Hello all,
I just wanted to check in with you briefly to let you know I haven’t forgotten about you. I’ve been in a bit of a low place in my life the past few months and have struggled to put together anything creatively. I’ve also been on the road a lot, which has hindered progress on posts. On the upside, I did recently get some great photos from my travels, which I’ve included below. I hope you enjoy them.
You know, I have to be honest. I’ve been struggling. Without going into too much detail, back during Covid I had a lot of life upheaval and things have yet to stabilize back to anything resembling “normal”. This isn’t bad, necessarily, I feel that I was, like the people in Exodus, sort of “forced” out of The Land of Egypt by a literal plague. That’s had its upsides. I was stuck in a kind of bondage (to myself and others) and now I am free. That’s true. But, also, just like the people in the book, I have likewise found myself literally wandering in a desert. I didn’t choose it. It just sort of happened that way. Myths (and by that I don’t mean falsehoods), especially biblical ones, are true not just because of their historical accuracy but also because they play out over and over again in our actual lives. I was forced out of my comfortable slavery by plagues and, somehow, found myself often all alone in the middle of the desert. Free but adrift, and, possibly, walking around in circles.
The only part of the Exodus Myth that hasn’t come true for me is the Pillar of Cloud and Fire part. You know, where, after the Israelites are freed from Egypt, they are guided by God in the form of a Cloud during the day and “a pillar of fire” (whatever that means) at night. I don’t have that. Wish I did. Guidance about what to do next or how to proceed hasn’t yet come to me, or, if it has, I’ve been to stupid to notice. This has left me feeling a bit more despondent than I’d like and, sometimes, I, like the Israelites, have frankly just wanted to lie down in the sand and die. There are days when I feel I don’t know God at all anymore, and like he’s abandoned me. Days when my previous crystal clarity has been all but totally replaced by fog and confusion. I don’t know. I write this to you from somewhere far from home, beneath a sky full of stars. If “the promised land” is out there then I don’t know where to find it, and I sure would appreciate some kind of sign. Spare a prayer for me, if you could. Ask for clarity. Direction. That’ll I’ll know the way I ought to go.
That said, I haven’t been totally idle on the writing front and have a pretty long and very provocative post in the works which I hope will come out soon. An angle on first century Christianity which has, frankly, thrown my understanding of the whole religion for something of a loop. It was there, hiding in plain sight the whole time, but I hadn’t eyes to see it. That’s the way of it I think. Nothing important is ever actually hidden. It’s just… if we’re not ready to receive it, it doesn’t “click” with us. We’re not on the right frequency to “get” it. Not tuned in enough to hear the message.
Let him with ears to hear, hear.
Amor Vincit Omnia, and see you all soon.
Might try to commit Psalms to memory and recite them out loud. Psalms 1, 103, 51, 37 are good ones. Spiritual sustenance!
I personally have had almost exactly the same experience over the past 2 or 3 years, and I suspect many others have too. The mass psychosis of Covid was I think a manifestation of this inner confusion.