Forgiveness is a bitch.

Forgiveness is a bitch. Even when one understands that we are all lost sheep, all confused little sheep, and people don't really understand how to love each other. It's still hard to forgive. And if you're someone who has been greatly hurt, and so marked by wounds that everyone one meets hurts you. Strangely, that's the way it often is. If you're abused as a kid, you are forever marked and (in some strange invisible way that can be seen by other abusers) a beacon hangs over one's head flashing the words, "You may hurt and abuse this one.) That's the same thing with people who have been molested as kids. They wander through the world getting molested, and abused by others because some invisible sign has marked them.

Not digressing but just saying that hurt children carrying this lure around with them and when they become adults, other potential victimizers see the lure and continue the cruelty. And then that wounded child ends up with additional wounds. I speak from experience. The upshot of all this is that there are so many wounders and so many hurts, and so many things and people to forgive truly from the heart.

Jesus said, "Forgive and you will be forgiven." AND we should pray, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." AND, "when you stand praying, forgive." Then there is the parable of the steward who owed the kings super-funds who himself (the steward) was owed a couple of bucks by someone else.

23Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants. 24And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents. 25But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. 26The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. 27Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt. 28But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellowservants, which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest. 29And his fellowservant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. 30And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt. 31So when his fellowservants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done. 32Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: 33Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee? 34And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. 35So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses. Matthew 18:23-35

Unforgiven? Unforgiven?

A Christian believes "Believe on the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved."

So what happens if one believes on the Lord Jesus and cannot truly forgive another from the heart?
It is not only lack of faith that prevents prayers from being answered, but Jesus implies that it is often unforgiveness. Is it possible then, that most Christians are in a state of unforgiveness because they are so deply wounded they cannot forgiven? Is it possible that the reason we see so little miracles is because we are essentially living in a state of unforgiveness. . .even though we are saved?

And really? Isn't it enough for me to just forgive them and have nothing more to do with them? Why must I be as God and do good to those who have wounded me?

I mean, really.... JOB was holding up pretty well under his sufferings until his religious friends came in with their commentary. And he had to pray for them. Aaargh, the thought that I have to forgive some atheists and religionists....in order to really get healed...bothers the crap out of me.

That Keanu Reeves dream is really challenging me. I do not want to pray for those who have wounded me all these years. It hurts my soul to wish them well. It hurts my soul to pray for arrogant, cruel, self-righteous mocking people who have stepped on what little self-esteem I have, who have hurt my son and me, who have stolen my inheritance and the wonderful house in Jamaica we should have inherited, who have crushed my soul and my body.. I do not like the idea at all. No, J'aime pas ca. And yet... to be healed? Could I force myself to pray for these people so that Gabe and I could be healed? How terrible it is for me, right now! How terribly trapped I feel! Must I truly learn to love these horrible people to get even the tiniest of miracles? God is gracious and He has answered many of my prayers while I stayed in this state of being unforgiven-because-I-cannot-forgive. And yet, how much longer can I presume? And even if He has answered my other prayers, will He give us the GREAT miracles we seek if I cannot forgive and bless my enemies from my heart? Lord, have mercy on my soul. Put love inside me because I cannot manufacture this love and this mercy on my own.

Those women in the Keanu Reeves dream weren't bitter. I feel God is really telling me how I am bitter against the rich, and against the beautiful, and against the young, and against those who have, and against the healthy. The anger is so deep, and the resentment because of my health and money issues. But I can't be hating the good in another person's life. Or judge their worthiness. Been praying for my enemies and for good people who I've resented because they had something I didn't. The race is not to the swift. If I judge someone unworthy to receive good, then I also judge myself. And send the blessing away. Besides, i want to love from a pure heart. So hard.

The Naked Time

Writing some stories or some parts of stories just cut so deeply near the heart. There comes this time when a writer asks herself what is necessary and can she attempt to brave it. Questions of Healing, escapism, Wish-fulfillment, Showing Things as they are, or allowing our neurosis to show.

My neuroses are in all my stories but I don't like sending out stories that show my neuroses in such a way that everyone knows I'm actually depicting my neuroses. You know how that goes. Or maybe you don't.

In Wind Follower, we have a dark-skinned main character who is loved by the handsomest guy in the world. It's necessary for my healing that this is the scenario. And because my neuroses (rejections for being too dark as a kid) is shared by many Black women, I can have such a scenario without feeling too weird or naked.

