Brainwaves

”Experience has taught the race that, if knowledge of God is the end, then these habits of life are not the means, but the condition in which the means operates. You do not have to do these things; not at all. God does not, I regret to report, give a hoot. You do not have to do these things-unless you ant to know God. They work on you, not on Him. You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. The stars, though, neither require nor demand it”….Annie Dillard, “Teaching a Stone to Talk”

The lady is not a preacher, but a naturalist and a writer of fiction. I’d even go so far as to suggest that she’s not a believer, at least in the sense of her having had an encounter with Christ. Nonetheless, she’s one of my favorite authors, refusing to abandon the idea of a Creator even though the Church (or I probably should say religion in general) gives her much reason to scratch her head about the matter. To put it in simple terms: she just tells it like it is. In this chapter I’m currently re-reading, she points out the comedy that our humanity brings to our ritualistic endeavors and compares it to early expeditions to the Earth’s poles. I have enjoyed the humor that can, indeed, be found in such analogy, but would beg to differ with her when she likens God unto a certain “Point of Relative Inaccessibility”. History proves both scenarios able to be conquered when men follow truth with a bit more than their egos…..

With thirty-seven years of more than just “fill-a-pew” involvement in the Pentecostal denomination, I can testify to laughter being part of the journey. There’s the night that one preacher, so excited that he miscued with his diction, shouted into his microphone for the congregation to “Praise the Gourd!” My wife could tell you about another who once invited people to get in line for a disease. One of the deacons at my old assembly, after counting ballots at a hot business meeting concerning the election of a new pastor, asked those present if they wanted to take a vote to see if they would “accept the vote”; and there is still a smile attached to my memories of one old saint who stood to request prayer for her “cranky, unloving husband” one morning, not knowing he was seated a mere three or four rows right behind her. Ms. Dillard, however, refers to far more than our ability to so amuse each other…..

Our expedition is not into some frozen wilderness with little wisdom in what we take in order to survive. We merely step through an outer foyer into an inner sanctuary; but she is quite correct when she finds that event often accomplished with little or no regard for such space supposedly being holy ground. We stumble through our programs week after week as if the promise of His presence actually coming forth to meet us in some manner has long been lost along the way; and there, of course, is the problem. It’s not that He has left us, but that we have forgotten the Reality and merely attempt to rehearse the routine. It’s not that He is unwilling to sit down with us in the garden, but that we have occupied ourselves with silliness and neglected the soil. If, from time to time, we catch His voice, feel the breeze as He passes by, it’s become so much easier to hide and cover ourselves than it is to face the facts as they are…..