Thoughts from Culhwch

It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything particularly thoughtful here, so I figured I would go ahead and try. I’ve been thinking about a lot of things recently, but one thing that has really gotten me thinking is trying to pinpoint exactly what it means to be free from fear. We read in John(?) that perfect love drives out fear. The thing is, there are only a handful of times that I remember ever being really free from all kinds of fear. They are these short lived moments, when I realize that absolutely nothing can separate me from the love of God. But it’s not just a realization, like some sort of thought that just rushes through the head. Its a a whole state of being, a kind of existence that intimately connects me to where I am. ts like a way of living in the moment. But it is so much more -not just in the moment but simultaneously through it. It’s like the here and the now become simultaneously more vivid, somehow more real, more opaque, and yet completely translucent, since I become at the same time aware of the connections that bridge between the moments. I become aware of the timeless, and temporal conjunction that we see in the divine and human presence of Christ, and Christ as risen lord. It is somehow the moment when I look out and see my savior and know that he is the Christ.

At that very moment I know that Christ has conquered death and the grave. I know that wherever I am the one who is good is there. That even should I face my own death, I have absolutely nothing to fear.

The trouble is that these moments of clarity come and go. They wash over like the waves of the sea, only to withdraw again. I shall call these moments a taste of heaven. I have a feeling that very few experience that utter lack of fear, that soothing peace that assures us that no anxiety, no imagination of the terrors that might be or might have been, can ever hold their meaning though eternity. From time to time these present troubles, these worries of the world, these weeds are plucked up, and the seeds of something far more real, far more permanent, in short the beginning of something that may truly abide begin to grow.

Should we worry when these moments are only temporary? Certainly not. That would be like being afraid because we are afraid. The message of the gospel is that Christ has conquered death and the grave, has conquered sin, and brought us reconciliation. And that message is the message of God’s perfect love… perfect love which drives out fear. No cycle of fear can live in that kind of love.

So what are we to do? I’m not really sure. Is it even a question of our doing?  I’m not really sure how it all connects, but when I look on it, I know it does.