Wayside Pulpit

Some Kind of Healer

Ministry abounds with the concept of the wounded healer; the idea that we bring comfort and healing from those places inside us where we’ve been wounded. I think that this idea isn’t altogether true. I think that comfort and healing come not from wounds, but from the places we’ve been touched. It could be that we’ve been touched by grief, by happiness, by horror, by abandonment, by fear, by love, basically, by really anything.

I feel exposed when I preach. I find myself a few hours after a sermon wondering why in the world I told people all the stuff I did. I think I find writing a similar experience – though not quite as intense. I come forth to the world from the places that have touched me and they are very personal, so personal I don’t know if anyone can ever relate. The underlying fear being, “If you don’t relate, what does that say about my experience of the word? Am I as weird as I sometimes feel that I am? Am I normal?”

Am I wounded? No. Am I not wounded? No. The truth of the matter is, we are not about wounds, as much as theology and psychology would like to think we are. We are about the questions, the aches, the insights and the flashes of knowing and unknowing that pass through our experiences. The energy of this space, the whirling dervish of the soul, this is where healing comes from.

Oblique Strategies

I just finished writing the hardest sermon I’ve ever had to write. I still don’t know what it was so difficult. There wasn’t one moment when the ideas flowed, it was like slogging through wet snow to put together the final 2000 words. The text, Hosea 1:2-10 was a challenge for me and though my final interpretation is interesting, I’m still not sure if it will fly tomorrow morning. You think with preparing a manuscript ahead of time one would know if the thing was good, but the pulpit changes everything. I just never know what will happen.

I’ve been meaning to put a plug in for my favorite sermon writing help – Oblique Strategies I’ve rarely written a sermon without their help and this time around they were indispensable. The Oblique Strategies were first put together in card form by Peter Schmidt and Brian Eno in 1975. There were a number of hard card editions, but I use a freeware set put together by Curvedspace software for Mac OS X.

I can’t exactly explain how they work, but the Strategies are these creative unstuckers that get things moving again when all I’m seeing is a nice big wall. I usually pull out the cards when I catch myself leaning back in my chair and saying, “I have no idea where to go next.” Usually it only takes one or two cards to find the next direction, but sometimes, like in this sermon, I used at least five at various different points. The ones that synched the deal for this Hosea text were, “Retrace your steps” and “Which parts can be grouped?”

There is something really sweet about using a tool made by Brian Eno to help craft better sermons.

Undiscovered Value

Recently, John Stuart over at Heaven’s Highway, featured The Wayside Pulpit in his glimpse into the world of progressive Christians bloggers. It was a quite a hoot to see the Wayside up there with such awesome sites such as, Street Prophets and Faith in Public Life.

John made an insightful comment about the spiritual loneliness that progressives seem to encounter in their journeys of faith. This is the loneliness that often comes from living a faith that is built on questioning, discovery – unknowingness. Not all those who find themselves living under the progressive label relate to this sense of chronic uncertainty, but I know many upon many that do.

What I find fascinating is that faith without certainty is often seen as something to be grieved. Those who have a faith that gives them that rock-foundation will often look at my faith with pity, the underlying, but unsaid thought being, “If you only knew what I knew then your life would be so much better.” I still feel some resentment when I get these kind of patronizing glances, but I’m learning, gradually, to let it go.

Why do we assume that faith is supposed to answer our questions, provide us with certainty and fill us with comfort? Why do we not instead believe that faith is meant to challenge, make us question and fill us with uneasiness about ourselves and the societies in which we live?

For me, there is a grief that comes with a faith that doesn’t explain it all. I am forced to face the rawness of life in all its bloody complexity. This standing as witness is hard, it is challenging, it is often lonely, it sometimes makes me want to run away.

But the truth of the matter is, there is a captivating beauty to be found in the unknown. It is a beauty revealed to all of those who stand staunchly in the midst of shifting sand regardless of the fear that may call them to bedrock. Only those whose bones have been touched by this beauty can understand why the loneliness, the uncertainty, the grief and the sickening spiritual upheavals are more than worth the price of admission.

Honestly God

Today at the hospital I was reading a prayer book that someone had left in the chaplain’s office. It had a prayer based on a verse from Isaiah. I can’t recall the verse, but the idea was that god can be trusted for the future because god has always been there in the past.

I read the verse a couple of times and realized that this has not be my experience. I have never felt that god has been there for me. I can look back over my life and list situation after situation from which I was not saved, healed or given comfort. In fact, I cannot recall a time when I felt that god’s presence was with me during a really nasty stretch of life. I know all about the footprints poem, where god is said to carry us, but I have not felt carried. I have walked through so much in my life and I have done so basically alone.

This lament of, “Why have you forsaken me?” is timeless. It is only in this timelessness that I find any comfort whatsoever. I can read all sorts of things from scripture to medieval poetry confirming that god has left many of us feeling completely abandoned.

