I can’t escape conversation. Even in what may appear to all but you know who as silence, there are often words swirling around inside me. And likewise, and not unusually, I appear to myself as one invited to, and in, a great question and answer forum, hearing questions rise.
And right now, in this very moment of tapping keys to suddenly cause words to appear before me, (and perhaps in some later, before you) arises this one: “Where do I go from here?”.
And now that is consigned to my past, and right now, to perhaps your future…(which is now)
Oops, here it is again: Where do I go from here? I was wrong…again! Not so past as I thought.
Making the unknown known is some work! (Good thing it’s not left to me or my work)
Ahh, here is where “we” are going. See, I am finding out in this now, just as immediately as you are finding out in yours. We are all (O! the presumption in “we are all”?) walking in a way we know not. Walking into what is unknown to us.
One writer said this of another:
By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. (That’s in the Bible I have)
Now, I understand this may not sit well with some, in my assignment of “we are all”. For I can and do already hear something of a din arising in the so called forum that might seem to disrupt what was determined to be a (more orderly?) question and answer period.
Opinions are now rising, being tossed to and fro in seeming odds against each other. Some called believers are shouting “To hell with your “we are all”! for not all men have the faith, and surely not the faith of Abraham, much less Jesus Christ!” and “You have no idea who is going to read this!” And for me, some of (who only seem) the mass of faceless believers have faces, I think I know some of them, have met some of them.
But their faces are only in my memory, as again and likewise “we all” only see the past. Even when looking face to face in the natural. In the natural, all we know (or believe we do) is in the past…words utter(ed) (it takes time for sound waves to reach our ears from the utterer), things seen as looking at, (it takes time for light), and we are, in the natural always and only in capture of things past. And no matter how “fresh” a memory may seem…
But anyway…and nevertheless, we are quite convinced we have a “now” in which we see and hear as things really are. (My own memory would never play me false, would it? After all, it is my own…!)
Likewise I hear a din rising from what appears “another side”. “I am not a believer, I don’t believe your hoo doo, or in some invisible sky daddy, so don’t include me (or us) in your “we all”. And surely not that silly book written by mostly ignorant, superstitious, and unwashed nomads and tribal folk. This is 2025 dammit! Who do you think you are, anyway?” and often “You so called believers are always so presumptuous, pompous with what you say and think you know about everything and everyone to even include the likes of me (or us). You talk like you know or have known…everybody! Pompous fool!”
And “You writer, appears as the most pompous and presumptuous I have ever heard!”
“You don’t know…me!”
Yeah, seems anyone expressing anything…should expect push back. Even if in their own head.
“No, the sky is not just blue, it is cerulean blue!” Corrections abound. (Say cerulean blue 50 times and see how queer and meaningless it sounds…even to one’s self)
Oops did I say queer? (Another quadrant of the forum is being heard from!)
“Hey! that’s our word!”
All of us (did I say “all” again?) trying to appropriate whatever this thing is we commonly call reality to our own ends, whereas it most often seems the greatest and only most common thing we find is an each seeking to be uncommon. Whose words, whose reality (kinda belies the very notion of reality by assigning it a “whose”, doesn’t it?) is/are reliable? Is it really (what does really mean, anyway?) up for grabs?
Listen, if you can. Briefly, if you can. I ask as favor, imploring. For I know I am asking a lot…and more than a lot. At least to a man I can and do readily concede is out of his mind if that be your judgment. I can no longer be afraid of the crazy (or the judgment of it) than I can of my own shadow. It follows me, relentlessly. Too used to it by now. (Maybe I kid myself? Wouldn’t be the first time)
Listen it is 2025! (or so it seems, anyway) And there are discoveries of microbes, cells, atoms, quarks, neutrinos, Higgs Boson(s), forces and fields, weak(s) and strong(s), electromagnetic waves, photons, Fermi paradoxes, musings over gravity and space (and mutual effects), vast spaces uncovered of these things we call “matter” on a level so profound we wonder if even matter exists at all as ever once thought. (And my fondness abounds for a thing called “string theory.”) All these things and so many others those dusty footed nomads knew nothing about (or at least they didn’t say).