Same thing with Changeling, A Cry for Hire, Constant Tower. My neuroses are all in those stories. But My Life as an Onion, well, .... there is a story that needs a lot of elegantizing before it can go out to face the world and other people.

Which brings me to the problem. How much of a heroine, perfect, wonderful heroine do I want my stand-n to be? How much unbelievable happiness can I put into her life? I kinda got away with it in Wind Follower because I gave her a lot of crap. My main character in Onion has a lot of crap as well, but the crap is contemporary. So if I'm not careful, the contemporariness of he story can give me away. Folks will know it's me I'm talking about.

So I need skillz to get this story done. And I need courage as well. Aaargh! Courage to talk about faith, to talk about love, to indulge my yellow fever, ah me! But skillz and elegance above all else. I must talk about religion and spirits without being hokey, preachy and cheesy. I must talk about woundedness and eccentrics and people in emotional communities formed by pain...and yet not sound precious or off-the-wall or contrived. I must be utterly heartfelt and put my whole heart into the story without folks thinking that I'm whining or indulging or being escapist. I must heal myself and talk about love and sexuality without being unholy and pious on the one hand or a sexually deviant writer on the other. I must do all this in a story that should feel normal and dropped down purely from heaven without any human sweat on it. What to do?  WHAT. TO. DO?

The Keanu Reeves Dream

Last night I went to bed around 3:00 and I said to God, "Please give me a dream that explains everything I've been going through. I need help."

I dreamed  this dream, the first in a while.

I dreamed Keanu Reeves was being roasted (given a roast). All the really bad acting he had done were strung together or discussed. It was all in fun but it was quite the slaughter of his ego. He was very hurt. However, he had been married zillions of times and had divorced. Some of these women were poor, old, destitute or all the above. One was a very old lady who sold fruit from a cart on the street. When these women found out about the mockery he had received, they were hurt for him. They decided to write letters of comfort defending him. I don't think they got together as a group to do it. It was just kind of a groundswell and each woman did it spontaneously from her heart. Because he had been divorced from them they didn't know where he was. So they wrote the letters to him in care of the broadcast company that was doing his show. He was very touched, and it seemed because of their kindness toward him I felt he was going to resume the friendship/acquaintanceship he had had with them. Some kind of restoration. I looked up Keanu in Google and his name means:   "cool breeze over the mountains." I really am not sure what this dream means to me. 

I sent it off to my dream group and got this from one of my dream interpreter buddies. I'm thinking she's dead-on.

well, Reeves most famous character played someone caught in the Matrix, manipulated by evil forces. We all live  under the prince of the power of the air, even as believers we live in a fallen world full of sin and we make many mistakes and fail much and deserve to be roasted not only verbally but physically.  The poor destitute women represent a spirit of forgiveness even when they have been wronged. The forgive and rise up with mercy even when they have been divorced and marginalized. They still saw the good in their ex husband. This kind of forgiveness is not something that is necessarily done in a group (like church) but the key to what we do as individuals to help others in our isolated situations. Despite all the crazy things that people we love do, mercy and compassion are still the best course of action.

 Rose-Marie Slosek

Jessica said this:

Rose-Marie's interpretation is beautiful and it makes sense. I can see what she is saying, and it is actually a beautiful little story in the dream. And those women had every reason to gloat particularly given the fact that it was all said "in fun" and probably true. Or at the least they could have gone on, but they took that opportunity to comfort a man who had spurned them. Forgiveness is like a cool breeze from the mountains
there's something refreshing in it. And its clear from this that forgiveness is demonstrated in a variety of ways, not necessarily by addressing the wrongs that these women suffered by him. They offered him comfort which was not a clear forgiveness as in "I forgive you for hurting me" but in that, it is powerful and more than the more staid Christian platitutde of a direct confrontation they're heaping coals of fire on his head through their sincerity now what he does with that is up to him.

The Healing Paradigm.

More and more i'm thinking of the healing paradigm we have in the church and why it is a bit on the wrong side

When we go to God for healing we ask him for a "touch" and we point out the area we want Him to heal.

But more and more it seems to me that when one is full of God or near God, one gets engulfed in His glory and the more normal thing would be that the entire body would be touched and changed and healed by God.

That healing is a wholistic thing. When we ask for a touch, we are saying to God to fine-tune his healing power and touch a particular part but to not let other aspects of the person's body feel it. But I really feel that God comes in like a flood more often than not. Except that we are unable to get the full benefits of the river of life. There are waters to swim in. but we have been so trained to stint where God is concerned, or we are so trained to stint

that we only go into the waters ankle-deep spiritually speaking so the glory of God can't take us and utterly heal us.

