To Wrestle with Angels: On Doubt

Here is what I mean by doubt.

I don't think doubt is a virtue or a vice. I think it is a real thing that happens to humans.

I'm not advocating wallowing in a pit of doubt forever because you have given up believing in anything.

I think it's good to be honest about the parts of Christianity (or any faith) that you wrestle with. And I'm using that word, "wrestle," very intentionally. I think of Jacob physically wrestling with God in the OT; that is the picture that comes to mind. Note that Jacob doesn't let go. He holds on. I affirm every single thing in the Apostles' Creed, and I affirm it without much trouble. I believe the Bible is God's word, and I affirm that without much trouble, too.

Wrestling is how the blessing gets in. It's saying, "Perhaps there are things I don't know." Or "Perhaps, the things I know have more facets to them than I previously thought." Or "Perhaps this thing I know is much bigger than I thought." Or "I thought this was smooth, but it has jagged edges." Or "I thought it was soft, but I'm discovering some hard parts." Or "Perhaps I was wrong completely." It takes courage and humility to admit you don't have all the answers all the time.

What I mean is, some days it's hard to believe things, and some days it's not. I want to be honest, and I want people to be honest with me, about what's going on in our lives. I want to live authentically, which to me means being able to say, "God's word says x. I believe that God's word is true. But today, it's hard for me to hold to the truth of x, to a strong, specific belief in x. Ask me again tomorrow."

Or maybe belief is a sliding scale, and it's OK if on Tuesday I 70% believe God and on Friday I 100% believe him. Maybe the Thursday after next I'll be down to 20%. The point is that I'm still somewhere on the scale, that I haven't thrown up my hands and said "Can anything be known? Is anything even true? Does it matter at all?"

Doubt means that sometimes I have to be in a place where I have more questions than answers. Or it means that the answers and questions appear to be mortal enemies. Or they slide off one another like oil and water, and I can't hold them together in one hand. On those days I can hold them in separate hands and say "Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief." Or even, "Jesus, I really don't get this at all. Help me, please." And then I get up and go to work and come home and watch Netflix and wash the dishes. And then I go to bed to wake up and do it again.

It's real and human and OK to not be 100% certain about everything 100% of the time. Jesus is compassionate: he knows our frame, remembers that we're dust.

Different communities of people who love Jesus fall on different sides of this issue. I'm falling on the side of believing that doubt can be a helpful and a healthy tool. The author Kathleen Norris, in her book Amazing Grace, writes “Doubt is merely the seed of faith, a sign that faith is alive and ready to grow.” I actually believe that doubt is a means of engaging with God.

I'm not saying let's all put on berets and smoke cigarettes and talk languidly about our collective ennui and put stones in our pockets and walk into the river to drown ourselves. I'm saying I intend to live in communities where we can admit to faults and failings and uncertainties and let each other sit in those spaces for as long as it takes.

Also, I believe that it's good and OK to say that you're thinking through something, that you're still deciding and don't know where you'll land. I think it's right to say, "I've been told this is true, and I'm still deciding about that. I don't know if I believe it yet." The head and the heart must work together.

I affirm that it's OK to be uncertain. I affirm that it's good to be honest with yourself and with others about your uncertainty. I affirm that I want to leave space for my doubt and the doubt of others.

I affirm that Christianity is a story worth wrestling with.

That's it.

The Girl in Yellow: Behold, You are Loved!

Dear Reader,

There are two things I want you to know today:

     1) God makes room for himself inside us.
     2) You are loved.

Pt. I
This week, I've been trying to think about dwelling in the middle of nowhere. I'm learning to be comfortable waiting, and I've learned waiting is often more about the formational process of waiting than about the things waited for.

