By violence intending

My Tree

Photo by bgrace

"You must have often wondered why the enemy (God) does not make more use of his power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree he chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the irresistible and the indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of his scheme forbids him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as his felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For his ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve...Sooner or later he withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs--to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish...He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hand...Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

Uncle Screwtape

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

(As found in the preface to The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard)

"To the soul, God is the kingdom of heaven; hence, when she withdraws from all things and adheres only to God, she attains God by violence. For God cannot withhold Himself; He must give Himself to her, since it is His nature to communicate Himself to the soul that is ready to receive Him. Now all things are equal to a free soul—pain or pleasure, slander or praise, poverty or wealth, weal or woe, friend or foe. A free soul never permits herself to be drawn away by anything that might keep her apart from God or mediate between herself and God, as St. Paul says: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” All things then tend to aid her towards God; she presses on through all obstacles towards her origin."

The Book of the Poor in Spirit, by A Friend of God

I'm writing again.

Whenever I write about the fact that I'm writing, its a good sign that so many things are coming together in my mind that I'm overwhelmed by all my experiences, my thoughts and the thoughts of others that I'm reading. I'm trying to understand God, myself, and others in light of it all. And its coming together in a way that I can feel it before I clearly see it. I can't quite capture it all or put it into words but here are some of the pieces:

I'm writing about what it means to be poor in spirit.

I'm writing about the violence our souls must go through in order to become so attached to God that we become detached from everything else.

I'm writing about what it looks like to stop loving others for all reasons that have to do with ourselves, and to allow Him to birth in us a love of others for the sake of God.

I'm writing about what it looks like to stop loving God for all reasons that have to do with ourselves, and to allow Him to birth in us a love of God for the sake of God.

I'm writing about a yieldedness that is the path to freedom.

I'm writing about the beauty of the heavenly kingdom and the blessedness of those who live in it.

And I'm writing about the hope that one day, it will be fully mine.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Matthew 11:12