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Thursday, December 31, 2009

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 06:22:44 GMT

My annus horribilis is almost over.

At the end of it, I feel a bit like the original marathon runner staggering to the finish, and after delivering his message, dying of exhaustion. This week, I'm grateful for a passage of Scripture I'm more familiar with and have more to say about than last week's, when I laid the biggest sermon egg I probably have ever done.

Good thing, I guess, that we also had our smallest congregation ever last week. Less people around to be profoundly bored by what I was saying. (Yes, it was boring. Heck, I was getting bored just delivering it. And you know it can't be a good sermon when the preacher gets bored while he's preaching it.) Well, all right. I wasn't necessarily bored, but I just couldn't see how this was connecting to where the people were at. I preached on grace, on the etymology of hen (Hebrew for, well, one's disposition to act mercifully and with compassion), and on how David could have come to the end of his life and have sang the psalm of Samuel 22, which is essentially a psalm that glosses over his colossal failures as a human being. (Adulterer, murderer, warmonger, bad parent, etc.)

Not the most thrilling message to be heard after a fairly good Sunday the week before when I felt as though I gave one of my better sermons.

Yet this isn't the measure of my life-- sermons are only the most public thing I get to do, and so people tend to form their opinions of you based on the half hour of their attention you get. But, being a man who is probably too conscious of others' opinions of me (and being a people pleaser at heart), I probably derive too much of my self image based on what others think of a very small window of my life.

What I have been wrestling with over the last couple of weeks is not what I'm preaching (though that does tend to bleed into everything else-- O for a 9 to 5 job like so many other people!) but simple (if it can ever be called that) loneliness. This is how I know not everything is right with me, because I'm usually quite content with my own company. Yet in recent weeks, I'm not.

I live alone, more out of choice than necessity, as I tend to find that male roommates have markedly different ideas about cleanliness than I do. I'm also alone in my work, since most of it is spent writing or reading or simply staring out onto the trees in my front drive thinking about the significance of Solomon spending seven years building the Temple but thirteen on his palaces. I fill in the empty spaces with more writing, more reading, and being distracted by the TV. I wish I could run, but I've been laid up with a knee injury for the last couple of weeks, so my only physical exertion these days are trips to the gym, something I'm not terribly keen to do.

Although I have some very good friends whom I go out with as much as I can and I'm significant enough a figure in my church that I regularly receive emails concerning stuff that is relatively personal and interesting, it doesn't quite touch the deep inner emptiness the simplistic side of most people would say could be cured with a girlfriend or a wife.

I, for one, know it's not that simple or that easy. We all know the Augustinian side of things: that this emptiness is one that only God can fill. Yet I return often to the idea that of all the pre-Fall things God said was "not good" in his Creation, it was for "man to be alone." (Yes, and woman as well.)

Sometimes I'll get well-meaning advice along the lines of "get out there, Tiger!", but some tigers, once let out of their cages, really have nowhere better to go. It's not that I mind meeting new people, but the contexts in which I meet new people are most of the time bound up with "work", thus drawing a line that for some is already insurmountable. I know that look: You're a pastor? Ugh. That must mean you're super spiritual (which makes me feel guilty for not being that way) and rather destitute. You'd be nice as a friend because pastors are understanding and empathetic, but as more? No thanks.

So I got an email from eHarmony suggesting I turn my matching back on (I'd joined on a free weekend a couple of years ago on a pure whim), and now I have. But it makes me feel as uneasy now as it did then-- I hate the idea of meeting someone so mechanically. There is something decidedly unromantic about meeting someone online, but then again, having met people who have met other people online (and are currently married or in a committed relationship) who am I to say? So, I stab in the dark. Stab stab stabbity stab, all the while not-so-secretly loathing the entire enterprise. It comes down to personal tastes, and my tastes run towards repugnancy as far as internetickally dealing with my loneliness is concerned.

Call me extremely old-fashioned, but I prefer meeting a person, well, in person. There is only so much you can learn about someone from self-projections into online profiles. I want to know the little things, not the big things. I want to know what she does with her hands when she talks. Does she flutter them? Does she ball them? Does she touch her lips or tug her hair? I want to know her facial expressions, like how she might cross her eyes when she's confused or bite her lip when she's worried. I want to know the way her eyes go: do they catch fire when she's angry? Do they smoulder in the night? Do they dip at the corners when she's feeling sympathetic? I want to know the presence of her; the scent of her, the timbre of her voice, the smile that makes me feel as though the night is almost over. I want to know how it feels to be close enough to whisper, to be in the same room as her, to be halfway around the world from her. The curve of her shoulders, the line of her jaw, the tuck of her hair behind her ears-- these are the things I'll never know unless I know a person in person. Not so coincidentally, these are usually the things I find endearing about someone. I've known quite a few photogenic women in my life, but over time, it's the small things, the things that make her her that make her more beautiful as time goes on.

That's just it: I'm a terrible romantic. I keep hoping she'll walk in on a Sunday morning when I've got a dynamite sermon going on and I'm being very impressive. (But then, she probably would think me unapproachable afterward.) I keep hoping she'll show up at a dinner party where I've busted some elaborate baking/cooking moves. (My sister laughs at this and says she'll probably show up when I've had no time to cook or bake and I've brought Tostitos and a jar of Safeway salsa, leaving me saying "no, I really can cook! Honest! Just ask around!") I keep hoping we'll be introduced at lunches and there'll be enough chemistry for me to ask her for contact information or enough cause to facebook stalk her and add her as a friend. Or maybe she'll be on the stationary bike next to me at the gym and she'll ask what I'm reading. (For the record, the latter is not wishful thinking-- it has already happened. With a woman in her 50's. No, she is not a cougar. She is a clinical psychologist.)

Maybe this year will be different and I'll meet someone. Or, maybe things will be the same-- more disappointment, more heartache, more days and nights spent alone.

Maybe.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:35:31 GMT

There are always a myriad of interactions that take place when you prepare for a sermon. Of late, the most difficult thing I am doing is being honest before the text and grappling with claims that seem, at this time, untrue or at least in this lifetime unfulfilled. It is not just exegesis or languages or research or delivery-- it is being naked before questions that I hesitate to ask for fear of upsetting my inner apple cart. I am afraid to ask these questions because I do not have answers for them-- leastwise, the answers that seminary could provide. There are no guides here, only Jesus, weeping even as he holds me, weeping because he is weakened by love.

It is a hard thing to grapple with.

This is the manuscript of my Christmas sermon tomorrow. You may not have asked for it, but I'll give it to you now, for what it's worth.

