Love/Hate Relationship with Tension

I am in the throes of research for some fast approaching deadlines in seminary. This morning I was trying to sit still and respond to what I'm pretty sure is God moving inside me. It strikes me odd that on the one hand I can get so caught up talking about God and then refuse to respond to him. Never is this more in my face than when inner stillness eludes me. I have an almost impossible time exploring theological depths without some measure of inner stillness, and I have to wonder if God is messing with me. "Take away the stillness, and she'll respond to Me." But maybe that's not really God. Maybe that's just me projecting me onto God, and I fear that I do that a lot (emphasis on "a lot" vs. "alot" because most do not want to see Alot of projection; well, maybe Jackie does. I know I do).

I love the mystery of God, and I often feel like contemporary spirituality and modern christianity has no interest in mystery. Mystery implies tension, and our culture works really hard to eliminate tension with soundbite responses to difficult situations and questions. Answers often (not always) imply control while mystery requires some level of genuine surrender to discovery. Not that I'm anti-answers, but I greatly value the power of tension. From a Christian angle (since I am in fact a Christian), intimate communion is a must for me when I explore the mysteries of God. Without a deep connection to God's Spirit, I think I would lose my sanity. When tension abounds, God's Spirit anchors me, and I cling to a voice that has grown so deeply familiar to me that it speaks without words and yet I know what it is saying. It is a part of me and I am a part of it, indivisibly so. I find great freedom in this.

When I was younger, I felt that I couldn't trust what I couldn't explain. As a result my spiritual identity relied on propositions, doctrine, and answers. In short, my spirituality rested heavily on someone else's conclusions, and I wanted to fully possess what I had not learned to own. Oddly, as I began to walk in the way of Jesus, I learned to inhabit something without understanding what it fully meant (I thought I knew at the time, but my knowing was severly lacking the component of experience and deep trust). As I'm learning to be and embody the way of Jesus, I find myself in deep conflict because the gospel is not designed for those who divorce tension from spiritual maturity (i.e. that would be the very definition of both a Pharisee or even perhaps a pagan). Instead, the more deeply I connect with God, the more he conflicts with all that is numb, apathetic, inhuman, and dark within me. I hate that. Yet I subject myself to it for one reason only. I want to know this God who claims to love me and those around me. And this yearning I cannot escape, numb, or deny. Tension.

What little I know of God, I find great rest in, inexplicably and undeniably so. And it seems absurd to me that I could simultaneously be so conflicted and yet utterly still in God's presence. In the end that's where I am currently, and it is what it is.