Or Perhaps It's You

Or perhaps it’s you. Perhaps it’s in relationship with you, for your friend. With your friend, for you. With another person. Your lover, perhaps. Perhaps almost any other person. Most others.

Relationship with the other, so to speak. Because of which we are able to make it through. The doorway moving past us. And now. Suddenly. We’re on the other side. Suddenly in the room. Perhaps what happens is these others who are our family. Our friends. Our co-workers in the vineyard. Our colleagues in the Kingdom. Our neighbors in the now.

Fellow volunteers in the great charity bazaar in which all of us participate. All of us volunteer. The great grace bazaar. The great forgiveness function. Or most of us, in any event. Or many of us. These others, as I say. These others in whom we become. We find ourselves lodged. Wedged. In whom we find ourselves guests. Find ourselves entertained. Find ourselves freed. Find ourselves welcome. Find ourselves wined and dined. Find ourselves discovering. Find ourselves wandering. Find ourselves wondering. Find ourselves in whatever mood. Find ourselves opening. Find ourselves rivering.

Find ourselves flowing and riding and ferrying and surfing and peeling out and jetting and paddling and spinning and gandering and learning and absorbing and eddying and bracing and bumping and dumping and swimming and recovering and dousing and shivering and warming and drying and revving and motoring and weaving and dodging and sliding and sneaking and streaking and dropping and adventuring and exploring and resting and floating and drifting and listening and hooting and giggling and guffawing and turning and looking and looking and seeing and seeing and hearing and listening and touching and smelling and. Well.

Doing everything we can think of. Being everything we can imagine. Becoming everything that is possible. This way. Through the doorway of the other. Through the being of a friend. Through the possibility of the other. The undisciplined easy necessity of the lover. The eros lover. The agape lover. Same-same. All one. Love. Caring. Concern. Sympathy. Friendliness. All from the same spring. The same artesian well. The same deep earth place.

All the same necessity of the living. The living other. The other who is here. Right here. All around and in and through everything we know and how we know and what. The other in whom Spirit resides and whose Spirit draws us. Writes us. Creates us. Makes us. Enlivens us. Affirms us. Encourages us. Identifies us. Discovers in us a corresponding Spirit.

And it is in the communion. The commingling. The merging and separating. Together and apart. To and fro. The dancing quality of coming together and parting and coming together again. Of these Spirits. This Spirit that wants union of all its bits. Its pieces. Its replicated selves. Its distributed being. Its disparate living. Among us.

That wants to bring us into intimacy with one another. The dirty and the really dirty. The sinners and the really sinful. The rich and the poor. The stupid and the smart. The ambitious and the lazy. The well educated and the not so well educated. Men and women. Old and young. Ugly and pretty. Tall and short. Blue eyed and brown eyed and green eyed and gray eyed. The arrogant and the humble. The selfish and the selfless. The cruel and the kind. The miserly and the generous. The faithful and the faithless. Christian and non-Christian. Dark skinned and light skinned. Articulate and inarticulate. Shy and glad-handing. Honest and deceitful. Birthing and dying. So forth and so on.

Wants to reconcile the one with the other in the Kingdom of Grace. The Spirit that is hauling all of us into a state of Grace, weather we will or no. Pulling and hauling us through the eyes and the ears and the lips and the nostrils and the skin of one another. An industrial strength magnet operating on each of us. Exercising extraordinary power over us. Dragging us like a spiritual gravity toward its center, which is everywhere in everyone at once.

Or something like this. An industrial strength spiritual gravity that works on our hearts and minds and souls and spirits. That is at work even now. Even between us, who may not have ever met. You and me. Whoever we are. Whoever we are becoming in one another. Through one another. Because of one another. Through whom the Spirit is doing his wonder work. His miracle work. And isn’t it enormous. And isn’t it extraordinary.

And isn’t it like something out of the Bible or out of fantasy literature that this extraordinary redemption may occur. This amazing mystery. At work in us. You and me. Right at this moment that is a moment that is extensive after all. That is infinitely extensive after all. That feels like it may be forever. Who knows. Although it feels like we do. It feels like we know. But it’s something that is. Well. Strictly speaking. Unknowable. And isn’t this. Well. Perplexing. And confounding. And well. Paradoxical. And impossible. And improbable. And true.