{"id":51,"date":"2024-06-08T14:04:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-08T13:04:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-01-23T15:24:05","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T15:24:05","slug":"i-quit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/08\/i-quit\/","title":{"rendered":"I Quit."},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was little, and the nights were properly dark, sleeptime was a realm that could hug or terrify you. Sometimes both and many times over in the course of one long night.<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you remember the BBC test card screen with the blond girl and the clown? Like that fuzzy edge, waking at night you were greeted not with black, but a crackley grey- electric hum. It felt alive and suffocating.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was afraid of the edges. The end of the dark night. Falling off. Drifting with no anchor. In proper dark, all lights off but your eyes wide open, you couldn’t help but frame up space in your imagination. Stars and galaxies and planets. What then?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Deep breath, blink blink to force the crackle from my eyes, and crawl back to here and now. A cool duvet under sweaty palms. My body still, my mind still restless. Space remained, formless and vast, unending. Those night-time imaginings have always felt to me similar to the caverns of my soul that I fall into. Down there I am still child, lost in vastness. I’m out of my depth. I’m not ready. I search the spaces for hook or handle, answers to my heart cry :\u00a0who am I, why am I, what is this strange world, and how am I here again?<\/i> But the reaching hand of my heart meets no solid answer.\u00a0 Then, with only a moment spare, I frantically peddle to the surface needing air to breathe.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
I wondered if it would always be this way. The space around me and in me that I could fall into. Space that drew the life and light from my body, leaving only a deep ache in my bones and a heavy weariness that demanded sleep, but was never satiated. <\/span>Then one day I heard the Spirit say:<\/span><\/p>\n

Why don’t you quit. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

It was too simple a question, I thought it a trick of some kind, but I know that voice. That word “quit<\/i>” lingered. There were whispers dancing around it… failure.. fool..<\/i>. and the snakes and ladders board with my blue counter over the word start<\/i>. Again. The practical voices “what then<\/i>?” And the bitter root voices “what was the point in all of it? Everything that came before? What was it all for?”<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

That one word from the Spirit irritated me, like I had brought my grain offering, hard earned, and it was passed over.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then the line from my favourite poem appeared like tickertape on the wall of my mind:<\/span><\/p>\n

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

(T.S.Elliot, Little Gidding)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I wondered how we could not cease, <\/i>and also end<\/i>. And I wondered then if Wisdom was actually in that word “quit<\/i>“. And if there was a knowing to which “quit<\/i>” was the door. So I yielded to the word, and the Spirit that brought it. <\/span>I see Jesus. I always want to cry when I see him. He’s walking in a room, weaving between man-sized candlesticks. Then he stops and looks at me, and he places his hand around the tallest candle in the centre of the room. The one with the wildest and most vibrant of flames on top.\u00a0 He says:<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
I am the Alpha and the Omega<\/i>. (Rev 1:8)\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Hearing those words, calm infuses my system like warm oil. The room feels soft and hazy, and I see the candlesticks form a line. He stands in the centre, holding the one still, and says <\/span>
\nI am the Alef Tav.<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/i>
\n<\/i><\/span>
\nI understand. And in that moment I choose to quit. And begin.<\/span><\/div>\n
Bah-reh-sheet bara Elohim et ha-sha-mayim veh-et ha-ah-retz.<\/i><\/span>He speaks the seven first words of the first book, Genesis. <\/span><\/p>\n

Bah-reh-sheet bara Elohim et ha-sha-mayim veh-et ha-ah-retz.*<\/i><\/p>\n

As he speaks I see the words dance above the candlesticks, right to left, one word over each stick. Over his head, the 4th word, pronounced “et<\/i>“, but written\u00a0alef tav<\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Alef tav. Alpha and Omega. He stands in the centre, between the beginning and all the creating that flows from it. In the the void-without-edges I’ve found myself in. The dark and unformed spaces within. He’s there, at the centre, holding within himself the vastness. He the beginning and the end.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n<\/span>
\nJesus. <\/span>He beckons to me. “Come in<\/i>” he says. “There’s room here between the aleph and the tav. Room in me for you and all you bring.”<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In my mind I now see these two as a canopy and a hammock. I can live hemmed in and enveloped by pleasant boundaries<\/i>. (Psalm 16)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n<\/span>
\nThat one line is enough. Those first 7 words are all I need to know. Jesus is in the centre of them, and there’s space for the grain offering of my journey until now, and for all that I am becoming. Space that holds those I love that are no longer of this earth, and for those yet to come. For the birds of the air, the fish of the sea and the machines we make that kill and mend. I am held. I quit holding on. I am held. He is here. <\/span>I want to stay here, but creating flows from this place<\/span>\u00a0and again I yield to the flow. I’m not afraid, I have a postcode now. I know where I live.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Let there be light….<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

\nThe light that is life, that I have known a long-time now, is suddenly in my bones. It fills the caverns of my soul, and illuminates my eyes so that the earth looks hazy and full of wonder again. The crackly grey electric is just the moment of its happening, and I am full of joy in the centre, not watching from the edges afraid.<\/span><\/span>The learned man lifts his head up, but the simple put their foot down; and this is the way to the inheritance.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Spurgeon.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
*I’ve written these Hebrew words as they sound, for ease of reading.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was little, and the nights were properly dark, sleeptime was a realm that could hug or terrify you. Sometimes both and many times over in the course of one long night. Do you remember the BBC test card screen with the blond girl and the clown? Like that fuzzy edge, waking at night […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270,"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions\/270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agoodknowing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}