It's time to write about some things... and this one (fair warning!) might be the blog entry that causes you to permanently dismiss Nick as a total weirdo.
I don't know a lot but one thing I *do* know...
Spiritual clarity comes with sitting down at a keyboard and typing out the honest contents of one's heart with some sort of regularity.
My hang up - now and always, lol - is that I tend to want to be able to package things up in pretty wrapping with a bow on top to make the things I put down on paper palatable for mass consumption.
Admission: It's idol worship, plain and simple. Lol.
Anytime in the past that I've been able to succeed at taking the elements of the situations I find myself living through... and aptly reduce them to a few, poetic lines and phrases... it has always allowed me to feel good about myself... in a way that I suppose ought to be reserved for how I feel about God.
And at age 41 I think I want to be better at faith than what I am when I just sit at a keyboard, pound out some prose, slap Jesus' name on it and then sit back to wait for comments to appear saying what a blessing it's been to get a glimpse into my faith walk.
Ministry - if that is what this is and if it is what I'm called to - probably ought to be bigger and better than an ego massage I initiate once every six months through social media.
It's my modus operandi, though! My "M.O".
Once you change the formula, you're effectively eliminating the well-worn path up the mountain to worship at the altar of your idol.
Not that I haven't blazed new trails before when my faith required it... when I've felt that how I was doing Christianity wasn't cutting the mustard.
I know that with Christ's shepherding that this is something that CAN be done but I guess I've just long been hoping that it wouldn't be necessary.
I want to just take it easy as a Christian.
Why do I need to re-invent or amend how I do faith again now at this stage in life?
Isn't it enough that I have reconciled my faith and orientation?
Trusted God to deliver me into a state of (mostly) peaceful coexistence with family, loved ones & acquaintances... even those who are perpetually suspicious of whether or not I am authentically a Jesus follower?
Isn't it enough that I lived through a decade of single life in which I had to convince myself I still belonged to Jesus while trusting Him to help me do something that the church doesn't prepare ANY person - gay or straight! - to do (develop a consistent sexual ethic to maintain outside of marriage)?
Hasn't it all just been enough?
Can't I just be the current version of myself that I am until I'm *done* living? Lol.
I'm not perfect but I think I like the present version of me, after all. Lol.
And I definitely haven't always been able to say that!
The Nick I am as I enter 2023 is a barrel of contradictions and hypocrisy, it's true.
But Nick knows who he is in Jesus and doesn't really want to start down a different path at this stage of the game... even if it means expanding on his relationship with his Heavenly Father, embarrassing as that is to admit.
2022 was about me asking God (in pretty much every conversation we had) if I can just opt out of future self-renovations in favor of just maintaining the status quo and Him reliably answering "no". Lol
But darn it if He doesn't make another adventure look attractive!
I think I believe that if you're really in a relationship with the Creator of the universe, that you'll find yourself being beckoned in ways to do things that no matter how much work they seem like they're going to be? You won't be able to resist doing them. You'll feel they're essential to survival... even if they make you look
weird.
An example...
When I was a kid, I taught myself to fall asleep with my fingers crossed.
The Baptist church I went to in my youth put an older church lady in charge of teaching the fifth grade Sunday school class and she had a penchant for believing the occult was much more pervasive in Haysville, Kansas than what it probably was. Lol.
Every Sunday turned into seven or eight kids sitting around a table in the church basement with our fruit punch and glazed donuts and listening to "Ginger" (that's what I'll call her for the purposes of this blog) tell us about what rocks she wanted us to be sure to leave unturned in the week ahead in order to avoid "giving Satan a foothold" in our lives.
I think most of the time I was able to permit myself to remain unphased by the topics that would surface in that Sunday school classroom. But I was profoundly shaken by one particular week's table talk...
The Sunday Ginger told us about ouija boards.
I had never heard of any such thing but Ginger's hysteria quickly spread through the room as a couple of the girls in the class opened up about their experience with them.
I sat and listened, horrified, as a story was told about how demons had been summoned at a slumber party.
Ginger literally clutched her necklace with mouth agape as the girls recounted the events.
They stated that after they had summoned a demon at a recent overnight party things started moving around the room and blood started to inexplicably pool underneath a doll in its resting place in a chair in the corner!
The story ended with one of the girls picking up the ouija board and throwing it into the roaring fireplace in the living room causing it to emit a series of screams before all returned to normal.
The adult in the room was reduced to tears by this story which caused me utter concern... I mean, if the SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER was shaken, shouldn't I be?