And all these things mentioned (of which there are boundless others), I know less than zero about in understanding to convey to any adequacy…except to mention them. Just as I can say “theoretical physics” without prohibition, yet knowing absolutely nothing of it.
I hear it! I hear…”See! See! We always told you thunder and lightning was not as some hill dwelling sandal clad goat herder thought…’the voice of a god’. Or angel. Or that spontaneous combustion deserved wonder and attribution to some miraculous appearing from another realm you claim as under your purview! We know! We now know!
We are not superstitious, but scientifically and rationally informed as to the nature of reality and things, not like that shepherd or so called prophet believed or wrote, with not even any basic understanding of things mentioned…atoms, cells, the Krebs cycle, electrical activity. And the “nature of matter” being so enigmatic that we now say (and without fear) to even that they in their benighted ignorance (and all who find something of their “stuff” to hang their hat or so called faith upon) you ‘had and have no idea…no idea at all of how things really are…’ ”
“Nothing is nor ever was as it seemed to YOU in your silly, ignorant, and superstitious interpretation of it, or holding to it”
Wait.
Some other few are now rising. I can’t describe their camp even though (perhaps especially so and even because) I count myself as there. Somehow indescribable and resistant to all description of any how…yet I am there.
“Wait”, is said. “Wait”.
“This is all we have been saying in ultimate of deconstruction, even to your own words ‘Nothing is nor ever was as it seemed’.”
This, your seeming claim is no less ours from even our own outset. Nothing, no thing is…as it seems. There is and remains a hidden nature as to all things are as yet, in seeming. Perhaps like you my mind says and interprets solid when I hit the table…or wall, or fall to the ground, but as to the nature of the table (mostly space) and myself also, no less, I find my own mind in one sense lying to me about what solid really means as it appears to it. (And how fond I am of Lord Rutherford’s reaction by staying in bed!)
A brilliant man of peerless exploration, experimentation, and discovery in his work of finding how vast are spaces in things we perceive as once “solid”. A brilliant man (also called “the father” of nuclear physics) reduced for a time in fear possessed by his discovery. Terrified of getting out of bed for fear of falling through the floor with what he now knew. Everything I once thought solid is mostly empty space!
Yes, knowledge can be very very scary. Even the brilliant are not immune. And though I am not seeking to make a point, neither am I ashamed of what another wrote:
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
O! But doesn’t that seem contrary? Doesn’t it seem that the better would always be to the knowing of stuff? That to the knowing of more stuff is the better overall? How could sorrow be in it? Is some superstitious work at work…smuggling sorrow in?
I have met many (purely anecdotal of course) who claim faithlessness, or atheism or agnosticism as home base, yet who claim some oft unspoken intrepitude [sic] for meeting life or reality head on without crutch. This thing of faith to which they assign as only superstitious belief and practice. That likewise they are often not unwilling to say or ascribe to as a mere result of a fear generated response.
That “they” are the more fearless, intrepid, devoid of that nothing they assign as faith in “other’s god(s)” or God’s being, but assign as that form of comfort crutch created by the timorous (of which they are not, surely) to face what few would deny as life’s uncertainty(s). Not to even here mention death. It seems often there may be enough pomposity to go round.
It’s almost as if, if there really be sides, each side is prepared to say “O! but you do not know what I labor under (My god asks much of me!), and/or contrarily, “You do not known how much fearlessness is required of me to live bare faced and alone looking into the future. And at death” (Rare is the man who is not inclined to somehow publish “See how hard I am at work!”)
And I must also wonder at those who, not unusually say how at home they are (in their fearlessness) with the notion of death. It must only be “the others” that find some fear/terror there to construct a crutch as only possible motive for a thing called faith. For, if so comfortable in, or with that notion of their own non being so final, so ultimate and so rapidly approaching (I tell you, there is nothing after!)…why shun its practice now by being silent if one is so at home with it?
Am I being catty?
Perhaps there is more to being, especially being in consciousness or what appears so…or what we claim as so…than seems? Yes, nothing is, no thing is as it seems. Even nothing.
Who really is made able to enter, not the unconscious…but the absence of it? If that is the true and overall estate of (what some might call) reality, (it has no and holds no consciousness) then one is already there, no? I mean…who escapes…reality? And if reality is ultimate, and what we are all inescapably in, and is no less the absence of consciousness, then you (perhaps) alone O! man! are surely upsetting it by thinking! Unless you are prepared to say you do not…think. (Ha!) Am I being catty, again?
