too deep for words

The good news: I have completed the article I was working on after a full day of writing.

The not-so-good news: My brain feels like a hunk of melted plastic. You can tell the hunk of plastic used to be something, maybe even something colorful and fun. A toy? A Playstation 3? But now it's just slag. There's no hope of getting it to do anything more complicated than just sitting there, having mass and taking up space.

I like to think, at empty, beyond-weary times such as this that I earn some kind of points simply for showing up. It's easy to keep to a discipline (writing, exercise, diet, work, etc.) when you've made time for it and saved energy for it. But when you're running late? Running on empty? Kicking at a pile of melted plastic to see if you hear any hint of mechanical noise from the clockworks that used to be inside of it? That's when discipline really...disciplines...

It used to be that I stressed out about times when I felt empty or less-then-jazzed about doing something God-related, like going to church or reading scripture or praying. Now, I have written about (and against) the notion that God sits in heaven above us ever-poised, lightning bolt in hand to strike us down out of impatience or hatred. I do not believe that a God who inspires nothing but fear and (((very hidden resentment))) makes for a healthy faith.

But I do try most of the time not to be casual about approaching the Creator of the Wide Universe. "What is man, that you take notice of him?" asks the Psalmist. Who am I that I expect God to take notice of me? And more--who am I that I ask God of all things for favors? To protect, to care for, to assist. Again, I do not subscribe to the theology of the God who can barely stand us, but neither do I dismiss evangelical reminders to be still and know that God is God.

It's frustrating, then, that there are times when my soul feels like my brain right now--cold, dead, immobile. The last thing I feel like doing at times is forcing myself into the mindset of communion with God.

I take no small comfort, then, in Romans 8:26, which assures me that the Holy Spirit prays in my place, prays better than I am able, prays with sighs too deep for words. To me, this message from Paul suggests that God's love is not dependent upon our transient emotional states or our transient abilities to be spiritual or thoughtful or reverent. I have read that the practice of speaking in tongues (glossolalia) in Pentecostal churches--the Baptism of the Spirit--serves in part as a way for the prayerful intercession of the Spirit to bypass a person's lack of rhetorical flair or fear of saying the right thing. It relieves the pray-er of the burden of praying right. "I have you," says God, "I will speak for you and through you."

I do not myself practice the Pentacostal doctrine of tongues, but really--is it that different from the Methodist doctrine of prevenient grace? Methodists believe that God's lovingkindness for us precedes our awareness of it. Pentecostals have a way of performing the fact that the Spirit's power exceeds our human ability to respond to it. And are not both of these doctrines but different expressions of God's sovereignty--the excess of God over humanity? I had never thought of sovereignty as anything but a mark of God's impossible distance from us, but grace and the Spirit give me ways to think of sovereignty as impossible support, impossible intimacy, a miracle of upkeep for a weary mortal.

I ramble--forgive. It's time to put my plastic brain to bed in the hope that the new day will find it whole and functioning again. In the meantime, an assignment: find a way for the impossible, sovereign intimacy of God to surprise you with how it prays for you, works for you, writes for you, perseveres for you, with efforts too deep for words.

More tomorrow,

JF