Most of the things that Ginger usually wanted us to be wary of weren't things I would've ever had much contact with anyway growing up as a kid who went to Christian school.
But it seemed that all one needed to have access to for an "Ouija Level" encounter with Satan were three fingers centered on a piece of wood and that?
That concerned young Nicholas. Lol.
I sat near the girl who had told us about her slumber party experience in church that day as the pastor delivered his sermon. Sidebar: said sermon was utterly useless as it was completely void of instructions on how to prevent the toys in your bedroom from hemorrhaging blood at night!
She and I exchanged notes as I attempted to gain more clarity about the experience she had had and how to make sure I never did ANYTHING to open a door to it replicating itself in my own bedroom at home!
I quickly learned that my suspicions had been correct. The demon had been summoned when each person at the slumber party had placed the three center fingers on each hand on the ouija board to begin a seance.
That night, as I attempted to go to sleep, I was mortified the more that I considered this information.
My hands regularly ended up in close proximity to my wooden headboard as I slept!
The more I thought about it, the more that I reasoned that there was nothing stopping me from winding up with the three fingers used to *intentionally* summon a demon on a wooden ouija board positioned in such a way that they would *unintentionally* summon them via my wooden headboard!
I had a few nights of sleeplessness before I formulated a plan of action to make sure I wouldn't be waking up with Beelzebub at my bedside.
My mom and dad were usually in bed no later than 10:35pm (after the local evening news).
Even though *I* was expected to be in bed at 9pm, I would wait up and listen for the sound of the television powering off in the living room before sneaking out to the hallway to go demon proof my hands in the bathroom.
I would cross my index finger with my middle finger on one hand and then cross my pinkie finger with my ring finger on the opposite hand.
Ever so clumsily, I would proceed to take Johnson and Johnson bandaging and wrap the crossed fingers from top to bottom, locking them in position so that the center three fingers would never be together in such a way that they would mimic the position that was needed to summon demons.
Eventually, I got to a place where I was able to successfully wake up with my fingers crossed in the morning without the bandaging to hold them in place.
I did this for several weeks (an entire summer!) before I was able to overcome my fear of the story that had been relayed around Ginger's Sunday School table and return to sleeping without worry.
Actually, I believe I was called out on sleeping with my fingers crossed by a friend who spent the night at my house one weekend who found it laughable and convinced me to see the hilarity in it also.
Considering it all again afresh a few decades later... there are cautionary tales GALORE in that recounting of events.
Mostly about how adults should be well vetted before being given access to sculpting the spiritual lives of children.
But for the purposes of this blog it's about how the love of God is to be prioritized over the fear of Satan.
This is vital to internalize even if the things you have to start doing to make said changes to your perceptions are going to get you labeled as being different, weird or
backslidden.
That was the dreaded adjective that I found myself trying to avoid after I began to take seriously God's calling to live transparently as a gay person of faith.
It still chases me, that word.
Backslidden.
And there's plenty of times where it's plenty applicable, don't get me wrong.
But not because I'm gay.
When I'm backslidden? That's because I'm human. Lol.
The same is true for you despite how good of a job you may have done in convincing yourself that your sainthood is intact. ;)
And isn't it weird that any Christian would find themselves in the conundrum I'm describing?
That an individual doing something outside of the norm for the sake of their individual relationship with Christ would be met not with the SUPPORT of the Christian community but instead with their skepticism? With their animosity???
It's what's kept me from writing new and honest blogs over the last several months and kept me instead just being content to preserve blogs from decades gone by in a new format on a new platform.
I don't want to be honest about the next phases of the path that I feel God might be calling me into because I don't want to spend any more time feeling rejected and dejected than what I already have in my Christian walk.
Again, it's selfish and it's idol worship.
But it's also the truth - I bow my knee at the altar of self preservation these days much more than I bow it at the cross of Jesus.
The same thing that scared me as a boy frightened of a makeshift ouija board emerging from his headboard as he slept scares me now!
That God isn't concerned with me being well maintained.
It's not true, by the way. He most definitely DOES want for ALL of us to be well maintained!
But, for better or worse, I need the approval of others - both Christians and non Christians - to feel "well maintained".
I guess I haven't learned much about trusing Him, have I?
As a teenager, I demonstrated fear that God didn't love me enough to prevent me from inadvertently summoning Satan as I slept.
Now?
I think it's that I am failing to trust Him to love me enough not to let me stumble off a philosophical cliffside as I continue chasing Him in directions that, quite simply, the majority of folks don't seem to get invited to chase Him. Lol.
