nothing glorious, yet

"Sooner or later your figure out life is constructed specifically and brilliantly to squeeze a man into association with the Owner of heaven. It is a struggle, with labor pains and thorny landscape, bloody hands and a sweaty brow, head in hands, moments of severe loneliness and questioning, moments of ache and desire. All this leads to God, I think. . . . Matter and thought are a canvas on which God paints, a painting with tragedy and delivery, with sin and redemption."
- Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts

Illumination is a metaphor, and one which I got to live in this last weekend. A friend of mine's myspace describes her as someone who "believes in the power of words." I was illuminated this last weekend at the extent to which I have long lost my faith in words. This is a very defeating loss of faith for myself. I write. Songs. Blogs. Brief paragraphs I hope might one day become books. My mind more often than not is exerted in an exhausting attempt to open up words. To free them from incomplete definitions that have robbed them of the truth they refer to. Yet, for a while, I know, I have lost faith in them. I have been aggitated by the hopeless relative character of language in general. Words have been lacking life for a while to me. Language has all felt as a game, and games are insignificant.

Nonetheless, my faith has this intrinisic attatchment to words. I am so tired of the imperfection of words, but I can see no way to truth without them. All concepts and grammar it seems play a role in struggles for power and coercion, social-political struggles that I tire of quite often. I could continue on with my frustrations for pages, but I'll save you all that.

This last weekend I spoke with friends. I had words spoken over me. I started reading Through Painted Deserts. Something came alive in me this weekend, and I think it was that I found a renewed hope that words somehow matter. I think I realized in the quote above that language finds power as it connects to the beauty and imagination of the fluid narrative of life. God has no interest in dictation. The revelation of his will has never amounted to God speaking something word for word so that reality would once and for all time remain a concise legal document. God is free. Think of it, we would not know freedom were it not for the fact that God himself exists in it. There is no predetermination of God. In short God is not defined; he never has been nor will be encapsulated, nor even be found structurally within a definition. Strange then that for millenia we have wrestled with the eerie sense in which God "speaks". The absurdity I have long perceived, but not fully understood is that his "words" carry with them the same freedom whih his essence exists in. Beyond all the ridiculous assertions of predestination and the scientific mythology of the nature of the Trinity, we can find the simple fact that the words of Scripture, the inaudible words of existence, all refer to a story that is not yet determined. I know this somehow because the one we claim as the only god deserving a capital 'G' is free, and as I have learned that I am somehow similar to him, I too am free. My story is not determined, and all the Calvinists can kiss my ass since they serve a god who is a slave to their lofty ideas of his nature.

It is because of God that I find the freedom to believe or not believe in the factuality of the gospel. It is because he is free that he created me how he wanted me to be. I never need look longingly at another person for "admirable" characteristics of their personality feeling inadequate. For all the negativity I have felt surrounding the past few years of my life, I need not be ashamed, because I know that I was seeking an honesty with which God is pleased. Meanwhile God was seeking me, watching me grow frustrated with the inadequacy of words in approaching him. And though my frustration was connected to a truth about words, I was missing out on the freedom of it all.

The imperfection of words prevents me from ever touching God through language. It is one of the many asymptotes we experience: approaching God infinitely, yet never connecting to him. I don't regret seeking God in theology or philosophy. The closeness I have found to him as such is amazing and irreplaceable. And, at a distance, I can appreciate those who have found God through acts of daily devotion and prayer, but I deny that they are at an advantage. They too only know how to approach God. They grow closer but never connect. That is, unless God chooses to bridge the infinitesimally small gap that stands between him and us all. God determines whom he will touch, no prayer or act of devotion can undercut his freedom in this.

It is this freedom that I feel called into lately, and maybe called to bring my words and thoughts with me. I don't get the impression that it will be anything glorious at first. Probably I will proceed through my daily routines much the same, yet change begins from the core. Perhaps the power of words is found in the freedom of choice to let them be more than phonetic sounds waiting for an ear and a mind to engulf them in an ocean of predetermined meaning. Perhaps words are waiting to become living breath, spirit, from the mouths of us who have received the same breath into our own lungs. It just might be that I'm discerning how it is such a spirit of one's story instead of the mere procession of words revealing a predetermined plot that reveal the value of all life; that reveal that no story is inferior to another, and that all stories somehow belong to one another.

I have a shelf in my library for books I intend to read next. Yesterday I made room for some fictional stories at the front. This is the first time I can remember feeling convinced that it was a good idea. . .