************

¹⁴ Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

-- Isaiah 7:14

The name of the child who would be a sign of God’s faithfulness to Israel was Immanuel. Translated into English, Immanuel means “God is with us”, and when it was first spoken by Isaiah some seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus, the sign that a virgin would give birth to a child who would be “God with us” was a sign of hope in the midst of darkness. For at that time, seven centuries before the birth of Jesus in a stable surrounded by farm animals, the city of Jerusalem had been surrounded by enemies, and all hope seemed lost. But God speaks to the people through his servant Isaiah, and says “Do not be afraid, for though you might be surrounded and outnumbered, this child will be a sign to you that I am with you.”

This is worth remembering today: that even though we might be surrounded on all sides by difficulty and sorrow, God is with us. We may ask the question, “what possible good can one little child do against a world that even now tears itself apart in war and famine? What kind of sign can possibly deal with our broken hearts, our broken marriages, our broken homes, and our broken lives? What good is one little candle in a darkened room?”

So, thinking that this candle could not possibly be enough, we make up our own answers to these questions. We may say “Jesus is not enough to light a dark world”, and seek what we think is better, a spectacular saviour who will enchant us with light and music. We may say “Jesus deserves better than to be born in a barn” and so sing “away in a manger/no crying he makes”, as though this is one baby who would never ever cry. Yet Jesus weeps for those he loves. The shortest verse in the Bible is “Jesus wept”[1], as though telling us that if there is one thing worth remembering, it is that God cries.

Some of us here have come today because it’s Christmas, and if there is one time of the year we might think about coming to church, it is when everything looks its best and brightest. If anything, we come thinking that Christians celebrating the birth of Jesus ought to look like how the shopping malls make Christmas feel: all tinsel and glitter and glamour, all neighborly favours in the form of “buy one get one free”’s, all the strains of comforting music drifting in through hidden loudspeakers. Some of us come thinking that today ought to be an extension of the consumer culture in which we live, that like the shepherds watching their flocks by night, the skies above us should explode in light and song and that we should walk away nodding and smiling and saying “well, wasn’t that nice.”

Even more, some of us will stay for lunch and sit with strangers and practice niceness with each other, and then we will drive away, nodding and smiling and saying “well, aren’t those people nice.” What a nice service. What a nice people. And then there I am, watching you go, waving goodbye, but inwardly wringing my hands as I hope that you think nice things of me too. That you say of me “what a nice young man.” But if this is all we leave with today—that everything is nice—we would be missing something much deeper than that. We would be missing the very fact that in celebrating Christmas and the coming of God in the flesh, God Himself is with us.

It often seems like such a small thing that we miss it. It happens so quickly and so quietly; too quickly, too quietly for we who want a dazzling spectacle. It happens out back, in the stable, witnessed only by goats and sheep and a confused husband who knows this baby isn’t his. The mother moans, the baby screams, the cows chew their cud, the goats roll their eyes, and the night presses in, cold and deep. The sign of God with us in the form of a helpless little baby, a candle flame in the dark, seems impossibly useless. And, by extension, sometimes following a God whose brilliant plan is to send himself in a helpless form feels useless. Innately, we don’t want this kind of God. We want the God who will ride at the head of some great army. We want the God who will heal the sick and raise the dead and make sure none of us ever feel pain again. We don’t want a God in a manger, a candle flame in the dark, a God who suffers, then dies.

I am not just speaking of you, I am speaking about myself and my own wish for a Saviour, not a baby, not a candle flame in the dark. Yet the truth insists upon me—God with us is a baby, a baby who weeps, a baby who bleeds, and a baby who dies. God with us—God with me—is nothing like I want it to be. And this is the heart of the mystery of God with us: that God with us looks nothing like what we expect. The God I want with me is a roaring fire by which I am warmed and can cook and around which we all can be safe. But most often, God with us feels like a candle in the dark, small and useless; like a baby in a stable.

“My idea of God is not a divine idea,” writes C.S. Lewis. “It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins.”[2]

In all truth, I still hunger (as do you) for an easier picture of God. I want a shinier God, a God who swoops in with bronzed, muscled arms to scoop me out of danger. But very often, as I get to know God, I’m left with a picture of God that more than anything else leaves me feeling disturbed, because God shows himself to me as weak, as helpless, as a baby. The God I am coming to know is a God who is vulnerable to love. The God I am coming to know is a God who weeps. The God I am coming to know is a God who not only takes on the appearance of being human, but also feels our pain and our dying. The God I am coming to know is like a candle flame in the dark, sometimes seeming so small, too small, for the task at hand. Yet there is just enough light to hope for more.

Maybe the sign of a baby is a sign to us that this God is a different kind of God, a God who willingly suffers with us. Not a God who stands far away laughing and stroking his beard. No, this is God who stubs his toe, a God who has his heart broken, a God who has family and friends that never understand him. At Christmas, we do not only celebrate a cute little baby Jesus asleep in the hay; we remember the mystery of how God is not only with us, but how God is also one of us.

The most difficult thing you might do today is wrestle with God. It is the most difficult thing I do every day. What a surprise, then, that sometimes when we wrestle with God, God is overpowered, and we win.[3] We know full well that God could throw us down and break us over his knee, but he doesn’t. And he won’t, because for the sake of love, he becomes vulnerable, he becomes a child.

Which God do you want? The God you make up in your head? Do you worship an image of God that is not God after all? Or, today, can you for the first time draw near to the candle flame in the darkened room; wondering at how such a seemingly insignificant thing could possibly herald the coming of our rescue?

God is here. He flickers in like a candle in the dark.

[1] John 11:35

[2] C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed. HarperSanFrancisco: San Francisco, CA. 1961. p.66

[3] Gen 33:25

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:21:18 GMT

Counseling is difficult. My counselor is a white woman slightly younger than my own mother, but a woman for whom I have immense respect, not the least because she does not try to solve me, but is willing to sit across from me and hear me moan about my abundance of questions and lack of answers. I know from my own experience with people that I would rather fix them quickly and move onto my next project. But people, I'm finding, don't work that way. And neither do I.

I feel these days as though I am sifting through the broken shards of a picture window from some cathedral I built for self-worship. The picture, of course, was me-- or what I thought was me. Yet because of all that has gone on both within and without, the windows in my cathedral have been blown out (strange and terrible mercy indeed), and I am left to try to put the picture back together again, occasionally cutting myself on some of the more severely deformed shards. I need not tell you that the putting back together again may not, after all, be the right thing to do. But it is what I want to do. I want all the King's horses and all the King's men to put me back together again, and double quick, not to lie around in pieces in a yolky mess.

She counsels me that this is a time of deepening, something I wish I could be done with. Do I not already have enough depth for ten? Does this oversensitive pedant not already flinch at every little thing, no matter how slight? But there, even you can sense my hubris. There are unplumbed depths in every one, and lucky me, I believe that God has asked me to go deeper. How could I not believe this? How else can I make sense of what is going on inside of me? Yet death tastes like pain, even if resurrection-- or the thought of it-- seems so sweet. This being a time of hollowing and emptying and deepening, she counsels me to remain here a while, to dwell on my empty tomb. Yet this is not where I want to stay. I want to be fixed, and not in the veterinarian way.