There are neglected parts of the Christian faith that have gone largely unspoken of for centuries and why WOULDN'T God be ready to issue a call to return some focus to them?
And why wouldn't *I* be one of the ones hearing that call?
Doesn't He still use the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, after all???
What exactly am I talking about, you ask?
Well...
The following sentiments popped up in my facebook feed as words I'd authored this week back in 2014... which just goes to show how long I've been trying to avoid fully devoting myself to thinking about all this.
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...since I moved back to Wichita and have a two hour commute to make twice a week, I have tried to become more intentional about engaging in prayer. Not because I'm some super righteous person or anything but actually more because I'm *not*. Lol. I do have a copy of People's Sexiest Man Alive occupying the same shelf at home as my Bible, after all. Lol.
I'm constantly learning more about neurological ongoings in our brains (due to being a sleep disorders clinician) and I'm crazily fascinated by the fact that our brains operate as electrical storehouses. Sleep and meditation and prayer all (simply put) generate electricity within the brain seemingly out of nothingness!
That's some crazy crap, right???
That electricity stays stored in the brain until it is needed to send jolts that animate our bodies and literally make us capable of putting one foot in front of the other each and every day.
Without sleep, prayer & meditation the electrical charging process does not occur, and our bodies literally do not have the power normally accumulated during a "charging session" to permit us to function.
So my renewed fervor for prayer (as much as I wish I could say that it's about piety) is actually something of a science experiment. Lol. Will the quality of my life IMPROVE with "deeper prayer" in ways similar to how I know it to improve with "deeper sleep"???
To determine this, I've been delegating some time while praying to a practice I was exposed to at Pentecostal Bible College... the traditional term for it is "speaking in tongues" but I think that's too "ookie-spooky" a way to reference it.
Staying with the thought line that sleep, rest and meditation literally generate electricity in the brain, let's think of the whole operational system as a very intricate piece of technology.
Instead of calling the willful practice of muttering jibberish in prayer "speaking in tongues", let's think of it instead as processing encrypted code - the way you would on a home computer to make it capable of tasks it was previously incapable of performing.
It's not something you have to do daily (though it probably wouldn't cause harm of any sort if you did), but occasionally installing new software via a long string of nonsensical code improves the efficiency of any computer system, right?
So my theory is, if sleep and prayer are undeniably capable of generating electricity in the brain then
"coding" (tongues) may amplify the experience by performing system upgrades I'm not even knowledgeable enough to know I need.
From a less technology driven place let's state it like so: There is an eternal component to my being that I am most of the time out of touch with. ...by giving voice to that component on occasion, I allow the entirety of my being to operate more efficiently and effectively.
Not to mention that that eternal component (because it is eternal) knows things I do not consciously know... it needs to be given a voice so that it can ask it's Programmer (God) for things I do not know it needs and therefore do not know how to ask for.
It is performing the action of "helping" me which, coincidentally, is what Jesus advertised that the Holy Spirit would be sent to believers to do in His absence.
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So if you're still reading after all that, lol, I'd like to devote the rest of this blog entry to unraveling a paradox.
Because - as outlined in orange type above - I am CLEARLY on a path towards opening myself up to being a vessel through which the supernatural can occur (& have been since I wrote all that 9 years ago!).
But in my heart? I'm also still a little Baptist boy who knows that the last thing you ever want to let your fellow Christians catch you doing is being backslidden, confused, different or (worst of all) curious about parts of the history of our faith that "we just don't talk about".
So what is the paradox? The conflict of identity I find myself currently struggling to overcome?
Well...
On one side of the coin, I realize that back when I was younger there was never any real invitation being issued to me by Satan to summon demons through my head board, an ouija board or any other medium.
And now? On the other side of the coin??
It's taken me not *just* the nine years that have passed since I first wrote about developing the habit of speaking in tongues... but in reality? DECADES... to begin to let myself openly respond to the VERY real invitation being issued to me by the Holy Spirit to summon His power through my prayers!
My first exposure to the practice was in high school, after all!
And then again in college.
And then again in Bible college.
It just keeps coming after me and I'm glad about that because the more seriously I begin to take it, the more I realize it's accomplishing weird, wonderful and bizarre things in my life.
When I let it, that is.
And therein lies the problem because I often times, frankly, just don't.
The most simple way I communicate the paradox I wrestle with is as follows:
My track record as a Christian is that I take the *myth* of easily summoned demons far more seriously than I take the *reality* of an ever-present Jesus imbued with all the power of the cosmos.
