The world beneath us spins in circles
And this life makes us twist and turn and sway
But we were made for more than rhythm with no reason
By the one who moves with passion and with grace
As He dances over all that He has made
Stephen Curtis Chapman
We all have a profound longing to experience being – that nearly indescribable essence – that rush – of ecstasy as our soul within aligns and connects with the body and its brain without and all that we are cannot help but erupt in joy. Bliss. Wonder. Awe. We feel worthy. We feel whole. We feel alive. We feel ourselves. And we dance.
But we are impatient. And shallow. And we begin to confuse being with the fleeting pleasures available to us on the surface. We see money as the power that allows us to purchase an endless supply of amusements. We begin to see people not as fellow beings, but as objects that merely provide, assist, or prevent us from obtaining those thrills. We pursue popularity because, in our surface-level thinking, it validates our worth.
And once we make the conscious choice to pursue pleasure through popularity, power, and prosperity – we harness all of the energies within us into seizing the bounty.
Enter a most woeful irony.
In our obsession with procuring these prizes, we give ourselves over willingly into indentured servitude. The daily grind. The treadmill. The rate race. The hamster wheel. We lose ourselves in grueling work in exchange for the someday spoils. But before we realize it, our lives become the grind. And there we sit, wallowing in the two-fold misery of the burden we willingly accepted and the frustration of failing to find euphoria.
A prolonged quest into these fruitless ventures produces an oppressive fatigue. We become restless. Jaded. And so we turn our attention to anything that can bring escape: staring at a screen, ingesting a substance, purchasing a toy, indulging in sensual encounters, fantasizing what could be instead of relishing what is.
And yet, as we toss and turn in our self-inflicted maladies, there are moments when a whisper of being captures our attention and we catch a glimmer of hope. It might be the wet nose of a puppy nuzzling your ear and asking to play or the unexpected kiss of a loved one on the forehead who has just come from far away to see you. Or the sight of a surprise snowfall through the window on Christmas morning.
Is it possible to capture the essence – the being – we experience in such moments? Can we live in bliss instead of hanging onto mere morsels of memories?
Yes. We were designed to live this way. Let’s explore how.
Source Scripture
The Woman at the Well – Part 2: John 4:27-38
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
The Chosen (Woman at the Well Scene: Watch Episode 8 beginning at 40:10)
And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible.…In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. – C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
Our seemingly wholehearted devotion to applying the scientific method to ascertain the nature of reality has produced in us a remarkable blindspot. Science, by definition, aims to discern objective truth through observation and experiment.
But here’s the blindspot. While holding tightly to the belief that nothing can be true apart from scientific proof, we find ourselves in the possession of an inheritance of long-held theoretical truths that are yet to be proven or impossible to prove. And rather than employ the scientific method, we leave the decision to whim.
Enter the ego, whispering if it hasn’t been proven, then it must not be true. Reject it if it suits you.
We do this not because we are firm believers in science, but because our egos now have a loophole in which to exploit the realm of the unproven in order to to mine it for favorable resources.
Rather than seeking to discern universal, objective truth, we proceed with impunity to determine personal, subjective truth.
For example, it has long been held that forgiving your enemy when wronged is the only way to inner peace. But science has yet to prove this. The ego seizes this uncertainty to its advantages and proposes other, personal truths. Anger, hate, bitterness, vengeful fantasies, or outright retaliation.
The ego wants to determine truth in order to get what it wants. The soul longs to discern truth so it can fall into rhythm with it, live by it, and share it.
Today we will take a journey through time and space via sacred Scripture to three wells where we will discover those truths that exist in not in the domain of scientifically proven fact, but in the realm of the Logos, the Tao, the Way, the objective Truth of the Universe that permeates everything and reveals itself in the soul.
Let’s begin with well #1.
Source Scripture
The Woman at the Well: John 4:1-26
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
The Chosen (Woman at the Well Scene: Watch Episode 8 beginning at 40:10)
Abraham Builds the First Altar in Israel in Shechem
Joshua Builds the Altar of Fulfillment in Shechem
Joshua Renews Abraham’s Covenant in Shechem
Levi and Simeon Take Murderous Revenge in Shechem
Joseph’s Bones are Carried from Egypt and Buried in Shechem
Joseph’s Story of Curses to Blessings (Read Genesis 37-50)