sacred

i'm sensing the presence of the sacred now in my mind, my heart.
i'm thinking about what sacred means, feels like, looks like.

i just watched a beautiful reminding video of the very sacredness i too often skirt around, inch back from -- maybe because its so intense i don't know if i can handle its unsettling purity? i need reminders, i'm so forgetful and blithe.

i'm so profane.

i don't choose to be that way. its just programmed - i'm fallen and i can't get up.
really though this kind of falling isn't a joke.
i know, i always know - i live with the intimate knowledge of what it is to be fallen. . selfish, bad.
I despise this core nature of mine.

I find it so easy to dip my toe in the pool of God's mercy, walk around the periphery of his grace, afraid, afraid to commit to the plunge. . for that would demand my surrender, giving up the damaging ways i've grown accustomed to, the world's bent is my bent. . humanity's crookedness is my own. I don't need to stay there. . in fact i should not.

my feelings seem to govern me. one moment i feel a wellspring of love within, love for God, love for people. . .

the next i feel removed from this love, deaf to its voice, somehow beyond its reach, yet i'm not really.

my spirit gasps, i fade and faint
so i live in the shallows of myself, afraid of the depth of the sacred, of him.

feeling too shabby for his perfection.

when will i understand his heart? why do i try to humanize him? he's beyond parameters, he bursts them wide open.
i'm learning how to live with him.
relationships are never easy.

some might think that i'm not in my right mind with this talk of God, of sacred. .

some might think i'm weak, in need of a crutch, an opiate, a 'false' system of belief to prop up or medicate myself. .
I know this isn't the case. I can't tell you how i know.

How i can believe in someone invisible, mysterious?
I'm no flake.
I'm not deluded.

I just do.
I have felt within myself the sacred imprint of his spirit on mine.

I have 'heard' within my heart, his voice.
I have felt the power of all that he is, restoring my spirit's wounds.
I am flawed.
I am unworthy, but his willing-to-die love gives me worth, though this does baffle me and does make me feel unable to thank him properly.
tends to make me want to avert my eyes.
too bright, this light.
Still i am drawn by and to this love which is beyond my capacity to understand.
I am drawn.

I have felt and i do feel what it is to be in the presence of someone from whom nothing about me is hidden or covered up. .

from whom i can lay down the burden of the risk of such transparency and not count it as risk, with no guarding --knowing i am safe from rejection and disdain.

How can such absolute acceptance not attract me?
but why do i still shrink back?
i don't understand myself.

I cling to this faith i have and i don't want to let go.

Dawkins would scoff and bandy points, pierce my 'ignorance' expose my irrationality to the world. Hitchens would have a similar field day with my 'pathetic' state.
sacred? what does that even mean if i won't risk knowing what it means?
if i don't feel it, don't see it.
I can't measure it.
There are no pie charts.
No proof.

I do feel it.
I risk it, this intangible, beautiful force hooks my heart and pulls me in.
In to the mystery of the sacred.
In to the love unique. In to life.
In to relationship.
In to the sacred, to stay. . . . . .

to live