“The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.” – C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

I’m feeling extremely angry, resentful and blasphemous right now. This is because I have just been reminded, in a roundabout way, of a truth I can’t quite bear to accept.

All things in the Universe belong to God. Everything I “own” is loaned to me. To say I own something s a blasphemous lie and to treat it as if I own it is theft from God. This includes “my” material possessions, “my” body, “my” mind, “my” soul.

I am pretty annoyed with God right now. I can’t masturbate with hands that are His. I can’t swear or lie or speak when I ought to keep silent or keep silent when I ought to speak with a mouth that belongs to Him. I can’t vandalise a brain that He’s let me borrow with laziness and junk food and stupid online games. I can’t walk past a Big Issue seller with His feet. I can’t comfort myself with thoughts I know are illogical when the brain doing the thinking belongs to the Divine Logos. I cannot spend “my” money self-indulgently. Every penny is His, given to me on the understanding that I would share it with any of His children who need it more than I do. I cannot cling on to the unfair advantages my race and class give me, when “my” life is not my own. To claim ownership of “my” mind, body and possessions is to say I am more worthy than those whose minds and bodies are devalued in society, and that I have more right to a computer than starving people have to food. It is only when people cease to see themselves as owning anything, when people give freely and fairly of all they are and have, that the world can be remotely just to anyone. I cannot let “my” heart reserve its love for people who are kind to me. He loves everyone, and I have to let Him live in the heart He has leant me and love with it, because I cannot love like He wants to me by myself.

This means abandoning my prejudices, abandoning my selfish desires, abandoning “my” self. And I can only do this by resuming my prayer life.

My illness has made prayer difficult for me. I have found myself, again and again, praying to a twisted thing I referred to as God. This thing is the creation of a disturbed mind and has nothing to do with the real God. This God doesn’t really like anything, and particularly hates me. I won’t waste time and effort describing this monster’s rationale. Suffice it to say, He isn’t real and He hates white people, middle-class people, queer people and anyone with two legs. That would be me. He also hates anyone who isn’t perfect. That would be everyone, but especially me. I’m not allowed to think there’s a possibility that anyone could be more sinful than me, otherwise He’ll get really angry. He’s really angry anyway, but He’ll get angrier.

But this “god” is so much safer and easier than the real one. He is God made in my image. Really, he’s a part of me that has always been there ad has just got a lot louder and more annoying. I can still “call my soul my own” with him around. I get to be like Aninias and Sapphira, for all the good it will do.

What I need is the absolute opposite of what I want. C.S Lewis time again:

Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about “man’s search for God.” To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat. The best image of my predicament is the meeting of Mime and Wotan in the first act of Siegfried; hier brauch’ ich nicht Sparer noch Spaher, Einsam will ich. … (I’ve no use for spies and snoopers. I would be private. …)

Remember, I had always wanted, above all things, not to be “interfered with.” I had wanted (mad wish) “to call my soul my own.” I had been far more anxious to avoid suffering than to achieve delight. I had always aimed at limited liabilities. The supernatural itself had been to me, first, an illicit dram, and then, as by a drunkard’s reaction, nauseous. Even my recent attempt to live my philosophy had secretly (I now knew) been hedged round by all sorts of reservations. I had pretty well known that my ideal virtue would never be allowed to lead me into anything intolerably painful; I would be “reasonable.” But now what had been an ideal became a command; and what might not be expected of one? Doubtless, by definition, God was Reason itself. But would He also be “reasonable” in that other, more comfortable sense? Not the slightest assurance on that score was offered me. Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark, were demanded. The reality with which no treaty can be made was upon me. The demand was not even “All or nothing.” I think that stage had been passed, on the bus top when I unbuckled my armour and the snowman started to melt. Now, the demand was simply “All.” – C.S Lewis, Surprised by Joy

This unbearable demand is what frightens me away from the real God.

I know that he has so much to offer me. He offers me His blood, His body (worth so much more than the one I am so desperate to own!), His life. But more than that, He offers me a way of existing that is better than anything that could be if I tried to live without Him. I cannot speak of this life because I have been running away from it so hard. I can only let those who have at least attempted to live it try to speak of it. I haven’t chosen quotes from canonised Saints, but from people I know. This life is achievable for everyone. It’s just very hard.

All of the patterns that fill up the world, so perfect and beautiful and all tell me about God. It is like the grass and the sky and everything is covered in words about God, but not words like you hear or read. God is everywhere, he fills up the world. For me the patterns in the world, the symbols in a church, the way rain looks as it falls, my niece, and these things teach me the most about God.

I wrote most of this last night. My brain was very clear. The less stressed my head feels the better I can write. My brain is not clear now. It feels muddled and stressed and tiered. One of my favourite saints is St Bernadette she had trouble with talking also. Sometimes my brain scrambles, and sometimes my words go. Talking and words are difficult for me and for her. But God is the same forever. – An anonymous woman, known on the internet as Pebles

“We pray that we will give whole-heartedly to those among us who are in need, not from our surplus but from our treasure. Lord, hear us.”

This prayer moved me deeply when I heard it at church a few weeks ago. We often pray that ‘we’ might be generous to ’the poor’ and ‘the homeless’, which makes me wonder how any homeless or impoverished people in the congregation must feel when they hear somebody asking this of God. The underlying assumption is that Christians are comfortably off, ready to provide something for the poor – an abstract mass of people who are not included in that ‘we’.

By placing people in need at the heart of the community, the woman offering the prayer helped me to see the distinction between sparing some extra change now and then and giving from my treasure. If somebody is a close-knit part of your family, you want nothing for them but the very best. So you give your all. Everything you have.

If you only knew the gift of God…

If you distance yourself from a person by putting them in a category different from your own (‘the homeless’ or ‘the elderly’) it gets easier to excuse yourself from this effort. You’ve placed them outside the sphere of your experience. They may as well come from a different world. And in the resulting unease, a forced conversation with that strange old woman who always accosts you in the public library (is she quite right in the head?) or fifty pence given to the beggar outside the train station start to pass for generosity. […]But for me the real shock is Jesus, a carpenter from a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. He didn’t have much money. He didn’t have a house. He didn’t carry a suitcase of possessions around with Him. In fact, He had nothing to give apart from Himself.

The gift of God. If only we knew Him. Then, perhaps, it would be easier to give to others. We wouldn’t be able to help it. – From ReJesus blog

I have to pray. I have to give myself to God so I can stop seeing myself as my own. Until then, nothing will mean anything.

Pray for me. I need it.