ॐ मणि पद्मे हूँ
My last post garnered some attention. Almost certainly more than it should have. In general, I do not like to hand out “black pills”. It hurts morale, but, more importantly, it’s just not fun. I’m more of a red pill guy. You know, a “truther”. If you stick around long enough you’ll find that I’m essentially Morpheus, only not black and not nearly as serious. Overly moody he was. Trench coat and rain storm ambiance. The world is fake, of course, on many levels. More levels than a lot of you will probably ever be comfortable with if we’re honest. But, at the same time, I never get upset with people for choosing the blue. The delusions are more comfortable and it’s not my job to “wake up” those who prefer the dream. Dreams aren’t bad, in and of themselves, and if you choose to sleep I hope that you have a good one. That said, sometimes a sober look at the situation is necessary. Occasionally you have to put down the compass and figure out where you are on the map. We did that yesterday, and, honestly, the place we’re in ain’t good. Okay. Granted.
Next?
Jesus was asleep on a cushion.
He was on a boat, he and the twelve. For those of you who know your Bible just the word boat will have your hackles raised. Jews, at least the ones in the Bible, are not good in boats. Perhaps they have since learned to sail better, I’m not sure, I haven’t checked in on the state of Israel’s navy. In scripture though almost every time somebody climbs into a boat it goes poorly. Noah was perhaps the one exception, and in his case it was a global apocalypse so, you know. Jonah for example. Gets on a boat. Storm. Paul. Gets on a boat. Storm. The disciples too, despite many of them being fishermen, seem always to be putting to sea at the worst possible time. This day was no different. Attempting to cross the Sea of Galilee after a time spent with the crowds, Christ leaves it to his disciples and retires to the back of the boat for a nap. Predictably, a storm arises. One violent enough to send the disciples into a panic. Rushing to get Jesus, one of the disciples shakes their master awake. “Teacher! Teacher!” he cries. “Do you not care that we’re about to die!?”
I imagine Jesus was annoyed. Keep in mind, at this point the men on the boat have seen him, in no particular order: turn water into wine, drive out evil spirits, heal the sick, cleanse a man with leprosy, produce a miraculous catch of fish, heal the paralyzed, raise a woman’s son from the dead, and restore another man’s withered hand. And, yet, still they are afraid.
Nonetheless, Christ gets up. Walking out on the deck, somewhat curtly I imagine, he shouts up at the sky. “Stop it! Quiet down!”
The sky obeys. The wind calms, the rain ceases, the thunder goes away. “Why were you afraid?” He asks them. “Have you still no faith?” What he did next is not recorded but personally I like to imagine he simply left it at that and went on back to sleep.
It is always thus. This episode on the sea is human life in microcosm. Our life, our little life, tossed and thrown by the waves and only we ourselves and perhaps our closest friends along for the ride. The externalities of life will always be scary. Sometimes, like in our day now, extremely so. Tyrants will rise and brother will turn against brother. The economy will shake. The drums of war will beat. You will look round about you and not see any possible way that you can make it. Yet, be not afraid. You can go to sleep at night, or even in the middle of the day, and rest soundly. Because if you know the truth then the truth really will set you free. Free from fear, from worry, from anxiety and distress. And here is the truth: You did not make yourself.
You. Did not. Make yourself.
Repeat it again.
You. Did not. Make yourself.
You are not, therefore, responsibly for continuing your own existence. Nor, for that matter, could you even handle such a responsibility were it were given you. Your life falls under God’s management. Just as no sparrow falls from the sky apart from his will, you can never perish unless he allows it. Nothing can harm you without his permission. Other people, the government, a virus. Not even the wind nor the waves. It may be hard to believe that right now, and in your head you are, even as you read, manufacturing dozens of counter examples, but again, listen to me.
You did not make yourself.
I urge people often in my writing to look at their bodies. This is because there is no greater evidence that someone greater loves and cares for you. All the trials and troubles of your life and yet, look. Hands and feet. Eyes. A beating heart and lungs that breathe. Are you doing any of that?
