self: part three (Being)

A few years ago I traveled across the country to what I consider one of the most beautiful places in the world: Santa Fe, New Mexico. I don’t think I appreciated the vastness and beauty of New Mexico like I would if I were to go now. (Which is something I plan on doing in the future.) I can remember scenes in my head. There is absolutely nothing that compares to a Santa Fe sunset. We would walk from Ashley’s apartment complex to the corner of the sidewalk where you could see The Cuttery just to watch that huge inferno quietly set each day, never bothering anyone, just doing what it always does. Recently I was reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, and he was talking about driving up to Mount Tabor in Oregon and watching the sunsets there. I can’t quote him exactly because a friend is borrowing the book right now, but he said something like, “This is happening over the heads of millions of people who hardly notice it.” I loved that. Seriously, almost every idea he presents in his books are brilliant. I consider the man a genius. But when I read this, I thought about those New Mexican sunsets and the vastness; the otherness of my God. The God that has everything figured out, and even though I don’t (because I wasn’t crafted to), everything will be okay. It’s because of sunsets and clear, starry nights that I can truly, honestly stand in awe of His power, His otherness, His craft that I will never, ever in a million years be able to understand. Our minds were not made to chart God or figure Him out, so we might as well stop trying. We really should stop worrying so much about our existence. We should stop trying to figure God out, or the cosmos, or the nothingness, depending on what you believe. We could be using all this time to be finding cures for cancer or other life-threatening diseases. (I’m convinced the government has created these and they’re putting off the task of finding cures, but that’s another story..) I’m a believer in life after death, and I do believe there is a God who loves us and does not want us to live in fear. A loving, life saving God that breathed life into us and made us from the dust so skillfully would not put us in a state of terror that causes us to forget about the beauties of everyday life - the love of our children, our parents, our friends, the beauty of creation, the things that really matter in life, not some black hole. Aside from that, Julie told me about this radio talk show host, Alex Jones, and even though we were watching his videos at 4 am the other night and I was extremely sleepy, I still registered a lot of what he said and completely agreed. I’ll have a whole other spill about his stuff later.

Ad hoc, live your life stop worrying about what the world says.