What I find difficult to accept is that this is not necessarily the road to recovery, but simply the road. This is brokenness, and walking in it is something, no matter what I tell my church, that I hesitate to do and do not do well. When all is said and done, what I want is to walk in health and wealth and to quit cutting my boils with potsherds.

Yet Job was restored. Will I, too, be restored? What will the picture of that restoration be? Pieces, too many pieces, and not all of them fit together. More breaking, more shattering, more tearing down. Springtime starts and then it stops in the name of something new.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:22:49 GMT

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
-- T.S. Eliot, "East Coker III", from Four Quartets

I hesitate now to even speak of it, even less to write of it should writing and thinking about it give it more power than I ought to give it. Yet therein is the rub that has rubbed me raw, the prospect that somehow, I have given it more power and that the darkness that consumes me has been fed by my hand.

Such is depression. That dreaded D-word. Not damnation, though it sometimes feels almost as bad as I imagine. Not dung, though at times I can scarcely stand the stench of my soul. Depression, not the economic kind-- the kind that once dwelt upon, can become a bloated spectre that blots out thought of anything else. I am used to pain of physical kinds. Right now I am nursing a bout of tendonitis in my left knee, and I am loath to rest it because I am just that stubborn. But psychic pain is different and more difficult to deal with because there are no salves to reach the inner self, no massage to break open knotted nerves and downcast souls. There is pain, and I am tired of it, tired and exhausted of waking, as Hopkins once wrote, "feeling the fell of dark and not of day."

I am coming to see that the gradual arc of all that I have been writing and thinking has been the arc of someone slipping deeper into something he cannot dig himself out of. Would that there were vaccines for this! Would that medication would be enough! Instead, there are only long moments of waiting, waiting for morning when you are almost sure that the night is all there is.

A large part of the fear in writing about it is that everyone will seek to offer good advice. To be sure, I am taking all of it, and the prognosis is good because I trust that attacking instead of laying down is what I need to do-- but how many times can you hear permutations of "turn that frown upside down" and not get a little angry? Yet here I write, hoping that you who are struggling like me might take a little comfort in reading words that are yours but not yours, and in thinking thoughts that are yours but not yours. In a way, let this little, oft-neglected cyberspasm be for you a Lorax of the heart. My name is the Lorax, I speak for the trees-- and for the selves that awake and are not sure they're still asleep.

I have been depressed for a while, possibly over the course of the entire last year. During seminary, I held it together in the name of meeting achievable goals: get that paper in. Ace that exam. Memorize and synthesize and push push push. But once seminary finished and I was cast into that nebulous task known as "ministry", my self-perception shifted. No longer the open-handed student, the wide-eyed wonder, now the broken amongst the broken, the man whose helmet slips from his fingers as he watches his comrades fall at his side. I went to Hong Kong last summer in hopes of remembering-- and was duly remembered-- but when I returned, the frustration, the anger of being as I am visited itself upon me, driving me into some deep places, places I had not known could exist in the human psyche.

And I do not use the term "psyche" loosely. A student of Greek will tell you that it comes from the Greek word, well, "psyche" (pronounced "ps-oo-kay"), meaning our souls, our lives, our selves. It is not merely my thoughts, but my feelings, my cognitions, my habits, my unpredictable inner jig with God.

It was a hard late summer, autumn, and winter last year. I thought of suicide once, and that alarmed me enough to seek counseling, something I have been regularly engaged in throughout the last year and a half. Some who read this and who know me would say "why would you think of suicide? Do you know who you are and what you mean to me and us?" Even more, those who only see me on Sunday morning or leading a group would probably be surprised that I, the somewhat sought-after bachelor, the spiritual-seeming guy, the athlete, the scholar, the preacher, the speaker, the writer-- that this man would want to destroy himself. But for those who have thought of it, you know that this is precisely the most difficult thing to realize when you contemplate it: your worth. I could only consider killing myself if I thought there was no one counting on me, no one loving me, and no one caring for me. And still, I am strong enough in my self-monitoring and dead enough to my pride that upon realizing the thought was taking place, I sought help. I reached out, perceptions be damned. I was not in a good place, and I needed help. The reverse is true: I do have people who love me, who care for me, who think I'm the bees knees not because I contribute meaningfully to their lives, but because of who I am. This is the truth that I still cling to as a tangible sign of God's pleasure in me.

Months passed. The dawn came and I felt better for a while, then went. The last half year has been one crushing blow after another, such that each little thing, each little bump, has opened up wounds anew. I was weakened in the early summer, and after a series of events and circumstances that I was helpless to control, I was left empty by early fall-- yet, apparently, not emptied enough.

It came to a head a week ago when, after being saddened by something I saw, I sank even further, and the pain became too much to bear. I returned again to thoughts of ending my life. Yet here is where a measure of grace breaks through: I knew enough to know how severe it was becoming. I had no real plan, and the momentary plan I had I knew would not really be enough and that I would probably make a mess of it. It was not an attention-getting device, for I knew that many people were praying for me. It was that I wanted the pain to end, to stop feeling so crummy that much of the joy of life was being systematically drained from me like a vampire bat latching onto the leg of a cow. I realized then that many things had become difficult for me not because they were inherently hard to accomplish, but because the joy I had taken in them (yes, I am acquainted with lines of thought that we ought to "take joy in the Lord", but what I mean is that the joy I had was the joy of "feeling God's pleasure" as I did them) was gone. Writing, running, reading, preaching-- it was all so difficult. Most Sundays I put on a brave face and walked away wounded within, knowing that even though I had done my best to be honest about how I was feeling my way through some text, most people could not understand that I felt as though I was being torn apart by wild horses. And it felt that evening as I sat, staring but not seeing, that the tearing was complete. The night closed in. I was alone.

I struggled into bed at around 4 that night, and slept violently, hoping that the drink would finally work and that the pain would ease. It didn't. I awoke the next day with a headache and still wondering why I needed to continue in this pain. I knew the arguments against suicide because it is, for some, a forfeit of your salvation, but whoever is considering it is not in a good frame of mind. In fact, it is a psychic (that word again) illness, something I am not sure God's mercy does not cover.

What kept me from it? By dwelling on how much my premature, self-inflicted departure would hurt the people I love. I am not a coward in the typical sense, but in the final analysis, more a lover than I thought. I could not bear the thought of my parents having to bury me. I could not think of my sister's face at the funeral. The sight of my congregation's ashen countenances and self-recriminations about what more they could have done to stop it made me gag. No, despite the pain, I knew I was loved. Not just by God who seems so distant, but by real people and in real time. I could not and cannot do it because I care too much for them. I wanted to escape the pain, to finally be free of it, but not when it means burdening others with the questions and my pain, now magnified and diffused amongst them all. I could not do it because I am loved, and in my little and halting way, I love them also.

