The dark underbelly of love..


Wanting more of them than you can ever hope to receive in this life, and knowing that constant pain.

Allowing your beloved to do something to hurt themselves, keeping silent, knowing that to otherwise would only damage the relationship and create rifts and no-talk zones.. which seems worse than the hurt of the thing itself.

Allowing yourself to need their love, and despair so grievously at real or imagined loss.

Seeing them transfer their affection to another you dont know and dont trust.. yet knowing you can’t hold onto them, but just stand waiting at the shore.

With all your being desiring to hold them and protect them and keep them close, and then watch them walk away, looking back and smiling.

Hearing them say words with joy and excitement, which cause you nothing but searing pain at their implications and interpretations.

Desiring with all your heart to fulfil their every need, and watching them turn to others.

Living in constant yearning for your beloved, where the few perfect moments will be fleeting at best, and haunt you forever.

Being torn apart by the impossible desire to demonstrate how you truly feel about them, for it would not be appropriate, and you fear it would not be welcome.

Knowing that they will never fully understand just how much you really do love them, and having no more words to say so.

Living in constant fear of losing them, and knowing that that same fear is the greatest contributor to losing them.

Knowing how stupid, how destructive, how painful and foolish loving like this is to you, and being unable to do anything but love..

another thought..

after my last entry i got to thinking..

Michelle and I are into camping, bushwalking and such.
I know Pete is Mr Outdoors, amongst other things.
And if rumour serves me well, then Sarah and Steve aren't adverse to a bit of camping and bushwalking.
And Al and I have shared many an adventurous bushwalk.

I'm seeing a common thread here.. Perhaps a weekend camping and being outdoorsy might be a plan in the not too distant autumn future.. ???

No B-S last night...

Part of the vulnerability and fragility of such a small group I guess... Hopefully that will improve soon. But it's all good...


Cute story about prayer though in the meantime... :-)

On the weekend Michelle and I went camping and doing outdoorsy things out past Gembrook in the forests out there. Amongst other things, we took our little 4wd off-road a little, which was well-intentioned and we tried to be quite cautious.. However, suffice to say, we ended up pretty soon beyond the point of no return, sliding down a rather scary little fire-trail axle deep in thick Gembrook mud, coming millimetres to the passing banks and stumps and rocks... Scary stuff... Eventually came to rest on a berm and found ourselves stuck on the middle of a rather treacherous slope, both shaking and highly distressed.

Naturally, in time of panic and extreme anxiety, I turned to prayer... Please God, help me get down this hill in one piece. Don't let this weekend turn into a disaster. Don't punish me for not being cautious enough... please, please, please...

Well, I envisaged him answering that prayer by getting us out of the mud through our own efforts and assisting us down the hill... Well, a few minutes of spinning wheels and flying mud proved that wasn't going to happen. Had to resort to the very un-manly solution of calling for help...

Well, help eventually came. Trudging up the hill through the mud. The local rescue guy who, instead of laughing at the silly city-slickers in their new urban 4wd with no idea of what they were doing and who had taken no preparations or precautions, helped to make us laugh at our predicament too, and even start to enjoy it. He didn't blame us, instead, he showed how it could happen to anyone. Without any tools he got us out (even getting Michelle to drive it over the edge of a rather scary ledge), encouraged us to take some photos of wheels spinning in the air, and then not only performed an awesome escape maneuvre that we never thought our car would be capable of, but then drove us down the hill, chatting all the way and encouraging us to not get disheartened. He even guided us to the local servo and pumped up our tyres for us! Clearly, an advocate for his sport, but also, a God-send who saved our day, and turned a complete tragedy into one of the most interesting little episodes to happen to us in a long time...

Funny how God answers prayers... esp those panicky blurted ones... However, I don't think we'll be going off-road for a while again...

Last night's B.S.

Watched part 2 of Son of God... May I say that I'm loving this series. It's making Jesus so much more 'real' than the ethereal blonde touchy-feely nice guy that is a hard image to shake. Plus, it was kind of weird how I've studied theology and church history and all, and technically know most of the facts presented in this video series, but it's just making it all come together in a much more meaningful way. The whole thing about Jesus healing people and the spiritual/faith implications of that really rammed home last night, as well as the very radical, earthy, and in-your-face aspects of Jesus, which i'd always kind of known, but only now really appreciating fully. One questions that came out of it for me was: "If sickness/disability was the thing which the priests constructed as a barrier between people and God, and thus was the thing that Jesus focussed the most on addressing through his healings, what would be the thing today which the church might have created as a barrier to God, which Jesus would want to address the most if he came now..."

Also had a long chat on the nature of forgiveness afterwards, which was a bit of a surprise... The how, why, what and to whom... No simple answers (as usual...), but a good discussion all the same.

oops!

Just realised a little problem with our name..