Do you know how your hands work? How about your eyes? Even the most studied anatomist will admit only the most surface level of knowledge. Can you control the beating of your heart or the exchange of oxygen in your lungs? Do you know how to make your toenails grow? When you wake up in the morning, do you have to remind your ears to hear? You are, right now and without any exaggeration, one of the most marvelous things in the whole universe. Your body is an artwork beyond imagining and your brain, in a strictly technical sense, is a more complex structure than all the solar systems in the sky. Did you make any of this? Did you knit yourself together in your mother’s womb? Look again at your eyeball and tell me there is no intelligence behind its design. Something out there is real. Something out there exists. Something powerful, and wise, and good. Perhaps the idea of an old man in the sky is not your preferred imagery. Fine. Think of a Force maybe. Or a Consciousness. Or a Love. However you like to imagine God here is a summary of his gospel in three sentences: The one who made the universe made you too. He knows your name, he knows your face, and he cares. You don’t have to be afraid.
Truly.
That’s what Jesus was trying to get us to see.
“Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
Still? After all these miracles? The ones that greet you everyday when you wake up?
When we are worried God is asleep. When we are asleep God is worried. By this I don’t mean of course that God is unconscious or unaware, only that, generally speaking, what we consider problems, aren’t. Not enough to rouse him from his cushion anyway. He has no fear that the government will get you, or that you won’t have your needs met if you lose your job over a vaccine. He’s not worried that you won’t be able to get food for lack of supply chains or that you will die in a mob driven by social unrest.
On all these issues, he sleeps. They are, to him, non-concerns. What does worry him though is that you will fall into sin because you got scared of all the other stuff. The fear that you might fall to temptation. That keeps Jesus awake. Quite literally, for example, in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Why?
Because sin isn’t simply doing naughty things. That’s a reductionist take on the matter. No. Sin is playing with Death. And, when you do that, God does indeed get worried that you will die. It is that, and only that, that leaves you vulnerable to life’s wind and waves. Only sin.
Look. A storm is blowing. God tells you to hoist sail and paddle hard to port but you don’t believe him. His command seems insane. You see the lightning and you hear the thunder and you think it best rather to drop anchor or to paddle starboard, or that it’s time to throw on the life jacket and abandon ship.
That’s how you drown.
That’s all it is. All the language of sin and righteousness and so on that’s become so laden with baggage over the centuries, that’s all it comes down to. Following God’s commands, even when they seem stupid, gets you through the storm. Doing anything else out of fear gets you shipwrecked.
See, there’s no reason to fear the storm. The storm is stupid. If the storm had any power you wouldn’t exist right now because there were multiple trillions of opportunities for you not to.
And yet.
Here you are.
You can get through this. You can and you will, if you have faith.
In the east they have a mantra. I chant it sometimes. ॐ मणि पद्मे हूँ. “The jewel is in the lotus.” If the world were bad, if the universe were as out to get and destroy you as your fears make it seem, then how could anything so delicate and beautiful as a lotus flower exist? Rather, does not the whole cosmos exist to produce such things? To make beauty. Is the lotus flower, or the lily of the field, not a jewel and a prize of the universe?
And you are more beautiful and precious to Heaven than all the flowers of the earth.
That does not mean there will not be trouble nor storms nor threats. There will be. But if you abide with God you will flourish in the midst of it. Don’t be afraid. Only have faith and sail on.
(Footnote: Some of you have generously taken up paid subscriptions to my substack. I just wanted to say thank you. I will work to give you more special content in the future, as thanks for your support. It means a lot that you do and it helps me greatly. Thank you again.)
Well you've hit the crux of the issue, and I agree in principle: none of us are in control of anything on this crazy rock--but how do we know what God is saying?
By the way yesterday's article was dark,but it was truth.I prefer to deal with the truth.Life can be dark too thanks.