For the last 2 1/2 years or so, my life has neatly paralleled the Israelites' wandering in the desert. After several months of examining this metaphor, I've learned that feeling lost, being in-between, having questions but not answers, living in the still barrenness of winter, is OK. I've learned that the wilderness is a place of preparation, a place that disabuses you of former treasures, visions, and joys. The wilderness creates a longing for the Promised Land, that is, walking through the wilderness results in a deeper desire for God.

I have learned that even Moses' time tending sheep in Midian, all 40 of those years before he became the champion of his people, before any bushes burned, were not wasted. God doesn't waste time, he uses every second of it, even when for us each second feels like Chinese water torture. Moses slowly learned to tend sheep, and then he slowly led a stiff-necked and wayward people through the wilderness. Even in the desert, God provides and leads: there are pillars of fire and cloud, piles of manna waiting on the ground, and the law, lovingly revealed. God never, ever goes away.

I have heard God say to me, over and over again, "Have courage, and say yes." I have often felt, reflecting on these words, that God is preparing me for something big, something that will take a lot of courage to face. This new thing is something that will require absolute, full, trusting obedience: the kind that dwells in furnaces of fire and lions' dens and does not let the cup pass.

My perspective is focused on earthly measures of success. It's as though I'm waiting for God to make me richer, or prettier, or more widely loved. But really, as I've been walking through this awful wilderness of being, or my twenties, I've learned that one of the most important things to have is an open, empty heart.

We think of emptiness as a bad thing. It's bad when your fridge is empty, when your wallet is empty, when your brain is empty, when your schedule or womb or stomach is empty. We are so focused on being and staying filled. In the short span of time I call my Grown-Up Life, the most important thing I have learned is that God is carving out a big space inside of me for Himself.

At least, I used to think this big space inside of me was for Himself. Sometimes I think that the big, empty space is just for the sake of emptiness. All I know is that this big, empty space is one of the most important things about me. I've become a large receptacle, and I'm waiting to be filled.

Kathleen Norris, in Cloister Walk, though married, writes about celibacy from the perspective and insight of her monastic friends. Norris writes about how, in celibacy, the heart grows large and opens; there is room enough for the entire world, because there is no room designated for just one person or one exclusive type of love. I don't know if I'm going to be celibate my entire life, but I am celibate now. And I do find, when I look deep inside myself, that there is all this room and space, waiting for something. Sometimes, being empty inside feels horrible, and I run around frantically, trying to fill that hole with something  anything  that will remove the feeling of hollowness I bear. But more often, I feel and know that this space is good; it means that there is room in my heart for lots of people, it means that there is a lot of room in my heart for the love of God.

I want to be a person who is comfortable with space and silence. When you think about a cathedral, or a chapel, you think about empty space. Those spaces we call sacred are nothing but concrete cavities for love and worship. If there is one thing I know about God, it is that he loves it when we make room for him. I have become a room entirely. It is not that I have room for God, but that I am room for God.

"Aubade for a Friend" was written by Fr. Gregory Elmer, O.S.B. of St. Andrew's Abbey. You should read the entire poem, it's wonderful. I'm copying the relevant parts of it here.

Whoever excavates a deeper bay
In your heart, so that you can the better
Yearn to love Him more, Who carves
Out this most precious space in
Your soul, a wound that curiously
Comforts you, a cave of the heart
Now being painfully excavated to
House more God, more love, to build
Within the middle of that heart, not
Only a more capacious pilgrim hostel,
On the shores of your spirit, but digs
Deeper the secret pilgrim road to the
Bottom of our heart, where. . . .we pass
Over the world, and set forth to cross
The wilderness. . . .We stumble down a way ever more interior. . . .
which leads on, in this life. . . .to the life eternal.

Becoming a temple of the Holy Spirit is painful and takes time.

&

Pt. II
Today I went with my roommate to Urth Caffé for breakfast while her tires were being replaced. Over our multi-grain waffles and tea lattes, roommate and I talked about the weeks we'd had, both of which were full of unpleasant people doing and saying unpleasant things, to put it mildly. While we were eating, two deferential, hipsterish twenty-somethings approached our table and apologized for interrupting us. They said they had a word from God for a woman in yellow, and that I was the only person matching that description in the restaurant (I was wearing a yellow cardigan). I can't remember every word they spoke, but by the end of that encounter, both roommate and I were wiping tears away.