The problem here seems to be that one part of the body can really reach a high level while other parts of the body are at a different level but that we won't see a lot of superhealing until most of the body at least acknowledges certain truths. All the same, this has been a real help in me thinking about being healed of many things.


When I think of being healed of A, B, C, D, E etc I start to think, "But can God handle ALL this healing ALL at once?" That's the kind of thing we've been trained to think. That God sees things in parts. But when I realize that if I can attain to this spiritual thought and freedom, if I can ascribe to God power and greatness, and really ascribe to him the ability to enter wholeheartedly into a situation, then ALL will be healed ALL at once. I know this sounds very heretical to some who feel as if God heals in parts and in stages, but I keep thinking of the Passover where all God's people were led out and no one was sick and where their clothes and their shoes didn't rot on them. I keep thinking of the Tower of Babel where everyone's mind was altered at once. I keep thinking of the ten plagues where so much happened to so many in so many little things and so many big things. And I see more and more that God is a complete God who does things individually and yet completely.


I keep seeing folks in church waiting for "a touch" from God. They do little bargaining things. They want to be healed of arthritis, diabetes, cancer, allergies, money problems, a pain in the right ear, a pain in the left eye, blindness, etc. etc. So this one person has all these things wrong with her body...And so she does this little accounting strategy... and says to herself, "Which of these things should I tell the minister about?"


I just don't think that is what God wants. 


Yet, the paradigm of God touching a particular part of the body is too compartmentalizing. I just want to stop going up to ministers and doing an accounting check and deciding which thing i should tell the minister to pray for and I want to be able to have a great God who just comes in and because of His nearness to totally envelop me. To be near Him, how can our entire body not be filled and touched by Him? But because we don't believe it can be, we don't receive it.


As my friend Jessica says, "It's like what Jesus said 'Is it harder for a man to say your sins are forgiven or take up your mat and walk?' and then boom he does both."


And the removing of the sin sometimes is the bringing in of healing. And when ministers say things like "the salvation of a soul is better than healing" I'm like... "why do people who generally do not always show the gift of healing have these elaborate theologies about healing which basicaly stops your faith before you begin?"


The more I think about the Tower of Babel (Blog reposted below if you can't click there) the more I see how full of fullness God is. 


THE TOWER OF BABEL



Okay, so here is the story as told in Genesis, chapter 11:

1And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. 4And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reachunto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. 6And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

I love this story. And what gets me is the confounding of the languages. Language nut that I am. Am not sure who the "us" refers to. It might be spoken by Father God to the other members of the godhead, or it might be spoken by God to the angels. But the operation is set, accomplished.

Now, everyone who spoke thought they were speaking THE language but they weren't.

A) Instantly, a B) series of instant languages were created C) and downloaded into the minds/tongues of D) groups of people E) as the lesser choice against a future evil.

That's five different miracles all at once.
A) The choreography of the Divine assault, the timing, the instantaneous direction.
B) The creativity of our great Lordm the God of order and rules. He creates these languages with all their rules. I'm not talking about languages that have branched off from others since then, just these FIRST primary languages. Grammatical rules for each language are different. Some cultures start sentences with the object, some with the subject. Pronounciation rules, syntactical rules, also vary. Some cultures have no "L" sound, some have no "R" sound. Some rules are made up of tongue clicks. Yet, at the same time there are certain rules that all languages follow. People must have names, for instance. Or, interestingly, the word for "take" can be used to mean "to understand." (Weird, but that "take" idiom seems to be in so many languages. . .probably connected with the idea of "taking an idea and digesting it.")
C) The great communal mind change. ALL minds are similarly affected at the same time. Through what agency? The language centers of the brain? Suddenly the language centers of all the brains of all these people are changed? What a great God!
 D) They had to be different enough so folks couldn't understand each other. The languages had to be numerous enough so that all these people could not easily find someone to speak with. The languages had to be shared by families, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, so when the big departure happened, people would be able to converse with their own households.
E) And why is this done? In order to prevent humans from destroying themselves by unity. God alone knows what this human created tower to honor humanity would do, but it was obviously gonna cause trouble if humans pooled all their knowledge. Note, at first God thought it was all very interesting and only came down to look. But when he saw the dangers... well, one shudders to think what God saw! But what does he do? He doesn't destroy the tower Himself. He makes them leave off building it. He simply causes language confusion.

