Journal : God's Absence Presence Faith

(Note: Searching beneath the surface, holy discontent, good questions – these are the elements that start and sustain a truly transformative journey. I will occasionally share some of the wonderings that began to move me from inherited pieties to what I call 'sustainable spirituality.')

I write for God first. I write equally for myself. I do not give audience-cues to my future readers. I do not explain or be cute or show off my writing “skills”; I do not preach sideways or grandstand. I do not humble-brag. I do not censor. I tell all. This journal is for me; it is for God. It is a spiritual exercise for my benefit. It is not an advertisement or project or future book. These are the rules.

I just broke them all.

Life is what happens between cigarettes. The ritual rolling of tobacco in little papers. The quick lick and seal. And there it is: a slim cylinder of perfection. I am alone. Alone with my thoughts. Or maybe with my smoking friend, who also knows the joy of silence. I awoke early to the screams of children and their catch-the-bus agenda, my mind having raced all night every time I stirred with the devastatingly urgent list of Things To Do and People to Please and the sickening shift of the sand we’ve built our lives on. Handshakes at the office followed, strategies, speed-rote prayers, and we’re off! But now, this, ten minutes of quiet. The tiny scrape of metal grinding and a yellow flame. (So many poems inspired by fire...) I light up. It’s not unlike yoga, really: “Deep breaths, slowly now. Breathe in. Breathe out. Feel your stress melting away.” Yes. I don’t know the chemistry, but I inhale and whether it’s nicotine in lungs, hitting the bloodstream, both or whatever, I feel my jaw-tension slack, my shoulders relax, I am calm and all will be well. For ten minutes. Of total, reflective solitude. I am at home in the universe. Then what we’ll call life will happen until the next one. A question: How would I live life if I’d smoked my last, if there were no cigarette to look forward to?

Paul: "Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!"

What is my woe to me?

Lord, are you my cigarette? My addiction I can’t quit? Is my desire to know you more deeply, experience you more fully, and follow you more faithfully a project to protect against pain? An escape? Could my hunger for righteousness be an appetite for acceptance, my pastoring a persona, my faith a fortification of my ego? If so, would it not be necessary for you to withhold yourself, disappear, empty me and my work? To evaporate like a plume of smoke?

Would you withdraw – give me withdrawals? How will I then live the time between you?

Let’s be clear. My hunger and addiction to God’s presence – what I really mean is my email inbox. God’s activity and proof of existence = my inbox. This is my command control center. It’s the engine of God’s kingdom in my life.

Now that I’m on the other side of this thing – actually, let me be precise: now that I’m deeper into it – I’d expect some more complete physical release. But no, I suppose 7 years (or 9, or 19, or 36, depending on when you start the count) of any lifestyle leaves you positively Pavlovian. I still wake every morning absolutely amped up. My mind races with fears and obligations. My heart throbs as if it’s had a fright. Most often as my first defensive move I resist the email waiting on iPad, iPhone, and MacBook and do Morning Prayer, keep the study portion of Benedict’s Rule (updated for our urban pastors), and hope that like coffee shakes the sleep they will melt my anxiety away. But this unrest is not like sleep. It’s more like a wetsuit with no zipper that I can’t get off, and now it’s getting unseasonably warm outside. I carry it on me and ride my bike through the Brooklyn death gauntlet a little too recklessly for a father of four. Or I go for a run, harder than I’m physically capable of. Sometimes I give in and smoke. I avoid people. The constricting weight goes with me.

Most of the Christian life (and ministry) is acquiring an adequate vocabulary for the inscrutable perils of life that will, eventually, befall each of us.

I used to think God was using me in his mission to change the world through endeavors like parenting, church planting, pursuing justice, and embodying the kingdom in word and deed. Through failure I am wondering if his primary mission is not to change the world, but to change me.

The fundamental necessary shift is this: to move from desiring God’s mission and kingdom and manifold gifts to desiring him. In himself. Full stop.

(...?)

These days I know God more by the shape of his absence than by his presence.