The mere threat of the first sends me running to the bathroom in the middle of the night to bandage up my fingers.
Meanwhile, repeated ACTUAL encounters with the second sends me into an embarrassing disarray of uncertainty, second guessing and not being able to be brave enough to utilize it when it's needed... to better not just my life... but the lives of others!
And this paradox I'm struggling with in my soul?
I'm betting you struggle with it too.
Why can I confidently speculate that to be true, you ask?
Because our churches train us to believe that "good Christians" should occupy their time by avoiding Satan... not that they should occupy their time with embracing his holy counterpart.
You know what one thing I remember hearing a lot as a "church kid" was?
"Satan will come to you throughout your life masquerading as an angel of light!"
I recently shared this sentiment with a friend over breakfast and it bears repeating here ---> "I've been so conditioned to believe that a visitation from an angel is actually Satan in disguise that I'd rebuke the angel Gabriel in Jesus' name before he ever got a chance to introduce himself."
It's true! And, honestly, what alternative reaction would we expect from a person in the present day church??
Most of us, after all, act like Jesus is legitimately threatened by Harry Potter having his own series of books and movies!
We're addicted to believing that evil is more omnipresent than our Saviour and that its impact is more far reaching!
That's why I'm going *public* with what I'm going through in my spiritual walk starting now.
Because I see it in the faces of many of the Christians I interact with...
It's obvious they have resigned themselves to believing that the physical absence of our Perfect Jesus is resulting in an ever-decaying world where "things are getting worse and worse all the time".
We simply have stopped believing that that Perfect Jesus - while, admittedly, invisible and not physically present - desires to address the perception of an ever-worsening world.
And He desires to do it THROUGH US!
We've forgotten that reality so thoroughly that we live our lives as if the best we can do is bandage up our digits on both hands and not give Satan any unintentional access to our lives.
We clearly believe that he has access already that we can't prevent him from utilizing to trip us up but we behave as if it's up to us to prevent him from getting even an ounce more.
Aren't we full of ourselves??? LOL!
Look everyone, *I* am imperfect and unable to stave off Satan.
*YOU* are imperfect and unable to stave off Satan.
But good news!
If you are in relationship with Jesus I believe there is a spiritual component to your life that you can and should develop so that you aren't doomed to live out your days as a defeatist.
The question becomes are you going to let Jesus develop that component (whatever it is)?
Maybe it isn't "speaking in tongues"... Maybe it's something else! But one thing's for sure - It's something to be experienced by anyone who has let Christ into their life at ANY POINT.
If you're gay... if you're straight... if you've never darkened the doorway of a church sanctuary... if you're black, white, hispanic or Latino or any other race... if you cuss when you stub your toe or just for the sake of occasionally driving home your point... YOU... if you have initiated a relationship with Christ?
Well then, you are meant to be cultivating the ability to powerfully intervene in adverse circumstances happening around you with some sort of supernatural gift.
I am meant to be doing that.
And that brings us to..."Gashena Mache"
Most of the time when I'm praying (or singing, if the mood strikes) in my 'coded' prayer language, lol, I'm pretty good about clearing my mind and just letting myself pronounce whatever utterances the Holy Spirit desires to produce using my vocal cords, lips, etc.
But last summer after meeting my mom for some lunch at a Chinese kitchen in Wichita, one very prominent recurrence of jibberish began routinely surfacing -"Gashena Mache".
As is true of many of my shared times with my mom, lol, we had been at a lunch meet up. 😊
The rendezvous point was Mr. Miyagi's Chinese restaurant in Wichita sharing a BIG plate of sweet and sour chicken.
A sidebar: I'm approaching the authoring of this next little bit of this blog with a hearty dose of trepidation that matches the volume of the tempura that was being served up in that eatery that day. Lol.
Why?
Because... there is not a soul alive that rivals my mother with regards to being someone that I've loved as hard for as long.
She is it.
And while I'm POSITIVE she'd dispute this, lol, my aim is to respect her.
If you notice, when I reference my mom in conversation or the occasional bylines on social media, I talk about her in the context of being Grandma to my cute niece and nephews... or in the context of being my undeniable "bestie"... or as someone who rivaled Marie Barone as a doting mother during mine and my brother's upbringing...
I don't talk about her often in the compositions I pen as just the person that she is - herself. ...she is usually reduced down to something of a caricature.
This is by design, I assure you, because my mom HATES it when I make her humanity an ingredient in my prose. Lol.
