Gone Missing

About half of my belongings are M.I.A. My parents decided to redo the hardwood floors in our house. That means that, starting tomorrow morning at 8 am, the only part of the main floor of our house that we can inhabit is our kitchen. For those that don't know our house, that means that I'm camping on the basement floor, surrounded by boxes for the next two weeks. NASTY. My stuff is in boxes and bags. My clothes are hanging on a rack in our garage. I rescued the most important books and clothes, but have no idea where the rest of my stuff is.

Plus, it's midterm season. One tomorrow, two Thursday, and a couple more next week. Also NASTY! I haven't written multiple choice exams in several years - history majors write papers, not exams. But, when you take mostly options in your last semester of university, you write multiple choice exams again. As soon as I finish writing this post, I'm off to study developmental psychology for tomorrow afternoon. BORING!

Anyway, all this to say that my blogging will probably be sparse for the next couple weeks! Between my missing belongings, sharing a basement that normally sleeps two among all five of us, midterms, and a wedding to attend this weekend, I don't think I'll have much time to write! But, we'll have to see!

And, with that, may you have a very happy thanksgiving (we in Canada believe in spacing our turkey dinners out a bit more than the Americans among us), and good night!

Angry

I am tired and I am angry tonight. My very act of sitting here at my computer and writing is an act of defiance – an act of rebellion and frustration. I have been hit hard by depression again this week. I noticed recently that my patterns of writing have changed from the early months of this depression. Then, everything stirred me to write – every frustration, every triumph, every worship service and house church, every time I had a spare moment there was a pen in my hand, chronicling the moments and emotions. Now, there is little that drives me to write. My love affair with words has not faded. What has happened is that, as time has passed, there have been fewer and fewer new ways to describe this time. What were once daily and even several times daily entries are now one or two a month, often jotted on my computer for speed, rather than with a pen on paper for the cathartic release of making the words appear.

Thursday nights have become my time for musing. I have an evening class that ends at 7:45. From 5:00 until 7:45 I sit and learn about abnormal psychology. At 7:45, I pack up my books, and head outside (after bundling up appropriately!). While I stand and wait for the bus (which arrives at 8:04) I hum worship songs to myself, trying to center my mind away from the school work that has consumed my day. Once I board the bus, I use the 45-minute journey to muse, to reflect, to read scripture or whatever meditative work I’m currently working my way through. I know that once I get home my mind will be taken up with other things – it’s Thursday night after all – there is television to watch, emails to read, things to do to get ready for whatever I have planned for Friday. But, those 45 minutes on the bus – those are mine, to quiet my heart, to allow my mind to wander, to wait for God’s occasional voice.

Tonight, I alternated between reading, and reflecting on things I’d written earlier in the day, and things I’d contemplated on the bus journey to school this morning.

The most accurate sentence I’ve written all day is the very first one of this entry. I am angry. It has been building all week, perhaps even for months. This is an anger I have faced before. The circumstances of my life are making me furious at the moment. I am twenty-two years old. I am physically healthy. I come from a very good family. I was never abused or neglected. My parents and siblings loved me and I knew it. And yet, I have spent at least the last two years struggling with a depression that refuses to be satisfied. And it makes me livid! My siblings had the same experiences I did, and they turned out healthy. Why me?

Did you know that a woman who’s mother was depressed stands a 30 percent greater chance of being depressed herself? I’m part of that statistic. But my mother has recovered, and I am still floundering. Why did God intervene there and not in my life?

Maybe that’s the biggest part of all of this. I am furious with God. Do you have any idea how long it took me to admit that for the first time? Probably a year ago, a good friend listened to one of my many rants about my life, and asked me if I had told God how angry I was. I told this friend that I couldn’t possibly tell God that, that I couldn’t yell at God in that way. My friend just looked at me, and told me I needed to do it. It took me until a couple of months ago. It’s still crazy hard to say.

Some time ago I journalled about a book I had just read. Stumbling Towards Faith by Renee Altson. It was, at the moment I read it, incredibly liberating. I was reading it again on the bus tonight. I have carried it with me often in the intervening weeks, always knowing that the truth contained in Renee’s words was something I would come back to. Tonight, as I read, her words were once again cathartic – a balm to a soul that was wondering if I was the only person alive who felt this way about life and faith. I want to close with her words, so freeing in their expression of my soul’s cry tonight….

a god who wants my woundedness but not my covering – WHAT KIND OF GOD IS THAT? a shivering god, a jealous god. “give me yourself,” he says, “trust me without those protections, trust me with your pure vulnerabilities.”

and I laugh.

“and what will you do with them?” i wonder, knowing all too well what this means.

the rage wells up within me, like fire.

