The space around the ball [spoken word]

By Professor Daylover

My whole life I’ve held opinions I always thought
were true, but I’ve gone back and forth so many times
​I wonder, what is true?  And this wondering goes for everything,
even God, or, especially God.  As a teenager I feared
the very idea of some paternal figure hoisted upon a cloud,
ready to roll me in the dust for breaking the rules.  So I
became headstrong.  I questioned what I was taught, questioned
everything, and sat upon a fence post, saying “I don’t think
God exists, man, but wouldn’t rule it out, man.”
In my late twenties I came down,
pulled by the Tao, the ancient energy of yin and yang,
an impersonal greatness, the life force always moving
like a river, watching over our very human dramas
unfolding naturally as science.  I could call God the Way,
or the Universe, or Spirit, and think of them as a pinball wizard
setting up this game where I watched myself become the pinball,
starting at rest.  Suddenly I was ejected and shot
around the bend and crashed into bells, bumpers, and shock absorbers
of perspective.  I earned points. I rose.  I fell. I was flicked
back up a few times only to sink and start over                                                      and be fired back into the game once more.
I could watch myself like the ball and find peace, anticipating the
rise and fall, simply observe.  After a while, though, I wondered, how do I
rise above the rise and fall?  How do I transcend the game?
A vision of Christ appeared at that point.  
He was slightly above me and extending
a single hand, almost smiling as if to say, Come on bro, I got you.
“Love the game,” he said, “even the pain because I
am always here.  I am forgiveness and grace and love rolled
into an eternal invitation of freedom. Detach from blame,
not communion with others,” he said, “for you are not the ball but the space
around the ball, always discovering and letting go of what it means to
rise and fall while the ball hangs out in harmonic balance.
The bells and bumpers are real but not what’s true, just like
your opinions.  The balance isn’t true so much as the space
co-creating it, waiting for the cosmos to refine it. So be careful
saying you know what God is, what faith is, what I am, and give
yourself a little space to say, no comment. Fall in love with an
everlasting patience that the ball will achieve its purpose,
always at rest and yet always new with glorious surprise.