the path to God is nothing if not counter-intuitive.
today it seemed as though everything before had been a wild goose chase.
where nothing was certain in the way that I had begun to believe it was.
like jumping up and down on a floor that I was sure was solid only to find that it rocks and sways under my feet and I must tread cautiously and anxiously all over again.
there was a desire to retreat, but I know this cannot happen. there can be no retreat: there is a certainty, not a certainty that I understand a single thing other than that you are the way that you are even if I cannot glimpse anything of the truth of what this means. I go back to that lutheran thing: the crucified one, and I understand a little about what he means. We look for certainty in power. We desire someone powerful to keep us secure but the power of God does not offer this type of power at all and it might be that the more we seek it the more frustrated we become. There is no security like this in the kingdom of God because it is a false security and I search for it in vain. There are times, I must accept, when I am blind to spiritual things, just as I am deaf to the music of Mozart, or the beauty of Shakespeare. But is this the poverty of the gospel, or something different? just a poverty type of poverty with nothing to do with God? but no, this is what luther means then by 'no hint of religion' perhaps. poverty is just that: poverty; with no luminosity or angel choir behind it. Something grinding and ugly then. the crucified one. Jesus crucified does not have an angel choir backing, or a rich film score to add luminosity and meaning: it is grinding and ugly and it is perhaps the first essential to discovering you as you are that we can glimpse this . . . . is it then a case of seeing beyond the poverty? or something intrinsic in the poverty itself?