You who read this and are similarly depressed and deep in your isolation will ask "so what about me? What about me whom no one loves, whom no one sees, whom no one remembers or cares for?"

I cannot answer you. I don't know. But I only know that you are in pain. As am I.

A thought occurred to me as I lay there. I had done everything I possibly could over the years to manage my stress in healthy ways. I had been running four or five times a week, totaling up to 65k as I had trained for and completed my second marathon in October. I had been eating well, aside from occasional indulgences in chips and beer (all right, all right, and dark chocolate and red wine) to enhance the experience of watching professional sports and/or cheesy mood-elevating melodramas. I had, for the most part, been sleeping as much as possible and monitoring my stress levels. But due to the circumstances of the months, the stress had gotten unmanageable, and my capacity had gotten overwhelmed. I was seeing a counselor, but it wasn't enough. I was being prayed over, but it wasn't enough. I was talking my way through it with loving friends and family, but that wasn't enough. For the first time, I actually began to wonder if something was physiologically wrong with me-- that the wiring in my brain had finally blown?

I didn't want to get out of bed that day, but I did, resolve strengthened to fight. I would get medication, a thing I am reluctant to take part in because what I know of it is that it never cures one's depression, it only, in the words of a friend who had taken them at one time, "keeps you from bottoming out." The issues that caused the depression are still there, the circumstances that feel like death by a thousand cuts still real. Drugs were the one thing I hadn't been trying, the one way I had not been attempting to, as someone (thank you) has said for me, "rage, rage against the dying of the light." I called some people. They responded, and spent the afternoon and early evening with me, their very presence alone a comfort and reminder of why I had not ended my life the night before. When they were with me, it did not have to be a lengthy existential discussion. In fact, the most helpful thing I talked about that day was football.

I got medication, but only as a last resort, a resort which I have yet to visit. It sits in a bottle in my cupboard next to some Tylenol 3's I never took for gum surgery I had last year. It sits in my cupboard like a safety net, in case the darkness gets too much and no one is answering their phones. It is not as though I am disobeying doctor's orders to be on medication-- my doctor has only prescribed it as a measure at hand, one more resource to bring in while I wrestle, while I, it must be said, fight the good fight. (at least, I hope this fight is good.) My doctor and counselor tell me I am doing all the right things in managing it, this quiet, shadowy monster under my bed. I am talking about it with close friends and family. I am receiving prayer without responding to the obligation to pray for others (in other words, letting myself be ministered to). I am in the counselor's office and our sessions have been more intense and aggressive: I walk out feeling hollowed and clean, and though I often cry at these sessions, it is cleansing. I have also stopped drinking alcohol and have moved onto warm milk with almond powder. And, despite a nagging knee injury, I am still running and in the gym whenever I can gather myself enough for the act.

It is still difficult, though. I hate the feeling of being useless, and now being down for the count, I am feeling even more useless as I want to be productive and useful. At the very least, part of me whines as I rest, wanting to be the good shepherd and out visiting the flock-- until I force myself to remember that I am not the Good Shepherd after all. Someone else is. I have years upon years (I think) to work and play in the fields of the Lord. Now is my time to work through the pain, to sift my ashes, to rise up against that most impenetrable of walls, myself.

I took last Sunday away from my congregation and went to First Baptist, where I hoped to hear Darrell preach. I bused downtown early last Sunday, feeling the nip of early winter air making my nose run. My heart made a peculiar flop as I approached the grey stone church, for on the sign out front, I knew Darrell would be preaching exactly what God wanted me to hear that day: "The Bright Morning Star." It was a sermon I'd heard from Darrell at least twice before, and it was, in a strange way, exactly what I'd hoped he would be preaching again.

In it, Darrell speaks of his own experience with depression and suicidal thoughts. Unlike mine, his occurred at moments when things seemed to be going well, but the will to live was somehow gone. It was on a leave from his church one night 28 years ago that he read in the last chapter of Revelation, "I am the bright Morning Star." The appearance of Jesus, the insignifcant-seeming little pinpoint of light in the midst of so great a darkness, is the point at which the night is at its most complete, its deepest-- and yet at the beginning of its decline as the bright Morning Star pulls the day in behind it.

It had much to do with what I was feeling. As Darrell quoted Thomas Torrance, "John was left to bleach and rot on the rocks of Patmos." It was the same with me: I could theologize and say that Jesus had beaten death, that the resurrection had happened, that my faith was not based on an unfounded rumour. But here, in the middle of so deep a night, where was the evidence of that great victory over sin and evil and death? Should there not be some difference? Some change? Should the world not be different and things become well? And, I asked along with Darrell as tears started from my eyes, should I also not become well? I am tired of being sick. Tired of being sad. Tired of finding ways to manage my pain. So tired. Bleached and rotten and wondering whether I am forsaken after all.

He said several key things that I am still holding onto. The first is that Jesus is the bright Morning Star, and his appearance hails the end of the night contrary to all evidence that surrounds it. It is unbelievable that the night should end because it seems so completely overwhelming, yet this is the word of Jesus to us. The second is that though I am often led to wonder if Jesus is true to his promises that the night shall end, the ferocity of the night does not negate the word of Jesus, it validates it. This valley of the shadow of death I walk through is this deep and difficult not because the Gospel of Christ is that weak, but that the Gospel of Christ is that strong, and knowing this, the night does everything it can to keep it from coming in.

And finally, something new that I had not heard Darrell say before: "no matter where you run, you will run into Jesus. He has you in his hands. You cannot outrun God." We made eye contact a few times during the sermon, but I am never completely sure whether preachers see me or whether they gloss over my head. But part of me wondered if this was what Darrell was saying to me in a tacit way. He knows I am a pastor of my own church in Vancouver. He knows I ought to be with my people on a Sunday morning. Was I now burned out and running from the flame? Was I now just another statistic, another young one fallen by the wayside as the night became too much, too deep?

The night is deep. The darkness complete. Yet, and I hold this lightly, I am wondering now why Jesus has appeared to me. I have neglected my life of "seeing" prayer for months now because of some very difficult and indigestible things that have been said to me because of it. Yet last week, a new picture that I have been turning over in my head was given. By reason of this post already being too long (and days in the writing), I may need to share it some other time-- yet it has been a constant source of comfort as I struggle, waist deep and helpless in dark waters. I am only starting to see that Jesus has appeared because the night, I hope (but do not yet see!), is over, and the day is coming, the Kingdom coming, the hope of glory being revealed in everything now coming clear.

I shook hands with Darrell after the service.

He said, "I saw you in the congregation."

I said, "Yes, I thought you might have. Good to see you."

He said, "Good to see you too." Then, he leaned in with that meaningful look I have often seen in his eye. "Did it come through?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, thinking that he was simply asking whether God's Word had come through to me that morning. Darrell, being the best preacher I know, is not known for being unable to deliver God's Word accurately and on time. I had thought it was a simple preacher's question about how he did.

