No specific news today on the health front, other than the headaches are back and I’m staying current with Tylenol (thank you, Diane!) We await a consultation with the super specialist with the improbable title of Neurointerventionalist Radiologist. 🙂

I’m not sure where this blog is going but I feel called to be transparent as to what I’m thinking and how life for Diane and me is progressing. If you are reading this, you may or may not see things as I do and that’s OK!  I hope this calling is not perceived as a kind of self promotion, as many blogs are probably inclined. I flip the case and would want my dear friends and family to be similarly transparent so we can live and share life in close community, where those things that make life livable flourish.

Here is the window into today at 11350 Turtleback Lane.

I woke up thinking about the veil this morning. Some of you know that this is not a new topic for me. I think about the veil regularly. In a broad way, the veil can be described as the dividing line between the sacred and profane. Or, between the natural and the spiritual. In my view and experience, it is that which separates us from God. Now, some (whose views I respect but with whom I disagree) believe that, in essence we ARE God and only need to rid ourselves of the loads of baggage that blind us to the reality. Others who also hold views I respect but with whom I disagree, believe there is no God … at least not a personal one … so there can be no veil.

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. … Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.“

As Mark describes in 15:38, the very first thing that happened after “Jesus breathed his last,” was the tearing of this massive curtain in two.

This can be read as either a nice little myth or as a hinge point in all of human (perhaps cosmic) history. Just as Lewis leaves us a clear set of choices, so, too, does this reported event. What is its significance?

Yes, there is a veil but now it is rendered permeable. Jesus is the mediator and the Spirit is the guide.

Where is God? How do we know he is there? What a great topic for conversation!  Atheists, Theists, and Believers all grapple with this.

The promise is Emmanuel. God with us. Like a number of you, Diane and I believe in this as much as we believe that love is real and not an illusion. As much as we believe that joy makes happiness seem sweet but transitory and even hollow and deceptive. We believe this because we have experienced this unpredictable and inexplicable thing called grace. We believe this because, when we surrender our self interest and idols (however frequently or infrequently), our eyes and hearts are open to a reality far deeper, fuller and more eternal than that which the world normally presents.

Many of you have heard me describe in vivid detail when the veil all but disappeared. But, what of the other times, like now, as we live through this current crisis? Of course, we are extremely close to some of you who have stepped out of the boat and are living or have lived in that raw tension where the veil undulates between opaque and sheer gossamer. Thank you for your transparency and leadership!

Then, there is humor. Diane and I laugh and joke with one another and others. We shake our heads in puzzlement at the kind of impish nature of a God who could orchestrate that impossible and miraculous voice text last November. Clearly, that veil opened briefly so we would know he is ALWAYS right here. As he is right now.

God is wholly God and I am not. And, I am perfectly fine and deeply grateful for that. If there is illusion, it actually is the veil. It has been made obsolete. And, that obsolescence is why we are held so dearly and can gaze upon each day as a precious gift.

Paul writes to the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 13:12-13): For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (Nod to Diane).