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I have been soul-sick for several months now. But today I feel okay. Both the pain and the relief are inexplicable. I accept mystery… as long as it stays theoretical. But I find practical mysteries at best annoying: where are my glasses, which street do I take, why is the car making that noise? When not knowing is costing me money or making me late or (more profoundly) hurting my relationships or my heart, I become agitated. For me, ignorance is not bliss, it is often agony. My method for coping with a scary, unpredictable world is to figure it out, experiment till I get it working, find new configurations for the parts lying on the floor. As long as I have untried options, I can keep hope alive.
TRY THIS IN THE DARK
But I seem to have run out of options. I don’t know why I am depressed and I can do nothing to change it. It is a mystery of the worst kind. Mystery is just a highfalutin word for confusion, and being lost and blind does not make me happy, especially when I bash my shins every other step. Kimberly is struggling in the same way, and it has driven us to our new year’s resolution or annual theme of life: be okay with not being okay. It is our stumbling way of embracing faith. It doesn’t light our path or clear away the rubble, but it is our way of handing back the situation to God: “We’ve tried everything, and it doesn’t work, so we’ll try to adjust ourselves to whatever might come.”
I commented to Kimberly in our prayer time two nights ago that I’m stuck with God. If I thought I could find more peace with the devil, I’d look up his address, but I know leaving God would make me even more miserable. I can make no sense of what God does, but I trust who He is, and for now that has to be enough.
Today I ran across this video from 2011. It is a vignette of two famous actors who have been in the gutter more than once, but prop each other up with forgiveness and acceptance as they stumble along. Hollywood films portray beautiful truths, but Hollywood lives rarely do. Here is a two minute “acceptance speech” by Walter Downey Jr. that is a message of hope for those of us who are recovering sinners
EMBRACING THE FALLEN
I am not a good writer by nature. My sister is. My wife is. Creative words just stream from their fingers. I envy those of you who can do this. I have to slave for hours over a paragraph or two, partly because I am trying to disentangle my thoughts, but even more because I am trying to sort out my words. I never suffer from writer’s block–my mind pumps out countless fresh ideas and insights. I have boxes and file folders full of scribbled notes on the backs of envelopes and the borders of bulletins. Instead, I struggle from writer’s bottle-neck–all those ideas pile up behind my cramped ability to express them.
It seems the real artists among us are forced to express themselves. They find relief and release and fire for their souls. It is their antidote to depression. Writing fills their tank, but it empties mine, and since I live with just enough fuel to make it through each day, I often have no energy to write. Thank you for sticking with me anyway and finding some benefit in what I say, and especially for responding, which does actually energize me. May each of you be blessed with a fresh taste of God’s grace today.
I am clinging to Christmas past: playing Christmas music, plugging in the tree, snacking on holiday food and drink. My neat wife likes to box up the season quick, but I’ve talked her into observing the 12 days of Christmas, not because I’m liturgically inclined, but because I’m trying to hold at bay the cheerless, cold, dark march of winter days. Our second advent theme this year was celebration, and all our decorations and colored lights inside and out speak of good cheer, pushing back the bleakness beyond.
The first Christmas was a true celebration, the Savior had been born and his whole life of healing and redemption lay ahead of him. His birth was the great crack in space and time through which God poured in. It changed everything. But our little christmases change nothing. We pause to celebrate for a few weeks and then go back to life as usual; our sugar high dumps us on the doorstep of New Years with our purses a good bit thinner and our paunches a good bit thicker. Our celebrations leave us worse off, our only defense the remorse of resolutions to do better in the next 12 months.
As I say goodbye to extended family, vacation, wrapped gifts, boxes of chocolate, TV specials and Christmas carols and return to the mundane of alarm clocks, office memos, bologna sandwiches, and the monthly mortgage, how can I keep alive the magic of Christmas? If there is any real magic in Christmas and not just pretend magic, it must be that God himself is with me–Immanuel–and my ongoing celebration, not simply of his memory from 2000 years ago, but of his daily presence. Any suggestions for how a celebration of that might look?
The bright-faced children (and adults) whose lives were snuffed out in Newtown look out at me from the screen as their talents and personalities and families are profiled. It makes me cry. It is not just the sadness of this one event, but the tragedy of the whole history of the world that washes over me. Even as I write this and you read this, folks all over the world are being mutilated, raped, burned alive, enslaved, beaten, starved; they are being traumatized, rejected, hated, abandoned. As my wife says, “Why did God think this was a good idea?”
Whatever clever answers we give theologically, our daily reality is inescapable–we live in a malicious, dangerous world and we are not safe from harm. Faith-filled followers of God are raped, blinded, stoned alive; some lose family and friends, a good reputation, mental health, productive ministry, even a sense of God’s presence all through no fault of their own. It is a scary world, and that makes me cling all the more tightly to every bit of control I can leverage.