"My life is not any of anyone else's business... least of all the people you know from Facebook!" she'll say.
"If you ever write a book about me, please wait until I'm dead, Nicholas." LOLOLOL!
And so I make my mentions of her brief and never too personal... even though I could fill a library with tomes of how she's molded my life and what she means to me. 💗
I'll insert her here or there for comedic effect in an occasional anecdote because - just like HER Mom - she is more than ok with being the reason someone has for smiling.
And she hates to be the reason your smile retreats.
The way mine did over shared tempura chicken and an announcement that a doctor (who had been helping her manage back pain) had suggested that some recent "discomfort" might be the byproduct of something more serious.
Something like a mass... growing on a kidney...
Something like renal cell carcinoma.
I was immediately sworn to secrecy after she disclosed her diagnosis.
She wanted her dignity.
I've spent enough time in life also being in want of that particular thing that I understood.
She asked for my prayers and I promised I'd supply them... even the ones she didn't know I was in the habit of praying... the ones I uttered forth while practicing the type of praying the apostles did in Acts 2.
Having now experienced the range of emotions that I experienced that day as I processed my mom's health scare, I will say this: I am glad that I started investigating and permitting a broader practice of prayer YEARS before this news was dropped on me at Mr. Miyagi's over lunch.
If I was someone who had maintained just a general curiosity about speaking in tongues over the years... and had THEN tried to start incorporating it into my prayer time AFTER finding out my mom might be losing a kidney? Well, I know that never would've happened.
I was too preoccupied with battling fear and worry and stress to devote energy to amending my understanding of the Christian practice of prayer.
It was a blessing within a blessing that I had already began to undergo a more thorough renovation of my personally held doctrinal beliefs.
My point?
If any of what I'm writing about in this blog is speaking to you and resulting in your OWN curiosity being piqued, RESPOND TO THAT & TAKE ACTION!
Because it will make whatever hardships are coming down the road (and, inevitably they always do!) something you feel more equipped to take on.
The next part of this essay is both fun to recount and also terrifying. Lol.
Fun because it chronicles the almost playful way that the Holy Spirit began interacting with me once I decided I wasn't going to prevent Him from doing so... and terrifying because, lol, once I document all this on paper there's no denying that I'm living through what I'm living through right now... that I'm participating in what is something I'm sure will invite scrutiny and judgement again... just like when I first came out of the closet.
Everything old is new again, it seems.
As I referenced above, mom's announcement about her kidney health was followed by sessions spent praying in tongues during which I'd briefly be cognizant of one repeated phrase being routinely spoken, "Gashena Mache".
In all my years of attempting this practice, I'd never done so with a specific situation in mind that I wanted the Holy Spirit to infuse His presence into... Usually, these times of prayer were initiated while driving to a hospital somewhere - Topeka, Larned, Liberal and now sites in Nebraska - and I'd just set a timer, tell God I was switching into "coding mode", and let my thoughts wander as I made it my priority to just babble.
I suppose I always reasoned that whatever situations these prayers were supposed to be applying themselves to was something the Spirit was already aware of; that He was really just wanting me to yield to Him and submit to a practice that would signal my willingness to let Him integrate Himself into ANY circumstances in which He was needed.
Things I consciously knew were problems AND things I did not consciously know were problems!
In the years leading up to all this, it had become easy to let myself check out while the timer counted down to zero and not focus on things while this process played itself out.
But now? When praying in tongues with my mom's health in mind?
I believe that that resulted in a level of maintained awareness not previously present that led to me being able to identify the recurrence of the "Gashena Mache" phrase.
And once it'd been spoken a few dozen times, I couldn't stop myself from wondering about the possibility that it may be something capable of being translated...
So... playing the part of a good little 21st century apostolic, lol, I went to Google. Lol.
I get goosebumps thinking about it.
I had no idea how to even SPELL the words I was trying to look up so I just took my best guess at how Hooked On Phonics would've advised me to spell something back when I was a kid based on pronunciation. LOL.
I got the following Google result on my very first try...
...Ever have the experience of having to make your peace with knowing you've been praying in Bulgarian about catnip?
...How about the challenge of trying to figure out how you're supposed to incorporate (or IF you're supposed to incorporate!) that information into actions that might benefit your ailing mother in her battle against kidney
cancer?...
I think it's something I'm *still* processing and, as such, can write about no more for now. Lol
A cliffhanger seems appropriate...
Check back sometime in February for more thoughts and recollections as I have the time and emotional energy to compose them, won't you?
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
