I missed you.

It's been awhile since I've written anything at all, my creative powers being sullied by the busyness of my summer masquerading as productivity. Since I very much doubt this is read by anyone in particular, I'll allow myself to write confessionally in an attempt to "find a home for my malfunctioning being," a more comfortable (or at least two-dimensional) home than my meandering electric brain.

I've been really struggling with faith this summer, with hypocrisy in the church on the one hand and hypocrisy within myself on the other, with believing in my Holy Self when every other path seems so much simpler.

I really want to love Jesus. Like no joke, I truly believe that the only way to love people properly is to first recognize that we're enveloped in this vast, incomprehensible, unconditional, unshakable love that never leaves. Isn't this what we search for all our lives? And to be assured of that from square one, before we even leave the womb is a remarkable, joyful thing. It's something we should celebrate with every breath, every kiss, every exclamation! Why has religion become something so staid and stuffy, so insulated and businesslike? I'm so tired of trying to be a part of that, to fit into a system that saps the Life out of life, jumping onto a sinking ship, living out a slow spineless death. God save me from a heart that can see nothing but evil in your church...

***

Today I saw the Holy Spirit at work, and felt the weight of my own mortality, the superficiality and the shortsightedness of it. I was in this meeting room with all of these adults, and until today I had seen no life in them at all, and then all of a sudden someone new comes (my friend David Casson) and things get stirred up and just like that God awakens everyone in the room and the Holy Spirit descended and we had one of these prayers that actually feels like a prayer, a taste of the living water that keeps me believing when I'm desolate. Man, what a beautiful thing, to see so many men and women breathing, together...I wish I could've sat there and dug that moment forever.