..”Which Way the Wind Blows”
I was maybe 9 or10 when I first discovered just how vulnerable is human consciousness.
My parents were trying to prepare me to see my grandma—well, not my birth grandma, but my parents neighbor and friend; sharp as a tack, funny, passionate for Jesus, her hands soft and old and wrinkled as she washed my hands with soft soap under warm water, by day my care giver as both parents worked—now nearing life’s end some years later. “Terry,” mom said as we finally arrived in Twinfalls from our 500 acre farm 30 miles east, “Grandma Jonsey may not even recognize you or seem like herself.“ I tucked the thought away like a droplet of water in a vast rain cloud, unsure of what it even meant. As the door knob turned, my heart raced excited, afraid. “Jesus,” i quickly prayed under my breath, “please help grandma remember!”
The room was filled with, I don’t know, the kind of feeling you have when you get on an elevator with strangers. Turning toward my grandma I noticed that her eyes seemed cold, distant–gone was the face that loved me. Then, like a light bulb being turned on, her-eyes focused, twinkling, her face brightened as she excitedly said, “Terry… oh, my Terry.” For the next few minutes we were all laughing, talking as Jonsey asked me questions and seemed the person I always knew. Again, just as suddenly her eyes glazed over, distant, cold and now angry. I was quickly being rushed out but not before I heard a stream of very bad words, curses, accusations I had never heard, certainly not from her.
As I sat in the huge soft cushion of our Nash, or was it Stutebaker, tears forming within. ‘That’s not grandma‘ i thought. I was grateful for even a brief moment with the grandma I knew. Into my young mind came the question of wether she was even a Christian. How can a true Christian change like that? Somehow, even then, I knew Jonsey was with Jesus.
In the 1950’s America I grew up in Ike was President, character mattered and was immutable, like the ground upon which we walked. Anyone or anything that was out of norm was broken, or in spiritual terms the result of sin. Maleness and femaleness was rooted to bio-chemistry, as was sexual orientation. Was not our very ability to put a man on the moon, as promised, the result of complex mathematical calculations certain in time and space? Such was the peak of modernity, a sweet mix of Judeo-Christian, renascence and the enlightenment.
Then along came Einstein and the awareness that time and space were themselves subject to one’s perspective from within time or space. Quantime mechanics, questions about wether time itself bends, the discovery of active worlds within worlds, each moving around ever smaller sub-sets of particles generating explosions of energy moments resulted in a fundamental shift in perceived reality or the principle upon which all existence resides—from “thingness” be it rocks or a persons soul, her/his character—to the community of events and the ever changing relationship between these bursts of energized moments within larger communities of moments, like a small stream gaining explosive power over rocks until it becomes a mighty water-fall, now trimming and shaping the rocks. Such is the world of the post-modern experience wherein the shape and flow of human identity created within communal tensions is what matters, never fixed; though always informed. Spiritually, sin is not to be found within the shape of a thing, our bio-chemistry alone, but in what is lifegiving or loving in experience.
The natural sciences may to a large extent shape both the cultural context and the felt interior experiences which inform the self as a male or female or trans-gender, heterosexual or bisexual or lesbian or homosexual or trans-sexual—but such discriminations are equally informed by the complex of social relations one has enjoyed from birth.
Such is the nature of the divide wreaking havoc around the political, social and spiritual fabric of the American Republic, and to a lesser extent, the world. Two world-views colliding inside the same time and space but seeing radically different things or experiences.
It is into these layered worlds that we as humans live and move and breath; our inmost identity vulnerable in the extreme—over stimulated and that with a political context at odds.
About 40 years ago I began to be aware of just how vulnerable was my own mind. Through my childhood experience with my grandma Jonsey and scores of friends in ministry, I was increasingly aware of the anxiety driven depression, the fatigue, fog, emptiness that my relationship with Jesus did not resolve—though Christ in me was a strength that kept me ever pushing forward, seeking and in moments experiencing, not only peace with God, but the peace of God.
It was 15 years ago that I became keenly aware of the physiology of mental acuity having nearly lost my soul in the darkness of sleep deprivation (sleep apnea) and later the onset of mental exhaustion and neurological jerking, wrestling with new bouts of addictive patterns that broke through psychological meds, silence and soul rest, the Wesleyan confessional and the developed strength of character formation.
There were more times than I like to remember of near or complete blackouts while driving or at rest, dizzying spells, anger surging through my body as a deeply embedded irritation. In all and through all God as real presence, my lady Joetta and my Psychotherapist were the grace of Jesus extended.
My recent fall and the recovery I’m now in as pain ebbs and flows, my body—almost continuously hungry for sleep interrupted by moments when my heart is strengthened in physical labor, writing and by prayer—has again renewed an awakening of two spiritual insights:
1) That in this world clearly built upon the Einsteinium model of “energy moments“ seeking union and connection i/we really at one and the same time, “are like grass… and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever” (Isaiah 40:6-8 NIV).
2) That, though I am but dust, it is the dust of the Stars and in the Creator, I, even fragile I, will outlast a thousand universes. “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure“ (1 John 3:1-3 NIV).
In these two interwoven truths, vulnerability and being God-breathed I stand within two world views, modernity and post-modernity; each narrative incomplete, both together hinting at the whole.
Blessings! Terry :)
”Which Way the Wind Blows,” a song by the “2nd Chapter of Acts”. https://youtu.be/WsQz9J1Wc70
A Visual Devotional exploring some of the same themes and based upon:
“Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them”” (Mark 7:14-15 NIV).
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