"Who is this?"

Been spending more time with gospel narratives in my continuing quest to "see Jesus more clearly"; the passage where Jesus walks on the water (following on from my previous post) and when Jesus is asleep in the boat during the storm and the disciples are fearful.

It's an interesting thing but I've found on many occasions during my retreat, that as I pray with passages or themes that God "gifts" me with an experience of the thing I'm praying with. The really curious thing is that I often don't see it until I start to reflect back with my Spiritual Director (who I meet weekly - the exercises are a guided retreat), and it becomes blindingly obvious - in an "Ahh! that was what that was all about!" kind of a way.

I realised that on reflection, what had been a very difficult week on many fronts, was an experience of buffeting from many quarters. I was in a storm and so reflecting on what Jesus was doing during this time was very helpful.

What did I see?

Well I saw that if God appears asleep - it doesn't mean he doesn't care, it just means he's not worried.

But I was also conscious that God defies our easy characterisation of him. We try and resolve the "Who is this?" question by trying to impose some order on God. We try to contain him in some way. "It must be a ghost." Ghosts we understand, but a God who walks across a lake, through a storm, well that's a whole concept we can't seem to get our heads around. Because God is surprising, unexpected, uncontainable. When we try to impose restrictions on God we actually bind ourselves.

Jesus walks across the water, defies the disciples categories and then Peter... I love Peter - he dares to meet God in the storm; to meet God in the place of non-restriction; to meet the unbound God. He asks to come to Jesus in the storm, on the water, to come to where God is. Jesus says "Yes. Come!" I imagined at that point that there was joy from Jesus and maybe just a hint of relief. Someone wants to defy the easy categories and walk out to where I am; someone who is willing to take a chance, cast off the self imposed restrictions.

"Do not be afraid, take courage. I am here"

I sat on the bus travelling to Glasgow (again) and gazing out at the blue, blue sky; lifted my eyes to the hills and saw the snow shining in the sun, the trees almost ready to come to life - the tiniest buds forming; saw the geese flying across the sky; the dull green of the grass almost ready to shake off the restrictions of winter; felt the warmth through the window. And suddenly I was longing to be out in it, just like Peter, didn't want to be confined by the bus, to be gazing out from behind the glass. Longed to be in the midst of it - in the storm, where the life is.

And I heard Jesus shouting over the wind and the waves "Yes. Come!"

"Who is this?" is not a question I answer once - it is the journey.