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! 

A Certain Strangling

      I have lost my voice. Spiritually, I mean. I intended to spend 2013 writing and contemplating voice, in order to regain the part of my own voice that has weakened and been lost.  This did not happen, however, and I can’t say why, though I can talk a little about what has happened to it. When I was younger, in my first few years of college, those truly, purely idealistic years, I took a risk. At the time, I believed that God wanted me to take my voice to the ends of the earth, and to recount his story of love to those who had never heard it. But when I tried to do this, when I embarked on a big, scary overseas adventure, I found that the journey was too hard, the task too large, and I failed. I discovered that I lacked the courage to live boldly every day.

            Since that time, that tragic moment of epic failure, over seven years ago, I have been walking under a sky of shame, and the weather does not change. This is important in our conversation about voice, because it was shame that silenced me. It hushed the part of my voice that spoke boldly, that took risks and chose adventure. I am trying now, after all this time, to release some of that feeling of shame. It is hard, sometimes, for me to be gracious with myself. But God is gracious, more gracious than I understand.

            I was recently describing my feelings of condemnation toward myself, and the judgment I feel emanating from God, when someone wise spoke to me and said, “No, God is kinder than this.” And, “You need to show yourself more grace.” She doesn’t know, of course, that I desperately want to feel permitted to show myself more grace. I want to be kinder to myself, but I feel that I don’t deserve it. Such kindness is unwarranted, unearned. But that is the point of grace, isn’t it? It is never about what is deserved; grace gives, lavishly, what is most needed.

            I need to feel this grace extended to me, from me, because God’s grace in this same matter is already given. Sometimes, I can see the light of grace falling from his open hands: little golden daffodils of grace wholly gratuitous. I’m going to climb inside one of those glowing yellow cups and sit a while.

            Essentially, to regain my voice, I need to remove my hands from around my own neck, until my face is no longer blue and my eyes sink back into their sockets.  

“And the ransomed of the LORD shall

            return

     and come to Zion with singing;

everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;

     they shall obtain gladness and joy,

     and sorrow and sighing shall flee

             away.”

Substance and Shadows

This will be a very short post. I just need to say that today I learned something. In my relationship with God, I am the changeable one. When I sin, God is faithful. When I choose righteousness, God is faithful. When I am sad, God is faithful. When I am happy, God is faithful. He is loving all the time, just and holy all the time, slow to anger all the time, and perfectly, perfectly, gracious--all the time. His steadfast love does not change with the seasons, and his love is not shaken by my inconsistency. Isn't that a beautiful thought?

There is a reason Aquinas describes God as the Unmoved Mover. O, Lord, let me live at the still point, where you are.

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.

Branding instead of Beauty

It's the third day of my Nativity Fast, and I'm feeling fond of emotional capitalization. At least, I think so. The weather is cooling, though not cold, as though the days are a preface to sacredness, but not the Thing itself. I have to admit that I'm awful at fasting. Why do I even attempt it? I think one day I'll move past the rudimentary acquisition of discipline and begin to gain something from these moments of self-denial. I've begun reading through Isaiah, which seems fitting, because it starts out in a tone as morbid as my own feelings. Oh, how my thoughts are wandering just now. Yesterday, I finished re-reading Home, by St. Marilynne Robinson, and I feel closely connected to the character of Jack Boughton. 

Jack, the Prodigal Son, can't come home even when he is home. I feel like that sometimes. Jack hears but does not understand, and he sees but does not perceive. And he is lonely. Jack is a faithless character who was raised within the Faith (see the emotional capitalization again?). He is surrounded by others whose lives are filled with Love and Virtue, people who are reaching their arms out to him, longing to comfort him, all day long. But Jack cannot be comforted, it is the nature of his affliction to be alone in his vice. I think his character scratches at my heart so sharply because I often feel like him. I think this is one of the reasons it comforted me to read Home again, because sometimes I need to be reminded that loneliness is part of the human experience. We are born into sin, and alienated from God, after all. What could be more lonely than being at odds with the All-Perfect Creator of your own soul?

So people are lonely. Is there anything more to be said?

I'm currently terrified of reaping what I sow. There are so many verses in the Bible concerned with this general principle: "whatever one sows, that will he also reap." I'm more comfortable thinking that the great Gospel Narrative is about helping me not to reap what I sow.   . . .for all have sinned. . .   No one wants to reap the misery of a fallen humanity.

"Tell the righteous that it shall be well with them,
        for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds.
    Woe to the wicked! It shall be ill with him,
        for what his hands have dealt out shall be done to him.

In these next 37 days, I'm going to try to sow actions I'd actually be glad to harvest."



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

So Great a Cloud of Witnesses: Distracted Musings on All Saints' Day

 

“Around your throne the saints, our brothers and sisters,

sing your praise forever.

Their glory fills us with joy,

and their communion with us in your church

gives us inspiration and strength

as we hasten our pilgrimage of faith, eager to meet them.

With their great company and all the angels

we praise your glory as we cry out with one voice:

‘Holy, holy, holy…’ “

 

Thus ends Poetry Appreciation Month. It was good while it lasted. 

Today is All Saints' Day. I had so many ideas for this day. Alas, we went on a field trip. The truth is that field trips are always secretly exhausting. It's a wonder I can hold up my head right now. In other news, my best friend is getting married in 9 days. Yet another reason why I am feeling the rush of activity rather than the inner stirrings of quietude.

Last night, I read up on some saints, thought about Hebrews 11, and read bits of Revelation. I planned to watch Millions, read St. Joan, and think about people I admire: the George Muellers and the Amy Carmichaels. I wrote out a list of All Saints' Day worthy activities. Today I even wore a white dress, but forgot to feel significant feelings about it. I'm too tired to observe such a holy day.

What can I say about all of this? We know that righteousness is possible, and real. Not just for God, but for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

What we do know is that faith is the common factor in the lives of all these holy people. . .

Without faith, it is impossible to please God. 

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.