The Divine Dance

I don't know why it is that I so often assume that my relationship with God should be an uncomplicated one. Every other relationship in my life isn't, so why should I expect one with the divine to be so simple? I was struck by this thought the other day when I was pondering the complex relationship that exists between my dog and I. Even that relationship doesn't exude simplicity. My dog has entered into the teenage mentality, where listening and obedience aren't always hand in hand. The simple command, come boy, isn't always obeyed and he is challenging his boundaries constantly. My spousal relationship is by far the most challenging and complex one in my life and yet when it comes to God I have expected it to be neat and tidy, simple and predictable, but it never is.

So I've finally resigned myself to the fact that my relationship with God is going to be layered with complexity. By no means can I predict God's responses or guess how He will lead me, or know how He will orchestrate the broken pieces of my life into his grand design. I don't know when His presence will be felt or not, when I'll bask in His love or feel a time of heaven's silence. But I have come to relax in these complications and handle them much like my other relationships.

I ask questions when I have them. I wrestle with the unknowns. I express my anger, my frustrations, my doubts and fears. Then I leave them at His feet. I have learned to come to God in my full humanity and in honesty. I believe that is what He desires--me, being honest. Not me in my finery, trying to impress. Not me in my religious skin, but me, in my human frailty, full of questions and doubts, full of failure and complications.

It is in moments like these when I like to think of my relationship with God as a dance, though it may be an awkward one at times. For Sometimes I twirl away to dance on my own, or ignore his leading in preference to my own steps. At some point, I concede and return to the dance once more in an attempt to figure out how the human and the divine can move together seamlessly.

I recognize there will come a time when we will experience this union perfectly. And there will come a time when we will dance a waltz that is elegant and uniquely right. And for the first time we'll be exactly in sync with each other. But till then I continue the dance, sometimes in step, sometimes out, sometimes in close, sometimes needing to be retrieved. He leads, I follow, step on His toes, argue, move away, concede again and the awkward dance continues. But nevertheless I cling to the knowledge that someday we will do it precisely right and I will have the aha moment when I see exactly how it was meant to be.

Cardboard Fires

I love having a woodstove at this time of year. Though I hate to admit it, my husband is the best fire starter in the family. He is very Boy Scout about the whole process. He follows procedure and steps till he arrives at a hot roaring blaze. First, he lays his twigs and arranges them so the right amount of airflow occurs. Later, when he has achieved his coal bed he lays on the larger pieces layering them just so. Within minutes we have a hot sustainable fire.

I, on the other hand, am no Boy Scout. I am impatient and always looking for instant results with minimal effort and time. So instead of establishing the necessary coal bed I skip right to cardboard. Cardboard catches fire quickly and creates what appears to be a large roaring fire. Then when I have this wonderful illusion going, I throw on a large piece of wood and blow really hard on it as I keep my fingers crossed. Inevitably the cardboard burns up quickly and the wood below it doesn't catch fire and I'm left with a smoky mess.

I keep trying to make this system work by throwing more and more cardboard on hoping that a miracle will occur and my wood will catch fire without a well established coal bed. I keep hoping to trick the system and succeed in fire starting for impatient people. But it never works and as a result I fight with my woodstove for a couple of hours instead of taking the proper steps and having a decent fire in 20 minutes or so. They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. I guess that makes me an insane fire starter. You might think that I'd learn the lesson with so much evidence stacked against me. But I confess I still struggle with my cardboard fires trying to believe this is a process I can one day beat.

One day I thought I had just achieved my moment of glory. I had a particularly great cardboard fire going, where for a few brief moments the flames were high and looked successful. Of course it was all a ruse because it quickly petered out. For some reason the scene made me think of religion, specifically a checklist system of particular behaviors. What I realized was, this system can easily look like a roaring, sustainable fire. But it is a relationship with God that makes the sustainable fire, one you can warm yourself by. Faith by the checklist leaves one with a cardboard fire; you may see the bright flames, but they will quickly die out and leave you cold to the bone. Now, more than ever, I long for the genuine warmth of a sustainable fire rather than the tease of a quick, high flame. In the end, one can see it's clearly worth the extra effort.