Baptism.
Everyone is different. Everyone has their own unique relationship with the Divine. Some walk with absolute certainty about how Spirit moves and works.
I do not fall into that category.
I entered the race with absolute certainty, in how my relationship with the Divine works. As many entered Training Camp unfamiliar with certain concepts used by AIM, such as listening prayer and praying for healing of the sick, I was not one of them. My application even said, “I am a Son of the Most High”. I was a bit…pretentious, to say the least. However, I signed up for this journey to experience more and new ways of understanding and experiencing God. To try and blow the box I had for God to smithereens.
The moment my feet landed on Georgian soil, God turned everything ‘off’. All my ‘usually ways’ of ‘communicating’ with God stopped working. I thought something was wrong with me, little did I know my journey was just beginning.
God has been silent for me much of my ‘Race. Well, at least the first leg of it.
This aligns with two major prayers I have been praying. 1) to understand the relational side of God. (Not just the personal, God talking to me, but the Spirit moving in-and-amongst the body. & 2) to be more human, and to see people where they are at, and love them right where they are at.
One day, as I jumped into a Jeepney, in the Philippines, I heard God’s voice drop into my head.
“I am silent, so you will listen”
Listen to everything. To my team. To my squad. To my Hosts. To the kids on the street. To the birds in the trees. To the geckos in the house. To the sound of rain failing on my tent. To the silence.
I always saw God ‘in’ things. But could I see Spirit in nothing?
My concept of God is progressively changing. Growing, Expanding, Shrinking, & Multiplying. My prayers no longer contain words, but breathes. Feeling, sensing, understanding and experiencing my whole soul (body included). Silence. Reaching into the void, into the darkness of nothing, and believing Spirit moves.
I understand this is a completely odd concept. I feel, this is foreign for evangelical christians, this concept of Void, and God in the Void. God in the Mystery.
I still do not have a full grasp on this concept. (And I have attempted to write this blog 3 or 4 times). As I was trying to explain this concept to my new teammate Emily, she only grinned. As if she fully understood what I was talking about.
“I don’t know if I quite understand what you are getting at”, Emily said after listening to me try and put thoughts together. “However, I see how God is pursuing you through this. God talks to us in a language we can understand, and He knows you are a seeker. So of course He hides himself, so you can go find him. So you can seek out understanding, and better communion with Him.”
One of the last days of debrief, as we watched the sunset over the ocean, a bunch of us decided to get baptized again.
For some reason I felt the urge to get dunked again.
Not for the traditional reasons of symbolic baptism. I really didn’t understand why I my soul urged to plunge into the big blue.
I went to the Bible to search for some reasoning, to why I wanted this.
As I searched the scriptures I stumbled upon John 1: 31
31 I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”
Over the last couple of days, as my ideas of Jesus, the Christ, the Spirit, Yahweh have all been challenged….I have a circled prayer to really know and experience the Spirit of the X (my short hand for Christ, being that X is the greek letter Chi…short hand for X)…(plus the mathematical symbolism for the unknown).
This is faith. Taking the first step into the void, the unknown, the chasm of mystery. God renames Jacob, Israel, after Jacob wrestles with God. Israel literally translates to; “those who struggle/wrestle with God”. God’s chosen people are those who do not follow him blindly, but those who wrestle with Him. Those who dare to engage with the Divine, the unknown, and the unknowable.
I wanted to enter into John’s baptism, not for the forgiveness of sins, but so that He (the Christ) might be revealed to me, a man who wrestles with God.
I wanted to be baptized into the void. The unknown. The mystery. Besides Space, there is no greater physical metaphor for void then the Ocean. A thing we as humans have not fully explored, grasped, or begin to understand its depths and mystery.
The symbolic has been used to try and define and grasp the Divine. We can only fully define the religious experience with symbolism and metaphor. God is like this. Or God is like this.
So naturally….getting dunked into the Ocean was something I had to do.
As I asked Walker to baptism me, I tried to explain my thought process. Plus He has been with me for the last 4 months to see me wrestle this out.
So of course, as true bros do…he baptized me…in the name of Yahweh (the IS-WAS-WILL BE…breath itself), Jesus (the Incarnate), and the Great Spirit.
Cheers to a journey into the unknown.
PS. I STILL NEED a little less the $800 to be FULLY FUNDED!!!
