it comes in waves and heat waves.

there is something in christianity that demands my presence. i must be here. i am sitting on a real chair and typing at a real desk and just finished writing a real letter. ink on paper and flowing words to form an expression of a real friendship that i have. presence is real.

there are times in california that i must fight to engage in the dirt earth world around me. times that i must fight to not pick up another book and must not stare off into thoughts as i am driving down the same road. the road that i take home when i am tired of the highway. california is a real place and then occasionally i remember that i live here. people actually live here. places are no longer distant thoughts but ground that i walk on.

i am learning to be present in my job. to smile when i am thinking of something else. when i get choke caught up in anxious worries. when i am heart sick. i am learning to think about other real hearts that are beating on the other side of a counter who long for something. i am asking to know their longings too. to be so present that i might know their presence too.

and there is something to G-D who demands my presence. who walks into my shame heart hung low posture that i have been carrying and unloading and carrying for sometime and demands me to look up and demands me not to strive and demands me not to try, but also demands me to try. be. there is a real being in the person of Jesus and there is a real being in his holy spirit companion and he wants my being. and he sat on chairs and i am sitting on one.

in some ways this is hopeful. Jesus perhaps had a sore back and pinched nerve that woke him up in tears and so perhaps he might know how to run his fingers down my spine in such a way that the pain that is taking over the left side might not do that anymore. in other ways this is terrifying. he is not a thing that maybe i created one day -- the safe corner in my imagination where i run to so that i can breathe on the days that i am particularly sad, or anxious, or over feeling. he is not a voice that will echo back to me all of the niceties and pleasantries that make me feel as though i am not at fault.

he is not those things. he is something that i don't quite understand.

a man.

a god.

i do not understand either of those creatures. i am a woman, not even close to a demi-god much less the incarnate living-being from whom all other living beings have their source. i may have three or at most ten living beings that draw their source from me at one point in time but even then, i am not a god. i am just a woman who is at times afraid of men and G-D and at other times loves men but not G-D and in other days loves G-D and cannot see men or can see them and is afraid of them or maybe sometimes hates them a little. these are the things that i am, some of them.

but his presence, like my shame in one sense but not in many others, comes in waves and heat waves. and i want it to be real. present. and i too, want to be real. present.

and this is why we eat body and blood and this is why we pray ABBA and this is why we shake and cry and sometimes we laugh, and i would like to laugh more. and this is sometimes why its better to eat body and blood over meat and dairy and all good foods because we are starving for his presence. i am starving for his presence.

so hungry for his love that is real and matters because it walked on water over waves and heat waves of shame and other such destructive things.