Eve, Can I Trust This Garden

Told Brandi tonight that I feel like there’s something stirring inside of me. It’s a unique sensation that I’ve come to recognize over the years. The way I do when whatever it is turns into a record. Maybe this time it’s another book. I entered this year with a lot of dreams. It’s all gotta come out.

She, lover of potty humor, asked me if the stirring meant that I had to go to the bathroom.

Marriage is good for a man.

There’s a kind of feeling in my body like a pent-up energy that starts to pull at me like “pay attention” when — and I think this is what it asks me to know — there are words that have to come out.

There’s a dream on the verge of lucid. 

(Do any other readers / creators out there know what I mean? Do you experience this, too? I genuinely want to know.)

It wants me to stop putting it off. Stop ignoring it. Do the work. The deep work. The kind that wells up from somewhere deep inside of you...

There’s a difference between that space and the head trip.  

Two days ago I asked my Twitter followers what the best advice they’d ever been given was. One person responded: 

“Unlearn that the church taught you to ignore your gut instinct and intuition — listen to them.”

I’ve been thinking about that. 

I’ve been thinking about it while watching the new season of His Dark Materials with Brandi in the evenings. “They told us that the dust was bad.” 

I don’t believe that honoring intuition is incongruent with faith — nor the desires of one’s heart — so it’s maddening to let that unfold and realize how much cognitive dissonance, needless suffering and self deception it has created. No one has lied to you more than you have.

Berate the flesh.

My main question for awhile now has been — as largely unbeknownst to me and only discovered recently with the help of a spiritual director — “Is this place safe?” And included in “this place” are things like: me, you, this body, this world.

Am I safe?

Are these people safe?

Can I trust this earth suit?

Could this become home?

Has it always been that?

In the fall, a woman asked me if I was trustworthy and it sent me into a spiral.

Am I?

Have I been?

Will I be?

Can I be?

How do a people whose hearts are wicked and deceitful above all things come believe something like that? What kind of collapse must one endure to repent and trust his own soul? That there might be something good inside of him?

What kind of forgiveness is asked of those who must learn to extend it toward the ones who told them to hate the place where God lives?

Your berated body houses Divinity.

She told me that I am. Trustworthy, that is. 

I told her that sounds like The Lie.

“Eve, can I trust the garden?”

Is it possible that following The Way has more to do with incarnation than escape?

Do you want me to be wholly me? Us wholly us? Are we fearfully and wonderfully made? Can a wicked heart feign delight to receive the desires you promise to give it?

Are we looking at this all wrong?

There is something unique about You. What was the stirring like in Your earth suit? Were You afraid to let it out? 

Is to be true to be crucified? 

And how in the world could it be true that the same spirit who dwelt in You calls me home? What am I when I AM abides in and beholds me and smiles? Does that mean that WE ARE? 

Are we?

You are better than we think You are. 

Can I tell the truth?

Take up your cross.