 That amazes the heck out of me. Communication was the problem that was pushing humanity toward a fix and communication was what was challenged. The thing they feared and were working against (dispersion and alienation from each other) came upon them. And yet, it seems, the end result God chose was the lesser of two evils.

Okay, so why is God making me ponder and think about this today? Is it about me ascribing glory and power and strength to Him? Is it about a group download into the Christian mind? Is it about the United Nations? Is it about me understanding He can heal Gabe and me? How we need to see the strength and power of God and His angels! What is it about????

Stories, movies, and dissatisfaction

Lately I've been thinking about something that I hadn't really thought about: dissatisfying art.

Dissatisfaction is a horrible feeling to get when encountering a work of art. I didn't realize how bad it was until recently when three different films left me so upset with dissatisfaction I almost gave up on movies. Whether it's unresolved issues, a missing scene, a missing character, a "wrong" resolution, a "happy" or a "bad" or an "unbelievable" ending, I just feel so let down.

Of course there is the issue of expectations. Perhaps I just expect too much. Perhaps as an American I expect a happy ending answer. ;-) Perhaps as a Christian I expect depth. Perhaps as a lit major and a lover of movies, I've just seen and read so many great masterpieces that I'm always comparing lesser films to great ones. But I gotta say that I do appreciate imperfect movies. After all, minor films can satisfy.

One of the first instances of dissatisfaction I remember is LadyHawke. Overall, it was such a lovely movie. But there was just something lacking in it for me. Okay, so I sit around remaking movies in my mind. But really, there was something just not quite deep enough, not quite painful enough,not quite sweet enough. An acquaintance loved it and got really angry when it was discussed. I think she "supplied" with her imagination what the film lacked. A lot of books and films depend on the artistic imagination of the viewer and don't do the work of supplying (or putting into the work) what really should be there.

Another instance of dissatisfaction was Lord of the Rings. Sorry but the whole series left me cold. And it's not because there weren't any black folks in the movie either. (Although that didn't help.) There was just something very distancing about it and I didn't feel any of the emotions. There was no scene there that pulled me in. Could be the director, could be the acting. Could be me. ;-) I'll admit it... it might be me. Maybe I just need emotional intensity that's ya know...really intense.

I'm hoping my books don't dissatisfy. Who knows?

Jesus and the man with the legion

Seriously, asking information fromdemons?

Mark Chapter 5:9And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My nameis Legion: for we are many.  I believe we should cast out demons. I just worry about doctrines being told us by demons. Really if you break down the conversation between Jesus and the demon, there are a few things to be clear about.

Jesus asked the MAN, "What is your name?" It is probably one of the demons who answered instead of the man. The man was too out of his mind to know what Jesus was saying but it's clear that Jesus said to THE MAN, "What is your name?" The strongman answered that there are so many of us here that our names are legions. We have many names." Jesus DID NOT interrogate the demon. The Bible clearly states he asked the man his name. He was trying to see if he could pull the man out of the mess around him.

I will also add that Derek Prince, Charles Holzhauser, Win Worley and the other folks you mention were probably way wiser than you and I are, and probably had had years of experience in knowing how to speak to demons and how to trust demons before trusting a word they said. Discerning a liar and being able to tell when a demon is lying is a hard-earned hard-won skill. It is not a something one picks up after just a few years of deliverance. I would rather be taught by the Holy Spirit to discern than to have a demon tell me what's going on. If Jesus ever asked a demon a question, it was BECAUSE he ALREADY knew the answer.


One: Is Jesus asking the man what his name is? Or is Jesus interrogating the demon?

Two: If Jesus is conversing with the demon, is Jesus asking who the strong man is?

Three: Is Jesus asking about doctrine or asking advice from the demon?

Four: Do we really believe Jesus didn't recognize the legion and needed them to clarify things for him?

Five: this was such an infestation of demons that the situation is unusual. These demons readily showed themselves and declared who they are, speaking through the mouth of their victim. There was no hide-and-seek going on. We don't even know why they told Jesus they were legion. To get pity? To make Jesus feel overwhelmed?

Six: Notice that when Jesus cast them out, he didn't start naming them even though they said they were many devils. He just said to the demon gang, "All of you out!" There was no, "okay, you talking to me, are you the gatekeeper spirit? are you the strongman? are you an imposter?" He just told the entire legion to go out.

