Now I see! I was blind but now I see. Losing your life in order to find your life. For the first time in my life I have a glimpse of this! Oh, this is so very rich.
It never made sense to me before. I understood the concept of losing your life of materialism in order to find your life of the spirit but how to do so always seemed vague. Oh, sure I understand living a life of simplicity but that can be legalistic. I dread legalism.
Actually, I think it’s vague to everyone, all of us, but we’re afraid to admit it. What if some one stood up in church and said “Hey pastor, tell me how this happens.” The answer would be something like, “Empty yourself of your self and open up to the Holy Spirit.” What?! That’s opaque at best, nonsense at worst.
This idea of losing self to truly find self is a cool idea but how does it happen? I wish I could do it but it seems unattainable. I’ve seen others who claim to know the experience but somehow I’m not sure I’ve ever really seen it.
And for some reason when I consider all of this I’m led to wonder why it is that I often get a lump in my throat, tear up or get goose bumps when I hear the song Amazing Grace? It doesn’t matter if I hear the tune and the words or just the tune and it doesn’t matter whose playing it or singing it. I just can’t help it and I don’t even know what grace is.
The song has universal appeal. I’ve heard it played in places where no one would dare broach the subject of religion for fear of a riot but everyone becomes quiet and still at the sound of Amazing Grace.
No one can define grace because it’s not possible to put it in to words. It’s beyond cognition and therefore it’s beyond words and explanation. But it’s real and at some level we understand it even though we can’t explain it. I have seldom, if ever, seen it. That’s strange.
And somehow I think this losing your life to find it and this grace thing are related to each other. Both are so appealing but neither seems very attainable and both are clearly beyond words.
Today I was mowing the lawn. Right next to the phenomenally gorgeous tulip bed in full spring color it just hit me. I saw it for the first time. I mean I really saw it.
Losing my life is refusing to put my faith in my perceptual, my sensory experience of life. Oh, my life is a true experience, true enough. But it’s not an experience of Truth.
I can live my life as if this experience is what it’s all about or I can remember that anything I perceive, anything and everything I perceive, is not me. It can’t be because if I perceive it then there must be a perceiver doing the perceiving, an observer. It’s that subject-object thing where all perception requires a subject and an object. All experiences are the object of my subjective perceptions.
So, if I perceive my actions, my thoughts and even my feelings who is doing the observing? And that’s the point. I must lose my faith in my life of perception in order to gain my faith in my life of Truth. I am that which is beyond all of my perception. My experience of life is a gift. Perceived by me but most certainly not done by me or owned by me. Of course, it couldn’t be any other way!
And what does this mean about grace. Well, I was taught that, I am saved by grace and not by works. Works are perceptual. They are observed. Grace is beyond perception. Grace is an experience I have that can’t be observed. It can be known but not observed. It’s nothing I can do, or think, or say, or feel, or be. All of those things are perceptions and therefore works. Grace can’t be perceived or expressed. It is with me at the point of me the perceiver, the observer, never me the perceived.
As long as I focus on what I see, my observations, I am blind. Only when I am beyond my perception do I finally see. So that’s what it means: “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I’m found. Was blind but now I see.” Now, that is amazing!
