a kingdom built of seeds

God creates a wound only he can heal.

It’s as if something (or someone) is attempting to disrupt the routine of my spirituality. To finally cast away all the words, thoughts, clichés, theology, knowledge, religion, Christianity–even “God”–in order to bring me to the Great Nothing (where God finds me). I have taken everything for granted. I exist, in all its mystery, and simplify it. We are (often) afraid of what we do not know, while still yearning for it. So it is for me: what I do not know, what I cannot understand, is exactly what I want. The mystery. Without it, life is stale and predictable. I want to welcome the rupture, the (in)breaking, the unknowable (who knows me). I want to surrender to it. But I am caught in the familiarity. And when I can’t free myself from it I turn to the ever-present shadows that offer illusory moments of escape and “happiness”; but which only drive me further from myself and whatever (or whoever) is pursuing me, asking: “Won’t you stop and listen?”

The truth will set me free. But first I must accept it. Before I can follow it, I must surrender to it, allow it to break in and rupture everything I (once) thought I knew about it; every definition and idea of it. I must become nothing so that it may become everything. We must become “backsliders,” even traitors, to all we think we know, so that we can be known. Let go of everything you’ve taken for granted. Become nothing, not in order to know, but to be known.

“You have not chosen me; I have chosen you. All along you’ve believed that it is you who has chosen, who has believed and done the right things, in order to know. But no. Before this, before you were conceived in the womb and came forth into the world; before you were socialized, enculturated, indoctrinated with a certain worldview and creed; before you knew enough to choose, to believe, I had already chosen you. I believed in you. Before even the universe appeared at my word, I was–I am. And I know of you. No power of culture, history, politics, economics, ideology, religion, changes this. I knew of you, always (before time itself). And I know of you now.”

It’s so natural to desire answers, to want control. But it is the mystery that discloses us, and in surrender that we are known.

God, I thank you, that you are not an ambiguous answer to some fickle religious question. I am content with all I do not and cannot know of you. And I am so fully satisfied to know you apart from any proof you provide.

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