The content of their message was that God sees me and wants me to know a new season is being ushered in, that a lot of changes are coming all at once which will be hard to understand. But God is leading you, they told me, like Dorothy down a yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz. And, speaking even to this wilder-wandering time, they said that God has seen me in the shadows.

Every time God speaks it is always good news. I keep forgetting this, but it's true. Every time God speaks, it is always good news. 

The pinnacle of encouragement is to hear another person say that God loves and delights in you. God sent someone today I didn't know to just the right place at the right time, because he wants me to know I am loved. I am dearly loved.

Roommate bought me a Rifle Paper Co.-esque art print to commemorate the day. Do you know what it says? It says, "You are loved."

Dear Reader, you are becoming room for God, and you are dearly loved.


Oh! How he loves us! 

Open Thou Our Lips: On Detachment pt. 2

     About a week ago, on Saturday morning, I woke up, dressed, and walked outside into the grey light of day. I intended to spend the day doing some deep cleaning in my old apartment, and hoped to make progress with deciding where to store my belongings. While I was walking toward the bus stop, I noticed a bitter, burning smell in the air. As I approached the intersection, I saw firefighters and police officers using their vehicles to block off the street, cautiously dismantling a burnt vehicle as they stood on scraps of charred metal. Because it would have been impossible for the bus to pick me up from that stop, I decided to start walking. To walk from my house to my old apartment would take over an hour, but there was nothing else to be done.
            I pounded down the sidewalk with my arms crossed over me, trying to keep out the surprisingly cold wind. As I walked, I reflected on my lack of motivation. Why should I have to spend my Saturday cleaning a home that was no longer mine? Why should I have to pack and divide my belongings, to store them at cost until I could find another opportunity to live in the way I desired? As I walked, I grew angrier and more frustrated, feeling nothing but the injustice of my situation, feeling trapped in a whirlwind of circumstance.
            I realized, suddenly, that I could not say, with Kathleen Norris, that the thing happening to me was the thing I desired. This was a sobering realization. I remembered her advice about how to adopt an attitude, how to inhale a spirit, of detachment. There was only one method: prayer. So, as I walked down long grey sidewalks, wondering how long until I made it home, I prayed. Because God had already begun the work of detachment in my heart, I felt able to pray for this. I prayed that God would enable me to choose rightly, that he would show me whether I should keep my belongings, and that he would help my heart to release all the things I wanted to keep.
            As I prayed, I noticed a few things. First, I didn’t feel angry or burdened anymore. Second, this release of distress came with the decision to give away and/or sell my belongings to the girl I replaced in my new house, because she is swapping lives with me, and moving into her very first apartment, which she will share with one other person. The deep surprise of this moment, I think, was the absence of pain. I felt certain that this is what I wanted to do, not just what I ought to do, and I felt free from the burdens of my own emotions. Finally, after about 40 minutes of walking, the bus came. I reached the apartment, did some cleaning, and when my old roommate returned, I told her what I had decided. The girl who is taking my things came over that afternoon and together, we walked around the apartment as she evaluated what she could use. Instead of feeling like a mother selling her children in a market stall, I found it easy to extol the merits of my sofa, the comfortable, attractive, brown-suede couch that I had cried over purchasing a year ago, because furniture is so adult and I’m afraid of money.
            I think I’m keeping my kitchen supplies: dishes, pots, and pans, because I can store them in the garages of a few family friends and they will keep until I need them, if I need them, again. But we will see about that, I suppose, because the goal is to “be free from wanting certain things to happen.” It is amazing how many things I no longer own.
            God never forces us to do anything we don’t want to do. Why? Because He loves our yes.

“Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in your ways.”

Open Thou Our Lips: On Detachment

Detachment:

"Being free from wanting certain things to happen, and remaining so trusting of God that what is happening will be the thing you want and you will be at peace with all."
 --Kathleen Norris and Dorotheus of Gaza

I want to contemplate the virtue of detachment. A few weeks ago, a friend read me the chapter on detachment from Kathleen Norris' book Amazing Grace. This topic strikes me as appropriate not only for Lent, but also for the season of life I'm entering. My current roommate, who is one of the best and most beloved roommates I have ever had, got married about a month ago. Because all the other women I know are married or live with their parents, I could not find a roommate to share my lovely, comfortable, quiet hermitage. So, even though I had just reached the stage of early adult life where I owned furniture, had utility bills in my name, and could throw dinner parties with real dishes and silverware, I had to pack up and leave.

I'm not just sad because my dear roommate is moving over lands and seas, but also because I am giving up the place that has been my only home for the last two years. During the seven years I spent in college, I longed for a space of my own. I kept boxes of pretty dishes and table linens given to me by family friends, waiting for the time I would be able to use them. I glory in domesticity. I love having my own kitchen. I love deciding what color of paint goes on the wall, and not having to resign myself to an ugly wall-hanging because everyone else thinks it looks lovely in the living room.

It's hard to give up something that you are actually grateful for. I've prayed about this move many, many times, mostly using words like "Jesus, please, please, please, can I stay?" But even while I prayed for this, I knew that I really needed to pray that my heart would be aligned to the will of God. It's scary to feel desire clutching your heart in its fingers, controlling the rhythm of its pulse. I made a thorough search for anyone female, Jesus-following, and non-crazy. I did not find a roommate. I did not, do not, feel "free from wanting certain things to happen."
 
Instead of finding one roommate, I found five. On Saturday, I moved into an intentional community house. Most of the women who have lived there left behind piles of belongings: stacks of books, mattresses, luggage, mismatched dishes, and shabby furniture, so there is no room for my treasured belongings. I'm ashamed to admit how much this upsets me, but that is the case. The women are all wonderful people, lovers of God, and so good to me. The house has a lovely quirky charm, with odd cupboards and cabinets, a white picket fence, and a well-kept lawn. My little attic bedroom is painted in a lovely shade of grey, with walls that slant upward at about five feet, and a window that overlooks the front yard. Nonetheless, I am having a hard time with this transition, because I am confused about what my life is supposed to look like, who I am supposed to be, and what I am supposed to strive for. A spirit of detachment is wanting. I am trying hard to step away from my constant desire to read the tidy narrative of my life, as though I can stand in the place of God, observing the unfolding of the universe in time, and holding my existence in my own hands. I wish I could see inside the mind of God, because it feels like I'm regressing, going back to my life as a college student, shoved into a small space with a lot of women, unsure of where I am going or why.

 Kathleen Norris writes about a monastic understanding of detachment. As Christians, the point is not to be free of all desire, but rather our aim is to "not [allow] either worldly values or self-centeredness to distract us from what is most essential in our relationship with God, and with each other." Community is more precious than cups, and faithfulness more treasured than furniture. I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. 

I'm still planning to store my dishes and furniture, but I want to do so with my heart believing in God's constant loving-kindness, with hands that are open to give and receive, and a mouth that is ready to sing worship and shout praise. It's nearly Good Friday after all: "Not my will, but yours, be done."

Hitherto thy love has blessed me,

 thou hast brought me to this place, 

and I know thy hand will lead me, 

safely home by thy good grace.

Amen.

"O Lord, open thou our lips, and our mouths shall show forth thy praise."

