Gods and Goddesses

While life has been happening, this blog has not.  In the last few months, we have:

• Left behind 10 years of the familiarity of military life
• Moved half way across the country (to be closer to L's family)
• Begun a new career

and...I've let all of that get in the way of the nudging I've been feeling to "get back after it."

I'm not sure exactly what direction that nudging will take at this period of our lives, but how often do we when we begin down one of those forks in the road, be they large or small?

So, I guess the long and short of it is, we'll see.

Separately, another "nudge" recently came in response to my prayer for help and clarity in dealing with a couple of difficult situations that have arisen at work.  While there hasn't been a crystal clear, lightning-bolt-from-the-heavens answer (again, how often does that happen?), I was prompted to pick up a book that Dr. Peter Kreeft published a couple of decades ago and mentioned after a recent talk was his favorite: Heaven: The Heart's Deepest Longing.

I'm only half way through it, but it has reminded me of the desperate need to spend significant, dedicated time in contemplative prayer--particularly adoration--and spiritual reading, both of which I had been neglecting.  Contemplative prayer is the time when the Lord speaks to our heart, sometimes in whispers and sometimes more.  It is the time when he feeds us mentally and reminds us of His perspective on things when we can so easily get lost in our own corner of the world.  Most importantly (for me, at least), it's the time among the beautiful, busy times of family life, work, relationships, and everything in between, when He reminds us who we are--sons and daughters of God, co-heirs with Christ, destined for a share of his divine, eternal life beyond our wildest imaginings.  This contemplation goes beyond the "be still and know that I am God" moments that are completely necessary; we can carry it with us into the moments of our daily lives to allow him to speak the peace and perspective into all of them, ordinary or chaotic.

Dr. Kreeft shares an excerpt from C.S. Lewis' The Weight of Glory that his this home point-blank:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.  All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations...There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations--these are mortal, and their life is to our as the life of a gnat.  But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

Wow! count on C.S. Lewis (and Dr. Kreeft) to give a little of that contemplative perspective.  God speaks to us, and counts on us to speak to us and love each other into relationship with Him.  What an awesome responsibility; unfortunately, one that we so often let life and the lure of the world get in the way of, but that he is ever faithful about gently nudging us back to.

+AMDG+