Doorway of the Deep



I read this book a while back about free diving and ocean research. It was fascinating. Free diving is when (after LOTS of training) you take to the ocean with no scuba gear, no oxygen, and dive as deep as you can for as long as you can.  Apparently at about 40 feet down you reach what divers call 'the doorway of the deep' - a depth at which the pressure of the water overcomes the natural buoyancy of your body and instead of having to kick yourself down you become completely still and the ocean begins to draw you in. The author likened the experience to a giant hand enveloping you and drawing you deeper.


I found that description to be a beautiful analogy of worship. We come to God with our efforts and strengths, but they can only take us so far. At some point we become still, surrendering ourselves, and find that we are being enveloped and drawn deeper into God.


These musings became a song, but since the voice of a songbird is not one of my giftings, I'll spare you any recordings, and just share the lyrics. May we all be drawn deeper into the vast and ultimate reality.


Take me to the doorway of the deep
Further than my strength can carry me -
Where I feel the ocean of your love enveloping
and drawing me deeper... deeper.



How shallowly we've plumbed your mysteries
Believing all there is is what we see.
But you are vast and terrifying
And You're calling us deeper... deeper.



Deeper than our understanding
Deeper than our fears.
Deeper than our strengths and failures
Deeper than our tears.

Deeper... come deeper.



Stripped of all we use to make believe
Awaken us to Your reality.
For surrendered to Your Spirit we are free
Free to go deeper... Deeper.


Deeper than our understanding
Deeper than our fears.
Deeper than our strengths and failures
Deeper than our tears.

Deeper... come deeper.

House of Mourning





A young man my husband works with passed away recently, his candle extinguished by a swift wind of cancer. As my husband and some co workers headed to his funeral, an ancient proverb kept coming to my mind:

"It is better to go to a house of mourning than to a house of feasting,

 for death is the destiny of every man;

the living should take this to heart."

 Ecclesiastes 7:2  

We humans spend a lot of our time trying not to think about death. There is nothing more certain in our lives than the fact that they'll end, but sitting and contemplating it is uncomfortable at its best and terrifying at its worst.  We might glance at it briefly from the corner of our eye, or give it a quick nod of acknowledgement, but sitting and staring into its eyes is not on many of our to do lists.  Because lets face it. Death is scary.

But we are all going to die.  Why is it important to take that to heart? Why not push it aside and press on with our lives with some degree of happy denial? Well there's the "carpe diem" approach, popularized in the Dead Poet's Society. "Make your lives extraordinary".  Seize today. Make every moment count.  I'm not dismissing the carpe diem philosophers, but the fact is that life is necessarily full of lots of mundane.  If I really wanted to seize today I would not do laundry.  I could proclaim to myself, "life is too short to do laundry!" but at some point I would need clean clothes. And so would my kids.  We can't avoid spending some of the precious currency of our lives on minutia.

We need to sit down with ourselves and seriously consider our mortality.  We are so busy with our day to day tasks and obligations, and when we finally reach the end of our day, we don't sit and contemplate, we distract and entertain ourselves. We fill any potentially revealing silence with music and stories and drowning out thoughts that could make us uncomfortable.

I can't think of anything more important than really contemplating and searching and deciding what you believe about this life, because what you believe in your core affects how you live.  How you prioritize. If you decide you believe there is a God, don't keep distracting yourself from asking what that means. What that means for your life, for how you should live, for how you should respond.  Because you are going to die.  Think about the immensity of what God must be to be real. What if the ultimate Reality, the Answer to all our questions and the Fulfillment of all our deepest longings said, "I'm here. But you'll only know that if you're willing to look for me." And what if our response was, meh. What's on tv?

You are going to die. Ask the big questions. Really ask them, don't just muse over them in passing. What is this life about?? Survival? Pleasure? God? Nothing? Ask and keep asking, search and keep searching, knock and keep knocking.

The world has successful, beautiful people who seized the day and made their lives extraordinary, but were still met with depression and despair. As a wise woman at my church has said, It is not enough to seize the day. You have to seize the right thing.

You are going to die. Find out what that is.