Fresh Air

Here's an analogy for you. Let's say we are inside our house. Our interior self, our soul, is the inside of our house. God is the outside. He is all of the outside: the air, the trees, the grass, the sun; everything.

I guess the first thing we notice is that God is way bigger than we are. In fact, our house represents a very shallow false sense of security (anyone that's been through a hurricane knows this well). As sturdy as our house may be, one good gust of wind can rip it open. That's not even to mention all the things that can go wrong and destroy our fragile home from the inside.

The big idea here is simple: we can (to some extent) control what comes into our house. We are the ones who decide how much and for how long we accept what is going on outside. While the outside is much stronger and much bigger than our little home for the most part it is pretty docile. We have options. We can choose to open the windows as wide as they'll go and let the outside in. If the windows are open long enough the inside and outside take on the same character; actually, the inside becomes the outside. Never the other way around. We can flood the house with the fresh air and smells and sounds that are all around us, all the time, we just never heard them because the windows were closed.

We also have the option (which is probably where most of us are) of opening the windows but putting in screens. Why screens? We want to filter what comes in. We have decided that we don't want certain things coming through the open windows so we construct a device to filter them out. The problem though, no matter how minute it may seem the screen is a barrier. It obstructs the air, it clouds the view. In essence the screen enacts our prejudice. It becomes the tool that lets in what we like, what we will accept, and keep the rest out. With the screens we will get some experience of the outside but we are missing something. We lack the total immersion.

Of course the other option is to close the window entirely. Let in none of the outside world. We can create a cocoon. Instead of moving in harmony with the ebb and flow of the breeze we set the thermostat. In this analogy our central a/c becomes our attempt to create God in our image. We build a contraption, build a control for it, and then barricade our hearts in a prison of our own making, convincing ourselves that we've created a man-made paradise of material goods, conditioned and filtered air, with locks on the doors and windows to ensure nothing gets in (or out?). Then we turn on devices that make noise so we don't have to hear what's going on outside. If we don't hear Him because we've created our own world full of concocted noise, we can pretend He's not there. To carry on a little further, how silly that we do everything in the world to shut ourselves off from the outside and then buy a white noise machine to mimic the outside (Deepak Chopra, anyone?).

Our self-created world works only until something happens, like a hurricane. Then we realize just how fragile and fake it all was. We need to let in the fresh air and listen to the outside noises. We need to feel the slight temperature fluctuations. We need to accept God as He is, unfiltered.