“and what have you done? what have you saved me from? i have spent a lifetime yearning for you, aching, longing, desiring to be whole more than any other thing. i have brought as much as i could to your feet – passed them over, surrendered my will, and all i have received is silence. this much i have given, and would give more, but for a word, an acknowledgement, a sense of comfort. and yet there is still nothing.

…i am so angry. i have been so angry for so many years, yet i walk a fine balance between anger and fear. which feels safer? which will get me through? often i fear the anger itself, the way it rises up in me, clutching and desperate and needy… (Stumbling Towards Faith, 45-46)


There is so much more to that passage, but due to time, space, and copyright issues, that’s all I’ll include. Go buy the book, and then email me and I’ll give you the page numbers for several other passages that spoke to my wounds tonight… And Renee, if you happen to find this entry – thanks. You can’t know how many times your words have encouraged me to keep journeying over these last months.

Re-evaluating - Again

I feel sometimes like the last two years have been a time of continual reevaluation. As the depression that has been so much a part of those years has ebbed and flowed, so have the questions, my personal satisfaction, my ability to understand who I am and see that as part of a larger context.

This week the depression is strong, and I have spent most of my hours bombarded by questions that don't seem to have answers and by questions I thought I had answered long ago. I find myself exhausted (sleep has once again become an illusory concept) and angry.

I have wondered again this week if it's worth it - this current method of pursuing God that I have chosen. I read a book this week (one I highly reccommend - Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner) that described a lifestyle of study and liturgy that I could easily fall in love with. Winner is currently completing her doctorate in the history of American religion from Columbia University. She also did her bachelor's degree at Columbia, and spaced the bachelor's and doctoral degrees out with a master's degree from Cambridge in England.

At some point during her college experience, Winner converted from Orthodox Judaism to Christianity, and while she was in England, was baptised into the Anglican church.

I read her book, and wished for her bankroll - I have pursued a history degree, focusing primarily on the Protestant Reformation in Europe for the last four years. At Christmas, I will graduate, not only broke, but $11000 in debt. I would love to pursue a master's in this, but know that I do not want to spend my life as a university lecturer. Studying further is simply not an option. But, the cerebral, academic life, ensconced in books and stimulating discussion is greatly appealing to me.

The liturgy of churches like the Anglican church is appealing as well. I find so much beauty and meaning in the rituals that have lasted for hundreds of years. Something comforting in knowing that the order of service has not been greatly altered since the Elizabethan era. Something sustaining in all that history - the good and bad, but the unending nature of it.

I have spent the last two years pursuing a more "charismatic" understanding of relationship with God - one as far from the deliberately liturgical as possible most weeks, and I find it exhausting. I don't quite fit in this circle - I am far too cerebral, far too interested in thinking deeply. I tire easily of the rhetoric that seems to say that this is the only "true" way of expressing the church of the New Testament. I feel caught between my conservative family members who don't quite agree with this pursuit of mine, and the friends who keep promising that God has something "more" for me if I just keep going.

I have met God there, and I know with certainty that my "charismatic" friends meet and hear from Him on a regular basis. But, I feel as if I am still slogging through muck. I have watched with great interest the beginnings of an "urban monasticism" but have not felt that this is the life for me either. I hestitate to mention this, but my experience in watching these "urban monks" (some of whom are dear friends) is that there is an intense emphasis on prayer (something that certainly holds true to the medieval models they emulate) but very little emphasis on learning (something completely untrue - it is because of the monastic committment to learning that we have many of the great works of religion and philosophy available for modern consumption.)

I feel stifled intellectually at times. I cannot deny the importance of "experiencing God" but I wonder why it takes such great precedence. Surely, God gave me a mind and a love for learning for a reason. Is it not possible to incorporate both? My beef is this (and I admit it is a beef greatly colored by my current state of depression and frustration) - why are so few people interested in understanding anything beyond the experience?

I could fill pages with the knowledge of history that has greatly enhanced my relationship with God and his world. I could give you fascinating information about Count von Zinzendorf and the Moravian movement - one of the areas I've studied and researched extensively over the last year. I could tell you about a wide variety of religious movements, each one designed to correct some fault in a previous movement, and I could point out that each of these movements is eventually replaced by someone who thinks that they, too, are wrong, and that this pattern has continued into the present day. But few are interested. Most want only to have that "crazy charismatic" encounter with God, not to really know about him, to realize that what he is doing in the world today owes so much to what he has done in the past.