Seven: He didn't "bind the strongman." If he was doing all this as an example of how to deal with some heavy-duty spirits, he certainly isn't doing it the way modern deliverance folks say we should do it. So should we really think of this as an example of interrogation.

Nah,you have to ask God to give you discernment before you start listening to a doctrine told to you by a demon.

Vision: Restore my soul

So there I was saying Psalm 23 this morning, meditating on it actually when I reach the place of "restore my soul" and suddenly got this vision of my soul. It was a roundish oval thing. Not really a healthy pink, kind of dun in color. There was a spot on it like a gray smudge. I'm not sure if it was a smudge or if it was a place where dark black dust had been sprinkled on it. One part of my soul was wrinkled, near the bottom, almost withered and shrunk-looking.

I saw it in God's hand. He was holding it in his hand, very lovingly, very tenderly. I think he was massaging certain parts of it and was in the act of restoring it. Maybe going to put living water in it.

So I get up and because I didn't sleep the first thing I say to Luke (the hubby) is a snarky accusing comment. I kinda went into blame mode and he really hadn't done anything against me sleeping. But not sleeping and woundedness can make a person fall into blame mode very easily. I came downstairs and felt so convicted of my cruelty to him. Basically, what I was saying was he was going to ruin my day because he hadn't done what I asked. So I apologized to him.

He had this look of surprise on his face. "You said something mean?" he asked.

I explained to him that even if he didn't feel the cruelty and the blame in my comment that it was there and that I shouldn't have said it.

So now... waiting for God to restore my heart more and more. I wonder what that dark smudge or blast of black dust was. I've been so wounded in life that I really expected to see a lot of pit marks on my soul. And in all honesty, I was surprised to see just this one large smudge. I don't know how deep the smudge goes into my little pink soul. But I suspect the dark smudge woundedness is so deep that all the other wounds in my life must have come from (or is rooted in that smudge.) Father abandonment, I suspect. But who knows? Funny how one doesn't know how and where and why the main hurt in one's life comes from. Lord, do what you wish to heal my heart!

Christianizing the Roman Empire: A.D. 100-400 

Professor Ramsay MacMullen

Paperback: 183 pages

Publisher: Yale University Press (September 10, 1986)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0300036426

ISBN-13: 978-0300036428

Satan & the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy

by  Greg Boyd

Paperback: 456 pages

Publisher: IVP Academic (October 8, 2001)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0830815503

ISBN-13: 978-0830815500

Product Description

• Where does evil come from?
• If there is a sovereign creator God, as Christian faith holds, is this God ultimately responsible for evil?
• Does God's sovereignty mean that God causes each instance of sin and suffering?
• How do Satan, his demons and hell fit into God's providential oversight of all creation and history?
• How does God interact with human intention and action?
• If people act freely, does God know in particular every human decision before the choice is made?

In this important book Gregory A. Boyd mounts a thorough response to these ages-old questions, which remain both crucial and contentious, both practical and complex. In this work Boyd defends his scripturally grounded trinitarian warfare theodicy (presented in God at War) with rigorous philosophical reflection and insights from human experience and scientific discovery. Critiquing the classical Calvinist solution to the problem of evil, he advocates an alternative understanding of the sovereignty of the trinitarian God and of the reality of Satan that sheds light on our fallen human condition. While all may not agree with Boyd's conclusions, Satan and the Problem of Evil promises to advance the church's discussion of these critical issues.

Mammon and tithing

I remember the manna in the wilderness

It fell every morning and turned into worms if one kept it one day

and tried to save it

yet on the sixth day when it fell it miraculously lasted two days for the sabbath

and didn't get wormy

so we are taught that God is the one who takes care of us

same thing with the tithe on the land

every 7 years the rest

and people shouldn't do anything to the land

the land would give of itself because it was a blessed land

on that 7th year

wwe have to enter into his rest

the tithe is our realization that we have entered into our rest

we want to believe we've earned it all

that unless we work, unless we save\

unless we're good stewards

then some bad thng will happen

so we say religious things like

if you don't tithe

God won't bless you

and that isn't the way it works

God is always blessing

and the ithe is not about paying off God protection money

it's about resting in his love and showing that you are not being bullied by mammon and the fear of mammon

that you trust that God takes care of the birds of the air and the lilies of the field

when the persecution happens

we will see how well God takes care of us even without money and tithing to pay him off

but it's like we can't quite grasp that this is honoring his love

we see it as payment

and even churches who should know God's love

are afraid to trust God

it's like the pastor saying

but i need to get the people to tithe

or I won't be able to eat or to pay for the church or whatever

so they  are depending on the money and not on the God who gives the money

very hard to depend on God but i totally believe tht one should give something as a battle against the human mind of keeping money

as a little battle against mammon and human self-trust

Well. . . uhm, that was sudden.