Or even more absurdly (and I have nothing against the absurd when worn properly) one is prepared to say “reality is in flux”. Or even, “in flux to each.” Then, of course, one could not ever presume to base their notion of reality as a “real” and ultimately true thing as holding no consciousness. For some consciousness is required to even say that.
Everyone I have ever met or had exchange with (anecdotally) seems to have it. But here again I am. Nothing is as it seems.
This Jesus confessing man once said, (at least as I am told and have read):
One day you are going to find there are only two men alive in the earth, you and the Lord.
I have no doubt this is odious to some. (Look! A Jesus smuggler!)
And though I believe this is surely true of the believer, I hold some hope for even those who (seemingly) presently deny.
It may become of some import to know who (when applicable) and what, is real.
You might even find some question of what appears your own consciousness, your own mind. Even in that thing one calls their own mind. Are thoughts…really real? What are they? Is my mind so called, or consciousness, a real thing? Do “I” have it like any or every other, as it seems? When I say blue, do they see red?
Does anything I think I say to another…ever really conform to what I believe I am communicating? What some may even say they are hearing? Is communication actually a real thing…as it seems?
Ultimately, like our once view of what a seemingly solid thing really is as opposed to our experience and the way our mind constructs it to an ourself, might my mind have any other interpretations of, and even of itself…wrong? Misleading? What if all is wrong in my understanding about everything…what do I know? Is anything according to what I think “to know” means…as knowable? Maybe some they are lying about atoms? How would I know? Or maybe I misheard it all. Is there any they, at all?
What do I know?
If we summarily dismiss all this as folly, as mere teenage or dorm musings after a few bowl hits (See, I assume communication as a real thing), with “at least I know my own mind” and this which is coming from that mind (of the writer) is folly, then if it is yours, your mind; it is yours to control in all, no? Letting in only what “it” chooses, excluding all it finds foolish, lie or just plain stupid to it. Exquisitely judging by power of what will be to it. Then show your exercise and control by forbidding any next nightmare or even unpleasant thought. (I have yet to meet anyone who says they enjoy them) After all it’s your mind…and why would it ever do that…to you? Am I flirting with being catty?
Is Jesus an unpleasant thought to you? (too much?)
But this brother said as he said. In your earth of questions, in which I have little doubt words also swirl, and many questions too, the only man able to give answer to another man (even in his mind quite directly in a true now) is that, as yet, invisible man. If He answers you, His answer is a call. He spurred you to even ask. And His call is firm. Even out from all that is familiar to you, seeming home to you, and to walk in a way you know not. It sounds hard, right…”how do I go where I don’t know where I am going?”
Peace to you, because everyone is. You already know of it, are even quite sure of it of “others”.
The man who hoped to, even thought he would, break his best golf score had a heart attack on the 16th hole. (He may have lived). Or if too dire for you, the woman who won the lottery. It matters not what or how one chooses to view such, you already know (or do you not?) how life changes suddenly from what was apparently one direction to another.
We may like to say or think “I know”…”I know where I am going and what I am going to do…” Even “I know what I do”…often thinking we see or know all outcomes of such doing. What we most rarely consider in what we may think is, or view as, the immediacy of our doings, is a trail of consequences always farther reaching than we can know or imagine. But, we take the odds in our now.
Yes, how much we wager on odds! Odds are “I will make it to work”. Odds are “I will come home from work”. Odds are, odds are, odds are “things are real, and will be…as I think”. As I think…until. Until whatever, or whomever causes us to question even our very own thinking. Even being. What is it? These things over which we have made so many assumptions, presumptions, even as to what can be…and will be. Even and including…what cannot.
What is?
We may find ourselves in some extremis of darkest ignorance before light comes.
And light is to come.
The light is the coming one.
Then we “know” as no one can either explain, elucidate, illuminate or describe how desperately we need to know…what, if anything, is real. We can surely put that aside, do and have, to some later considering in our seems (that seem good enough) our odds (that seem enough in our favor) by being occupied in a mimicry we have bought as life.
