The Prairie Thistle

I meditated outside today, using the phrase “I am one with God. I am one with all matter and energy.” This follows with my March meditation theme and the word “embody.”

Listening to the sounds of the snow melt, water droplets hitting the ice, water droplets hitting the snow, water droplets hitting other puddles of water droplets, water streaming down the icicles and forming rivulets through the snowbanks, on top, throughout, and below unseen.

I was struck with a thought of how I put Christian jargon through my veil of understanding and see human spirituality differently, not invalidating Christianity, not validating New Age or other faith, but how they are the same. Under the one God/dess there is the one faith.

I see deconstruction as a great snow melt. We live on a floodplain and the fear of rivers, canals, and overland flooding this year is great. So is the fear many hold when contemplating how Christianity is changing. As in the law of conservation of energy, I see one great thing changing to a new form. It must melt away, deconstructed, to become something new, but nothing is actually lost. And is it becoming a better thing? I don’t actually know. But it is a different thing, to observe to reflect on and to learn about in a new way. 

Every year we see the world made new. We long for spring and we welcome it; it brings relief, excitement, renewal, and so many more good things. The snow like a heavy blanket is removed, and water, while perhaps a more manageable (certainly covetable around here) covering, brings its own set of challenges. But I choose to see hope – indeed I have experienced hope.

I see a new world where The Bible is accompanied by an entirely new set of Christian self-help books, where a new set of theological presets are the basis for understanding a good book. The Bible itself is currently set up to be a book we approach as the ultimate truth and the theology and devotional guides that accompany it are good secondary resources. We know we have applied our human minds and human words to our understanding of the Bible when we read the secondary resources. In this new world, we are reminded that the Bible itself is not the ultimate truth. It has also been put through the veil of human minds, words, and understanding.

This does not invalidate the Bible nor threaten its usefulness for teaching. It is a tenet of those who begin to deconstruct their faith, a faith with cultural traditions, languages and understandings that grow and change to the rhythms of time under the guide of the Creator God/dess. So one version of faith melts away. So one sees a new form, a divine experience described through human senses.

I suddenly felt the snow tremble with fear, individually each experience its molecular moment, its own transformation as each must bend to the Intelligent Designer, the Mathematical Mind.

Each moment a death and resurrection, a salvation, an integration. Followed by a great acceptance, a great peace, and an excitement to begin to be known, again, anew.

Fear is not the destination, nor a sin, but a moment to be named and moved through. So I feel a society around me in fear, shifting in its death rattle of tradition and culture.

I fear a flood this year, for my home near the canal. I also hold that fear with curiousity. What will actually happen? Will it actually be the end of something we have known and enjoyed? If it must end, what will the opportunities be for growth for me and my family? And I wait. And I melt.