Set firmly within the comfort zone of all I have known, I rest within the rhythm of the lapping waves A single glowing candle illuminates the darkness But the light of the candle cannot penetrate beyond the walls of the ship Crash! The thunder rumbles and the lightning strikes For a moment I can see beyond the horizon But to step even further into the light I must endure the tempest and the destruction of my safety net Overwhelmed by the waves and the darkness, The flashes of lightning give me the strength to hold on As glimpses of the land beyond my reckoning Allow me to see beyond the destruction of this vessel, And as the wreckage of the ship sinks beneath the waves around me, I tread water awaiting the rescue I foresaw in lightning’s flash Behold! I am coming soon! And I will be able to see in greater measure, Come and know me better, man! Yet I wonder now if I will make it to the vision that I’ve seen, For now there is nothing between

Christianity is like a drug, A comfort to which you return when the world spins out of control, Just when you think you’ve kicked the habit and moved into relating to YHWH, Something comes along that shakes your world, Makes you question how you see things, Makes you wonder if you’re moving forward in the right direction, And you return to the old familiar ways Like nicotine or crack cocaine, You inhale your theology when you start to get the jitters that come from withdrawal The questioning that comes from new ideas, You build your life upon this sand, Arranging your smoke breaks throughout the day and Stroking your tenets and telling yourself That it will be okay Because you have narrow confines in which to live That you can control, And you can keep all the things out that shake your world And confuse you And which might, if allowed to germinate, Cause your world to alter beyond recognition So what happens when Your theology is gone

If the world is built upon the foundation of Our Love And the anchor points in that foundation Is the relationship We have with everyman in everyway, Then changing the world Means changing relationships (For Love, oh Love, can never change) I used to relate to others Through the paradigm of Christianity Some were “in” and some were “out” based solely upon their theology Instead of who I knew them to be as people, And I gave my trust wholeheartedly to those who had the right theology And denied it entirely from those who did not And it’s completely terrifying to me To know that my friends who I trusted so much in my Christianity Will now do the same to me Because I am “out” of their theology I am not an atheist, I have not abandoned YHWH and His Love and His Truth, I have simply grown beyond the places where Christianity limited me, But to do so I had to give up all of Christianity And simply learn to be I must, I had to, I know th