Another Book?

I am starting to feel another book coming on…

I’m driven. It feels like there’s a jockey on my back flogging me hard with a quirt. But I’m not trying to catch up with anyone in a race. It’s more like being driven out into the wilderness.

I won’t blame anyone for stepping back from my writing. I’m definitely going somewhere and you may not want to go there. Whether or not you believe it’s the Holy Spirit, demons or some other thing driving me will depend on what you believe is real.

There are plenty of blog posts here and on the other blog that denounce the idea that reality is consistent with everyone. I characterize it as a living person (generally female, like a mother) who doesn’t treat us all the same. There’s enough overlap that we can recognize each other’s descriptions of encounters with reality, so we know it’s the same person. But it’s clearly relating to each of us somewhat individually.

And even then, I’m quite certain reality changes her mind from time to time about something. I’ve often woken to a new day and found that something I knew for certain the previous day was suddenly no longer true. Not always just piddling things, either. Sometimes it’s major elements of my world.

It used to drive me nuts, so to speak. It doesn’t bother me any more. I’ve been at peace with that state of affairs for a long time. In essence, it brought me to a rather different understanding of God, since reality is simply an expression of His character. It made Him more real to me. It also gave new meaning to the idea of living in a fallen world.

I’m not a shepherd, but sometimes I think I feel like a sheepdog. Dogs aren’t a good symbol in Scripture, but I don’t live in the Ancient Near East. At any rate, there’s no doubt I can’t lead the sheep, but I do want to hunt down the lost ones and try to persuade them to come back to the fold. I want to protect them from harm as much as I can.

So the particular lost sheep that my trusty sheepdog nose can smell are those who struggle with reality. I want them to get to know her better, and figure out how to deal with her. I think it requires a whole book to work through the details of reorienting from the typical American/Western viewpoint. They are wandering too close to the precipice. It’s an alluring majestic view, but sheep aren’t wired for that. You can see a lot from the peaceful valleys, too. They need green pastures and still waters. They can’t be fruitful chasing the next vertiginous vista.

So I feel driven to think this through and imagine how I might say it if I had real people sitting with me, talking it over. That’s why it feels like another book, but it’s going to take awhile. I’ll serialize it here, of course.