But later, when in my counselor's office and telling her of this, she rolled her eyes.

"Don't you see? He was talking to you," she half-laughed at my lack of understanding. I laughed too, and smiled at the thought that Darrell was thinking of me even as he was preaching, and that the words I had taken and written so that I might not forget them were words that he was inspired to speak to me, the lost sheep, that day. Yes, the lost sheep-- but even now as I write, strangely assured again that this ridiculous lost sheep cannot be snatched from the Father's hand.

That Sunday, I went to Chapters on Robson and browsed through books, feeling saddened by the prospect of entering so wide a market. Yet my hands were led to the Complete Works of T.S. Eliot, and there, after a few flips, I read what I have reprinted above. I felt, and still feel, that God is speaking to me not only through inspiring Darrell, but by the words of the poet. These are watchwords for me even now in the night. I am to go by a way I do not know to become what I am not yet. To arrive where I am, I must go where I am not, by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. The comfort is small, the light of the Morning Star so dim, the night so great and so cold. Yet with what strength these palsied hands have, I will cling to these words, to these hopes.

I have been wondering whether I ought to make this post public or not, but in the end, have decided to make it so. Those of you who are in my congregation who are reading this now (and have read this far into the longest post I have ever written-- I'm sorry, but there is so much to say! And in this instance, I think, you have been better served by a longer excursus than a brief one) I would ask of you to, for the moment, keep such knowledge to yourselves and not discuss it over Sunday lunch-- at least, not until I have a moment to speak of this honestly with the congregation at large. We are not, as you know, in the business of hiding pain in our little podunk church-- but we need time to figure the best way to share such pain, since not everyone is capable of handling such things as sensitive as their pastor's psyche. We will likely talk about it in public, but not before the time is right and the people prepared.

And for you, the casual surfer who has stumbled onto this, you will likely have read this far for one of two reasons. First, that you are now wondering who I am and what sort of fool shares so intimately? And I would answer that I am the only sort of fool who gives what he does not own, himself, and freely, so that you might in your own way be encouraged. Or perhaps, you are in a second party--at the end of your rope and free-falling. In that case, I am sorry for your pain. I wish I could make it instantly better, but if I have learned one thing in the last while, it is that I am helpless and cannot even cure myself. However, for what it's worth, I too am waiting for daybreak. I too, am thrust into darkness. You are not alone, for if you are cast down and waiting as I am, then, for as much comfort as this may bring us, we wait and suffer together in our separate agonies. We each have our own crosses to carry-- and they are not light! Nor is crucifixion painless. But even as we are torn apart, perhaps we can hope together that somehow, somehow, we might attain to the resurrection of our deaths.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:11:33 GMT

Restless today.

I look back on some of the older posts I've written and try to remember who that person was. Who was he, that one so fascinated with new ideas and concepts like a magpie with his shiny things? Who was he, the young man full of piss and vinegar-- and hope-- to change the way things were going? Where is that dynamism? Who was that dynamo? I read backwards and wonder where he's gone, because the man now in that man's place is carved down to the bone.

Perhaps I am tired. Ministry is tiring. I am embarrassed by my fatigue because I know how hard my congregants work and what kinds of hours they pull. I am ashamed of my lack of endurance because that, physically speaking, is one thing I tend to be good at. But being a pastor is tiring in a new way-- in the way that holding a naked live wire can be tiring. It is not as though I have distortions about me being the priest who connects the people with God. If anything, I am tired of being a prophet, of speaking and teaching and walking and weeping, and feeling as though the words I speak and the lines I write fall to the ground, never to bear fruit.

I was complaining the other day to my mother about this, about how hard it is to feel "useless." An accountant is done her work when the balance sheet balances. A teacher opens minds and is, for better or worse, a member of the establishment. A baker or a cook brings out the goodness of creation for others to enjoy. A pastor? I don't know about other pastors, but there is a very real sense of worthlessness as you strain at the yoke. Perhaps I'm more self-reflective than some others (all right, so I'm very self-reflective) but part of me longs for a less subtle occupation, all the while knowing such an occupation would, in time, drive me nuts.

My mom replied something to the effect that I won't know the end of what I'm doing now, because so much of it is focused on what lasts beyond death. All right, so she didn't use those precise words, but it was a stark reminder of how different this life, this calling, ended up being. Sunday after Sunday I feel as though a large part of my task is to remind everyone that this is not it. That there's more to living than being alive, and that a large part of faithful living means being faithful to the vision and understanding that we all, no matter our station or income or state of mind, are wayfarers and strangers.

Yet this is what many do not want to be reminded of. Time after time I'm asked to be more practical or to give people things they can apply to their lives. This demand has always confused me. Isn't it good that people get practical advice on how to live this vision of the Kingdom here on the wealthy West Side? Isn't it good that people have measurable goals and standards to work towards so that they know they're "doing fine"? For my part, I am trying not to give them good advice, I am trying to proclaim good news, something I'm afraid most don't see. For when I contemplate what the good news is, the burden to be practical is lifted in large measure, and courage to live an audacious life returns anew. That is what I would hope for those I am charged to watch over while waiting for the dawn: the apprehension of the good news, and the freedom of life to work it out.

However, I need not tell you that such musings are often seen as impractical or pie-in-the-sky, which often makes me feel even more useless. So I sit and read and pray and write, feeling useless, wondering whether, in another man's words, this is after all a weak Gospel?

The thought that this is a weak Gospel troubles me deeply. Perhaps this is why in recent years I have been more alert to the charismata, in hopes that perhaps I might be reassured that real change can occur and that I am not simply living out a fool's hope of breaking even while playing Pascal's Wager. I sought the gifts because I wanted to know that what I am doing is what God is doing, and so am in line with Him, not some maverick professional preacher who speaks a pretty word but ceases to believe it himself. I sought the signs because I am sometimes so uncertain of the signs of resurrection in my own life and in the lives of others around me; like a man waiting for green heads of daffodils and crocuses to come poking up through black sod and so hail the start of Spring. I sought these things, but now, in the wake of a rather tumultuous summer where many confusing things have been said, I have not sought them because I do not know what to make of them other than to simply say, along with Mary, "may it be unto me as You say it shall be."

There is hope, but it is faint. I hope those who have broken hearts might be healed. I hope those who live in nightmares might be given new dreams. I hope those who are trapped in cages of their own making might be given a key. I hope because I find it hard to see people suffer under the weight of living in a world that groans as it waits for its full redemption. I too, a man in this world, also groan as I wait, and wait, and wait-- and wait-- for the Dayspring to appear.

