Beware! Ongoing Theological Deconstruction and Construction Zone

Hey friends,
If I had to sum up the entire sabbatical in one phrase this would be it:

My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.” 
― Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

 It's so simple and yet I have allowed people and religion to make it so complicated. There were so many years of churchianity and discouragement with me believing the lies that I had to perform or believe a certain way. All that started to peel away like a thick morning fog, letting go to a beautiful sunny morning.
As I sat on the deck at the cabin, I remembered the days when I experienced Jesus as accessible and near. I flashed back to a time when I was in college; every morning I would get up before heading to school and make coffee in my Chemex, pour two cups and sit on the deck or at the kitchen island at our home in California. Every day, Monday through Thursday, this was my routine, one cup for me and one for Him. We would sit and talk about the day before, what's going on today, and the hopes and dreams I had for myself, Holly, and my newborn daughter. The cool part was that He knew I was a two cup a morning guy and He would always let me have His cup for my ride to school. He's great like that.  (Picture above: Jesus and me having coffee at the cabin, the dark blue mug is His).

    Well, my sabbatical was awesome. I hit the ground on the other side of it at a thousand miles and hour.
I haven't even really had time to unpack it all with Holly. There are obviously no words that could really tell the story of what this is like, having 4 days with just yourself, no human contact. Take a minute and think to yourselves, "Have I ever spent an entire 24 hour period without seeing another human face?" In all my years of asking that question, 9 out of 10 people cannot answer yes, they have gone that long. Something amazing happens when you get alone, really alone with God.
   I can say this about my first night, I was overcome with a wierd kind of anxiety about the deafening silence and the loneliness I felt. After my injury, at the end of December, I have not watched as much TV or movies in 15 yrs then I did in the first 3 months after my surgery. On top of that, I have been blessed to be getting my hours in Dispatch until I get cleared to go back on the road, yet with that came the constant ringing of multiple phone lines, multiple radio frequencies,and multiple ambulances and vehicles. So, needless to say my life has been way louder and busier. The world is so so loud and it doesn't always mean noise or volume, sometimes it simply means busyness, a fast paced schedule, and the horsepower of the world pushing against us 24/7, and unless we get away from it and get clear of it we get consumed by it.

   The desire was for solitude and silence with Jesus in 'lagniappe', a creole word meaning "a gratuitous gift of grace, to pass expectations". I made no grandiose plans, no well-structured format, no minimum hours of prayer or reading or meditation. What I did have was a goal to read the New Testament in two days(ya right) and some kind of "awesome felt intimacy with God".
   To be human is to be poor; a painful place of being helpless and powerless to add a single inch to my spiritual stature, to realize the desolation and darkness, to not be able to control, manage, and manipulate God into letting me experience His loving presence and compassionate care. Instead, "Be still and know that I am God." Psalms 46:10.
   My unrealistic expectations are grist for the mill of craziness! Instead of just letting God speak to me and minister to my brokenness, I got sucked into the 'me' instead of the 'Him' of the moment. "What am I doing wrong?" "Why can't I connect with God?" "Why can't I hear Him?" "Why can't I find God?" I was so busy deciding what advice to give God about how He 'should' (I need to learn to stop shoulding on Him!!!)relate to me, speak to me, meet my needs and wants ect.... I'm so set in what I think my needs and expectations are, I am unable to hear God's voice in the things He is trying to say right now. My prayers had become merely an expression of my illusions. But God did show up despite my ridiculousness.

   For three and a half days I was by myself. Me, my pipe and favorite tobacco, enough food and coffee that I didn't have to leave, my Bible, and a few select books that I knew would help me remember how much I loved Jesus. As I sat on the deck of the cabin and the rain showers were  sweeping across the lake, sometimes soft and sometimes pouring, I realized how comfortable I had become with the solitude. It's like a long lost friend, or a friend that you love a ton, but aren't able to see hardly ever, a friend that you can sit in silence with and have it be totally OK.
   Who you are is who you are when you're all alone. What I have realized is that I don't hate myself or fear who I've become. At one point during this sabbatical I thought maybe I would find out that I don't even know God anymore or worse that I didn't want to.
   What I did realize is that I do love Him, that I do know Him, and that at the heart of it all I am still a Ragamuffin, which by definition is someone who recognizes their inability to be or do anything good outside of the fact that Jesus and the Holy Spirit set it ablaze in their heart to do so.

“When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.”   

                                                                       The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning

in the dark of the night
i can hear you calling my name
with the hardest of hearts
i still feel full of painso i drink and i smoke
and i ask
if you're ever around
even though it was me
who drove us right in the ground

see, the time we shared
it was precious to me
all the while i was dreaming of revelry
                          Revelry by Kings of Leon

The very last entry in my journal from the trip: 

    If you live wide-eyed in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. 
    If you live squinty-eyed and in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. 
    Keep your eyes open, your lamp burning so you don't get musty and murky

                                                Luke 11:33(The Message)

Peace to all,

Bob