I Enter It Naked

Last night, a conversation with very close friends. Some confessions. Hearing the concern from others that somehow, they haven’t done enough with their lives: that things should be different, that they should have achieved more.

I examine my own soul and life. Many influences flow in from around me. There are so many ideas, perspectives, potentials, opinions, arguments from every side. Everyone thinks they know everything. No one seems to know anything. The certainty of ego impales itself on its own stockade; the next moment is always unknown and no matter how much baggage I pack and how many heavy jackets I put on, I enter it naked.

I can only say this. It is one thing, although it will sound like many; and it is an old thing that we fail to understand, over and over.

The only thing that matters is to love God and our fellow man.

The world is full of things, too many things. All of them are good enough as they are and take care of themselves. We keep trying to meet them and then find God, instead of finding God so that we can then meet them. God is not just that great Love which created us all; in this case, God becomes what we worship.

This is not good enough; what we worship is of ourselves, and we as ourselves are nothing. The world is a great thing that dwarfs us; how can we believe we know it? We don’t. Yet we make ourselves the gods.

I need to move past the things of life and love God only. If I come into relationship with this Love, all else will take care of itself. Christ explained this in considerable detail in the sermon on the Mount; in it is everything one needs to know about putting love first. All of the confusion and the many different ideas, opinions, attitudes and approaches that fill me, pull me in one direction or another and attempt to define me with the gravity of their own being, are not helpful to me in this effort to know God first. He said this. I need to come to this with all of my body through my sensation, all of my intelligence through its relationship, all of my feeling through its love.

Instead, I keep getting distracted by the way that life pulls me towards it so that it can devour me.

The love of God is a whole thing that comes first. Mankind denies it; and in doing so, all of the love that man could have is lost before it arrives. That real Love which forms the basis of our Being is already here in us; but we love ourselves more than that true Love, and blindness afflicts us in every moment of our action.

If I love God first, everything takes care of itself. Goodness begins there; and because it is goodness from the beginning, it is eternal goodness, not the goodness I try to manufacture. If I dwell within the goodness of God’s Love, all that I do will emerge from the goodness of God’s Love; and yet I see that I am unable.

From day to day in my life, I don’t see that I cannot be what I make myself. I believe that I can be what I make myself, in every way, in every detail. I believe this so firmly that it has become a stone I swallow. That stone sits in the center of my Being and can never feed me, can never be digested. It is a weight and a wall at the heart of my Being that stands between me and the Lord.

I love the stone more than I love the Lord; I love myself more than I love others. It is a weight I carry that grows heavier with every day. My imagination is just another part of that weight; it does not imagine God first, but instead, invests in anything else it can imagine, just so as to avoid the issue. All of this agitation, this activity, this frantic attempt to be something I cannot be and to do things I cannot do instead of being what I am and accepting what God has made me for.

I am already made. Don’t I see this? I already am what I am. This is what I was made for and how I am made. I am this way. Not some other way. It is hopeless to wish I were some other way and I am helpless to be some other way. I am as I am. This, as well, was created through Love as a gift for me, but instead, I spurn it and look for other gifts which I think could be better. At the same time I do this, this great gift called life which flows into me surrounds me, and it is flowing into me, but I look away. I look away from heaven, which flows into me and is within me, and towards myself.

I always look towards myself. This is the problem.

Well, this morning I just speak honestly of these things as they are. I’m not trying to make anything up here. This is just what is true. You can take it or leave it as you wish. Generally speaking, we are faced with truth in every moment of our life, and it’s not good enough for us. We move on to someplace else, anywhere but where the truth is, because we don’t care for truth.

We just care for ourselves.

Be well today, and consider your ways.

Best wishes, Lee