On Taking Refuge

"I take my refuge in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit."
      This is a play on an ancient Buddhist affirmation, but the principle of making God one's refuge is as old as the oldest of Scriptures, and is all over the pages of the Psalms. To take refuge in something is to seek safety in it, to hide yourself in it and behind its walls and barriers and allow these to protect you from the storms, enemies, or other dangers outside of that refuge.
      He is a refuge when all others fail, and yet to be honest, at first He can look far more dangerous than those things you seek shelter from. To take refuge in Him demands that you admit and let go of the illusions of safety you saw in other things. These other things might be individuals you trusted, institutions, organizations, literal and metaphorical structures, or even your own abilities on some level. They might be ideas, beliefs, philosophies, or theological constructs to which you held dear. To take refuge in Him means to leave the illusion of safety in all of these other things behind.
      And that looks and feels dangerous. It can be absolutely terrifying in point of fact. It can be terrifying because it means leaving the familiar behind, the things which, while not perfect, were comforting and always seemed to be what you could fall back on and rely on... until you couldn't, and until they failed you once, twice, and every time you came back to rely on them. They proved themselves an illusion. Smoke and mirrors which, when you leaned on them, when it really mattered, disappeared and left you hanging in mid-air with nothing solid to grasp at.
      God Himself is no illusion. He is solid. He is the foundation of all existence, and nothing can or does exist except it relies on His Being for its own. But the human senses do not register this. The human mind goes first to what it can see, hear, touch and so on. It goes first to what the brain can process immediately without effort, what it perceives as 'real," even if it isn't.
      To enter God's refuge means to acknowledge the illusory nature of all other things in which you sought shelter, and this itself is threatening to the human psyche. It means to acknowledge that all human beings, try as they might, are fallible and in error in some way. It means to acknowledge that all systems and institutions which depend on the decisions of these human beings are also fallible, and capable of catastrophic failure. It means also to acknowledge that those beliefs and ideas to which you held religiously are potentially also in error because they were communicated by said fallible and erroneous human beings. To enter God's refuge is to let go of all of these things and set yourself adrift in what looks at first like a void, a "Holy Darkness" as one author put it because your physical senses are blind to it, and trust that He has you when you have let all else go.
      This is why the conditions of discipleship which Jesus laid down are essentially to let everything else go, whether it be relationships, possessions, or even your own psyche. To be a disciple is to take your refuge in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and in nothing else; to throw yourself into that Holy Void, that place where your physical senses no longer function and are screaming at you to turn back because they can detect nothing. It is to follow the Teacher when your mind is screaming at you that it is madness to do so. It is to surrender to the Spirit of Christ when your brain and body are screaming at you to act to protect yourself and survive.
      As someone who struggles with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, or at least its ways of thinking and modes of operation, this has been an especially difficult journey of understanding for me, and one which feels as though it has taken lifetimes. The Autistic mind is one which relies on structures, literalism, routines, and so on. To take refuge in God requires all of this to be disengaged from, let go, and even exploded if need be.
The only way forward is through. You cannot go backwards in order to make progress. You cannot run to the familiar in order to grow and mature. The only way to the Light is through the Holy Void which is the refuge of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.