i have no earthly idea why God is so patient with me.   i've gone through so many periods of questioning, of failing, of cursing the earth i was born into that any reasonable deity should of just let me sell my soul to the devil when i wanted to and be satisfied with cool people like mother terresa. 

but no, when this lamb escapes, the hellhound of heaven happily leaves all 99 of the ones who have their lives together.  for me. and i have no idea why.  don't get me wrong, some times i really love God and feel His-Her joy covering everything.  there are times when being in a community, and being free to shout and dance about how God's saving me is the only thing important in my life.  but there are other times, when i don't feel anything. i still act excited and reverent before everyone else but it's all a mask. these are the times when i don't feel anything, and God seems so distant, and my own life seems purposeless.   there are times when my devout "Thy will be done" morphs into an agnostic "let me go! i want to be done with this whole santification process, it's too damn hard."  but its at these times that i find myself less able to break away from God.  the angrier i get at God's silence, the more likely it is that something (or someone) is going to come along, and God forces me back to Him-Her, just like a Parent who always lets me come home. 

in the words of one of my favorite old blues songs "late in the evening, i'm gonna lay my lonesome head on the railroad track/and when i hear that train a-commin', i'm gonna snatch my damn head back."  and it's true. it is at those moments that i feel the despair that hope flood in. and that is how we keep going.  to steal a phrase from barrak obama who stole it from rev. jerehmiah wright we regain the audacity of hope only when we begin realize how audacious hope really is.  that really corny poem about how God's footprints are always next to ours, but when we only see one set of prints its because She's carrying us is actually on to something....  everything is going to work itself out.  He hasn't brought us this far to leave us now....

when i was at one of my lowest points, a very wise friend told me that when we agree to become God's slave, He takes our brokenness away from us, so that we remade as more than the product of our sin, and the ways people sin against us. nearly 400 years ago, a people stolen from africa would gather illegally in the woods and created one of the greatest forms of christian worship in the history of the religion - at a time when all they heard about the gospel was b.s. about how Jesus wanted them to be obedient to the "master." why?  i think it's because, somehow, the Spirit let them know that becoming God's slave meant that you could not, and should not, be a slave to anything - or anyone else. 

this summer, i've prayerfully decided to start attending st. sabinia, a spirit-filled african-american catholic church on the south side - and have been impressed with how much i, as a white protestant, have in common with their vision and beliefs, and have learned from their passion. two sundays ago, during the mass for mother's day, a woman came up to the alter as father pflager explained that her son had been shot and killed just last week. "i went to the hospital, and we prayed for God to save this boy's life, and for reasons i don't understand, God said 'no, i want him here with Me.'" this beautiful woman then took the microphone from the pastor, and explained that, "it's hard to loose a child. you expect your child to outlive you. but, this expedience has think more about all those other mothers who are loosing children everyday. that's why i want to tell my church that because of this painful experience, i've become committed to ending gang violence in our community." i think she was the only one in the santuarry not crying.

the secret to happiness? - loose yourself. love God with your heart, soul, and mind, give Him-Her your whole being - and love your neighbor as yourself, don't get lost in self-pity, but let suffering be a motivation to work for justice.