Riffin' On the Soapbox (it's clean!)

“But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

John 3:21 - ESV

            It is, at times, astonishing how tragic our capacity for misunderstanding, for a lack of persistent, effective wisdom, moment in and moment out, can be, especially in the face of…the very structure of the universe, itself. Certainly, as a relatively recently enlightened Transcendentalist, the stretches of time in my life in which I thought I was going to have to…find God…to access Him in a real way, to experience a miracle…somehow… geeze, to face the notion that God may not exist, even, seem universes away, despite being very prescient for the entire first half of my life, before I expanded beyond a/the single/Western tradition. Once was a time He outright, although it mechanically can be construed as fallacy, wasn’t accessible (…but He’s all!). Prayers seemingly went unanswered…for decades, in the face of absolute belief, or at least a willingness to as I participated as a child in a Catholic education, a good follower through and through.  

             Meanwhile, to be blunt, if the parish/church had exhaustively validated science and what it came to know along the way rather than fighting scientific disciplines with paranoia/as if they could even be a threat to spiritual discourse, which, being that these disciplines study the very enigmatic mystery the church Itself is an offshoot of/studies, and being that the spiritual discourse was already saying said mystery couldn’t be perverted in any of the forms it materializes in, and that, too, it couldn’t fully be expressed in any form available to human perception, by the frameworks alone, science could only ever serve Spirit/is a way of engaging God practically so as to manifest much needed social technologies…that the church took an attitude towards it that was anything other than smug camaraderie (instead they seemed to associate it socially with the -isms…Atheism and Satanism and Lesbianism…Carl Sagan and his turtlenecks…)  was tragic, for me. I was worried about believing in God in a world full of Alpha Athiests who, genetically, were clearly superior to us, somehow, and who really knew their culture/history. I don’t care if it seems controversial, I somehow experienced a pervasive and spontaneous sense of genetic disadvantage in the midst of my Catholic School days. I was also overweight and had a persistent childhood asthma that also too has since disappeared, and, without being too nasty/conspiratorial, I blame them (the Parish).

             Apparently, it’s as simple as studying phenomena in the abstract, coming to see God. Apparently it’s everywhere you look. I know, mostly because of studying amazing teachers such as Deepak Chopra and Alan Watts…and have been able to essentially clearly prove the existence of a larger and sentient force…when my nephews have awkwardly brought up God socially for the first time ever after some years of Sunday school, by asking them to simply get kind of quiet and pay really close attention to the ambient room noise surrounding us right then and there. Y’know those motif moments we all face from time to time, some of which we all (myself included, in the past…) basically drop the ball on when it’s tossed our way… I’ve experienced the pure, radiating innocence of a child beam up at me after I’ve had what I believe to be spiritual experiences in my past which prove to me that God is real, and have absolutely biffed it in regards to effectively expressing to said child, when they ask about it, in a way that gets it across clearly to them in an actionable way in their lives, that God is real.

            Interestingly enough, after a few years of studying other traditions…I’ve grown rather adept at accomplishing such a task, and the difference lies entirely in the surface level conventions when it’s all said and done…group meditation is a wild foray into the mystical, and group prayer in the West is a leader/shepherd guiding you by way of fixing a rope, so as to guide, around your neck- you are the Shepherd, unfortunately in the ultimate sentiment of the tradition, and as such we all take our turns playing various social roles, leading and then being led…but you are the shepherd, ultimately, and they’re still struggling with that in a way that the behavior of the church itself could effectively address, and not so much the parishioners. But that’s neither here nor there for our concerns… the point is is that children and all of the other odds and ends perform really well for/within one tradition , and are hilariously inept/savagely deconstruct , by way of spontaneity, for/the another/other…

            Magnetism in this world works as such that He who does what all of culture, and all of the Scriptures, are trying to relay, effectively, is brought into the Light. He was propelled there by suffering, often, whether it be His own or that of the larger world He so cares for. That there’s already processes in place for giving these people the soapbox cuts through the aloof framings of universe that see us in anything other than the most structured of environments, developing towards an ideal and inconceivable state, personally. Mechanically, it’s as simple as seeing all in terms of God, and seeing all intentionality flow through that medium by way of choice of the agent with free will. Surrendering your life entirely to God/Love… if one does as much, they will be brought into the light, for this is the singular truth of existence/jackpot to be won. Whether it arrive by way of spirituality, or science, or rock n roll…it turns out…it arrives by way of culture, and we need it all. It was all only ever Spirit in the first place…the inconceivable mystery, everywhere.

             Survival is not…anything but, ultimately… testifying to the heart/truth of God. The entirety of what will be asked of us in regards to challenges in life will always wither in the face of spiritual wisdom, and when faced with persistent spiritual wisdom, day after day…we create a quality of life that sees us resonating with the idea of divinity by way of recreational pleasure, self-induced… we get a sense that we are living as if…gods… as Heaven was always fabled to be…many of us have experienced this in the modern day without a sense that our culture/society/nation was even really…all that spiritual, or that we’ve been all that religious along the way. That was a big modern condition was all passed through in the last couple of decades or so, unearned riches, a sense that we are still growing into our values as a people… and we are, but the riches that were there were earned, and were predicated on spiritual merit…to be blunt, anyone who has seen National Treasure with Nicholas Cage knows that there’s something up with our country. We are transcendental in structure…the all seeing eye on the dollar bill and stuff… we’re learning how to see our ancestors for who they were and what they did, learning to inherit what we already had…that is the modern condition, learning to see it all as works carried out in the name of God. All is gold.  

And gold is but an encapsulation of what a life amounts to. It’s seriously all in tender, in the name of growing further into the image of Love (God).

Art by Kaitlyn Page theinnerobserver