Yes, and I am as good (or bad) a mimic as ever was. And, yes, I can still do it, not denying. But the most easily verified truth remains, proven even daily…sometimes even moment to moment “I do not know what I am doing. I do not know where I am going” as often as yet I may remain so very inclined to think otherwise.
Too frank for some, I know.
But this I have also found…it is not too frank for one man. It is only before He who shows it so irrevocably and consistently true, that I truly don’t know what I am doing, that also allows me to confess it without shame. He alone is not ashamed of man’s not knowing, making and having made full provision for it in Himself. I have met a man who communicates it. Believes in communing, even if or when, all else is found scattering. Yes, communication is possible.
I dare not deny His provision, even plea, for what “knows not what they do”…God forgive me, and God forbid me. I am always moving into the all I do not know, regardless of how I pose myself. And in posing myself I am no exception nor hold some magic exemption. I posture a lot. Just as a mimic would. And the “all” I do not know is that which, and even that He of which, and whom is, all of reality. But funny…moving into that better man leaves me absolutely no claim of being any better. But it may of a liar, be able to fashion an honest man, a real man. And truth in the inward parts.
One might rightly ask “but how do you know?” It is the only thing I do know, I cannot escape reality. Despite my array of crumbling seems, and all the seems thrust upon me for which I cannot blame any other in their thrusting. They gave what they had to my willing acceptance. I bought into the odds. With all I had and was. After all, I could win at this! But there is a better man, and He alone is the one who provides me all relief from trying to be one. Or now, even think myself one. Truth is always enough.
Oddly, and for a long time, and too long a time I actually was convinced I was better, being made better to some end that I might (for my own pleasure) enjoy being better. A kinda bestial blend of Christian Narcissus , enjoying my own reflection in a pool, happy as can be at who I see there. Am I now immune from being found stealing peeks? God knows, and God forbid I lie! And, even more importantly, God forbid He stop catching me at it with reproof.
The odds were surely on trying, God knows. But someone did the impossibly sure for man; and only sure thing. He ran himself quite purposefully to death, and yet, not as suicide. The life that kills Him is the life He is, but something had to get out of the way for its seeing as that life going beyond death. He not only paid a ransom in full for sin, but no less took that sinful thing with all its predilections for and to it (sin) with Him to the cross.
There’s not much I can do (nothing, really) if all you smell is a rotting corpse about me. It’s a sure thing I must be, to some. And sure things are always better than the best odds. Even and especially if and when it even confirms the unseemly, as unseemly. (It is unseemly for a man to stink so much!) Yes! yes! Be provoked to look elsewhere for fragrance!
But it is not even that “I like” a sure thing, or am found in preference of it. I do, for sure, but there is something other. I can’t escape it. Reality…is real. And there is in and of reality, a better man. And He is not me, no matter the tightest of bonds irresistible in place. Drawn tighter (if it be so) only proves this all the more clearly, I am not Him. Yet in that perfection He has and is, He has no less made it perfectly OK to not be Him. Of Him is abundantly sufficient.
He allows another, has made provision (even in His own body) for another to be as real as He. It is enough to know…real. It changes us…even if we feel we must take to our bed to avoid falling through the floor for a time.
“Knowing the terror of the Lord,” someone said, “we persuade men.”
If you have gotten this far, perhaps a few extra paces? I am not sure what’s next, myself. But I see a shadow in hope of its materializing. That communication is now, and not merely as a possible thing but a quite real thing…and to take place.
And that is kinda it. Shadows becoming, and to become, substance. Real.
Just as I said every man is walking into the unknown (though he might protest he knows, and knows how things will, or must be) we are. In “the Bible” quote referring to Abraham we find a man with an attitude, particularly that attitude of accepting that as true. Someone called him out to even let him know by telling him, you are being led in a way you know not. He is called the father of faith for that, his acceptive reception of that. But even this was not of himself, he was called to and for this.
The man who remains convinced he always knows where he is going and what he is doing cannot receive it. Convinced of what “will be”. Even though he is walking into the very same unknown to himself. He simply is that, the man denying his walk into the unknown, because he is self assured of what he knows, and by his own will and purpose, what is “to be”. No man is immune to that except the one who walked perfectly and purposefully to His own end.
