Friday 4:31 PM Rock Island Coffee Company – Hamilton, Bermuda

bit longer between journaling than expected – went into the water & then nearly fell asleep on the beach and then decided to go home. Wanted to journal more, but didn’t get to it between wandering back to Marie’s and supper, scrabble, 24, internet & bed.

The urge to journal was nice though – haven’t had it in a while & it’s nice to actually have the creative urges feel more like cravings than “oh yeah, I should do that sometime”.

Tired and a bit frustrated – later nights (24 is addicting) and earlier mornings (the Lacasse family traffic & me sleeping in their living room) – the tiredness isn’t helping the frustration – got burned some yesterday – mostly OK ‘cept for one patch on my back where my hands couldn’t reach easily – Marie’s mom says it looks far less red this morning than it did last night. Got some noxema so will start treating it (if I can reach it).

The Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute was annoying and perhaps at some other time it would’ve been cool, but mostly it just made me mad. Cheesy displays, over evolution-ized stuff (e.g. talking of shells being an excellent “evolutionary design that has stood the test of time”. Implying a design says to me that there was a designer (perhaps this is the engineer or artist in me lashing out) and so it makes no sense to me when people phrase things like this – evolution is a genetic/geological process of change and, as such, has no capacity for decisions (and hence design) – if you’re going to talk about the wonders of evolution at least attribute it to a process instead of a source you can compliment on the ingenuity of “design” – either totally ignore the designer or credit the designer, don’t try to do both ‘cause it doesn’t make logical sense).

The displays were cheesy including the ‘dive’ – some goofy elevator/theater that they try to hype up as being a submarine. First they’re trying to play up to us 5 adults that this is some exciting “dive” and then they’re trying to reassure us “there’s no real water involved – it’s just pretend”. And the show & rattling and banging of the elevator was cheesy & ends in an “attack” by a giant squid & us abandoning ship at 30,000 feet down (which would kill us anyhow).

Then they have a shark cage display with replica shark cage (the one divers climb in while swimming with sharks) and it’s got two big screens showing displays of sharks on them with a sort of tolerable thought still mostly scary set of shark images. But when you step into the cage, it triggers the screens to switch to scenes where sharks start to rush the cage, mouths gaping open & they shake the cage/cage floor as the shark “hits” & then there’s a large bang & such & Kirk tries not to wet himself.

I’ve been having enough trouble with being afraid of the water without that. On Shelley bay beach, I was sort of having a good time until I thought about sharks & then had to go ask Marie if I needed to worry. Horseshoe bay has been OK, but I still look for fins every so often. Now I’ve switched to expecting a barbed tail to lash out when I step on some submerged stingray (Marie mentioned she saw some off of some ocean inlet around the island (i.e. not the beaches)), but yeah – the shark cage crap doesn’t help & made me feel pretty claustrophobic in the rest of the displays – expecting a shark to tap me on the shoulder with some huge fin and then smile & proceed to swallow me whole. I’ve left the institute looking suspiciously at the water expecting giant sea monsters to start devouring boats of reaching up to grab me off the pier & into a murky doom…..

Been reading both “The Cost of Discipleship” [by Deitrich Bonhoeffer] and “Traveling Mercies” [by Anne Lammott] today. I connect better with Annie’s book as she talks of addictions to alcohol & eating disorders and the miracles of learning to be sober & to feed herself. She talks of the personal hells of neurotically destroying yourself and the miracle of being rescued from that by grace. Could this grace, this salvation come without God? In Annie’s words, “I couldn’t’ feed myself! So thanks for your input, but I know where I was, and I know where I am now, and you just can’t get here from there.”

But Bonhoeffer’s book would likely ascribe much of this – and likely most of what I’ll embrace – as “cheap grace (which, as Dietrich says is “another word for damnation”). Dietrich speaks that, “he who believes, obeys and he who obeys, believes”. – that faith produces action and action puts us in the place where faith is possible. He speaks of the call of discipleship – Jesus’s call to follow, where the disciple abandons all to follow Jesus – about the initial step of faith in taking a step to give up something or to leave security behind to embrace following Jesus, and how this initial step out of the old life into a new one puts us in the place where faith (or belief) is possible and needed. In the old and comfortable life, there is no need for faith ‘cause it’s manageable in our control of whatever Jesus wants.

And yeah, his “pastoral thoughts” in the “call of discipleship” chapter feels pretty harsh (and like something a pastor could easily speak to me – whether they’d be right or not is a whole ‘nother deal).

And so yeah, I don’t know if I’m following, a true disciple, Jesus – & with what Bonhoeffer says, discipleship is about, I’m not sure if I want to be exactly. It makes me afraid. Confronts me with stubbornness, pride, fear, weakness, shame – it says to me that I can’t follow you – it seems impossible, beyond me, and that’s the point that my strength is not what matters. The new life of faith is stepping into a place where faith/belief can work, of where you’re “coming through”. Your grace is my only hope – and yeah, I’ve gotten so used to the looking out for me that I don’t know how to release me to you (or am scarred from trying to release me to others & having my heart smashed from that). So yeah, it may be like the guy “opposing himself” wanting to follow & not wanting to follow – “suffer me first” – yeah, so I know God - Jesus, Father, Spirit – maybe I’m in relationship with you & living in love and journey with you or maybe I’m just deluding myself and living in my manufactured self-absolving world of “cheap grace”.

God be merciful to me a sinner. I don’t deserve grace or love, but, from what I know of your heart, you delight to give us grace & love. Stitch me to your side in love, conform my heart to embrace you without shame, without fear, without reservation.

Give me clarity to know you as you really are.
Thanks. Amen.