I wrote a poem a few weeks ago and shared it with some other writers. It was about the pain I experience when I suffer when I get a migraine headache. When I wrote it, I was thinking about how I can escape the pain and when I am in the middle of a headache, I have nothing, but faith to hold on to when I believe that the pain will end. The image I wanted to create was being in a dark tunnel and hoping to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but not being able to see it yet. Ironically, most of the readers thought the poem was about suicide and that it was not hopeful at all.
This week, one of my friends shared a poem about suicide. It was about standing on a ledge and feeling like he was the villain of his story. Then, finding the courage to step back from that ledge. I loved the poem because I found it very hopeful and amazingly poignant. However, once again the other writers found the poem beautiful, but depressing because it was about suicide.
It’s strange to me that both my friend and I are trying to write about being hopeful in the face of life’s difficulty and yet our readers don’t understand that message. It makes me think about religion. The truth and mystery is a challenge to understand. It is beyond our comprehension as human beings, and I have found that it takes faith to believe in God and accept that it is beyond me. I literally have learned that my truth and wisdom is to be able to say that I don’t know anything and probably never will. Most leaders of “men” can’t and won’t say that. You can’t get people to follow you with that kind of statement. You have to say that you have the answer and that if you follow me, then your life and/or afterlife will be wonderful and if you don’t follow me your life and/or afterlife will be awful. God didn’t create Heaven and Hell. Humans did.
So, where does it all lead? Well, it’s the parable of the Sower’s seed again. Some people will read my poem and think it is depressing, some won’t understand it at all, but some will understand that I was trying to express hope. It reminds me of John Lennon’s song “Imagine”. It is so well-loved and yet totally controversial. Some people don’t understand the message and are offended by the lyrics. Some people don’t even listen to the lyrics and think it is a sounds beautiful. Then, there are people who listen to the lyrics and understand, Lennon’s message of peace and love.
I’m sure that when I write about love and hate ultimately being the same as well as good and evil and happy and sad. There are going to be people who don’t understand at all. In fact, I would think most don’t understand, but hopefully a few people might understand that when you reach a level of omnipotence that God has, then labels like that don’t really mean much at all. We just don’t understand because as human beings we have to categorize everyone and everything to understand it. Yet, if I were an all-powerful deity, then I don’t think I really would need to do that.
It makes me think of the Book of Genesis. The very first thing that it says God does is separates the light from the dark. Yet, from what we know about science, it isn’t like God made black and white. It was so much more complicated than that. I’m very sure, it wasn’t just two categories. Just thinking about the speed of light as a concept complicates things. It isn’t that simple, and it never was. Yet, for an all-power deity, to separate the light from the dark, it the creation of the universe, it wasn’t difficult for Him.
So, I guess there’s always going to be different ways to reach different people. For me, I accept that my brain can’t possibly understand like that of an all-powerful and all-knowing deity. I recognize God’s power in my life and so I know that I don’t know and all I can do if give my life and my heart to Him. That’s my faith.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
