I Sense Something

I'm looking forward to going to church on Sunday.

I'm looking forward to community, and friends, and prayer, and most especially, worship. Oh yeah... the sermon might be enlightening too.

The people there are my family. They pray for me. They have brought food, and listening ears, and good advice. One of them came to my classroom this morning and wiped down computers and counters and such. My classroom is ready for students (but my lessons aren't).

There is a room there where I can lock the doors and be alone, be quiet. The Prayer Room.

There are a lot of nice things about that place. There's a coffee bar that mixes whatever coffee drink you'd like. For free.

There's a food pantry which serves dozens of families twice a month.

The new sanctuary is clean and lovely. To the right the window frames form a cross. Behind the stage the molding in the wall forms another. And on the left is a cross made of the charred laminated beams from the former sanctuary.

There are all these things there which make it a good place.

My greatest pleasure there is the flip floppy thing that happens to my heart during worship.

I have wondered why Brenda has had so much trouble believing God does not mean her harm.

I have no idea why she does not sense the God I do.

I suspect there is a difference between folks, a range of sensing.

Sort of like vision. Snakes "see" infrared, far outside the range of humans. It is part of the same elctromagnetic spectrum we see, just a little further to one side.

I happen to be able to see just a smidgen further into the other direction than most people, the ultraviolet. (Something I discovered while using a spectrometer in a physics class.)

I guess I'm a little strange.

But then, if you have been reading my ramblings for any length of time, you already know that.

I think there is something about the way I sense myself that makes it easier for me to sense God.

When I worship I shut my eyes. Always.

There is a part of me that watches. It watches how I think, how I feel, what stages of maturity and cognition I am operating under. And, the watching part of me senses something somewhere inside, deep inside, that responds to God.

When I worship, when I turn my thoughts to God, there is something that moves deep inside. It sort of flips around. It sort of shakes itself and ripples through my thoughts, through my emotions. It sometimes happens when I am nature, when I see great beauty. It sometimes happens when I listen to Bach. When I think about magnetars, and quarks, and the Himalayas. It almost always happens when I shut my eyes on Sundays and worship.

I think that means something. I think that means that when I worship I am operating on a level different than my mind, my emotions. I think that means I am sensing the reality of God.

I wish Brenda could feel that.

But... she is no longer someone I am to worry about, someone to watch over.

She and I haven't spoken since the other night, when I turned and walked away from the sight of her standing beside him in his doorway.

That sounded a little pained, didn't it?

Well, I suppose it was. Of course it hurts a little.

But there is relief in knowing the end of this relationship has come.

I wish she knew how to sense God. It may have saved our marriage, but more importantly, it may have saved her. Oh, I don't mean salvation in the Christian sense. I believe that once in His hand thing.

It might have saved her from the questions which have cost her serenity.

I don't know why I feel this thing in my chest, this moving thing that slips around like a fish in dimensions beside these four. But I know it isn't my imagination. It isn't a part of my mind or my emotions.

I think it is like the light thing. Just as I can see a few more of the absorbtion gaps in a spectrometer than most folks, I can sense the Lord God through the sense of my own spirit as well as my soul.

It's the part that dances when I worship on Sundays.

I'm looking forward to going to church.

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Personal note: I got a full night's sleep last night. Huge difference! Isaac and I had a good day today. We waded around the Molalla River panning for gold.

Changed some automatic withdrawals from our joint checking to my personal account and closed the joint account.

The locks have been changed.

I got a little of the primer on the house exterior today. Few more days at that and I can start on the final coat.

Anyway... I'm doing a bit better.