Art of God

I had a "one in a lifetime" opportunity (at least one in my lifetime) to talk to a born and raised Born Again Christians few days ago. It was two wonderful young people visiting from Virginia. They were both raised in a very strict, very literal christian way, and they both realized at some point that it's not quite for them and started searching for a different path.

I was very interested in what they had to say. I have often wondered at the thought process that would lead to conclusions, values and ideas so very different from mine. I surround myself with people who basically agree with my model of reality, so I had no chance to find out how the "others" think, until now.

Is there a God or isn't there? Is there a God because billions of people believe in him or is there a God because no one can prove that there isn't? Or maybe there is no God, because no one was able to prove that there is one?

Christopher is reading a book on this very subject at the moment and once in a while treats me to little excerpts. As I listen to them what comes to my mind, every time, is an excerpt from one of my favorite books: "the Master and the Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov.

It would be to long a quote, so I'll summarize it: one hot summer evening in Moscow a poet and an editor sit on a park bench talking about Jesus. The story happens in fifties, the very middle of deep communism, which of course denied that any such "opium for the masses" as the stories about God could actually be true.

I find more and more pleasure in the company of trees. Ojai, the place where I live, is something of a village, though it is called a town. Nature here is very powerfully present and I get to hang out with it every day. Every day I notice the presence of trees more strongly and distinctly, their personality, their energy is more palpable than that of many human beings I know.

As I walked my dog the other day, down a deserted street lined with beautiful old oaks, I felt like I was walking down a crowded street and I realized that the presence of those oaks is so strong because they are so strongly present. They are so very much themselves.

I just got back from my session with Brooks. It is customary for me to feel like I just got put through a very intense cycle of washing, drying and ironing after my sessions with Brooks. Today there is an extra intensity to this particular set of sensations, today I feel like I need to die and get born again ... become a born again Pausha :)

I feel that there is a new element to my growing process, and that is actually putting what I learned and what I became into practice. At some point I said to Brooks: I am a "closet God". I am who I am inside, but outside I am whatever I was trained to be. Whatever I believe is safe to be. Whatever I think people will want me to be.

I finally started working on my book. It's been a while since I first came up with the idea, about a year and a half actually.

I have realized recently that I have enough material from all the blog posts I've written over last several months to put it all together and produce one comprehensive story.

Full of excitement and eagerness I sat down to my computer only to find that writing a book is quite a different story from writing on the blog.