The more I control, the safer I feel. I create a safe theology of a loving God who would allow no harm to his children… and 20 kindergarteners are massacred. Suddenly, my theology cracks and fissures. If I cannot predict what love will do, how can I trust it… how can I even understand it? God himself no longer feels safe. The cross in my past and the heaven in my future counterbalance these doubts but do not resolve them. A gap remains between the theology of a loving God and the reality of a terrible world, and it cannot be bridged rationally. The ‘why’ is never fully answered. An honest faith is much more strenuous than I ever realized.
I recognize this dynamic in my marriage. My wife loves me at a fundamental level, and I trust this love when I smack against painful and scary tensions, conflicts, and misunderstandings in our relationship. We eventually sort it out, we are both better for it, and our relationship, love, and commitment are deepened. In the middle of the fight, I can easily doubt her love, but it is not a fundamental doubt–I do not question our marriage. We have been through so many things together without breaking apart that I trust the relationship even when my feelings are in full retreat. A strong relationship is not one without doubts, but one that endures the doubts.
My first feeling was horror, quickly followed by outrage, and then a creeping sense of helplessness: horror for how many and how young the victims; outrage for the unprovoked, extreme violence; and helplessness because it was inexplicable and unpredictable. As a red-blooded, American male with an overblown sense of responsibility, my powerlessness is the most frightening of these emotions, so I try to get passed it as quickly as possible (though I would not have admitted this even to me most of my life). The way I protect myself from horror is to let my outrage stir me to resolve, to make sure such a terrible thing never happens again. In other words, the quickest way for me to escape those wretched feelings is to jump passed them into problem-solving mode.
My gut response to natural disasters or unavoidable accidents is quite different, much simpler and cleaner. I move easily into grief and solidarity with everyone since we are all in it together. There is nothing to examine and correct. I am responsible for nothing, and can simply feel. This acceptance is typical in fatalistic cultures, even for calamities that are preventable, but that seems like a defeatist attitude to us Americans.
As a nation carved out of the frontier by pioneers, we are very gifted at overcoming adversity with our “can do” spirit. We are independent, pragmatic, self-confident, and creative… so much so that we see everything in the light of problem-solution. We are able therefore to use action to largely override any feelings that crop up. In fact, feelings themselves are often seen as part of the problem that needs fixing. We tend to deal with insecurities by taming the situation. We are a nation of controllers. We take charge of ourselves, others, and our environment.
Within hours of the Newtown massacre, some of us were demanding solutions: better school security, more gun control, better ways to identify and fix those with emotional issues (or just as vigorously rejecting these ideas). “We can stop these killings; we can fix this,” we told one another. No. We can’t. We can limit violence in various ways, but we really are not in control of what happens on this old earth. The most we can do is influence it for the better. Malicious, unprovoked, random violence is an inescapable part of our broken world, and embracing our sense of vulnerability and fear might be a good place for us to start.
I am a particular kind of controller. I gain a sense of security by figuring things out. I am at my most vulnerable when I am confused or stymied. I often “resolve” my feelings of powerlessness by sorting, categorizing, and explaining the situation–intellectual escapism. (I guess this blog is exhibit A.) When I am lost in the maze of life, I fall easily into depression. But choosing a sense of helplessness rather than avoiding it can be my way into grace.
So in my next blog I will get out of my head and into my feelings.
We think of traditions as ancient, honored customs… but they had to begin somewhere, sometime. After all, the first Christmas was in a pile of barnyard hay with a few dirty sheep-herders gawking nearby (the natty, gift-bearing VIPs showed up later). Jesus was not born in a room full of colored lights and snow-flake medallions. Even the angels singing out in the muddy fields didn’t show up for his party as far as we know. So Kimberly and I decided to start from scratch in creating our own unique holiday traditions. We planned to emphasize a different aspect of the season each week of advent… only it isn’t playing out as we had expected.
CHARLIE BROWN
ALL GROWN UP
We both like Christmas conifers, and the use of evergreens in winter speaks to us of life outwitting death, of stubborn hope in the midst of barrenness. So we decked our banisters and brought in a scrub tree from the yard. My idea was to decorate in stages, emphasizing each particular advent week focus, but our scraggly, homegrown tree looked more like a sign of want than of hope. It started life as a weed in our flowerbed, and not having the heart to toss it out, I dug it up and planted it in the back yard. It has been growing there for four years, completely neglected, and is now 6 feet of meager, sickly green thistles. Those barbs were painful enough to scrape against, but since the branches were so weak, we had to shove decorations deep inside. We should have worn long sleeves and gloves. That pathetic see-through shrub had all its defenses up… a tree thick with issues… how appropriate for our home. It was truly a symbol of life… life as we know it.
NOT MUCH ROOM TO MOVE
BUT WHAT A VIEW!