My response to the Isaiah reading today was first to cry and then ask god why, “Why in fact have you never been there for me?” I didn’t get an answer, but then, I didn’t expect one either. However, in the asking, somehow the loneliness that permeates all the days of life was lifted just a tiny bit.

What Weighs Me Down

I was talking to a friend today and had a flash of realization. I really believe that the thinner I am, the smaller the number on the scale, the more loveable and competent I am. The inverse then is, if I weigh more or feel heavier then surely no one loves me and I am as worthless as a rock in a field.

I suppose I am not alone in this belief; the belief that weight and body shape define whether or not I have worth as a human. Still, I feel pretty alone and stuck in my head on this issue. The social conditioning about body image and weight has been so powerful in my life that I cannot imagine how it is not true. I know that it is simply a belief, but I cannot believe it is only a belief. It is as true as true gets.

My friend that I shared this with said, “Well, you can let that one go.” I immediately became defensive. It is so easy for someone on the outside to take a really thick socio-spiritual issue of someone else and just cast it away like an unwanted fish. If it were so easy to let go, trust me, I’d let it go. So much of the dissatisfaction of my life is rooted in the social conditioning I have in my head related to perceptions of my body, my weight and my beauty.

I don’t know how to let this go. Just like I really don’t know how to let go of many of my deeply held beliefs. I’ve seen a few evaporate into the nothingness that created them, but for the most part I’m still holding on pretty tight.

If I think about the two religions that touch me the most, Christianity and Zen, both are fundamentally about letting go of socially conditioned beliefs. This knowing about letting go is an open window; the knowledge that I can move beyond what society has programmed me to be. Yet, even with the window, I don’t know how to get the ideas that hold me to fly from the room.

Why a god?

Why do I want a god in my life? This really is the first question to creating a god that I can live with; a god that I can turn to when needed. Yet, even as I write that statement I feel this wave of irritation waft through my head. Even this language of turning to, of living with, of needing makes me so uncomfortable. That is one of the issues that stands in the way for me in regards to god. I don’t want to want a god. I don’t want to need a god. I just want to do life by myself.

Yet, I am not doing it very successfully by myself. I think most people look at my life and wouldn’t agree with that statement. I’ve got the house, the money, the family, the cars, the pets, the career, the education… It all appears so nice and put together. But, really, behind it all, I am falling apart. I want a god who can help me pull it together.

I rarely trust others. Actually, rarely is not the truth, I don’t trust others. I don’t believe there is anyone out there in the world that would love me and care for me unconditionally. I feel that everyone who knows me is constantly judging me, my friends, my family, the people at work, a random stranger in a cafe. Yet, I believe that they are judging the façade, therefore, if they ever really knew who I was, what was going on in my life, the judgment would be so severe that I couldn’t handle it. I want a god that doesn’t judge, a god that is compassion and understanding, a god that is the one safe place to turn.

Being alive is hard for me, most of the time I really wish I wasn’t. I am overwhelmed by small things and run from the big things. I live in a space of constant self-judgment, wishing that I was someone different, that I was a better person. I have a negative filter on the world and feel very little joy. I notice myself always expecting the worse and rarely having gratitude for all that I have. I want a god that can heal this spirit sickness I’ve had my entire life.

Does this god exist? A god that pulls things together, a god that is a safe place to bare a soul, a god that heals what medicine can’t?

I’m skeptical but hopeful.

Letting God Go

I have a mixed relationship with God. I can tell you all the things I want to think about God; all the things I want to believe about God. I want to believe that God is all energy, all possibility and all the potential in the world. God would be, in this sense, the stuff of the life, the power of creativity and the innovation that comes from being awake, aware and jazzed about the gift of living. This is the kind of God I can sink my teeth into. This is a god, beyond God. This is the god that changes the world. This is the god that lives at the deepest core of life.

See, I can tell you what I want to believe.

However, I am still saddled with the God of my childhood, the God of the presses, the God of masses, the God of my country, the God who lives and reigns in all those old-time hymns. This is the God that controls; that punishes wayward children. This is the God who smites the wicked and teaches the faithful through hardship. This is the God who already has a plan for me and for you and our job is simply to live it out without much say on our part. We are part of this God’s plan and there is nothing we can do about it. God is in control. God gets what He wants. He kills and heals at a whim. He is the ultimate authority. There is the idea that this God loves, but it is a rainbow kind of love. It comes mysteriously, infrequently and vanishes quickly.

It was so incredibly easy to write that last paragraph. This God is so big in my spirit that the diatribe just pours out without a thought. It is my conditioned response to God and it is this response that is holding me back like you would not believe. I cannot move forward spiritually, professionally or personally with this monkey on my pigtails.

How to let this God go, that is the question.