On Acedia and Beginning Again

"You don't have acedia, because you still care. If you care enough to read a book about acedia, you don't have acedia." --A friend

I'm reading the book Acedia and Me, by Kathleen Norris. I've been meaning to read more of Norris' writing ever since I read Cloister Walk in college. Norris is a protestant writer who fell in love with Catholic liturgy and became a Benedictine Oblate. I love her because she reminds me that I am not alone in the world. When I am feeling too lazy to write, or am having trouble explaining why something moves me, reading spiritual memoir is incredibly helpful. It's necessary. The spiritual writings of women like Norris, women like Anne Lamott or Lauren Winner, give voice to my internal spiritual and emotional tensions, serving as spiritual direction when I have lost my way.

In her book, Norris defines acedia as a lack of care: a spiritual and psychological malaise that combines the worst bits of sloth and depression. I began reading this book several months ago, but put it down because the heavy tone of the book and its correspondence to my own life was too much for me to carry. Also, I was visiting Chicago at the end of winter; the season itself had succumbed to acedia. But I have taken the book up again this fall, because the topic still spoke to me. I am nearly done with it now, in the final chapter, and I am so glad to have walked with Norris thus far. She knows the things I ought to know. She knows that constant meditation on the Psalms is deep, good, sweet food for the soul. And she is incredibly gracious with herself. I mean, unbelievably. And that same graciousness has unexpectedly encouraged my Christian walk more than anything else has in a long, long time.

I have a tendency to see God as an irritated, disapproving, wrathful taskmaster, as a person waiting for me to make mistakes so he can fall out of love with me. But when I speak of these anxieties with others, with people who have walked with God more closely than I, I always get the same response: "You don't have to try so hard."

Norris quotes Evagrius, and many others who have written and lived in the monastic tradition. Have I ever mentioned that the very word monasticism draws me in with an irrepressible force? It does. Somehow, on some level, I am a monastic. It's my nature. Anyway, there is one section where she quotes an elder monk speaking to a brother on the nature of life. He says, "Brother, the monastic life is this: I rise up, and I fall down, I rise up, and I fall down, I rise up, and I fall down." 

This is an incredibly helpful statement, and it relates to Calvin's doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. Sometimes I struggle with understanding how I can lose so much ground in an area of my life that I had previously excelled in. I used to be so good at monasticism! I used to carry around a book of common prayer, and illustrate miniature manuscripts of the Psalms to hang on my walls to meditate on throughout the day. I used to shun television because I wanted only holy thoughts to be stuck in my head, and it worked, and it was well with my soul. But I have almost forgotten how to live this way, and I only sort of care.

But, Norris reminds me, the Christian life is all rising and falling. But the life of the faithful one, the one to whom Christ offers a white robe, the one who endures, is the one who continues to rise and fall. The faithful life is one which is full of new beginnings. The faithful person is one who does not give way to acedia after falling yet again into an old vice. The faithful person continually begins again. This is how I want to think of my life, and this is what I mean when I say that Norris is unbelievably, incredibly gracious. She can accept her own humanity. Isn't that beautiful?

In other news, Norris also brought to my consciousness the idea that I am not immortal. I mean, I am going to live in heaven forever with God, but first, I will die. This is actually a very refreshing thought, because it is easy for me to become discouraged in what Norris calls the "endless cycle of now," that I envision as my future. The thought that time is not an unlimited resource is difficult for me to believe, but accepting this truth is essential if I want to live free of acedia. If time is limited, then it is precious. And if time is precious, then it actually does matter how I spend it. I am re-resolving to live faithfully. Therefore I will feed on the Psalms, I will write daily, and I will always begin again.

The "cure" for acedia, as I see it, apart from therapeutic and spiritual intervention, is faithfulness. Faithfulness is just another term for beginning again. The faithful person joyfully seeks the monochromatic repetition of each day, knowing that it is in these hopelessly boring rituals that faithfulness is wrought in the soul. So I'll leave you, dear reader, with this prayer, which Norris quoted in her book:

This is another d.ay, O Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be. If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently. And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly. Make these words more than words, and give me the Spirit of Jesus. Amen.