No Strings Attached

As a human being, I am flawed and imperfect. I am learning to live with that. But even in my imperfection, I am surprised to see moments when I am more than just skin and bones. There are times when I have felt the Spirit working through me.

There is no possible way to describe that feeling. For me, it's kind of like an electric charge coursing through my body. It's exciting and full of joy. At the same time, it's peace, like lying out in the sun next to a mountain stream.

So much of the time, I push away that divine impulse. I reject God's love. All through high school, I was shut off emotionally. No one knew the pain and the heartache. Some people sensed that there was something wrong and tried to help, but I pushed them away every time. I now see that God was working through them to crack open the cold hard shell I had built over my heart.

My senior year, I came to a time of crisis. I could no longer carry my burden alone. By the grace of God, my friends were there, ready to share the load if I was willing to open myself up. It was scary, accepting that love. Perhaps it's human nature to assume that everyone, even God, has a motive, and that love must carry a price tag. But the Kingdom of Heaven, I have learned, is not at all like the world we live in.

My friends wanted nothing in return for my trust and the opportunity to be a shoulder to cry on. They just wanted what was best for me. So, too, God wants what is best for us.

When I opened up my heart, I was exposed to even greater heartache and emotional exploitation. I lost control, but in giving up that control, I opened myself up to an even greater gift of love. Love that was unconditional, that filled the empty places in my heart. I didn't have to pay for this love or earn it in anyway. A love with no strings attached and no fine print. This was a love that I had never before known and a love that I cannot live without.

And with God's love, I am complete. In the immortal words of the Beatles - all you need is love.

What is the Trinity?

This past Sunday was Trinity Sunday, one of the most obscure festivals in Christianity. It is the day that we celebrate this strange idea that God is three entities in one and one entity split into three. Of all the concepts that are core to Christian faith, this one has caused me the most trouble.

It's hard to wrap your head around the idea that something can be both one person and three, or both human and divine. How is this possible? How can something or someone exist in this kind of dual existence being both and neither? That's not how our world works.

In the course of my roller coaster ride as a Christian in progress, I was lucky enough to stumble upon Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest seen as one of the leaders of the emerging movement in Christianity. In the talk he gave at the conference I attended in March, he spoke at length about the mysticism that has been lost over the centuries. According to him, the early church didn't struggle with these questions. They were simply able to accept that not everything has a logical explanation. For me, that's still a difficult leap to make.

The leap that I need to make now is a leap of faith.

Faith. Another one of those tricky concepts. Total acceptance of God's will. Letting go of the rational and the material to make room for the wonders of God that simply have no explanation. Having faith in the trinity is difficult. I don't like to feel that I am not in control, but over these past few months, I have learned that I feel even better when God is in control and I'm just there for the ride.

In the end, it makes sense. God is everything. How could we possibly understand how he is moving through us and the people around us? We can't. But we can trust that he loves us and cares about what happens to us, even if his ways of caring for us are sometimes a mystery. In my experience, the things in this world that are the most mysterious are also the most beautiful.