Chasing the Presence

What I had hoped was a nice run of sunny mornings yesterday has soured today. It is completely cloudy when I begin a 6.5 mile run at about 7:45. I run from home to the end of the road on the jetty that separates Doheny from the Dana Point harbor and back.

Looks like some decent surf out there. As I run down Palisades, I can see waves way way outside at Capo Beach but they don’t have quite enough energy to break. There is a good combo of swells in the water today: a peaking SSE, a fading SSW and a small NW swell.

Doheny is indeed a full house. Lots of surfers in the water and some nice waves that are large by Doheny standards.

When I get home it is still cloudy out. I do a couple chores and then head for the beach at about 9:15.

By the time I get to the parking lot, the clouds are looking ready to burn off. I’m betting it’s gonna be hazy blue skies by the time I finish up.

I head down the stairs and when I get to the final ramp I see a nice sized set of waves roll in. It’s pretty high tide - just starting to come down from a 5.7 which is fairly high. The waves are breaking fairly close to shore.

I get in the water and it is not long before I am knocked over and fully submerged. That’s ok because the water is still good and comfortable. Actually it would be ok even if it was cold. In fact I sometimes appreciate it when this happens in cold water. Rather than inch my way to submersion, it’s nice to have a little help getting wet. Then with the excitement of the tumble you kind of forget about the cold anyways. Well today that is not even a factor.

I’m off to the races as they say (but I’m in no hurry today).

As I head south there are a couple boats that are pretty close. I’m guessing these are lobster hunters (or whatever you call them) checking their traps. At one point it sounds like one is about to run me over and I lift my head to see what is happening. There is a boat about 20 to 30 feet away from me. Its wake sends waves that break right by me. Between those waves and the “reverse waves” sliding back down the slope of the shore and heading back out to the ocean, it’s a bumpy ride here but the water’s surface is glassy smooth.

It’s turning out to be a beautiful morning. I get to the southern cliffs and the waves are breaking with some drama against the rocks both close and farther out. The water is comfortable and blue and the hills of the Laguna coast lie green in the distance.

I’m swimming into a big wide yes. With every stroke I reach for yes. The last few weeks (and also kind of my entire adult life) I have been thinking about my relationship to religion, spirituality, the bible and the church I have been attending. Sometimes the concepts of spirituality, at least as communicated by some Christians and especially the little fundamentalist voice that lives in my head, feel so hollow and lifeless. When I think of a dude Jesus sitting on some throne next to his Dad in heaven and looking down at us in the same flow of passing time that we all perceive to inhabit and this abyss of hell that lies one step below, I just can’t (and don’t) get into it. When I think of prayer and talking to God as me here and God there and asking for some thing that I want or expressing some feeling that I have, the communication feels stiff and artificial.

However, when I read the bible with an open heart and when I think of Jesus as the pathway to communion with the source of creation, I feel a visceral truth deep in my body. Even when I am reading words in the bible that express ideas that seem ludicrous, I feel a sense of warmth and truth. A good example is 1 John 5:12 “Whoever has the son has life, whoever does not have the son of God does not have life.” On the one hand I absolutely do not believe this. I don’t believe that only those who follow and worship Jesus (as in an actual person with the name spelled J-e-s-u-s) are the only ones walking a path of truth leading to union with God. On the other hand I believe this verse utterly and completely. I can get into all sorts of word and idea games about what really is “the son”? In the end I’m not sure that is helpful. I think the author in his place and time was expressing somethin deep inside his first century self and I believe in that. I believe that Christ represented something to these people and his actual life had an immeasurable impact on their outlook on human experience that would cause this person to write such a thing. I believe in that.

I think of this truth I feel humming deep in my body and try to give it expression. There really are no words I feel capture this energy in a great way. The best I can do this morning is “yes.” That feeling screams “yes.” Its a “yes” shout out by all humanity in their quest to overcome the separation they feel from the divine.

Early this morning I was listening to a podcast that interviews different worship leaders of various Vineyard churches. It’s funny because this podcast is so NOT like what I normally listen to. Totally evangelical and they use a bunch of the phrases and ideas that might normally shut me down but I love it because it is so personal. These are intimate and honest conversations with musicians who don’t tend to be into all the dogma and belief hype and just want intimacy with God. That I can get into. Anyways Sam Lane, the guy that was interviewed on the episode I was listening to today was talking about “chasing the presence of God.” I love that phrase and it is often what I feel in the worship at the Vineyard church I attend. That chasing is the expression of the “yes” that emerges from how I feel about Christ.

So as I struggle with these thoughts and feelings of who is Jesus. Is he someone I can get into? Can I survive the evangelical narrative? The Jesus in that cosmology does not feel real, but when I hear Sam and the other worship ministers on that podcast talk about their own experiences with Jesus in their own words, it feels very very real.

Sure I could look at Jesus as some sort of spiritual abstraction - a symbol pointing to an ineffable catalyst that binds us to everything else in the divine whole. I did that for a few years after I rediscovered the bible and it was a step forward in realizing that maybe Christian thought was not total crap. Then I talked to Ed Piorek and had several conversations that lead me to an understanding of Jesus as a real thing. Honestly it was not what Ed said but who he was as he shared time with me that guided me down this path.

This evolution of faith from Jesus as symbol to Jesus as true divine grace that I love, worship and try to imitate has deepened my experience of life. This belief and devotion to a tangible entity seems so very weird and I can’t really have what feels like an intellectually sound conversation on the matter. However in this past year of faith in Jesus, I feel like my energetic plumbing is clearing up. I seem to have more access to my feelings which is something I have often felt disconnected with and to actually experience tears feels like a miracle every time I shed one. I feel more connected than ever to God or whatever the kids are calling him these days.

What’s odd is that this faith is not at all based in some fact based, legally justifiable set of arguments. It is…well…faith. I feel like I have enough facts to satisfy me on most days. I have unshakable faith in the “universal Christ” that was there in the beginning and was with God and was God as said in the gospel of John. The historical Christ is a tougher knot to untangle but I love the knot and I will indulge my faith in this person because it gives me life. I will sit with that knot like a Zen koan. I will lose myself in the untangling.