Guess I don’t worry about what God thinks of me as much as I worry about what other people think. I am convinced of God’s unconditional love of everyone, bold in my presumptions about God’s opinion of me. I am perfectly comfortable discussing any idea with God, the most risky thoughts, the most dangerous emotions, and that thing which is most foolish to share with people, my soul.
It is not the voice of demons that bombard me when I am alone. It is people. I fight for solitude, and they find me there. I tell myself I have permission to listen to God, to create and write, to sing freely, but they censor me. They say I am not noteworthy, have nothing to say that the world wants to hear, and worse, they disagree with me in a way that sometimes stops me in my tracks. Today, I won’t let it.
It’s not that I can’t handle disagreement. A writer’s job is to make people think, and feel, and inspire them to look at themselves and their world and form an opinion. But the people who spit the poison darts that became the little voices inside my head do not take issue with me to make us both better. They wrangle with me out of their own disappointment in their own lives. Or maybe they’re just mean.
Funny thing about disagreement from critics is that if you disagree with their disagreement, you are “narrow minded and incapable of expanding your point of view.” The thing is, we all must take sides. You can’t believe in everything. There are those who tell me that I should not be “preachy” or tell people there is a right way to live. I am, of course, a preacher via pen and pulpit, so this is like telling a carpenter he must not build. It is nonsense. I think the word “preach” has become the problem. It doesn’t seem to bother anyone that the commercials are telling us how to live by selling us their products, that the doctors are telling us how to live with their prescriptions, that the talk shows are telling us how to manage our relationships. “Ah, but the choice is mine,” they suggest. Is it? Sometimes I think we all look like a bunch of cattle being herded along thinking that because we are “informed” we have control; but the subversive ways of man have not changed, and the free thinkers are still few.
Granted, many preachers have abused their platform. Must we all be punished for this travesty? I have a message. I want to tell everyone how to live. “Love one another.” I guess my message is the same as my child’s kindergarten teacher. It is the same as the Dalai Lama’s. It is the same as the chief of police. The law enforcers shoot for a lowest common denominator of love – just don’t kill each other, don’t steal, don’t cheat the speed limit - they carry the stone tablets, the Thou Shalt Nots, and I am an idealist. So is the kindergarten teacher. She thinks that if she tells the children they can be good, or that they can be whatever they want when they grow up, that at least a small percentage of them will. A very small percentage. Frankly, Barney the dinosaur gives me more hope for the human race than the suits driving us by our own greed. Remember when fireflies in a mason jar made a perfect flashlight, and dandelions danced away with a thousand wishes?
I think we, as a human race should be capable of attaining the kind of love for humanity and creation that Jesus did. Of course, Jesus was God incarnate. I am only God’s temple.
So, I love by infusion. I took a drink of the living water that had been purified by the grace of God. I live in a light stream of guidance, peace, and empowerment, of miracles and impossible possibilities. I believe everyone can and should.
Do I sound like a crazed preacher? A sappy Christian writer? Mary Poppins meets Billy Graham. How is my discovery about life more outlandish than E=MC2? Energy, mass, and the speed of light combined before we ever knew the equation to cause and affect this temporal world by invisible means. This universal reality was there all along. Knowing about it changed the world. Maybe it’s time to change it again.