Meh. I'm done. I'm sure some of you have responses. Please know that my intention is not to criticize. My intention is simply to blow off some of the questions floating through my muddled brain. I have a very fond relationship with all of the things that I have chosen to comment on here. But, I still find myself asking questions about them, wondering if they could not be made bettter. Perhaps, I am the opposite of a forward-looking visionary type. My understanding of God will always be rooted in the history that I have studied so intently - not living in the past, but greatly influenced by the myriad of wonderful traditions that can be found there.

With all that said, I'm off to buy cookies. I need sugar to sustain me through three hours of lecutring on "Abnormal Psychology" for the evening!

Post Script

Okay... just wrote a whole post, and then it didn't publish - it disappeared into the shadows somewhere. Most days I love technology, at this moment I'm not so sure!

I was reading this and this, and they made me add a postscript to my thoughts from my previous post.

I mostly wanted to say that I really don't think it is an absolutely necessary thing to attend church like a robot, whether you want to or not on any given Sunday. However, I do think that church can be a beautiful, important, and life-giving part of the week.

I've been wounded by the church a great deal over the years, and I continually find myself asking why I go back? What, you ask, is my answer to that question? It's quite simple really. I keep attending church because I meet God there.

Now, let me be clear. Church is not the be-all and end-all. I meet God in the words of a beautiful song or poem, in a stunning novel (I met Him just yesterday in an obscure passage of Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis), in the beauty of nature that surrounds me (both in the city and out), in the words of a friend in crisis, in the tears that slip down my face when no one's looking, in my friends and family, on the bus, in the bathtub or shower (God has this odd habit of speaking to me in the shower!), in so many random and beautiful places. But, there is something beautiful about knowing that, by scheduling time for him (church) if I come with open hands and a willing heart, I will meet him in that time.

Should church attendance be mandated? No. Do I think it is important? Yes.

However, my thoughts continue to be muddled on this issue. My decision about church is just that - my decision. This is one of those issues that I think must be decided individually, between a person, and God.

Controversial Question?

As I was standing and waiting for the bus to arrive tonight, so I could head home from school, I was humming worship songs, and letting my mind wander through a variety of thoughts about school, about life, about God, about church. I'd been reading powerful material all day - stuff about the Puritans, some modern spiritual autobiographies, and a book on worship, and all of these left me with much to ruminate on.

So, I was standing there, and the thought occurred to me - I wonder if the "postmodern", "emerging church" has tricked something out of the importance of church in it's quest for something new? Now, this is not the first time I've had this thought, and I've certainly taken it in any number of directions in the past, but tonight, I was thinking specifically about church attendance.

I know so many people, who, in the midst of being "emerging" Christians, have dropped the priority of a weekly time of gathering from "essential" to "an option among many ways to spend an evening." So many of the people I know have the same background I do - conservative evangelical christian. We are all being told that the "spirit of religion" is a bad thing - and the people telling us that are not wrong. Instead, we're supposed to build "community" - again, an excellent, biblical concept.

My question is this - what if, in our quest to avoid the "spirit of religion" we have forgotten the very thing that community is really about? No, I don't think church should be some sort of mandated weekly activity. I want it to be a vital community - a place of freedom and safety, a place to meet God. But, how can we build community if our members are sketchy in their commitment at best?

If the purpose and stated goal of the community we're seeking is to share life in a way that goes beyond the two hour worship service where you engage as an individual, and then go home, how can we build that if those whom we are seeking to share life with, are only available for that sharing on an irregular basis?

Maybe I ask because I have been so blessed by the small measures of community that I have experienced in the past couple of years. I'm a pastor's kid - I grew up in a church where sharing the questions and troubles of my heart and life were dangerous at best. But, two years ago, I met this group of people, and they invited me to come and share life with them - on Tuesday nights at house church, and on Sunday nights when several house churches come together to worship, be taught, and to share life on a more corporate scale.

I have been blessed by the people whose lives have intersected with mine in this community. It was four people from there that nagged me until I telephoned a counsellor last week. It is people from there that I call on a bad day, or on a good day. It is friends from their that I go to the pub with, and shopping with, and for coffee with. I do these things with people from other places, but when done with the members of my church community, they are full of a rich sweetness born of shared life and purpose. I have had challenges in this community - the people who rub me the wrong way, and the ones it is infinitely hard to share life with.

I guess I ask about attendance because I see its value in my own life. A week where I miss our corporate gathering, or our house church is a week devoid of some meaningful bonds of friendship and love. It is the people who have attended regularly - the ones who know me, and whom I have come to know that challenge my faith, that pray for me, that I love to laugh and hang out with. And I just wonder, why would anyone choose to miss such rich relationships in order to go to bed earlier or to not be "religious"? Maybe a little religion - or better yet, the discipline of a weekly gathering is a positive thing, and we need to rethink the language we use in describing church attendance?