Third rebirth

WARNING:

To the faith folks: 

I'm often reluctant to write my thoughts on faith. I'm especially reluctant to invite some folks who might take offense and call me a heretic. After being away from my home church for a while and participating in other faith communities, I've been called "a lost sheep."  When visiting my home church people begin to give me impromptu lectures on not doing drugs--because of course, if I'm not attending their church I must be doing drugs! They may lay hands on me or give me that pity smile. 

I seldom take offense. I usually smile and nod. Having once been there myself, I may scrunch my eyebrows as though on the receiving end of some profound insight and utter a, "Hm" out of respect. I know it all comes from a good place. In fact, I used to be just like them, praying for the prodigal sons and daughters to come to their senses and return to the fold. 

So I know that blog posts like the one below are not for them. Their lens is pretty impenetrable for reasons that are too complicated to explain here; yet, understandable reasons. This post is more for my friends and for folks who have ventured out beyond the teachings they were given.  This is for folks who see God as a great mystery; who, like Kierkegaard, have dared to venture into the sea of 70, 000 fathoms; who have taken a leap of faith; who desire to practice a little epistemological humility. 

To the non-faith folks: 

On the other hand, I know some readers who have never stepped in a church might read this and ask, "Why faith?" "Is this conversation even relevant?" "Why even engage people who may liken you to sheep?" 

Such is the curse of having a foot into two worlds. You develop a particular language that borrows from two very different experiences. I can speak this language pretty freely with those who have borrowed from both camps as well. But when speaking to one camp or the other I sound like I've created a distortion or a mockery of their language. 

My encouragement to the camps on both extremes if you do decide to read this is to respect each person's journey and language.  To seek to understand before diagnosing. 

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Book of Hours, I 59

7/23/2013 

Atomic Cafe. 

At around 7:15am I passed the old Unitarian Church on Cabot Street in Beverly. A sign on the white chapel read,  "Sin is the wreckage of the love which we are capable." 

I repeated these words to myself over and over. The words resonated. Deep. As I listened intently to figure where they resonated and why, I made a realization:  Lately it feels as though life has carved out some sort of concave well in me.  The words sin is the wreckage of the love which we are capable echoed in that very concave space, bounced off the bare walls--almost as though the vibrations of which were announcing the coming of something new to fill the concave space. 

I've been thinking a lot about faith as of late. 

In my life I've experienced a few spiritual re-births. One occurred when I answered an altar call at 10 years old which set the tone and pace of the eight following years.  If I had to call this "tone" anything I would call it "over-eager." If I had to name it's hue I would say it was a fiery anxious red. And if I had to characterize the pace I would say it was faster than what my legs could support. Think Jesus Camp.

This re-birth also set my life on the course of a certain set of questions, a certain set of friends, a certain set of existential experiences and a certain set of tensions.  The way these questions, experiences and communities have panned out have far surpassed anything I could ever have predicted. 

The second life event that I identify as re-birth numero dos occurred in college and involved the leaving behind of an old community--at the very least a re-conceptualizing of an old community.  I no longer found the support and comfort I used to find there.  Feeling isolated and in the midst of despair, I grew out of it like one might grow out of one's favorite shirt. Painfully. Slowly. With some denial on the way. "But it's my favorite shirt! I can't throw it out!" I wore that shirt until the sleeves created little bulges around my arms and until the belly became full on exposed. Finally taking it off was the killer.  This re-birth happened with contractions, labor pains and all. But the result--Oh, the result! Was a freedom I could have never foreseen. Talk about seeing the light. 

The second re-birth was not uncommon for the Gordon College student--especially for the student of Sociology or Philosophy. However, I never did throw out the baby with the bath-water.

When all of my friends were watching their world-views crumble, throwing them into various levels of existential angst and identity crises, I was merely experiencing transition. I didn't exchange one worldview for another.This was not a trade. 

Simply, with new information, new experiences, unanswered prayers, answered prayers, new mentors, more color was gradually added to the canvas. As opposed to a darkening, mine was a more of a move towards something brighter, more nuanced, more complex. Taking elements from my hyper-fiery upbringing I created some post-Christian concoction. Like Anne Lammott says, “Mine was a patchwork God, sewn together from bits of rag and ribbon, Eastern and Western, pagan and Hebrew, everything but the kitchen sink and Jesus."

And yet there were a lot of aspects of my religious upbringing which I did discard during this time. And then again there were things I discarded while on the corrective which I later realized were overcorrections. So revisit and re-evaluate, I did. And then landed somewhere closer to the middle of two extremes. 

I'm feeling some labor pains now. I have a feeling a third rebirth is on the way.