things that go bump

Sometimes you know you're in for a weird day just by the way you wake up. I forced myself out of a deep sleep this morning when I realised I was giving Lara Spencer (of Antiques Rdshow and some rubbish gossip show on tv) tips on healthy living. I hope she remembers to eat plenty of cruciferous vegetables this week.

Summer of 1999 I was invited to Lake Powell with some boating enthusiasts from my church. It was two weeks of gorgeous sunsets, sleeping on the roof of the houseboat, water play, and sea doo's - my absolute favourite toy on that vacation. Having grown up owning motorcycles and liking the words full throttle, I decided to get on one of those things as often as I could to explore the miles and miles of canyon. Between races with my friends and wake jumping, we found some serene, wee spaces. One in particular was like a small oasis with a shallow sandy beach and warm red rock to walk around on. All of it, a tranquil inner fold in the enormous body of the canyon itself. I could have stayed there for hours. I was fascinated with the quality of sound and how my voice found its way out to the sandstone walls and then came back to me in patterns, clear but not harsh, still sounding familiar, but having a nearly transcendent, intimate quality. It reminded me of being in the underground, choral area of a convent I visited in Guatemala once and how the acoustic effect of the rounded, enclosed room made my quiet singing voice completely fill the atmosphere; it felt as if you could almost touch it, it was so close.

I had a similar experience today which ties in to what I was writing about in the chump and bump section (see previous post)... It feels a bit personal, but I want to share it because it seems pertinent to what I was getting at in that blog....

Everyone was out of the house for a few hours this morning, so per the advice of a dear friend, I got out my guitar (she knows how it helps me muddle through stuff I can't understand....like unemployment, familial imbroglio, the unanswerables of the faith), and I just started to play a intuitive, rambling sort of ellenspiece. These are meditations, a lot like pieces in Taize worship, where there are long, reflective repetitions of melodies and verses. I have written reams of lyrics to fragmented songs over the years, and I like just picking out a few at a time and trying them from any musical angle I feel like. I had the lines: You are Good. You are Great. None like You, coursing through my mind, so I went over and over them, smoothing down the courseness in my soul.

The strangest thing began to happen as I repeated those verses, and I feel a little sheepish saying this in a public place, but I began to hear those words, repeated back to me, directed at me. You are good. You are great. None like you. And just as my voice had skipped away from me in the canyons of Lake Powell and had returned to me transformed as a closer, nearer voice, so I heard God, my Nearest One, in the echo saying the same to me. I couldn't imagine it... I really couldn't. I felt like a heretic...How could God be saying these things, that I have just said in reverence, respect, and love...back to me? He's the only one who deserves to hear stuff like that, right?

I gotta be honest, I felt like the Grinch when his heart grows 10 sizes all at once and that crazy smile breaks out on his face. What the freakin heck could this mean? Does He really read my blog and all that stuff I wrote about Him thinking we are good? Could He possibly agree with what I wrote? Could there be a connection between Him being All Goodness, Love, and Light and how we are -- ontologically --, ones who are created in His Image? Could He possibly say these things to me and mean it?!!!

Stunned and incredulous, I just sat on the couch, trembling. Could God really think so highly, so warmly, so lover-ly of me? I don't have words to explain why or elegant theology to "prove it", but, yes, I do believe He does. Cut from the same cloth as Him, child of his desiring, I find the mirror I have craved, the echo I long for has a voice of its own, and it is trustworthy.