appreciate you sharing this, and appreciate the kind words about the work.
i'll tell you where i actually sit, and not to argue you out of anything. i'm a christian, trinitarian if you want the label, and i don't believe i am God. i believe God works through me, which is a different thing.
where i think you're onto something real is the part about limitation being chosen instead of being a failure. that idea is in my book too. the center of the whole thing is God stepping into limits on purpose, taking on a body and hunger and grief and death, and doing it willingly. so the instinct that being limited isn't a punishment, i'm with you there.
where i go another way is on who does the choosing, and that isn't from a book for me.
march 20th 2001 i was 20 years old and a passenger in a car that came off a crest around 70 on a road posted for 15 and hit a tree broadside. the driver was killed. he was my friend. i walked away with staples in both sides of my head and no broken bones.
he said oh shit we're gonna die, and what came out of me was no, i know Jesus, i'm not gonna die. then time stopped. my body went through it but my soul didn't. something in a robe picked me up by the scruff, the way you pick up something small that can't carry itself, and set me in a pocket over its heart and closed the robe around me. i looked back and the earth was small and burning, about the size of the moon. then i woke up in the wreck while they were cutting the roof off.
the part that still gets me is that the metal folded a pocket around my body that saved my head while the driver's side took the tree. i got carried into a pocket in the vision and the car made one around me in the world. same story told twice.
so when i read that we're God playing hide and seek with himself, i can't get there. i was carried. something that was not me picked me up. you don't get carried by yourself.
i call march 20th my second birthday.
so we land in different places, and i'm glad you shared it anyway. good to be able to talk about this without either of us needing the other one to move.