, and yesterday I was an altar server for the first time. I was nervous and felt off-key a bit (it was a last minute decision by my priest), so I didn’t take the personal time to get myself mentally prepared. I discharged myself well, or so I was told, but it didn’t hit me until today the true awesomeness of such simple service and ceremony. Even as an Elder in the LDS church, I never felt the gravity of the Sacrament. But holding the chalice, I felt (even belatedly) the holiness in the wine and the words, “The Blood of Christ. The Cup of Salvation.” I started crying at home today when I realized it.

Ceremony, communion, devotion, reverence, and love. This is what I’ve found in liturgy. This is what I’ve found in myself.

In Mormonism, the Trinity, at least as mainline Christianity understands it, does not exist. Instead, there exists the Godhead: three real “flesh and bone”, perfect physical and glorified persons sharing a common purpose, shared power, and joint authority. (For reference, we mere mortals are “flesh and blood”, imperfect physical beings, and won’t be gloried until the Final Resurrection–and even then, only perfect Mormons will have that honor.) So not three personages in one God, but three Persons in one Office. (Kind of like the collective presidency of the Swiss Federal Council.) And yes, Jesus was white (“someone had a dream, and painted an exact portrait of Him! It must be True, because it was another True Blue Mormon who dreamed it!”), and God the Father had a long white beard. We all existed before we came to this earth, God and Christ devised a plan for us to also earn perfected physical bodies and return to live with the Godhead, yadda yadda yadda. God demanded unyielding justice: sin of any type cannot enter God’s presence, and because of our inability to rid ourselves of sin without aid, God sent Christ to absorb our sin and give us mercy. (Penal substitution theory, for those of you keeping track at home; more on this on a later post.)

As you can see, I had a very clear vision of what and who God the Father was. Everything fit in neat little legalistic, ontological holders. I had an answer for almost everything. I KNEW who God was. Even when I left LDS, I still held onto most of my understanding of the nature of God. And then I met Fr. Errol and The Episcopal Church…. Really, what were these new words I heard during sermons, and read about online in TEC forums and articles? “Ground of our being”, “the God who surpasses all understanding”, even references to feminine divine? And let’s not forget this totally irrational concept of 3-in-1 and 1-in-3. Nope, not making sense, need to dive into scholarly works, engage in deep, long discussions of words, translations, philosophies, and interpretations. Thank God for wine to help keep Fr. Errol and I sane on those nights when the discussion went until 2, 3 in the morning.

I started, slowly, ever so slowly, to loosen my concrete assumptions of my Creator. And I started seeing God as not a person, not someone I could walk up to and shake His hand, but more of something much larger. And then it whacked me upside the head. I didn’t just loosen my concrete assumptions of what God was, I abandoned them wholesale. In its place was… nothing. Oh good Lord, I was scared. For one of the first times in my life, I didn’t have an answer. I was the one who knew things, the one coworkers went to when they couldn’t find the answer. I was the cocky (but still introverted) teenager who knew I was better than you, because I knew the Truth of God. (God, please forgive me for my arrogance, pride, and conceit in my youth!) Now, I was wading into deeper water, and the bottom suddenly fell away. Struggling to stay afloat with an upended worldview. It took more discussion, lots of prayer, and plenty on meditation and music to realize that I didn’t need to have an anchor. I was struggling to find that rod of stability that was my surety. But I was clinging to it too tightly, and searching for it too frantically to initially realize that God was keeping me afloat, and my rod was trying to weight me down. Gradually, I calmed, and contemplated, and made Fr. Errol cry for joy when I told him I no longer knew God–but I now could feel God.

I’ve started formulating a rather vague understanding of the nature of God, totally indescribable, but only an inkling of understanding is present within metaphors and riddles. The cosmic life force that holds galaxies together, the sentience of the universe attempting to understand itself, the fundamental forces that bind subatomic particles to each other and give order to chaos. These are my answers now. And to them, I add imagery given by my partial understanding of quantum reality: quantum reality is the theory that the universe, in all four discernible dimensions (x, y, z, and time), is quantized, discrete, countable. There is a smallest measure of space and time. Much like the warp and weft of the finest fabrics, there’re spots where nothing exists. Not empty space, but truly nothing. And we know there is more mass and energy in this universe, holding us together than we can see, touch, or record. So, could God be “dark matter” or “dark energy”? Is God this force that permeates everything, space, me, you, my dresser drawers, and sits between the warp and the weft of the universe, holding everything together? It makes sense. After all, I’ve come to realize that God is so incomprehensible, that we cannot even conceive of the questions to ask about God’s nature. Much like literal nothing, if we were to experience God as we are, we would go mad. So I’ve come to classify God as that which inhabits the space between spaces. It’s as good an explanation as any, and why not? I can park my answers wherever I need them to be for now, and pick up the questions God provides as my life raft. May I never lose the wonder I felt when I imagined God like this.

