The Other

Post on 28 July, 2019 by Dallin Malmgren

Hark the herald…

So you are here. You know that you can­not have cre­at­ed your­self, but you are aware of a self. Your mom and dad? That’s just biology—they had no hand in design­ing you. They were busy enjoy­ing oth­er things. You and The Other—that which cre­at­ed you. This is an imme­di­ate and an eter­nal rela­tion­ship. If you deny It, It will nev­er deny you, so you will just be walk­ing around with blind­ers on. It is elemental—a con­nec­tion with­out which you can­not grow in the spir­i­tu­al sense. So many of us have made tac­it agree­ments with It: yeah, I know you’re there – I real­ize it’s mean­ing­ful – there’s so much going on – let’s keep in touch.

But, sil­ly crea­ture, your whims are puffs of smoke in the winds of the Spir­it. The tri­umphant march is inex­orable. It is just a mat­ter if you choose to join it.

So let’s define this rela­tion­ship a lit­tle bit. A con­scious cre­ation and a con­scious cre­ator. It’s not far-fetched to sus­pect that the ide­al sit­u­a­tion would be for the two to be in ami­able con­tact with one anoth­er on a reg­u­lar basis. A rela­tion­ship. If you believe the lit­er­a­ture, there is a guar­an­tee that The Oth­er is with you always, for all eter­ni­ty, and that It will love you. No mat­ter what. Pret­ty attrac­tive. And you can always be your­self, because you can nev­er not be your­self with It. Where you go, It goes.

The most obvi­ous ques­tion is: If the rela­tion­ship is there, do you want it? First of all, it astounds me that it’s a choice. I’ve cre­at­ed a few things, but all the char­ac­ters in every book I wrote had to do what I told them to do. But in our rela­tion­ship it’s cer­tain­ly a choice…I know thou­sands of peo­ple who feel con­nect­ed to The Oth­er in thou­sands of dif­fer­ent ways, and thou­sands who don’t feel con­nect­ed at all, and thou­sands in between. Every sin­gle one of us is dif­fer­ent, but The Oth­er is not dif­fer­ent to any sin­gle one of us. The same yes­ter­day and today and forever. 

So let’s sup­pose you’ve been won over (a mir­a­cle). You acknowl­edge an Oth­er and you want to be con­nect­ed. (This is the most nat­ur­al course to take in the his­to­ry of life). How do you say yes? How do you actu­al­ly connect?

This is the trick­i­est part of the whole equation…and the most sub­tle and the most beautiful—you have to believe. Oh my good­ness. The con­nec­tion is faith. We’ve tried sac­ri­fices and promis­es and res­o­lu­tions and vows and nego­ti­a­tions and equiv­o­ca­tions and even pre­var­i­ca­tions. To no avail. The bridge is faith. “Abra­ham believed Him, and He count­ed it as right­eous­ness.” What a strange lit­tle covenant—and yet it makes per­fect sense. The foun­da­tion of any long-term rela­tion­ship is trust. And for­give­ness. The terms of the contract.

Now we have to exam­ine this faith thing. “Faith is the sub­stance of things hoped for, the evi­dence of things not seen.” Whoa. Sounds like a car­ni­val bark­er to me. But so it is. This is The Other’s wed­ding vow to you: believe…that is what I ask of you…that is what I need from you. And I (Dallin) under­stand it seems an out­ra­geous demand—except that The Oth­er does not demand. It pleads, It entices, It implores, It flirts, It reach­es in every pos­si­ble way and says: believe in me.

Is that fair? None of us who opens our eyes can help but see the evil in this world—yet The Oth­er says believe. That is the solu­tion. Of course, this oblit­er­ates the ego. What­ev­er you want­ed to do per­son­al­ly to alle­vi­ate the suf­fer­ing in the world (or not)—it is fruit­less. Believe. You don’t have the solutions—The Oth­er does. Believe. Wow, pret­ty deflating. 

The next tricky part: you can sit there and believe and not do any­thing for eons. No, you can’t. James said, “Faith with­out works is dead.” I’ve spent a good deal of my life try­ing to come up with the works to prove my faith isn’t dead. Fool­ish Gala­t­ian. Ramp up the faith and it is impos­si­ble for the works not to come. 

This is what I’ve come to know: The Oth­er made me, and It loves Its cre­ation. The first pur­pose in cre­at­ing me was to be with me. How sad that so many refuse that invi­ta­tion, for it is always an invi­ta­tion. We nev­er have to be alone. As we draw near to The Oth­er, there are only two pos­si­ble respons­es: love and adoration.

So here you are. You and The Oth­er. Say hel­lo. Believe.

Comments

  • Reply

    Hel­lo my Lord, my God. I believe in you!

    Mr. M., Keep up the good work; and may the Holy Spir­it con­tin­ue to guide you on your journey!

    Jeannette Truitt29 July, 2019
    • Reply

      thank you for the encour­age­ment, Jean­nette. blog­ging again was kind of a step of faith–your com­ments are reassurance.

      Dallin Malmgren1 August, 2019
  • Reply

    All of us ask the ques­tion; where did we come from, why are we here, where are we going? I love life, the beau­ty, the mag­ic, the divine poten­tial of human beings. I have looked dead on into the trag­ic sight of human exis­tence, death, sick chil­dren, can­cer, loss , betray­al. No one escapes these things. I don’t know where we go when we cease to exist in this expe­ri­ence but I love to imag­ine it, and I believe when we reach out into the cos­mos, some­thing answers us. It’s a wonderment.

    Gretch28 July, 2019
    • Reply

      that is a beau­ti­ful word–wonderment. with­out any judg­ment on any­one else’s per­cep­tion, the beau­ty of chris­tian­i­ty to me is that it becomes personal–Him and me in com­mu­nion. i wake up in the morn­ing and real­ize He is here.

      Dallin Malmgren1 August, 2019

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