Dear Pneuma,

I am in that state of loneliness that leads to self-determination.  I don't understand how it is that other people don't seem to end up here.  It is a state of being where I wait for my inner self to spur me in some direction. The voices of others, duties, obligations, even enthusiasms don't carry any weight here.  Surrounded by oughts, shoulds and needs, my body/mind refuses to move.

This is a place of anticipation.  I have an expectation that when I do move, it will be toward something wonderful.  Yet, I am also impatient.  My conscience would rest easier if I could just stay busy during this waiting time-plant that garden, or finish that big project at work.  If I knew I was accomplishing something-completing or contributing- but all my energy is inward focussed, and I have nothing extra except the desire to sit in my yard and be.

In this state, I know myself as separate from everyone else.  I, being fully in myself, realize that hardly anyone actually sees me.  They see reflections of their desires and frustrations, lived out through my actions and inactions.  There is judgment of motive and worth based on something outside my control and actual participation.

This is both glorious and tragic.  I suddenly have deep ideas I wish to communicate and deep feelings I wish to share, but I haven't found people that understand.  There is intellectual engagement without commitment, and there is touching without tears.  As people respond differently from my expectations, I fear speaking.  I have an urge to pull away and shut up.  Showing my true face and having people look past it hurts.

As I said, this is a place of loneliness.  Yet, it is a good place for me to be.  Real stuff is born here.  This is where I learned God.  This is where I learned Love.  This is where I learned Connection in its deepest roots.  This is where I learned that all that is born in my life is decided by me.

Love, Guilt, Purpose: I cannot look outside myself for these things.   They don't come from anyone else.  They come from inside.  They come from that place in the core of me that I cannot fathom or know, that place beneath words that cannot be moved, and which arguments cannot sway.  They come from something outside any concept of self that can be conditioned, trained or therapied into reason.

I believe that is the place where God resides, and the motives that are born there are God motives.  Still, through some process I don't understand, the world teaches me to ignore that inner motive, to distrust and push it aside for more practical considerations.  The imagery of the outside presses itself against me.  It shapes and molds my expressions.  It squeezes and contains my being.  It tries to exert itself as truth, and I am left naked in myself, to choose one set of motives over the other.

Naked, insecure and alone.  Lonely.

Knowing everything is going to be all right,
Cobalt Dreams.

Dear Pneuma,

It's love.  

I recently heard a sermon in which the well-meaning speaker suggested that love, in marriage relationships, fades, and only commitment and trust remain.  I wondered what was meant by the word love.  

I recently read a book titled The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm.  The author claimed that love is a discipline that must be practiced, conditioned and constantly applied.  I wondered how all of that activity left room for love to be received. 

I recently attended worship at a church with the words God Is Love painted on its sanctuary wall.  The congregation confessed its vileness and worthlessness to this love.  Then it left that sanctuary to share something with the world outside.  I couldn't help but wonder what that would be.

An anarchist suggests resistance to the status quo by daring to love.  A Jesus freak says love the sick, despairing, ulcer-ridden masses.  A professor suggests there is no such thing as love.  The Beatles say, "all we need is love."  Despots tremble in fear when love has come to reign.

In these ideas, it seems to me that love is quixotic, faithful, elusive, powerful, and free.  Therefore, we fear it.  We try to control it by using it for our own satisfactions.  We try to tame it by picking apart its limbs and organs.  We try to contain it, by limiting its bounds.  We try to own it by claiming it a product of our achievement.  We try to deny it by dressing it poorly, and refusing its advances.  We try to kill it by burying it deep. 

Yet, each of these techniques ends up disproving itself over and against love.  Fulfilling our own satisfactions soon causes dissatisfaction.  Love's components don't seem to add up to an easy universal.  Lovers continually cross borders.  Our achievements are rewarded handsomely by all that the world gives, but love is not there.  Buried love just calls and calls to us, pulsing and aching, a constant reminder that there is a vacuum within.

I think we do not like to be smaller than anything else.  We like the things we build.  We like the worlds we control.  We like predictably patterned days with obvious rules and expectations. 

We fear the landslide.  We fear the muscle-bound other.  We fear a reality that suggests we are not all that matters.  Yet, the mountain crushes us without feeling.  Death defeats us without our consent.  Life refuses to follow our directions.  

And then there is love-it crushes us with feeling.  It defeats us only with our consent. It changes our minds about where we want to go.  Love is bigger than the mountain.  Love is strong as death.  Love rides the currents of life.  We don't like to believe that anything is bigger, stronger or more adept than we.  Yet, to crush the mountain, to flip the bird at death, to dance the unknown paths of life, we must surrender first to that which is greater than them all.  

Ruminating,

Cobalt Dreams