The cement-mixer

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Is the faithful one like a drunkard on the steps? Like the avid connoisseur of drugs? If you were to judge by appearances is this what you would say?

God fills his follower's heart to the near exclusion of the world. The world lies underfoot but is hard to navigate, hard to negotiate because its solid floor lies at right angles to the other path, the better path, which is: this closeness to God. Buying food, getting to work and then working, those are side effects of this other, more intimate walk. So the God-drawn one has the hardest time putting his foot down before him. His attention is elsewhere.

Meanwhile, hard core "Christians" -- the ones who reduce faith to behavior control -- they watch the faithful one walking and grow disgusted. Her steps do not add up into a rational path. Her feet dance the drunkard's dance. The one who is pulling her off the path, that one is difficult to see.

What would a reassembled world look like to the one who is drunk with God? Since I am your average backyard sinner, I must be careful describing what I barely know. But I think the foreground and background of the picture might be changing places. Seen thru God's eyes.

A typical picture in our city: 2 well-dressed women walking into a store. A homeless man stands in front of the store. Cars rush by. But the drunken one cannot see the cars and the store is just a sort of black void that is receding from the picture and not really part of it. Whatever enters the store also disappears. Well then, is the homeless man at the center of the picture? Is the appalling smell that he gives off in reality an elixir concocted by God? Where is God in this landscape and where exactly are you? Disorientation is more or less your strongest clue.

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And the pavement circles you like a cement mixer as you try to figure out just where you are.

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