Confused with this is the sense that there is in me, for lack of a better term, an eros, a passion, a love, that of late has known little direction. Maybe this is simple loneliness, if something as complex as loneliness can ever be called simple. I would look to God for affirmation or a sense of Presence, but I know I need more, I need the Son Incarnate in his Church and those clinging to the edges of her. A large part of me yearns for this recognition of otherness because it is all too easy for one such as me to get lost in the woods with no one to Polo my Marco. On days like today, I would hope that she would come into my study and, kneading her fingers into my neck, demand we go for a walk because I have been cooped up for far too long. Or that he would climb into my lap and ask me to read him that story in the funny voice I used the other night.

O for some sweet inconvenience!

Instead, the inconveniences I have are the ones I make, and I will make one now by running into what is left of the westering sun.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:54:04 GMT

She once asked me what I did with my anger. No, check that. She once asked me what I did with my stress.

"Go for a run," I said. "Cook something. Bake something. Have a beer or glass of wine at the end of the day."

What? You expected "pray"? That's the "Mighty Man of God" answer, the "My-Isn't-He-So-Pious" answer--not the honest answer when you're out of prayer like you're out of coins at the laundromat and you still have a load of dirty underwear to go. When I'm stressed, I do anything I can to avoid meeting that stress head on. I'll watch a movie. I'll play Kongregate for hours. I'll daydream of flashbulbs and Oprah and black tie dinners for having "made it" as a novellist.

This highlights how I've tended to deal with anger-- mostly unhealthily. Conventional wisdom says that we need to channel our anger effectively, but what if you don't know what you're quite angry about? What if, as they say depressed people are, that anger is most keenly focused upon yourself? In these cases, I'm not sure how I can channel my anger effectively. So in recent days, I've been trying something new-- mostly, at her suggestion.

"So what are you going to do with all these things you're feeling? This anger? This guilt over this anger? This disappointment? This sadness?"

"I was going to just let it pass," I said, hoping that for once I wouldn't be lying when I said I could let things pass after all. "You know, try to let it go with time..."

She leaned forward, her bright blue eyes twinkling over the tops of her dark brown glasses. "Oh yes. That's worked really well for you before, hasn't it?"

Touché.

So I began thinking more seriously about other ways of handling negative emotions, and the one way I have not tried is to meet it head on by talking it out with the people whom I say I'm in community with. Yes, that dreaded 'c' word that becomes so meaningless with repeated use, but with care, becomes a concept that, because we are all in Christ, needs to be worked out carefully and, in cases like these, sacrificially. And sacrifice, I need not tell you, is always painful.

Part of me railed against the idea from the beginning. Who was I to bother other people with my difficult emotions? Wasn't everyone just going to get along nicely without me rocking the boat and speaking the truth not only of other people (as I am becoming used to doing) but, for once in this rickety life, to speak the truth of myself? Perhaps this was all a very "cultural" thing where the dictates of harmony and immediate peace outweigh the stresses of confrontation and addressing the problem as what we always envisioned adults to actually be like? (The irony, of course, is that adults almost never work this out. I always thought that adults did the mature thing until I became one and realized I almost never do.)

So I did the mature thing: I sat on it for a few days. And in those few days, I felt my pain subside just a smidgen. Why would I disturb the scabbing process taking place over my heart? Well, because I wasn't being emotionally healthy and I knew it. I was severing lines of communication and openness for fear of discomfort. I was squashing a tidal wave of powerful emotions because I was afraid of what I might do and how I might do it. Repression isn't the right word-- though I probably have done that in the past. Repression implies I don't know it's there and it comes out in a tumour somewhere else in my character. No, this was just good ol' bottling up the pain and hoping something good comes of it.

Nothing good came of it. I was being oversensitive to everything, every little slight, every little comment. It was hurting me to keep sitting on it like a hen incubating a snake egg that will hatch its own doom.

So I went and tried to do the mature thing. The "adult" thing. And man, did it hurt even more. My instinct is not to talk about it at all, but because I was hoping to actually live out what I teach when I talk about reconciliation and mediation, I knew I needed to go through it. Not just so that I can tell others "yeah, I've done that" and so give myself a little street cred when it comes to working things out in community, but for my own sanity I needed to breathe deep and plunge in.

I wish I could say that I said everything that I really was feeling, but so much of what I was feeling was a confused jumble that half of what I was saying was awry. Yes, I was angry but no, I wasn't angry and you but yes, I was angry at you, but no, I wasn't, so I must have been angry at myself, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes...

The cumulative effect of all this has been that I have opened up even more cans of worms. I feel a bit like a raw wound, but there's maggots in it cleaning out all the necrotic tissue, giving me an even chance at healing well. What I fear is mostly for others as I wonder whether I have handled such difficult and volatile emotions well. It would have been easier, after all, just to leave it. Not to say anything. To smile and gasp "I'm all right, Praise the Lord." But that would have been dishonest, and it would not have silenced the sarcastic quip that rattled about my head: "Yes, that's worked really well for you before, hasn't it?" No, I needed to forge on. Perhaps I am being selfish in expressing pain in a semi-public way. Perhaps I was taking too big a risk in believing that others could hear such complex, negative emotions come pouring out of me. Most people don't know what's going on, but they know I'm in pain, and so they pray: "Oh God, help my moody, oversensitive pastor. Help him feel better soon, because when he's depressed, it makes me feel sad too. And I hate feeling sad."

All right, so they probably don't pray that way. They're probably a lot more mature about it than I think they are.

Handling these negative emotions well and living in emotional honesty, well, sucks. I know from a purely theoretical standpoint (in the same way I tend to know the approach of the eschaton-- with a fair level of certainty) that this is the way to go. But after talking it out, not only do I feel as though my anger has been misplaced in several instances (leaving me with the tortuous question, "just who am I angry at anyway?"), but that I have also opened up wounds in others. I hate that feeling, but then I also need to keep in mind that I'm not necessarily responsible for other people's feelings. That doesn't mean I have carte blanche to be an asshole, it just means that sometimes, even when I do my level best to be as honest and as collected as I can be, I am likely to be treading on hearts from time to time.

Someone characterized it as me "lashing out". It stung to hear it, though that's probably closest to the truth. Yet it didn't feel like lashing out to me. If I was just lashing out, I would have not tried to watch what I was saying nor even bothered sitting down with people I'm trying to love. (yes, love.) Me lashing out is me swearing profusely and walking out the door. Me lashing out is going with personal attacks. This is not me lashing out. This is, as far as I can possibly help it, me trying to communicate that I'm chock full of shitty-ass shittiness.

I don't know how this ends yet. Maybe you'll never find out either. I'm hoping that maybe I'll be able to place emotion to circumstance with a greater degree of accuracy than I have been (i.e.: "I feel _________ because of _________"), but I sort of doubt that I'll get that far in any appreciable near future. Instead, what I have left is a muted maelstrom of difficult feelings-- of feeling sad, of feeling angry, of feeling, well, yucky-- and what I have to be content with is the knowledge that somehow, some way, this is me getting better.