To put a positive spin on our impecunious Christmas, our first week spoke of simplicity. No lights, tinsel, streamers, or presents under the tree. Even if we had a star, the top of the tree was too flimsy to hold it. Kimberly and I live out of a shortage of resources. I didn’t have the energy to find and care for a nice pine or fir, or even the initiative to plan that far in advance. I had a little energy, and with it I transplanted a sprout, and now we have a tree, spindly as it is. Having fewer resources makes for a tight circle of possibilities, and that may feel like a bare prison stripped of goodness or a narrow shelf above a sheer cliff. We have felt that at times. But a simple lifestyle may also be seen as freedom from the clutter of excess and from the need for a wider cleft in the rock. We have fewer choices and less to protect, and that helps us focus on what is truly important, helps us enjoy the simple things more richly, gives us access to one another’s hearts more openly and easily. The only difference between a simple lifestyle and an impoverished one is faith, and that difference is profound.
From one of my new favorite blogs:
What’s that in the Pool?
Parts of the Rocky Mountains look like
algae bloom out in the Indian Ocean.
Parts of me look like parts of you
and here we go with oneness
being nothing more than
pattern recognition and optical illusion;
though I hope there is more to it than that.
My hurt might not be your hurt,
but I have a sense of it.
Likewise your hope may not resemble mine,
but it cheers you just the same
and we are all the better for it.
We needn’t replicate each other
or attempt imitation,
but recognition is a kind thing
and art is what we all have to share.
Matthew 1:5 Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab.
In America, our job defines us. It is the first, most important identifier when we’re introduced, “Good to meet you. So what do you do?” Sometimes it’s even tacked on like a surname: Joe the Plumber or Bob the Accountant. With one word we label, categorize, and define someone from the moment we meet them. Just imagine if your meaning as a person was distilled into the name Karen the Harlot. You are suddenly no longer a person, but a commodity, and the worst sort of commodity, associated with all that is unclean, cheap, and dark. When someone hears “prostitute,” they do not think of giggling children, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and butterfly kisses. Rahab was part of a cursed race of uncircumcised philistines and she was known as Rahab the Harlot. Then God came.
In the gospels, Jesus was a trash-magnet. The discards of society were drawn to him like the starving to a feast of love. They found in him the acceptance and respect and embrace they never knew. Like father, like son they say, and the God of Israel was the Father of all widows and orphans, the poor and lost. He saw in Rahab what no one else saw, and said of her “I want her in the royal line as mother to my Son.” The beauty in all of us originates always with God, and it is our faith, not our goodness, that opens the door to his glory. Those least able to “make a name for themselves” are the ones most welcoming of grace. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom heaven.”
RECYCLED RAGS
2,000 years after her first appearance, we find Rahab again. Her past has not been air-brushed away–she is still “Rahab the Harlot”–because grace does not re-write our past; it transforms that twisted frame into an instrument of glory. She is now immortalized in the Hebrews 11 Hall of Faith as a model for us all to follow. God embraces a pagan prostitute simply because she opened her arms to him by faith. God does not ask us to patch together the shredded pieces that make up our lives, but asks us to trust him with those tattered remnants. He makes all things beautiful, all things placed in his hands.
This 3 minute video is a remarkable parable of grace
I am an artist and poet at heart. I’m not referring to my abilities, but to my perspective and energy. I have powerful visceral responses to all things creative, whether by God or fellow humans, and my mind bursts into a flurry of thought shooting out in all directions like a fireworks display. Within minutes, each separate thought has branches and sub-branches like a cauliflower head bursting into bloom in my mind. It is exciting, invigorating, delicious.
But when my spirit is tamped down by depression, I stumble along with just enough energy to lift one foot at a time between long halts to rest. Everything around me is dusted with dullness like the shoulders of a dirt road. I can see and appreciate beauty, but it does not sink into my heart to awaken life. As a young man I was so full of energy and purpose and hope, but I spent it all on “virtuous” sacrifices that broke down my spirit rather than building it up. I did not live out of the spontaneous delight of who I was but out of the driven obligation of who I should be. I did not live from the joy of God’s love, but from the fear of his frown. I lived out of the law and not out of the gospel.
Emotional energy is much like a sponge–once dried out, it loses its powers of absorption. Without some emotional reserve to start, I cannot soak up the encouragements around me. I see them, but cannot feel them at any deep level. They do not renew me. Because it takes time for the good to soften my soul, I need an oasis in which to rest, an environment rich with living waters, but in my experience those spots are rare and brief, and so the desert winds parch away the rain that falls. I catch and hoard my little cupful, but it does not last long. Had I lived from the start out of my true self and in the riches of God’s grace, the energy I used for good would have been a renewable resource. But I feel as though my forest is chopped down, and I must start over, scratching out life from the dust. I see hopeful saplings of emotional growth, but the full rewards seem still a long way off.
I have been soul-sick for several months now. But today I feel okay. Both the pain and the relief are inexplicable. I accept mystery… as long as it stays theoretical. But I find practical mysteries at best annoying: where are my glasses, which street do I take, why is the car making that noise? When not knowing is costing me money or making me late or (more profoundly) hurting my relationships or my heart, I become agitated. For me, ignorance is not bliss, it is often agony. My method for coping with a scary, unpredictable world is to figure it out, experiment till I get it working, find new configurations for the parts lying on the floor. As long as I have untried options, I can keep hope alive.
Janathan Grace Reflections 