I think I am in love. In fact, I know it. But being in love can be a confusing and complicated experience. It uncovers feelings deep inside you that you didn’t know were possible. It makes you laugh and it makes you cry (sometimes at the same time). It can frustrate you and enrage you to the deepest parts of your being, but you know it is only because you love so deeply that you would ever allow something or someone to touch those deep places in you that nothing else does. It awakens hopes and dreams and possibilities for a present and future freedom that both scare you and entice you, even though they seem crazy and don’t make sense. Giving into this love can change everything, in fact it usually does change everything. Love grabs hold of you and won’t let go until it has taken you to the highest mountain tops to dance and sing and feel with total assurance that this is who you were made to be. Love grabs hold of you and won’t let you go until you have felt the saudade and utter heartache and desolation of having your heart broken and divided, left in places and times that you know will never be the same again.
Yes, I am in love and I expect that I have been for some time and have just been reminded of it in these past few days. But for those of you who want to see me come home in May, don’t worry. This love isn’t for a Brazilian. I think I am falling in love all over again with God. I know. I know. It sounds cheesy. But trust me. This has nothing to do with being “married to the Lord” and giving up the joys and pleasures of a physical romance or declaring (since I can’t find a man to date) that “Jesus is my boyfriend”. When I say I am falling in love with God, I mean, that literally I am finding more and more ways of experiencing God in all of God’s fullness that make me fall in love and feel everything that I described above (the good, the bad and the ugly). I am learning to experience God in ways that I never did before. Growing up inside the church I thought that being a Christian was a question of being moral. Having a relationship with God meant dedicating yourself to being “holy” (whatever that actually means I think differs for every person and depends largely on what institution, or lack thereof, that you were raised in). I am learning now though that being “holy” for me is turning into something quite different that I imagined. It means letting myself be seduced, wooed, and transformed, by God. A God that is a profound mystery, larger than anything we can imagine, deeper than what we thought possible. A God that surprises me every day by showing up in yet one more place where I wouldn’t have expected. A God who can honestly infuriate me by knowing me so well and forcing me to face the deepest parts of myself that I don’t want to face. A God who makes beauty out of brokenness and tells me to look at life from the under side of power. A God that insists on throwing my plans out the window and surprising me. A God who answers every question with another question, insisting on keeping the conversation going.
I am falling in love with a God who delights in the beauty of creation and therefore delights in us. A God who is a composer of songs, finding beauty in that which we tend to cast aside or ignore, and daring us to dream dreams we never thought possible. I am falling in love with a God who loves to dance, and sing, and live life abundantly. A God who invites me to do all these things too. I am falling in love with a God that is deeper and more complex than anything I have ever known. Every conversation and experience probes new depths that I hadn’t yet considered, new questions that I had never thought to ask. Yes, I am falling in love with a God that is anything but rigid and strict and boring. I am falling in love with a God that daily relives a certain “velha infância”, loves to be a kid again, and calls us to be the same. A God that calls us to trust and walk with faith. I am falling in love with a God that is passionate about justice and mercy, about systems and individuals. Every time I think I have figured out who this God is, I am surprised by yet another side or facet that I have yet to see and consider. I am falling in love with a God who Rubem Alves reminds us is not a “bird imprisoned in a cage of reason,” but “the Great Mystery, the enchanted bird that flies and invites us to join her in the unknown lands where her flight takes her.” * As such, I am learning to leave my cages of reason and embrace the exhilarating passion of flying, as scary as that feels at times when my feet leave the ground.
Yes I am in love. And as such I know I am in it for the long run. There might be days that I want to give up, run away, long for the comforts of living life for myself and myself alone, but soon enough, something grabs a hold of me again- the beauty of giving oneself totally and completely to something that is bigger than yourself and out of your control. Something that is deeper and stronger and more beautiful than your wildest dream. Something that leaves you completely outside of yourself and at the same time defines you to the very core of your being. Something that you know without which life wouldn’t have much meaning at all.
*“Existe sempre a tentação de prender o Pássaro Encantado, o Grande Mistério, em gaiolas de palavras. O poeta é aquele que ama o Pássaro em voo. O poeta voa com ele e vê as terras desconhecidas a que o seu voo leva. Por isso não há nada mais terrível para um poeta que ver um Pássaro engaiolada”... Rubem Alves
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