Monday, November 09, 2009

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:40:09 GMT

I'm still not right. The more astute reader will recognize that I rarely am right, both in head and in heart and in matters of truth or fiction.

Some mornings I struggle to get up because of the pain. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but a lot of what people say to me is hurtful, even when they don't mean it to be. Is it because I'm just being oversensitive? Probably! But a large part of me wishes folks would be a little more sensitive to what they say. Sometimes, what makes a safe place to be one's broken self has little to do with how much people really do have good intentions of being helpful and encouraging and sometimes has a lot to do with their skill in it.

But this isn't about that. It's about me realizing that I can't stop giving. And sometimes, the giving makes being on the receiving end of the shit stick easier to take.

I went to preach at another church today and felt bad for the pastor. It was not a healthy church, and the pastor is younger than I am, although into his fourth year in ministry. He was clearly overwhelmed by a lot of the things going on there, and when he offered to pray for me, I stopped him and said "I don't want you to pray for me. I'm here to minister and to serve your congregation, but not just by sermonizing. Let me pray for you instead." So I did. Sounds terribly noble, right? I'd say so too, except that I can almost hear my counselor's voice floating in over my shoulder "are you hiding behind your role again?" Uh, not as far as I know. Maybe I felt extra compassionate because I could sense how much pain this young fella was in-- and I could only have sensed that much pain if I was sensitive to my own pain. Sometimes what I carry around with me threatens to deaden my senses, but others times, it does make me more sensitive to what's going on in other people.

Not all the time, of course. Just some of the time.

I was feeling tired and rotten on Saturday morning coming out of the gym. Two older women were attempting to move a table, and I felt for them. The world felt conspiratorial. I was alone, and slightly enraged at the unfairness of everything. But seeing them struggle to move the table around tweaked something in me. It was like watching your mom try to move heavy stuff around when you know you can probably do it a lot faster-- so I stepped up and offered my help. After we moved the table, one of the ladies asked "do you work here?"

Here's what I wanted to say: "No ma'am. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night."

Here's what I ended up saying. "No ma'am. Just wanted to help."

I felt a lot better as I strode out of the community center. Cynics will say it's because I was safe in my roleplaying. But I touched something good in me when so much of what had been pouring out until then was more bile and more bitterness. I don't know why I suddenly felt better, but there is something to transcending one's self by means of kindness. My mind's too tired at the moment to really dwell on that, but in the home stretch of the day, that's as much as I can say. Perhaps you should think about it for me.

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:14:00 GMT

It's been so long that I had to try a number of times to get my password right. But I figure my readership has died down enough now that few would actually see this post, thus making it what it once was: a semi-secluded spot to puke uncontrollably from fear and discouragement.

I didn't think I'd ever come back here. There wasn't any point. Either some people gave too much of a shit when I wrote, and most everyone else couldn't give two shits if I did. That leaves a shit in between, which pretty much sums up where I am these days.

It was a terribly tumultuous summer, both inside and out. It never ceases to amaze me that most folks think "oh, everything's fine" when they see me on Sunday morning or another context. You know what that is, though? Because when all is said and done, I'm a fucking professional, and it's not about me in circumstances where my personal problems are causing me to bleed dry from within. I cannot striptease my pain in front of the flock because there are only a few who would understand--and, unfortunately, a few who would be sent into valleys of their own because they are the ones by whose hands I have suffered. So I will not let them know. I will only swallow the pain as I swallow painkillers. I will hide behind my blandest smile. I will mouth platitudes. I will offer prayer. But within, I am rotting away; my bones know no soundness.

There are stories of how C.H. Spurgeon would get peeled from his bed by his church elders so that he could get up to preach, then would return to his bed once the service was over. It wasn't exactly like that for me, but were it not for friends and yes, professional counselors, I don't think I would have bothered to leave my apartment at all. The thing about being self-aware is that you end up doing whatever you can to divert deeper depression: you keep exercising, you eat as best you can, and you try to get enough sleep. But sometimes, it's not enough. I've been taking sustained beatings over the last few months in many different ways, and it's still not all good. In fact, over the last few days, I've been in the absolute shits. I've realized in the last few months that I'm actually very good at hiding stuff when I want to, and, more frighteningly, awesome at playing the I'm-so-fucking-happy game.

I slipped this summer. Many times. Into depression, out of depression. Sometimes wondering why the hell I need to get up at all. Sometimes wondering what the possible use of soldiering on could be.

I tried. I tried! I wanted and desired and prayed. I don't think I ever wanted such a thing as I did when I prayed for this, the change of my wounded heart. It was secret, it was furious, it was the work of a mountain lifting up its skirts and planting itself in the sea. Yet, my cold heart warmed too late, too late. So I am left behind, left alone, left holding the bag-- again. The moment when my heart of stone became a heart of flesh is exactly the moment when it became vulnerable to being torn apart. Story of my fucking life. Why have a heart of flesh at all? Is it not better to be what I have projected myself to be: a stone monolith--uncaring, distant, yet strong?

What for? What for, this new pain? Were it to make me compassionate, I mayhap would smile and say "good good", but all I feel now is bitterness and all that comes out of me is groaning. Were it to cleanse me, as some had thought it would, all this has done is scar me even more deeply-- a surprising thing, since I was not aware of how open I had become. What was all this striving for? For naught, I should say, and even less than naught to a terrible hurt that I do not know what to do with. Pain, pain, go away, come again another day. Every day I wake up and am in pain, and the only way I know to alleviate it is to medicate mind and body. And yes, I know you don't know what this is about, but I do, and for now, that's enough. No one can know the seemingly innumerable hurts I have gone through in the last year, and even if they do, no one understands how I have processed them and felt worn down by every single stroke of the lash. The first I could stand. The second tingled. The third I could feel my skin break. By the tenth, I am left an incoherent, gibbering mess; sobbing into my wounds and begging for it to stop. Enough!

I don't know why I'm writing here. Maybe it's because I've written through the last dozen or so pages of my journal complaining to God. Maybe it's because I spend every morning feeling my tongue curl with curses; and at night when I drift to sleep, my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth in sorrow. Maybe it's because most of my friends probably couldn't stand a sustained barrage of f-bombs as I am prone to use when I'm angry or tired or discouraged or, in this case, all three. More likely, it is the revelation of pain that most cannot stand. You know, I think I just figured out why I'm writing here: it's because in some weird way, it helps to have someone bear witness to your pain.

I said as such to Cousin Ted and my buddy Phil last week when I held them in confidence. I have other friends whom I may call, but I am afraid that they might be exhausted by the difficulty of caring for someone they love and so lapse into explanations. It is not as though I really want theological answers that explain it all. I can come up with enough myself! It is the counselor in me remembering that this is my shit, and even though others are trying to walk with me, it's still my problem, not theirs. They cannot bear my pain for me. Only I can. In that way, I am alone. But all can bear witness, and this, dear reader (if you have read this far) is the boon I ask of you today: bear witness. I am laid low and silent, a shiftless shadow wandering the halls of Sheol. Voiceless. Sleepless. Formless. Bear witness! I am a worm, not a man.