But just as there is some resistance to using such a broad and narrow brush simultaneously, there is often resistance to another thing. The thing of “what you don’t see”. Or by extension, the thing you can’t prove. And in particular for this conversation “the invisible friend” or “the invisible sky daddy”. As I said in Abraham’s walking as common to all (not really knowing where any of us are going, in toto) so is this matter. The religious might like to “keep it to themselves” for advantage of sorts, I cannot. Or cannot anymore…my own advantages having been thrown in my face by the reality…even to some staining, far too many times. They are dung. Yet I have hope in a cleanser.
But we all are in “dealing” with the invisible, and particularly invisible persons. Perhaps even of all “things”, persons are the most invisible to us of all things and in all our dealings. And it has only been by God’s grace of being drawn into a man I couldn’t see, and learned what little I have of Him, that I see this so clearly.
It doesn’t matter of whom “other” I might speak here, for quite mostly all other people are often a great mystery to me. But I feel free to talk of wife. Someone it seems a poor choice in all, not for whom my own wife is, but for the fact it seems (and is often widely accepted and acceptable) of all people a man would know his wife “best”. He may know his children, or think he does, and many others. But I choose wife, not necessarily as prime example, but for me as one (my wife) who will bear me using her as example. My kids may be strong, but my wife is strong in the Lord.
(But the wise will find it is really only me I am talking about)
I “deal” with her according to my knowing of her. She is corporeal, so to the protesters she is provable. But how often has been and yet often is, in dealing with this person I can see, feel, touch, know, had many experiences with (and therefore prove to the “rational”) another appears, almost as from out of nowhere. There’s a something or a someone going on there “inside” (well beneath exteriors) that is really there.
My thinking of knowing her so often is shown as not matching up as precisely as I think, that it has not been less than more than several occasions I have heard “You think you know me” or “you really don’t me at all, do you?” I may be a terrible, if not the most terrible husband as ever has been, God knows. Maybe it’s right for any and all to say “you need to be a better husband, you suck”.
But that’s not really the lesson, or for me, my lesson. It’s that even standing 5 foot 2, of so many pounds, (provable enough?) I am always dealing with that invisible “thing” inside. A person…a real person as real as me…but invisible. Knowable…but also unknown.
And even so often misunderstood…by me. I now have no problem at all with dealing on the grounds that “persons”, even all persons, are as invisible to me, as she. And to be fair (if only to myself) even what “comes out” from this invisible thing as words is often mystery…when, or what does “I am fine” ever mean what I think it might? Especially if I find it repeated by my further investigation by “I already told you, I am fine”.
But, even for me, that is low hanging fruit. But I think you get it. Maybe.
Of course I am only telling on myself. My inadequacy and often error in failing to read. But here’s the thing, this thing inside that (provable for some) shell is dynamic, real, even though I am pressed to admit how invisible is that thing to me. I “see” it with some knowing, but far short of its sum. Something is always going on I can’t and don’t see, changes here, revisions there, a consciousness contained (it seems) but which is itself…invisible. The she that is the she is, is of that consciousness going “on” inside her, even that makes her that her…is invisible. (And I do not doubt her reality, do you?) And how much more of a thing might be invisible?
Dare we say…spirit? A thing deeper even of all and ultimate constituent.
Ahh, I learn…persons, though invisible, are real. Oh, we can generally identify a body or a face as that of a person, even say we know a person by those things. “It has a human body, human organs” therefore “it is or was a person.” We have now advanced down to DNA, not only for a classification but now to more specificity as to person, where once fingerprints were the best we had.
And despite this, all this and these things, we still hold to something other than the body and even its minutest constituents “it’s who you are ‘on the inside’ that is the you you are.” Or I am. The things quite intangible, and things intangible of character, demeanor, dispositions, intelligence, and so on. And those things, always being impacted by thoughts, experiences, even thoughts and experiences of others, things of seeming no control to that occupant that “show” who that person is. I only see any by their manifestation of something I don’t see…to me.
