God of the Sky

Love. It seems like such a simple concept. Like eternity: no boundaries to time. But the moment we look at it its simplicity seems to disappear and we are left with a mass of concepts and presumptions of the meaning and soon we have to leave it and go get a snack or something.
I read the bible for the first time today. I now believe in its existence. Before Kim left for church I asked whether she thought I would like it. She replied that she enjoyed it, but that I would get more out of staying here. So nothing in mind I stayed here and read Merton and journaled a bit. Lying our on the counter was a bible opened to the psalms. It is a sight that might be expected in the house of any evangelical: the very confident trust in the Word of God as infallible and inspired. I cease to understand what they mean by that. I thought I once knew and read the bible as such, but I found I was force feeding myself mouldy bread. So I stopped eating it.
But today I happen to focus my attention to whatever the bible happened to be opened to. My eyes found Psalm 123. Which begins with a very King James-ish start “Unto thee.” usually after a beginning like that my mind goes down a very repeated path for the rest of the psalm and I want to puke by the end of the reading from all the images and connotations that assault me as I read. I continued, fairly unconsciously. “Unto thee I lift up my eyes, o thou that dwellest in the heavens”

Thou that dwellest in the heavens. A subject very much on my mind since my flights home. At first I just found that it affirmed what I was already thinking. That somehow God and heaven are tied together. That there is a kingdom somewhere that his law and nature are just as alive and awake as our government. And as good as ours is corrupt--eternally. In Calgary I sat by a huge window watching the sunset. There I met God as a lover, and as a relevant God, not as a harsh abstraction.

Here are my airport reflections:

I was just reading a closing collect for noon prayers. It ends like this:

give to us the peace and unity of that heavenly City,
where with the Father and the Holy Spirit
you live and reign, now and for ever

And as i read the picture of that castle in the clouds that haunts every ones consciousness. A grand house, dwelling, palace--all cultures understand it. Surrounded by light, or goodness itself. A longing to Go there. Not here. Somewhere else. But what if. What if there is a place there somewhere. There the Trinity reigns lives and present. Here, where on the brightest moments we have a glimpse of the idea of such a place and spend our life looking for that glimpse. It is what we live for, and to think that every moment this place exists, just not here. It is as bad as knowing that your friend exists thousands of miles away and while you know the date of returning, yet you can only imagine what that distance of time. Death will come and that is the door from our separation from it. We cross this barrier and we are there. Such a hard way? Why? Why is the passing into that most glorious place not celebrated and all those remaining here apart not that mix of utter happiness and longing for their own entrance? Where is this place?
Later written in Calgary airport

I see mountains under a sunset that gives me an idea of how great the sky really is. “When I look at the sky what are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” You, infinite in being, lights, life and me one loved before all this. Deeper, longer and more real than anything I yet know or understand. You, for whom all this is given, made and through. Does it matter now if I am ever known by any but You in this life? My existence is legitimate. I am part of this whole creation. I have to do even with the vaulted sky. And it has to do with me because you have to do with it and I have to do with you. Even if I do not fit in with one people group, even if I do not do some major act of help or give insight, I can know now that I am yet included in the world. if God so loved the World, I can know that that is me.
Are the heavens fallen? They are not tied to this earth? Why will they be destroyed? Will they be? What does Wietse feel when he is half way to them? Why is God “in the heavens”?
Calgary. Do I like this airport because I have met God here? Or is there something about the ethos here that is just enjoyable?



This past weekend I have felt very vulnerable. I have felt like I am wearing tee-shirt and jeans around machine saws and fast moving metal. I have been staring down at this black absence of life which for some reason I was more aware of this past weekend. I was constantly aware of its size and hopeless pain that can not be closed up by any little thing. It would take something very big. And then I thought of the sky at Calgary. How big and how bright it was, and yet how personal was the One who made it. So personal that you are not far off if you can even imagine your name called by this person. It is something like this sky that can fill that huge darkness that is in me. And this thought has given me hope all weekend. The God of the heavens, one which I have looked at with my eyes and not just read or heard about, it is He, and he only who carries the ability to fill me with light and love. It’s as though the sky, infinite and personal in all its vastness and light, were inside me filling me with itself.

If I had not been thinking about the sky and how God who lives there this weekend the psalm from this morning would have been passed aside as it always has been. Meaningless words to fill the trite consciousness of Christians. As I read that first line there was this moment of surprise that the bible actually agreed with my experience. Not only did it agree, but it added to it. It revealed more of the nature of this experience and interprets life here.

Psalm 123

Unto thee I lift up my eyes, o thou that dwellest in the heavens.

Were you aware of the country in the sky? Were you aware of the being, the Creator, infinite who is personal? Were you aware that he called you by name? Surely you know there is blackness in your being. A hole that nothing small can fill, nothing trivial. Look at the sky. Watch the symphony as it unfolds, the lights, wind, clouds. Behold how great in size it is, and remember that there is someone behind it all. Next time you feel that emptiness remember the sky and its symphony of light and movement. This is the Lord of heaven. Only he can ever bring enough content to fill that dark absence.

“Unto thee I lift up my eyes, o thou that dwellest in the heavens.”
Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters,
and as the eyes of a maiden look unto the hand of her mistress;
So our eyes wait upon the Lord our God,
until that he have mercy upon us.

Now I begin to see content in the psalms. If the black and white word was my only reality it is meaningless. But if I engage in life and look at these scriptures then I begin to see their meaning and it is not irrelevant. I have read them only as a detached member of both this life and of God’s country. The words I tried to paste on meaning and significance, but I soon get sick of fake food. I was tired to pretending. So I stopped. I am not pretending now when I read this psalm. I am listening and I hear what God has told me the last few days in my travels. I have heard that God lives, that the heavens are his “dwelling” and that it is there that I will find some comfort to my great emptiness.
I do not have servants, nor am I a maiden with a mistress. I might look into the meaning here. But I do know what it means to be a master. I know how my cat looks to me for food, and I wonder if it is not the same idea. That there is someone above another who is the giver of needs. It is not a using the other. It is the legitimate nature of things. My cat does not use me when she asks countless times for food or affirmation. I expect her to do so and am happy to give it and do not think twice of it.
As the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters
The hand is the source of power to give what that person needs I am thinking. The servant is powerless to take for himself. So are we with He who dwells in the sky. We wait.

“Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us:
For we are exceedingly filled with contempt
Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorning of those that are at ease
And with the contempt of the proud”

I am not alienated from this one. My soul is filled to the brim with the contempt of all who have told me that because I am a woman I am lesser. But isn’t this interesting, affirmation can not be demanded, but must be received. The affirmation that I need to live on God knows that I need this. And yet to demand it is to neglect the nature that has been created: as the eyes of a servant” To demand that someone love me on this earth is ridiculous. So we are reduced to manipulation and flirting to take power over another human and to objectify them.
Stoopid. But we need this love so much.

So our eyes wait upon the Lord our God,
until that he have mercy upon us.

So we wait knowing that our Lord of the sky will give it. And this is not only about my feminist, but also about all that in me that has illegitimately been pressed down. The God of the sky hears me.