The night I read the Shack and watched Lord of the Rings... which might have been a bad idea.

So I have been wanting to blog again... but I hate doing it when I haven't done it in awhile... and I feel weird about getting my feet wet and having everyone see. But I want to... and I feel like I'm in a place where I might like feedback... Maybe? or maybe it's a bad idea.

But that's okay... if it is a bad idea. I'll think about that later. But since I still don't want to FULLY get my feet wet, I'm just going to paste in an email I wrote to JD when he asked me why I wasn't able to really pray at prayer meeting this morning... because I feel like I would like to talk about it. And I wish Stephanie wasn't so busy. :P

Okay, here's my email:

When I was reading that book last night, I just felt like... I don't know. God was interacting with this man... for real. And there were three people, and they were all God... but they were all different. And their roles just made sense. And they loved each other. And they did weird things - like Jesus dropped the pancake batter... and they all laughed. God laughed... And God revealed himself to this man as a large African American woman. And it was odd - but it started to make sense. And then it more than made sense... and it felt like, a lot of explanations. And it felt like - everything I expected God to be, He wasn't being. But it didn't really go against what the Bible says either. And it certainly didn't go against what I had hoped He would be. It just was something totally different than what my mind thinks of God. And why my mind always has ideas of what God is and how I pray. Why do I always feel like God doesn't like modern things? Or God speaks in old proper English? Why do I think those things? And I feel like that's just the tip of the iceberg. I feel like the things I think about God turn Him into something He is certainly not! And what is He? I feel like I don't know. Even how I read the Bible - the way I read it, and the way I handle the pages. I'm always thinking, always remembering... everything that everyone else thinks, all the pictures I've been shown, and the explanations I've been given. I can't get away from it.

Maybe it God did reveal Himself as a large African American woman who makes pancakes... I would stop thinking of everything else I imagine when I imagine myself as talking to God.

It's kind of like when I talk to you... What if our entire marriage, I was imagining you to be a ... I can't even imagine how I could relate it - but if I thought you were something that you clearly aren't (like a library or a cup or tea or an elephant) - and I treated you as such and I thought of you as such and I approached you with all of the conditions that I would if I thought you were those things... I would be completely delusional. And everything I thought would be tainted.

And I KNOW that in some ways... that's how it's supposed to be... But I feel like at least if I have a general idea...and I keep working towards knowing what you are really like. I guess I would call that progress. And I could move in a direction of communicating. But what if I so strongly imagined you as those things, that other things I was learning about you were interfering with my idea. But I so strongly believed what I knew - that I couldn't even question it. Because thinking you were not really what I thought would never even enter my mind. Because it's so much a part of everything I know. There's only so far the mind can bend you know...

I don't know...

And then I watched Lord of the Rings? Which... was just so weird... I was watching it and I was thinking... "No... these people would never make pancakes. But somehow - it was like God too. It was just as real as the book I was reading. They BOTH felt like God. But they seem opposite from each other (the book even talked about how the man expected to look and see someone quite a lot like Gandalf when he saw God). There was urgency (not time to talk about things and have fun and laugh... who could be laughing in that movie? Who would have been acting like they had all the time in the world?") I feel like... what world do I live in? Do I live in a world where Jesus wants to sit down and make me pancakes and laugh about things and help me? Or do I live in a world where "my quest hangs on the edge of a knife? Straying but a little and I will fall?" If I stray a little.... if I have to WORRY about straying a little... I will have no time for pancakes? I won't even be hungry!

And then I was sad.. when I woke up and you told me Boromir died. I don't know why... it just hit me so heavy. I think I almost thought about death for the first time when I heard that. Or at least... it seemed that way. I thought about him and then about how he wasn't. And how it was so quick. And how it was for the quest. And how it mattered. But did he know? And was he healed? And is he having pancakes now? I just thought and thought and thought...

And then... at the very end... when we were listening to Enya. I was thinking about that too. And wondering what was so appealing about that music. And I thought about the elves and how they ministered to people. And how... somehow someone would be sick or hurting or lost or something... And the elves would just appear to them.. or sing to them or speak to them. And they would be well. And I wondered why? And I thought about what motivates people to do things. What makes them get up? And I realized it was beauty. It was because of the beauty of the elves and the beauty of the songs... somehow.. I don't know. But I thought about God. And I thought about our motivation to do what we do. And I thought about all the horrible things in the world... and all the reasons why it should make us want to do this or that about it. And I wondered about what regenerates us and what makes us want to sit back and just forget who we are? And I think it must be beauty. Something transcendent. Or something... I don't know. But it doesn't seem that pressing needs or horrible stories do much - not in the long run anyway. At least... not for me. And I felt better. I felt hopeful - that maybe it was about beauty. And maybe the song at the end of the movie was meant to minister to me. And make me feel like it would all be okay - because the song would heal me.

I think I only got a small percentage of what I was really thinking.... I mean - I can't quite convey it. But it seemed shocking to me when I was first rubbing up against the idea. That after seeing all the angst and trials that were in that movie... the thing that kept reviving everyone wasn't good conversation or the thought of their friends being hurt. It was always the elves. They were always giving direction, giving gifts and giving songs... They gave them spirits. And I felt like maybe that's what God gives to me. To help me to do what I do here... and is that why I'm not as motivated by the pictures and the stories...

I don't know. I still can't communicate it because it felt a lot more shocking. It felt a lot more true. Maybe because it was in the form of Enya. Maybe that's why God might be more shocking and more true if he was in the form of a black woman?