And such is dynamic in that sense; which is why today’s wife is both not yesterday’s, nor may be amenable to yesterday’s dealings or knowledge. “I thought you told me you like roses”? or “Oh, you don’t want pancakes today?” We are always being changed, in changing, but also in some peculiar way maintaining the same identity. Even if to others we may seem a completely different person. “I dont’t get it, she was such a bitch in high school…or he a bully…or timid…”
Walking into the unknown does that. Meeting unknown experiences, coming across once unknown thoughts or considerations, or some information previously unknown. We are all doing it. Even if we deny it, this, our being in flux; seemingly static to ourselves because, “I know myself! I know who I am, dammit!” Identity held in place, but everything else…swirling.
“This is me,” or…”this is me with amnesia” even.
And how rarely might we concede so much just seems to “bubble up” from somewhere in ourselves, an even unknown and unsee-able place somewhere, even and particularly (to us) within ourselves, unbidden, unsought…but now breaking through to our consciousness (or mind, if you will)…that we even seem to “self change”?
“Why I never saw it that way! Nor could I, till just now!” What are often called epiphanies. A light goes on, where once a bulb for lighting was not even seen, or known. How much of we ourselves…is even unseen to ourselves? Small wonder then, we are all some mystery to one another. For we are mysteries to ourselves, not even knowing why if pressed as when pressed we might say “I told you, I know who I am, dammit!”
Spirit, soul, and body. Spirit ineffable and irreducible. What we might call true or truest of nature (and most often resisted as to being real). Soul, which even the most hardened may deny as being a “thing” of itself, nevertheless understand in some way, that when they are dealing with a person, any person, (yes, even themselves) they are dealing with an intangible being in expression with, and or for, communication.
Some may think only of mind, so be it. But that in itself is intangible enough. Just to be able to touch another’s mind or be touched by another is no small feat. Yet, and nevertheless, this thing, if even reduced to mind is always, and in some way, under a bombardment of assault irrefutable…being directed, buffeted, informed (even by own thoughts rising from an unknown place) and situation and circumstance. I say assault because if stillness is peace to it, it yet and often finds itself nevertheless made subject.
To be awake and alive to circumstance also brings with it many unbidden things. “Does that old man wearing that T-shirt really believe himself ‘#1 Grandpa’? Does that old lady also garbed really want me to do a something? ‘Ask me about my Grandchildren’?” Is Crest really “the best toothpaste?” And on and on…even if one is happening to read this (or write it), for I, no less am being changed, and under some bombardment of thought and thoughts, circumstance(s), interruptions unanticipated, requests made as from outside for my attention and attending…and myriad other things. Nevertheless (I am persuaded) you are partially, if not totally convinced the man who wrote the first sentence here is the same as the last one writing the last sentence.
Yes, I am me, but I am also not so sure something hasn’t changed. Something intangible…even to me.
Body? The thing of material so often held as proof of being? “Show me God and I will believe” sort of thing? “Even if you can produce, or He would, some sort of smokey shadow out from nowhere…it would be enough,” some might say…”anything, anything at all (so called) verifiable to the senses”.
The weakest of all things, really, isn’t it? “One miracle, just one miracle…to be seen…if He really wants to make Himself known as so many say”. Or seem to.
That so called consciousness in demand of such proving has not yet learned (perhaps refuses to?) what a mystery it already is…and even to what would be called “itself”. How “it” has it, (is it in a hydrogen atom? Any number of groups of them and their multiple ascending conglomerates?) Where it comes from, where it abides, nor of restrictions to itself and allowances.
Even as to that “it” that has it when saying “I have consciousness”. Who are you? Are you the consciousness? ( I won’t call you God, but you might) Your consciousness? Some thing that has it? If so, who or what is the thing having? We could go on and on, no doubt about invisible and mysterious things. Like persons. What and who such is. What it means to say I am…this, or that, or such and such, or so and so.
One day you are going to find out there are only two men alive in the earth, you and the Lord.
Then maybe, and if so, you may discover you have always been dealing with the unseen to you, even particularly when not knowing it. Even your own “self”.
Who ascends?
This fellow, once blind, needed a second touch. The first left him only seeing men as trees walking.
And no more than that.
Yes, you and I are not the same. But hey, I’m not even the same as I was. Even five minutes ago. How far exactly might that time be divided down, as the unknown is moved through by each, or any?
A moment? A twinkling of any eye?
What is a moment…that it might become momentous?
Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.
Yet, Pharisees can be changed.
Blinded by the light.
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