4th entry--God is closer than we realize!

I remember listening to Father Thomas Keating, a monk from Colorado. I remember it very well. I remember his peacefullness. I remember how large he was. He was at least 6 foot 5. And I remember him saying, "We just have such a hard time because the consciousness of God is right with us all the time, we just dont seem to be able to experience it. It may be that God is so close that our experiences do not give us parameters whereby we can even understand how close God is to us." I really liked what he was saying. I liked it because it reminded me of what it feels like sometimes when I pray. Sometimes, rarely, I forget about where I am and I just sit with God.

I also remember listening to Thomas Keating because the day afterward was September 11th, 2001. Everything seemed to change on that day, and yet, Keatings words continued to work their way into my soil. I still thought he was right. Despite the devestation around the country, God was still in it.

The day I surrendered to God was beautiful. In 1997, I finally gave in. Out my window hung an announcement from a star, a star as bright as the Magi. "I see you," it said, and, at that moment, I was taken from blindness to sight. I crumbled under the glory of its presence. It is funny how my prayers have often gotten in the way. Why in the world is that? But that hot night in Tennessee, a ten thousand pound weight fell from my shoulders. As it feel from my 6'7 frame, it left a dent, crack, schism, in the soil around me. I found myself without a clear mind for many days following my tranferance into the life of the beloved son. But it was pleasing as far as anything else goes. I was filled with an "ease." The telos, the end goal, of my life had always needed this place, this freedom. Finally I had come into that court, the court of being in God's real presence.

But, I was also confounded. I was walking in the dark without a flash light. I felt restricted by my inability to see. I was hemmed in, tied up by a new “thing” that I could not describe. The thing that was confusing me was "a person." How was I supposed to relate to this person? Who is this person? I was swimming in a new section of the swimming-pool. In fact, my “quick and strong moment of conversion” was filled with this deep fear and trembling and this deep cracking. The rest of my life will be spent underneath the canopy of that moment, yes. I will never be without this break. And I give God praise for the break. It is like New Orleans. The levy had to break. Sometimes we need to break. But, because God has given me a mind, I often try to fit the breakings back into their original mold. I cannot do that. I must not do that. What I can do, though, is be amazed at how God dove in to save me.


We all have different relationships with Jesus, obviously. But for me, I was so blinded by my loneliness as a Christian when I first started. I could really not make sense of it. It was like I had learned a new sport. I did not know the fundamentals. I was blinded by prayer, reading the Bible, and Christian friendship. They were three things foreign to me. I needed time. But I also needed help. My life in Christ was, in a word, confusing. And then, I was living in a family based more on skepticism than faith. My parents were interested, but they didn’t seem eager. I had ventured into a new dimension of reality. And so this book is my flimsy effort to chronicle how I learned how to grow up into being a Christian, and by extension, a dad. And I hope it will help other guys that might find themselves in this position.