sorrow in his eyes when mine are filled with tears. And I’m pretty sure my
husband is not in this because I’m dazzling him either.
Our relationship with God is somewhat similar. Some people are lucky
to have experiences where they feel close to God, feel inspired, feel loved
and excited about their spiritual life. Those are wonderful things and I wish
them for all of you. I’m also a little bit jealous of those who have them. But in
reality, and not just in a sour grapes way, I think they are like those scintillating
conversations I was always after – occasional a t best and not enough to build the
whole relationship around. Why? For the same reasons using peak experiences
as a benchmark doesn’t work with our human relationships:
1. It is not sustainable. If you have any doubt about this, read the beginning
of Conjugial Love, where people get to experience what they imagined
heaven would be like. By the end of their experiences, they all are
clawing at the door trying to get out of their false paradises.
2. Life is largely neutral, with a liberal sprinkling of heinous problems.
3. The hard times are the times of growth. It is when we need the closest
guidance and the greatest strength, the most encouragement and the
deepest comfort. That’s when we really need God.
So even though it is lovely and useful to have a view of a magnificent and
benevolent God during the times of peace and plenty, in my experience those
moments are a lot like getting an ice cream sundae as a treat once in a while.
Most of the time we are learning how to eat the vegetables that are good for
us but taste boring or even bad, or recovering from the things we shove in our
mouths that we aren’t supposed to eat at all. Unfortunately, a lot of our lives are
spent in the equivalent of severe gastric distress from ingestion of emotional
and spiritual garbage.
Sometimes that garbage is stuff that was dumped on you when you had
no choice or wisdom to know there were other options. Here in Kathmandu,
where the cow is considered sacred but the bulls are not useful for milk, baby
bulls are led away from their mothers and let loose in the city. They can be
seen sitting on heaps of garbage eating plastic bags, because they were wrested
from their mothers and no longer had the option of milk, nor the experience
of elder cows to teach them what are proper foods.
In a similar way, some of us have been abandoned when we needed guidance
or worse yet, forced to take in harmful messages in the form of indifference,
neglect, belittlement or abuse. Messages that said, “You’re worthless, you’re
despicable, I hate you.” If we grow up taking in that kind of garbage, you can
imagine we will need a God who will help us undo those kinds of thoughts and
heal us from the damage it has done to us.
Some of the garbage we eat is stuff we do to ourselves. We know alcohol
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