A Series of Epiphany Posts on Being Human: what I am seeing

When I decided to do this series I was asking myself what my human life means. I am always seeking wisdom and trying to poke around what is false in me to gain a glimpse of what is real.

Upon reflection on what I am writing and what I have still to write, I think the most important things are these:

... Our humanity was never meant to be tamed. Oh, unquestionably it needs to be transformed, but transformation is not about stifling the freedom and richness of what is surely a ragged vivid experience. All our lives are ragged and vivid, you see, but we can come to believe they are best when lived out of conventionality - doing the right thing in other people's eyes, getting 'A' on every test - even if it means denying our own values, pretending to be okay when we are not, judging ourselves without tenderness - I could go on.

... Anything that denies our true experience reduces us as persons. When we hurry people to solutions and answers and force them into strange deformed ways of being completely wrong for them, we are acting against God.

God is always inviting us to become what he dreamed us to be. He is not worried when we are not 'victorious.' Instead of judging us, he just joins us in the journey through our vast and ordinary complexities, because, (though we often forget this) he remembers that we are dust.

... When a person cheats their own life by not embracing and living (joyfully or painfully) what is, they become an 'empty suit.' Just a set of clothes. It might be a very nice suit, but not alive. Alive is a big mess.

(I saw a short bit of Oprah yesterday interviewing a couple that had three toddlers killed together in a car accident. The parents described coming home to all their children's things, their beds and clothes, but no mess, no tumble, no noise, no fights. The MESS is precisely that which signifies the beauty and potential. The mess is a sign of our humanity.

As I ponder my own very human experience of life (which is just as complex and confusing as yours is) I feel my fear level going down. What can happen in the real world that can separate me from the love of God? Can fire? The sword? A bad day? A bad moment? Can someones opinion do that? Can bad hair or ill timed flatulence? Can unemployment? Or the loss of a friend? Or even a father?

The love of God is the source of our value as a person. And the love of God comes free and remains in the middle of all that is human about us.

And for me, that is pretty much everything.