I sat across from my mentor as he asked what I wanted out of life.
“I want to know God.
I want to know God in a way no one has ever known Him before.”
He smiled like I had no idea what I was asking and then looked me dead in the eye like he knew I would do it.
“That journey, Aubrey, will take all the guts you got.”
The exploration of God I have found will require a certain thing of you. You must cozy up to the edge and stand. Facing the probable death of your dignity, reputation, friends, and lovers. You must stand fully aware of all that lies behind and all you have to lose and then you must choose the unknown. Because it is only in the great mystery that you find the kind of glory that burns your eyes and electrifies your soul.
And the thing about the unknown is that it cannot be discovered with the eyes, the mind, or the stories of another. It must be explored with the most vulnerable thing you own. The heart. Your very body.
You must dive headfirst into a dark abyss you may never return from. And even if you do, the odds you’ll return recognizable are slim.
When you’ve seen the sun up close, you never see anything else the same. You’ve come across something familiar by name yet wholly unexplainable in nature.
And the oddest thing about it is what it does to you. The way it envelopes you as if you are as much a part of it as it is of itself. You hear the muffled shouts of blasphemy, insanity, and accusation but you couldn’t even retort them if you tried. For you are locked, fixed, and frozen in time with something grander than life itself.
You have been touched by infinity.
Excavation is usually only done by the mad. For you must nearly lose your mind altogether to find something beyond it.
I have never regretted losing myself to find something bigger. I wonder sometimes what it would have been like if I had chosen the familiar over this lonely plight of the wanderer. A good and quiet life without pieces of stardust caught in my hair.
I am sure I wouldn’t have these bruises and scars from territories uncharted. Maybe I would laugh but not the kind of a soul that is gleaming and free. I am sure I would cry but not nearly as deeply. I know I would sing but maybe not with the sound of angels in harmony.
These wings are the most painful gift I have ever been given. They have ripped through me and revealed deep and glorious mysteries.
Cloaked in agony, they use this dark to whisper secrets of God and me. The grand and the tiny. The material and the infinite all knotted up together in divine ecstasy.
I have touched God in ways I didn’t know was possible. It was expensive and I am glad that it is. I am glad He requires guts of me. That He won’t let me coast on dogmas and beliefs handed down to me but leads me down the dark and treacherous alleys. Where I find out fear is a tiny little thing compared to me.
And now that I have grown these wings called fearless and free, I plan to use them.
To see all there is to see and discover this truth altogether deeply,
there is no shame in this transfigured body.
Because you see I've always trusted God, but it has taken all the guts I've got to trust me.