Was writing to Michelle and went to shorten the name "breathing-space" to it's initials: B-S... hmm...

Can't see that as a good thing:
"So, what did you do last night?"
"Oh, nothing but some B-S..."

Disturbing, yet strangely suitable... consider it prophetic maybe :-)

Labyrinth Update...

Meeting with SU today went quite well. They're definitely on 'our side of the fence' in terms of alternative forms of worship and prayer, and seem interest. Liked what they saw and heard about what the Labyrinth contains and what the Australian tour would probably consist of. Nice people to speak to - A meeting I enjoyed for once!!

However, it will have to wait until May until a firm decision can be made. Until then I guess I'll just proceeding as per usual though - no point waiting!!

Another little note.

On this coming Monday I meet with some of the bigwigs at SU to discuss the Labyrinth project and if they'd be willing to provide some support for it. Prayers would be appreciated... I fully believe in the potential of the Labyrinth project as a great awareness raising exercise into the diversity of God and worship, and see the need for it in Australia as definitely long overdue... I hope they'll see so too.

Pax.

This is just a post from the Ship-of-Fools bulletin board, but an awesome one which is meeting with fairly astounding acclaim there - and after reading it I can see why. (Thanks to kenwritez):

In the world's eyes, Christians *are* idiots. Morons. Goobs, twits, feebs, rubes and social hayseeds. We're deluded, hopelessly out of date and out of fashion, reactionary, requiring a God crutch because we can't face reality, mentally and emotionally unstable, judgmental, cruel, hypocritical, greedy, in denial, neurotic, responsible for the worst atrocities committed in our poor history; in fact, we're barely a step away from full commital in the Giggle Factory, and that step is under debate even so.

The bad news? We already are idiots. So why change now?

We --at our best-- accept people unconditionally, we don't make them sign contracts and post performance bonds before we decide to love them. We don't keep track of wrongs done to us. We don't lie to people, we don't cheat them or steal from them, we don't sleep with one anyone else's spouses, we don't gossip or backbite or withhold material goods from those in need. We don't murder and we confess our sins, we hope for the best at all times and we tell the truth, we're brave despite our fears, we encourage each other in our walks with God, counting each other as more important than ourselves. We're honest in all things. We lay down our lives for each other every day in little acts of service and kindess, and in big acts of heroism. At our best, for those few moments or days or whatnot, this is how the world should see us.

We believe in a God no one can see, touch, taste, smell or hear. We claim He's all-powerful, all-knowing, all-benevolent, yet somehow evil still exists in our world. We claim He sent His son to die for us, taking the price of our sins upon Himself, a claim that has some historical proof, but nothing tangible. We believe God loves us all, even (or especially) you know, them, over there. The ones who don't measure up to all our standards for what "the right people" should look like, should work like, should live like, should drive or wear or eat or drink or screw. Yeah, those people; the ones that look like us....

We believe in forgiving our enemies, not just once or twice, but according to the words of the man whom we believe to be the Son of God, an identity never to be duplicated then or since, "...seventy times seven."

Over and over and over in the NT, God makes it abundantly clear Christians are not to conform themselves to the value system of this fallen world. (I'll spare the verse quoting, we've all heard them a million times.)

In a nutshell, we are to die to ourselves, and the consequence of that is we will live eternally.

We are to love our enemies, do good to them that hate us. There is no equivocation here in His words, no gray areas, no wiggle room whatsoever.

Where we fall into debate is, what constitutes "doing good"? What is "loving our enemies"?

If a beggar on the freeway offramp holds up a "homeless, hungry, please help" sign, am I loving him by giving him cash or perhaps a bag of food? If I drive him to the downtown mission or to the community hospital for detox, is that loving him less or more than giving him the cash?

Take a man whose wife is an alcoholic who denies her addiction and refuses treatment. What is his most loving course of behavior toward her when she comes home drunk, vomits on the living room floor, and passes out face down in the mess? Continue with her as she is and clean up after her and keep urging treatment on her? Or leave her there, pick up and move out until she gets clean and sober? Or just divorce her and be done with her?

Take Iraq for example, some people see continuing to press for UN sanctions and inspections as loving the Iraqi people by not inflicting war upon them. Other people see a miltary strike to remove Hussein from power as loving the Iraqi people as well as ourselves enough to rid us all of a genocidal tyrant. People of good conscience and sound mind, believers all, have opposing views on this issue, and both can quote Scripture to justify it.

So while there's no wiggle room in whatJesus said, there's quite a large room for maneuver in how to best implement what He said.

So, being a Christian means exactly being an idiot. It means holding beliefs and committing actions that the mainstream of every society will deem ludicrous or offensive. Being a Christian means feeding someone who hates you. Being a Christian means praying for the well-being of someone who hates you. Being a Christian means loving that hateful person in spite of their hate, and not returning that hate to them.