Last night as i lay in bed i realized something. I no longer feel the need to have those who wounded me understand how they have wounded me. So weird. 

I no longer wish to have my inlaws understand what they did to me. When did that happen?

it was so weird,

this sudden realization. All these years, trying to make folks understand!

All these years using my stories to make cruel dismissive people understand my soul!

Now I can write a scene in a story and not have to explain to the reader what it is like to be sleepless for 26 years andtaking care of a 21 year old Gabe

It's as if

now i know that God and the angels know and love me

and those who love and understand me really do love and understand me

and so why do the others who harm me matter? I felt so free

so weird, though, because the wrong persons have always mattered so much to me. 

This new realization will priobably free up Onion too, and all my writings.

because Onion will no longer be chained with or charged with explaining my life

and my dream life will be free of trying to explain to the brother-in-law what insulting me on my wedding day did to me, what the cruelty of my mother-in-law did to me. 

Why and whence this sudden freedom? When did it happen? Not sure.!

But it's very freeing

folks judge

and assume they know what pain I've gone through and how little and unimportant that pain is 

and i've gotten so upset at their dismissive ness and their inability to understand

and now suddenly i am free from the need to have them understand

it's a release

what do the negatives matter when the positives love me? 

God and my friends and my family?

it really is like a weight lifted off me

I sincerely have been relieved of the need to make another understand.

and there's no bitterness at all in my heart

just not really caring one way or another

How strangely bizarre to be so suddenly free from this!

Loving me some Tower of Babel

Okay, so here is the story as told in Genesis, chapter 11:

1And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. 4And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reachunto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. 6And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

I love this story. And what gets me is the confounding of the languages. Language nut that I am. Am not sure who the "us" refers to. It might be spoken by Father God to the other members of the godhead, or it might be spoken by God to the angels. But the operation is set, accomplished.

Now, everyone who spoke thought they were speaking THE language but they weren't.

A) Instantly, a B) series of instant languages were created C) and downloaded into the minds/tongues of D) groups of people E) as the lesser choice against a future evil.

That's five different miracles all at once.
A) The choreography of the Divine assault, the timing, the instantaneous direction.
B) The creativity of our great Lordm the God of order and rules. He creates these languages with all their rules. I'm not talking about languages that have branched off from others since then, just these FIRST primary languages. Grammatical rules for each language are different. Some cultures start sentences with the object, some with the subject. Pronounciation rules, syntactical rules, also vary. Some cultures have no "L" sound, some have no "R" sound. Some rules are made up of tongue clicks. Yet, at the same time there are certain rules that all languages follow. People must have names, for instance. Or, interestingly, the word for "take" can be used to mean "to understand." (Weird, but that "take" idiom seems to be in so many languages. . .probably connected with the idea of "taking an idea and digesting it.")
C) The great communal mind change. ALL minds are similarly affected at the same time. Through what agency? The language centers of the brain? Suddenly the language centers of all the brains of all these people are changed? What a great God!
 D) They had to be different enough so folks couldn't understand each other. The languages had to be numerous enough so that all these people could not easily find someone to speak with. The languages had to be shared by families, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, so when the big departure happened, people would be able to converse with their own households.
E) And why is this done? In order to prevent humans from destroying themselves by unity. God alone knows what this human created tower to honor humanity would do, but it was obviously gonna cause trouble if humans pooled all their knowledge. Note, at first God thought it was all very interesting and only came down to look. But when he saw the dangers... well, one shudders to think what God saw! But what does he do? He doesn't destroy the tower Himself. He makes them leave off building it. He simply causes language confusion.

 That amazes the heck out of me. Communication was the problem that was pushing humanity toward a fix and communication was what was challenged. The thing they feared and were working against (dispersion and alienation from each other) came upon them. And yet, it seems, the end result God chose was the lesser of two evils.

Okay, so why is God making me ponder and think about this today? Is it about me ascribing glory and power and strength to Him? Is it about a group download into the Christian mind? Is it about the United Nations? Is it about me understanding He can heal Gabe and me? How we need to see the strength and power of God and His angels! What is it about????