Day Nine

I am growing tired of seeing 4am! But as I lay in bed, I thought of a whole raft of things that I am going to write today.

Beginning with a verse that I always go back to - Deuteronomy 29: 29, "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may follow all the words of this law." Obviously it's the first part that interests me.

The secret things - the mysteries. And then Shakespeare's Hamlet, talking to his friend, says,

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (Act 1, Scene V).

These quotes are the main reason I never find myself fitting in. I always claim to be a card-carrying evangelical. And then I read things that the evangelicals write and I think, "Maybe not". The principal at my Theological College called me a liberal one time. I hold a high view of scripture, but it was my hair and my Afghan waistcoat and my general non-judgmental attitude that caused the accusation.

I was in the Free Methodist Church and attending a Nazarene college. I didn't fit in. Staff members used to make comments about things that were done for or to or by "all" of the students, and I would say, "Not me". I remember in the 2nd year when the college took on a chaplain. At the end of the year he reported that he had had all the students at his house for Sunday dinner during the year. But not me.

As a Nazarene minister I was free to be me to a certain extent. I was in a dangerous part of Belfast working with a church that no one had succeeded in before, so I was left alone. I could dress as I liked and do what I liked, but there were district assemblies when we had to dress in suits and collars and there were expectations that I couldn't live up to.

Then I transferred to the Methodist ministry, and right from the start I was told I would never belong. I wasn't one of them. In my 2nd circuit I gained freedom because of my church plant and because of the Fresh Expressions movement. But they started to kick back and I had to move. And I have been moving ever since, unable to settle; trying to be a round circle (is there any other shape?) in a square hole.

I tried joining the evangelical Methodists, but I had to leave. My problem has been that I became a Christian at the end of the Charismatic Movement, and if I'm going to fit in anywhere it would be with the mystics, but I've read some of their stuff and it doesn't make sense to me.

With all my charismatic experiences over the years I find that people give me puzzled looks when I talk about them, so I tend not to. But "the secret things" are real, and there really are "more things in heaven and earth ... than are dreamt of in your philosophy".

And the Bible has a few. I was writing about Yuri Gagarin recently and the comment he made about being in space and not seeing God (I find atheists to be arrogant and dumb). What he didn't know, because he hadn't read the Bible, was that God is not up there. In Revelation 4: 1, John sees a door standing open in heaven. Is this a door or a portal? (Let the reader understand). A portal into a different dimension. This is the apocalyptic dimension where God is; where He keeps all the secret things. And I'm more comfortable with apocalyptic than I am with prophetic. Jurgen Moltmann in "Theology of Hope" says the difference is that prophecy is concerned with history, where apocalyptic isn't. I am still working on my magnum opus on all things apocalyptic - fascinating stuff.

The Celts talked about "Thin Places" where heaven and earth touch. There are portals in these thin places. John. found one and saw behind the scenes.

As I am growing more and more dissatisfied with organised religion, I am being drawn to more of the "secret things".

Enough for now. There is a day to live in!