Love doesn't mean being a doormat or a yes-man. Sometimes love must make very difficult decisions, endure terrible consequences, pay high prices. Sometimes, love must ask someone else to pay a price as well. Love always, always looks out for the best interests of its subject. Love loves enough to say "no" when appropriate.

I'm 41, I've been a Christian since 1977, and I'm still learning about love, and frankly, I suck at it. If love were a profession, I'd be fired in a minute and I'd never be able to get a job in it. I've said very unloving things on this board and felt quite wonderfully self-righteous while I did so. I imagine we all share that condition, so we all know what it's like.

Rather a long-winded response, as most of mine seem to be, but I hope one you read. I remember once complaining to my magic teacher about the difficulty of a routine, how much it demanded of my hand, and he said, "If it were easy, everyone would be doing it." So too, for the Christian life.

Last night:

A well rounded evening methinks.

All gathered for dinner around the big table, and over chicken wings, polenta and hamburgers made fun of a certain Christian book which I, in my youth, took somewhat seriously, but which we pretty much unanimously now declared to be heretical rantings... Won't list the book here in case of offence (so tempted to though!), but if you email I'll happily fill you in :-)

Then we watched part 1/3 of "Son of God" - BBC documentary which uses historical, scientific and sociological evidences and techniques to work out who Jesus precisely was and what he was on about... I was pleasantly surprised - I expected it to be debunking much of the gospel accounts, but instead, it not only supported those records, but helped them to make more sense and move from the arena of 'mythology' and 'story' into something that I felt I could much more accept as reality. I know one thing for sure - the nativity story makes a lot more sense to me now, and no longer has the childish aura about it! Parts 2 and 3 to follow in the next few weeks...

Hi all. We were talking a bit about thinking during that confusing discussion the other night (sorry about that guys!) and I thought in follow up to that that people might like to have a look at some articles i've been reading. I think some of it relates to our group, as the author is investigating 'alternative' christian groups, and how many have been struggling to survive. Perhaps it could be helpful in terms of that further discussion that Michelle has suggested. It would be nice to think that in designing a structure and specific activities for the group we could avoid the mistakes that other groups have made, and in doing so plan for the extended future of breathing space.
http://www.reality.org.nz/articles/32/32-jamieson.html
http://www.reality.org.nz/articles/33/33-jamieson.html
http://www.reality.org.nz/articles/43/43-jamieson.html

Oh, and about tuesday nights discussion....
I'm in two minds... i'm a bit sorry - feel like i made a mess of initiating a discussion, and didn't quite manage to convey my thoughts. Also enjoyed the discussion though in that the group seems to be making a move forward in planning for a structure that involves a lot of variation and includes all of the elements that were discussed last year. I'm quite looking forward to having the mix of Bible stuff (in a fresh way) and spiritual something (can't think of the right word) and different ways of initiating discussion and just being a community together. (even if the process of getting to a smooth functioning model is a little fuzzy and confusing....)

Sare.

Good morning all. Was certainly a confusing discussion last night. I have to admit it wasn't the best environment for such a discussion - mainly the noise - and has created much frustration for me. Therefore, I am certainly voting for another discussion sometime soon to try to work out a 'plan' format for the group incorporating communal ideas from everyone. Someone mentioned last night "I think the group doesn't know what they want".... I disagree with this comment... it's not so much that we 'don't know' what we want...we are trying to work out together what we want, with regular assessment and revision.... which is the point of the group in the first place, not to be 'given' a format but to work out together the best format.

I agree with doing activities conducive to spiritual discussion, but I personally also would like the group to be scripturally based. Otherwise there is the danger of going way off tangent and becoming cultish. Also, I'd like the group to facilitate each of our personal growth, and the bible should be the ultimate foundation from which to base our spiritual growth. And I certainly don't mean the old-fashioned type bible study of read a passage and answer questions that come directly out of the passage. For those who weren't present at our study last week, I thought that it did trigger discussion that went broader than specifically the passage, and we did touch on personal experiences. I understand what Sarah feels about having done so much bible 'study' for the last 10 years that she needs something different for awhie. In fact, my reaction to a history of bible study is quite the opposite to Sarah's. One of the reasons I do like to do some bible study in the group (in this or other formats) is because my past experiences of traditional bible study had been so unsatisfactory, frustrating and useless. I don't remember many real discussions involving hearty questions and issues that matter, but more discussions about what the verse 'should' mean, and cliched answers. So now we're beginning to use the bible in a more meaningful way.

So hopefully we can work out a format for the group that can incorporate our different preferences, perhaps through new ways of studying the bible as well as other forms of worship activities and discussion forums. I think we need to bring those cards out again as a starting point. What would also help is rather than just saying what you'd like to achieve but also to offer suggestions of how to achieve it (ie thru an activity) or even offer to lead those particular activities, rather than all look to one person to provide the ideas.