So, time to explain the reason behind the odd title and URL. Grasshopper is pretty basic, truth be told; I have that nickname as the protege of my priest and mentor. Think Karate Kid: “Wax on, wax off”. As Miyagi called Daniel his Grasshopper, with much to learn, so do I. It’s an stuttering journey of intellectual discoveries, spiritual awakening, and theological enlightenment, but it’s building up to a hopefully great journey.

As for the paradigm shifts, that’s gonna take a little bit more to explain, and several posts will be about individual mind blown events I’ve had over the course of the last year. But, the shorter version I shall elucidate at present. I was raised to believe in God, but my family didn’t attend church until my stepmother came into our lives, so my younger years were decidedly lacking in any type of Sunday School or religious indoctrination. My stepmother (whom I call Mom) was raised Roman catholic, so we attended a few masses over the years from my age 8 to 12. It was my tween and teen years that were given the wonderful news of Another Testament of Jesus Christ, and His Coming to America. Yep, we joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, aka Mormonism. The lifestyle, the confidence, the strict answers with little in the way of mystery or gray areas enticed us all. But it was here that I learned about Christianity in any type of depth. And all during my most impressionable and formative years. I was a True Believer.

However, I eventually stopped attending the LDS Church as by my early twenties I was no longer confident in the veracity of the claims of the Church, and most importantly, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. It also helped that I finally came out of the closet with myself at this time, and I didn’t want to live a closeted life in denial anymore, which would have happened if I had stayed.

I spent the next decade maintaining most of my LDS beliefs while wandering aimlessly trying to find a church that fit my beliefs, which were still largely legalistic and Mormon (minus the actual Mormon: I no longer believed that aspect). Well, I eventually stumbled into my current church, and decided to stay. I enjoy discussing nuances of religion and learning more, so I frequently engaged my priest in conversation, occasional debate, and rare heated discussions. Fr. Errol challenged me to stop learning religion in my head, but to feel faith in my heart. Over the course of several conversations, personal hours-long down-the-rabbit-hole studying in the sparsely populated islands of the internet, and studying through several books, all while developing a personal spirituality and grounded being, I suddenly saw everything differently. The nature of God, the true meaning of Christ’s sacrifice, and my relationship with them completely changed. These changes happened suddenly, and a few of them caused real adrenaline rushes with the suddenness and shock of the change as the pieces all finally clicked together and unlocked the origami beauty of the answers–and the questions, more importantly–hidden in near-plain sight, just under a few folds of my former understanding.

So my intent here is not only to pepper you, O Glorious Internet, with the trivial and banal of my life, but to attempt, in some small way, to share the joy of being turned upside down and seeing the beauty of un-knowing a chained past. I hope you’ll benefit somehow, someway from this.

So for the past year, anytime I hear the AC kick on and air blow through the ducting and vents, or when my tornado/box fan is on, I can distinctly hear either classical music or a screen or radio play, all at very soft levels barely heard; most times, it’s impossible to pick out more than a few words or notes of melody. After some discussions with my father and some brief internet search, I chalked it up to “”Apophenia, Audio Pareidolia, and/or Musical Ear Syndrome”: the interpretation by the brain of white noise into something sensical.

However, I just discovered that this is a common problem with the fact that just about anything metal will pick up radio signals (they’re better at this in the AM side), and many will vibrate at the frequency of the corresponding wave. If you’re close enough, or something is pushing the air quicker towards you, the vibration will literally be a tiny speaker, pushing in the surrounding air just like an actual speaker.

I f’ing love science!

My prose has rarely been beautiful. Academic, articulate, even erudite at times, but those are $20 words for “dry”, “humourless”, and “boring”. Being a life-long learner, I’ve been many things in my mind, but pedantic in actuality. This blog will be my secret desire given form to balance the strict legalism and superfluousness of my headspace with the nuance and complexity of finding beauty in both the awe inspiring and the mundane in my heart space. I’ll weave, and ramble, wax poetic where I should be minimalist, and be restrictive when I should be expansive.

My mother (technically my stepmother, but she stepped up when biomom wouldn’t) has always called me an old soul. While not lacking in humor, my personality disorders (more on that later) and traits lead me to not pick up on some basic humor, but I’ll crack up at the dry wit of British telly. I take things too seriously sometimes, and as I’m reminded by my (compassionately heretical) priest, I will let perfection in my endeavors become the enemy of the good and the good enough. Lately, as I approach the middle of my life’s journey (á la Dante’s traveler), I finally find myself in a truly unique experience: I’m alone, without a laundry list of duties or expectations, and, for the most part, I’m happy(ish), generally satisfied, and I’m learning to love myself. So my old soul is being given the freedom, from itself, to stretch and see the wisdom of youth and revel in its newfound discovery of certain sacred unknowings. Needless to say, I’m surprising myself, and I’m starting to see the nudges that God has given me to reach this point. I hope, and pray, that I never lose this this wonder and this adoration for the divine cosmos.