Despair—the great gift.

It's strange how comfortable this afterlife is that I now live. So comfortable, that it is easy to see it as the place to which God was bringing me all the time; and perhaps it really is.

All the best things I looked for from God are out of my reach, and I no longer reach for them, save one. I have given up on ministry, both in preaching and in music; I have given up seeking purpose or fulfilment; I have given up demanding that my life should have meaning; I have long given up seeking God's will for me, beyond that of loving him and loving my neighbour; I have given up looking for an explanation of the way my previous life ended.

Best of all, I have given up hope; and I am astonished beyond measure at how much peace and contentment this has brought me. Not the peace of God that passes understanding, and not the joy of the Lord that is the strength of so many of my brothers and sisters in Christ. But peace enough, and contentment enough. Hope was not for me the whisper of an angel, but the honey in the poison.

I have also given up church. After I left the last church where I had ministered on an occasional basis, I attended Mass sporadically at a local Catholic church, while carefully avoiding involving myself in its life, apart from the services. It is now nearly nine months since I last went. And abandoning church has left my sense of peace complete. Every time the scriptures or the homily or the hymns spoke of God leading us, I would walk home afterwards with a feeling of deep grief, especially if the parable of the talents had read or cited. This source of grief is now gone, and I can live in acceptance of the fact that, whatever gifts or abilities God gave me, the only thing he ever called me to was failure, simple and complete.

I still pray. Not as much as I once did, but probably more often—several times most days. Mainly I tell Jesus that I love him. Sometimes I pray for healing for someone, or for relief of some other unhappiness that is troubling them. And the one thing I still reach out for is to know God's love. Because, dispassionately, I no longer believe he loves me. I don't rule out the possibility that he actually does, but it does me no good. Love may be expressed without being spoken, but love that is not even expressed might just as well not be love. I am not a member of the body of Christ; and I am not God's child, or even his servant. I am God's subject, and have no more relationship with him than with Queen Elizabeth or John Key.

And, given that this afterlife is probably going to be only a third to a half the length of the life before, and only an infinitesimal part of the eternity to follow, one question keeps coming back to me about the parable of the talents. It's the final fate of the servant Jesus never mentioned—the one who took the talents given him, and used them as best he knew how, only to have all his investments fall through, and the original talents buried by his master.