Live Wire

All of them were taken into ecstasy and they glorified God. Indeed they were awestruck and kept saying “we have seen strange signs today!” (Luke 5.26, my translation)

Nobody told me there'd be days like these. Strange days indeed! Most peculiar, Mama. Whoa! (John Lennon)

We often treat spirituality like a banking transaction: Rational, calculated, with a clear cost-benefit analysis, and no hidden variables. But perhaps spirituality is more like the electric current that gives power to our passion, which we try to contain within neatly organized power cables labeled “religion” and “morality” and “ritual” and “devotion” and “belief”. 

But every now and then, when we reach deep inside ourselves, we grab ahold of a cable that has not been insulated with respectability and predictability and social acceptability. It is then that we get a great shock, and we feel the power of the Divine surge through our whole being, lighting us up from the inside: A surge of passion that pushes us beyond our ability to comprehend our life, and pretend that everything is “normal”. 

We are awestruck with the unpredictable wonder and messy beauty of the world just long enough get outside of our own heads for a moment. And that moment of transcendence, that millisecond of grasping the breadth and depth of infinite Love, is powerful enough to fuel our passion for years to come. May we all rip open the fuse box of our soul every now and then and embrace the Divine power within us.

If there ever was someone inclined toward seeing spirituality in purely rational, calculated terms, it would be the co-founder of calculus and probability theory, Blaise Pascal. Pascal was not only a famous mathematician, but also a famous defender of the Christian faith, who wrote at length about the most rational way to defend and uphold the Christian faith. And yet, his most powerful spiritual insights came when he reached deep inside and grasped the Live Wire of God's presence within him. The experience was so powerful that he wrote it down in poetry, and had it sewn into his jacket by his heart. His Live Wire experience reads thus:

The year of grace 1654, Monday, 23 November... From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight.

FIRE.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob
not of the philosophers and of the learned.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
GOD of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
Your GOD will be my God.
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.
He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have departed from him:
They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.
My God, will you leave me?
Let me not be separated from him forever.
This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.
Let me never be separated from him.
He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:
Renunciation, total and sweet.
Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on the earth.

May I not forget your words. Amen.