I don't want theological answers. I want to be loved through this, borne up by the reassurance of God's love for me. God is good, you say? Then I need proof! I have felt the care of God in some ways: if not by dint of my own flattened will, that struggles to rise like a prizefighter from the mat, then by the attendance of others to me; angels incarnate, those bearing the salve of pity and understanding. Mockers say "oh, does the little boy need his pity party so badly?" And I say "yes. Only heartless bastards do not know what it means to live with a broken heart." I have lived with mine for so long that very often I feel only as a quarter of a man, not even half-a-man, a speck of what I think I should be. This long grief, this long sorrow-- it does not kill you, but it shrinks you, pulls you down into the corner of some dark box where there is no warmth and no light.

I have only begun to ask the most dreaded question we all must eventually ask of our pain: where is God in all this? And for me, the pain is still too near, so I can only throw up my hands and say "hidden". I wish it were as simple as feeling the comfort of His presence, but now, there is nothing. Only the hum of my refrigerator and more silence beyond. I do not know where God is in all this, because right now, it feels as though He is not in it at all and that He is asleep or uncaring. And perhaps that is the best thing I have written thus far: that perhaps God was not in this at all-- yet what I hope for is the redemption of this suffering. Maybe not on this side of life, for it may well be that I will weep out the rest of my days, but maybe on the other side, when I am raised anew, all of the way this sorrow has carved me out will prepare me to become a vessel of some greater joy.

I can only hope. Right now, after having spent the evening doing my damnedest to drink myself into a stupor and then found, to my dismay, that my tolerance is much better than I thought it was-- this moment, I can only breathe. And each breath draws the darkness nearer. Yes, darkness, you are my closest friend.

This Is It For Now and Perhaps For All Time

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:10:24 GMT

Though I sort of doubt it.

The last few weeks have been tumultuous-- not only with regards to personal stakes, but over the last week, my spirituality has been greatly challenged. In particular, the way I write and what I write for has come so sharply into question that I am going to leave it for a while-- and leave this blog entirely. No more even infrequent updates-- just nothing for a while after I write these scant few words. Ah! I'd better make them count.

Am I scared? Yes. Though I still believe that the power of self-expression is one I have received from God, the places I go to and the powers I draw on when I write may not be. Now that is a hard thing to hear, especially when one believes all along that one has been labouring for the glory of the Lord and the furtherance of His Kingdom. Yet I am frightened more because I have relied so heavily on knowing myself and being known as a budding writer that to see myself as valuable and significant outside of what I do and have done is a leap I cannot, at this moment, make. The question of "who am I" is answered easily enough by "you are God's beloved son", but there is no feeling in me to answer it thus. I might as well be saying "4 is the sum of 2 and 2", a mathematical fact that has no emotive value except to say that God is rational and constant.

The promise of all of this is that I should know myself as God's Beloved, something I admit that I am not always capable of seeing. The last time I remember feeling such love was when I returned from a run one Friday afternoon and, walking in through the door, suddenly felt the closeness of God and something of a divine embrace. I choked back a sob. In that little moment, every nagging worry that I carry with me evaporated in the blaze of such immense gentleness.

This goes further, deeper than just writing-- though writing is how it often gets in. It touches on painful memories I have yet to be healed from, glances across betrayal and nakedness of many kinds, and works tendrils and runners into what I do now. There is, I am told, a taint to my writing and to my preaching that reaches the people. Hearing this makes me not want to preach anymore-- what preacher worth his or her salt wants to be known for poisoned lips? Yet I will still preach. Only now, I must be more careful where I draw from when I do.

Those of you who can pray, I would ask to pray-- though I am somewhat tired of people laying hands on me over the last couple of weeks. There are things operating around me and in me that I am only now becoming aware of, so pray that these things be dispelled and cast away. I'll not do them anymore honour than to mention them in briefest terms for now, but pray that I might be delivered.

Until I write again,

ed

Friday, June 19, 2009

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:37:38 GMT

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper

-- T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

I've had this fragment of T.S. Eliot stuck in my head for the last few days, not really knowing why I should have such a thing in there to begin with. The last time I read this poem was over a year ago, I think-- but strange how some things bubble up from our subconscious when we least expect it.

Today was a difficult day. I went from contentment to anger to bitterness to acceptance to gritted joy in the span of a few hours-- all because of money. I am giving up the last of the "Smaug vintage", as Bilbo might say, and quite rightly so, for it is all that I have ever been able to save when I went "there and back again."

Giving it up means also giving up certain dreams, things that weren't really happening anyway. I was hoping to use that money for another degree-- now, I don't think I'll have the money for that. I was hoping to also use it for a wedding-- but I need not tell you how far that is from me as well. No, the money was just sitting there, waiting to be used, and used it shall be-- and for good cause.

I didn't give it up easily, though. I raged. The first thing on my lips after I was confronted with this new poorer reality was fucking hell. I thought "why me" and sucked my thumb. I clenched my jaw until I thought my teeth would shatter in my mouth. And then, I heard from God.

It was as I was praying for someone else, it was as though God was challenging me on several different fronts, but the most important thing I heard was "some people need to be separated from their money." It was something my old pastor and mentor in Hong Kong once said about other people, but something I turn over in my head. However, this is what I usually mutter to myself as I watch congregants drive off in their nice cars to multi-million dollar houses on the West Side. I didn't think that I, the poor church mouse, would need to be ever separated from my money. Did I?

I guess I did. Later, another pastor at the meeting I was at mentioned Abraham at Mt. Moriah, and it all became incredibly clear. I was counting on that money for certain things-- for hope, for a future. It is a subtle thing. I was not, in one sense, depending upon God, but upon what He had provided. The LORD giveth, and the LORD taketh away, n'est-ce pas? And now, the decision on how to use it is taken from me, the burden of wealth no longer a part of my life. Not because I still don't have the capacity to pay bills or go out for occasional lunches, but because the option of doing anything more than I regularly do is now gone. That wealth was my Isaac, my hope for the continuation of a promise and a life.

Only this time, there was no ram in the thicket. My dagger sheared into my own flesh and blood until I cut it away from me. Quickly, quickly, quickly. I did it quickly so I would not feel it so much, yet the feeling of leaning on emptiness is discomfiting to say the least. Yet is it ever emptiness that I lean on? Will God actually still provide? Or is it really going to be like the Eliot poem-- "Not with a bang but a whimper."

O God, I hope You show up here. Not just for my sake, but You do realize people are watching, don't You? If not for me, then for Yourself then!