And You were starting to tell me what it would take to have that kind of friendship with You.
A change of mind and a change of heart. That is what it would take. A change of mind and a
change of heart.
And courage.
Courage?
Yes. The courage to reject every notion, every idea, every teaching of a God who would
reject you.
This will take enormous bravery, because the world has contrived to fill your head with those
notions, ideas, and teachings. You will have to adopt a new thought about all of this, a
thought that runs counter to virtually everything you’ve ever been told or heard about Me.
That’ll be tough. For some, that’ll be very tough. But it will be necessary, because you can’t
have a friendship— not a real, not a close, not a working, give-and-take friendship—with
someone you fear.
So a big part of forging a friendship with God is forgetting our “fearship” with God.
Oh, I like that. That’s not an actual word in your language, but I like it.
That’s exactly what you’ve had with Me all these years—a fearship with God.
I know. I was explaining that at the outset. From the time I was a little boy I was taught to be
afraid of God. And afraid of God I was. Even when I slipped out of it, I’d get talked back into it.
Finally, when I was nineteen years old, I’d rejected the God of Anger of my youth. Yet I did it
not by replacing that God with a God of Love, but by rejecting God altogether. You were
simply not part of my life.
This was in stark contrast to where I was just five years earlier. At fourteen, all I could think
about was God. I thought the best way to avoid the wrath of God was to make God love me. I
had dreams of going into the priesthood.
Everyone thought I was going to be a priest. The Sisters at school were sure of it. “He has
the calling,” they said. My mom was sure, too. She watched me set up an altar in our kitchen
and don my “vestments” to play at saying Mass. Other kids were wearing towels as
Superman capes and jumping off of chairs. I imagined the towel as my priestly garment.
Then, as I entered my last year of parochial elementary school, my father suddenly put a stop
to the whole thing. We were talking about it one day, Mom and I, when Dad happened into
the kitchen.
“You’re not going into the seminary,” he interrupted, “so don’t get any ideas.”
“I’m not?” I blurted. I was astonished. I’d thought it was a foregone conclusion.
“No,” Dad said evenly.
“Why not?” My mom sat silently.