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.

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.

School of Wizardry

Last night I watched, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” with my daughter. We have seen all the Potter movies repeatedly, read the books, listened to the unabridged audios, but still the story holds our interest. I wonder if one of the reasons it does is that the plot carries the possibility of magic in the world. I feel a Santa Clause like glee when I am engaged with the Harry Potter stories. Almost like they contain a truth about the world if one were to believe enough in the possibility.

I have heard from my atheist/humanist friends that people turn to religion because they don’t have the guts to face the fact they are alone in the world. There is no god, no transcendent mystery and no miracles that can be relied upon. I’ve heard the same people say to me that religious people are too afraid to accept their own responsibility as humans. They pawn things off to chance, to god or to a savior. Religion becomes, from this viewpoint, a serious copout.

I’ll tell you that I agree on many levels. Religion, for many people, replaces human rationality, human commonsense and becomes a kaleidoscope of must-dos and must-bes. However, I wonder if people become religious not because they are shirking their human responsibility, but because they are trying to find the magic in living. Is the quest for a spiritual life a search for an experience that will shake the foundations of knowing and uncover the true enchanted nature of the world? Is religion living in the hope that one day you will find out that you are not a muggle but wizard?

I think this is the case for me. It is why I continue on this path. My spirituality is a journey toward uncovering the magic that exists in the world. I will tell you that I have found bits and pieces. Granted, there have been no stags pouring out of wands, or cloaks that make me disappear, but there has been magic. Enough magic, in fact, for me to know that I am heading in the right direction

A Science Project

My daughter choose the brachiosaurus for her second grade dinosaur science project. I helped her cut out the side out of a shoe box, bought her clay and paints and let her go to town doing whatever she would like to do. She had a bit of a snag getting the legs to stay on the body, so we pushed in paperclips to make it all stick together. She painted the sun with yellow glitter glue, made rocks out of clay and stuck tomato stems to the box for trees. All in all, when we left the house this morning I thought it was a pretty good second grade project.

That was until I saw the other projects that ended up in second grade. There were molded T-Rexs with ceramic fish in their mouths. Some boxes were filled with peat moss, real water and suns that were electric. I saw one mom set down a project that made roaring noises when you pushed a button. Very few of the projects looked like a kid actually did them, rather I could tell that their parents spent hours and hours building them.

I watch one mother gently carry in her son’s box and set it on the table. Her face had a glow about it, as she adjusted the fake little trees made with real plants and put the finishing touches on the spine of a triceratops. I heard her exclaim, “Wow, I’m so glad that is done, but it sure was fun!” Then I realized, for many of these parents this was a creative activity for THEM. They actually got to build something, do something artistic; something that other people might actually appreciate.

Once I realized this, my annoyance at the whole idea of a parent doing a kid’s science project evaporated. It was replaced with a sadness that for many people, living a creative life just isn’t something they’ve thought about. But I know there is a yearning for many people to be creative, to bring new things into existence, to express themselves. I believe that this creative drive comes from a spiritual place in each of us. In fact, I don’t know if one can be spiritual without also being creative; they are two sides of the same proverbial coin.

If all that expended energy that I saw today (the energy poured into dinosaur dioramas) was put into creative endeavors, this community would be a different place. Not only could new ideas be written, paintings created, political problems solved, but the people, the parents and the kids would be so much more fulfilled.

Bottom line, we are created to create. Figure out how to be creative in your life, in your own way and right there, in that space, you’ll find your salvation.