Wandering lost

Went on a prayer pilgrimage with members of my church community. Missing some, feeling closer to others than expected. Last week the pilgrimage was called on account of rain & I was bitter & angry and very, very unhappy. I felt the most lost that I have maybe ever been….and with my near monthly mid-life crises, that’s maybe saying something. The prayer week opened up a door in me again, let me taste the sweetness of presence. I felt His delight over us, saw visions of the ways the enemies have tried to exterminate this generation (and everyone before) and how that God has been sovereign over it all and, in the midst of all the death & despair & ache & loss has been raising up an innumerable cloud/horde of worshippers, intercessors, witnesses… voices that will not be silenced, can not be silenced, all crying out for freedom, for justice, for the night to turn to day & the dawn to come….

…and I’ve felt lost because after tasting that, how do you go back to normal again?! And the sadder truth is that it’s far too simple to go back to normal, to feel the fire of His kiss start to fade on your lips, to, like Moses, feel the glory fading from your face as you are further & further from the closeness of His presence….the memory of it all is still there, burning like embers in your chest, but all the while you’re going through the motions of the normal routines of life….

So today I wanted to join pilgrimage… or, well, to be more accurate, yesterday I wanted to join pilgrimage. Today I was dog tired and grumpy and felt none of the fire or passion or even desire to go. But I went, wanting to participate, to have the chance at experience….and so we walked & journeyed led by our messengers of enthusiasm & loyalty (Justice the dog & Daniel & Jenn’s kids).

The pilgrimage wasn’t what I expected. Lots of great parts of seeing beauty both in the sense of nature as we walked the trails and green spaces of Calgary, and in the sense of beautiful houses as we strolled through some of the more opulent neighbourhoods in Calgary. Most of these places I’d never seen before in the 13 years of being here. I enjoyed the ideas/concepts/discussions brought on by the walk & the ‘activities’. There was a beauty in making ourselves foolish in some of the moments. But yeah, just not what I expected….

.During the walk the words of Psalms 121 came into my head where David speaks saying, “I will lift up my eyes to the hills, from where does my help come? My help comes form the Lord which made heaven and earth.” Someone postulated the idea, and I’m not sure whether it was true or not, that the song is one of pilgrimage from the yearly journey to Zion for the day of atonement or some other gathering of worship at the temple. The person postulated that the reference to ‘lift up your eyes to the hills’ was from where the journeying worshippers would see all the places of idolatry set on the hills, the ‘high places’ as the pagan worshippers would assume the mountains put them closer to their gods. The person sharing this idea commented that they thought the psalm was David asking people to look at all of these places of false worship & to ask, where is your help really coming from? And the hearts of the true worshippers would say, “it is from the Lord, Jehovah, Yahweh, the maker of heaven & earth.”

I’ve head it said that the best place to see Zion, or even the temple is from outside the gates of Jersualem on the hill where Solomon let his foreign brides worship their false gods. This was beside Gehenna, Jerusalem’s garbage dump which burned with continual fires and became a metaphor for Hell.

As we walked today, metaphorically walking to Zion, I was hoping to see a bit more underbelly…. To have the high places pointed out to me, the seats of money & power in this city. The boardrooms and the backrooms, the places where lives are bought & sold. I was hoping to see the places of desperation, where there is ache & loss and heartache and people scrabble for morsels to feed their stomachs or their souls. I wanted to stand just this side of hell, to feel the stench fill my nostrils and the heat of the flame on my face…. Somewhere in there I was hoping to find desperation, and beyond the desperation hope, and beyond the hope was hoping to see revelation, again, of the only one who is our help.

But instead we walked & talked & saw beauty and clean. All of which is nice & great & there are lessons there… but it’s all harder to see, and I think I lost God in the middle of it all. Not that He wasn’t there, I just lost the sense of awareness. We talked about nice houses and money and need vs. want, enough vs. gluttony, nothingness & homelessness vs. just living vs. excess… and maybe in the end none of it mattered. As part of the journey they quoted Kierkegaard saying that seeking the kingdom of God isn’t about doing things or selling your house & giving it to the poor, seeking God’s kingdom is about seeking the kingdom, nothing else…. And as we wrestled with questions of money & life and what are we doing, all of which is good wrestle, we still lost the purpose which was to make the first commandment first and to just seek God….. and when we say we, really I mean, I because that’s all I can really speak for….

…. The rest of today has been a haze of tired & ache. I wanted to head to the U of C catholic community for mass tonight. Have never really been to a full mass & thought it would be a cool experiment just to learn what it looks like. Mostly wanted to go ‘cause I think the students that come to help at JLYS are fabulous people & they give a lot to our moms & kids & community and I wanted to go to the places where they are & worship with them, or at least see what worship looks like for them. But in the end, I ran out of time by trying to fit in making pizza and a having a nap and really needing to have just way more sleep. I should be cleaning my house, editing letters for Jason, putting together a dating profile, pulling in my hoses for winter before they freeze. But instead have been walking in a tired fog getting the bare minimum done to get me fed & have leftovers for lunches in the week ahead.

Watched the ‘Stone of Destiny’ tonight and that has led to a different haze. It’s a movie about four young people full with passion taking risks to steal back a symbol of Scottish freedom from the British who kept it under their throne as a sign of the subjection of the Scottish people. Watching the movie fuels the fires in me of ache for being significant, for making a difference, for bringing freedom to people, for igniting passion, for finding partners in crime and finding a courageous love. I’ve been all ache since finishing the movie. Restless. I’ve wanted to drive far & fast, to run out into the streets, to scream, to do something, anything to make me feel not caught in four walls, to not be caught in patterns of normal, not trapped by timidity or lack of vision. I want to talk to someone who understands this, to feel the strength of shared fire/passion. But in the end, many friends are away, or busy, or it really doesn’t matter. More talk maybe means nothing.

I feel the aloneness tonight of not being understood, of feeling foreign in my world & to my own people. I feel weak & cowardly because I talk instead of do. I feel foolish because I have no idea of what to ‘do’ and think that I should have better ideas & plans…

….and at the end of the day, the message is ‘love’…. That was what was spoken in ‘relentless’ voice to me in the middle of feeling lost… just love. It’s the simplest yet hardest, easiest & yet most courageous thing we can do. Love relentlessly like the relentless love we follow, who skips over mountains & hills……