A Labyrinthine Journey

Thinking about vulnerability. That sense of mortality that always lurks beneath every ache and pain. It is momentarily set aside with each good breath, but returns when the limitations of breathlessness and weariness come sneaking in.

Vulnerability: the reminder that life is fragile in the midst of being amazingly resilient. In this moment, we are able and strong, and in the next all can be turned around. Most people can live a lot of their lives without the reminders of our own vulnerability, but when us pastors go boldly into hospital and hospice rooms, it is harder to avoid. When we sit at a table with someone who is wondering if their wife or children will let them back into their life, our uncertainties arise. When we stand in front of a congregation of mourners and try to find words of hope in the shadows of their grief, mortality cannot be ignored.

None of us like to be vulnerable. We want to feel safe and secure. We are driven to prove our ability and strength. We will do almost anything to avoid being left alone or ignored. Usually when I find those feelings of mortality, I will try to find a way to shift the focus and distract myself from those depressing thoughts. Yet, I think I have only made things worse. And so in the long run, that sense of helplessness only increases under the surface until it is uncovered as an emotional pothole if I’m lucky, but more likely some sinkhole or crevasse suddenly grabs my soul.

In whitewashing my own sense of mortality and limitations, I have stored up an acid bath of the weakness I was trying to avoid.

In talking about vulnerability with someone the other day, we pursued a different path. We explored together the areas of weakness and mortality.

It wasn’t enjoyable, but in the end we agreed that it was healing, even as the feelings were still present. We saw two gifts: the first is gratitude. As we are mindful that life is fragile, we are more appreciative of the simple gifts that life gives us all the time. I have walked the path of depression and still know the power of those shadows in my life when everything loses color and texture and when everything I want to do becomes mystery and struggle. So when I catch sight of a small yellow flower in my yard, it becomes an invitation to appreciate life. When life just flows, I can be glad. When I have reason to laugh or at least be at peace, then I can give thanks.

The other gift is compassion. As I allow the illusions of superiority and immortality fade away, then I first see myself as more human and then I begin to see others as fellow humans. Mortality and vulnerability are a great equalizer. When I catch myself in an uncompassionate moment, it is usually because I have forgotten how easily I could be in that place. As someone who has been divorced and then remarried, I can see relationships and their challenges and graces with a clearer and more compassionate heart. It is easy to hold onto enemies, or to simply ignore people as long as we see them as less than us. Once we regain that sense of our humanness and once we start seeing others as people with the same hopes and dreams and fears that we have, even if they speak a different language or enjoy different music than we like, or worship in a different way, than we become infected with compassion for them. We can no longer push them away or refuse to see them.

I still can’t say I’m fond of that feeling of vulnerability. Yet, I hope that I will be more willing to learn from that voice of mortality within me.

An excerpt from my Soul Writing from a few days ago.

Dear God,

Thank you for inviting me into your abundant life. I don’t always hear the invitation clearly, yet you keep on knocking on my heart’s door and calling my name. Sometimes I do hear it but I turn away from it. I don’t know why. Those seem to be the times when I think the little I have is all I deserve. The shadow voices convince me for the moment that I am only worth the lesser portion. You have to admit it, this life you invite me to is pretty amazing. It does go far beyond imagination.

Sorry, but I live among a people who are used to dreams dying. I’ve been a Chicago Cubs fan. It is very common and almost normal for us to find disappointment and to live discouraged.

I get so excited about some dream idea and then it doesn’t come. That excitement turns to grief and pain. Or maybe I get what I want, but it doesn’t live up to those hopes. What’s left is emptiness and even resentment. Or sometimes I will have fun starting to follow a wonderful dream, but then it gets hard or it changes too much from what I thought it would be. I give up.

I become disheartened.

That’s a good word for it: disheartened. With time and the accumulation of more disappointments I have learned to protect my heart. A few times in I can actually picture my heart encased in a hard shell. I stop getting excited about things. I learn the cynical path is the easiest one to take. I stop imagining things. I settle.

I settle for the lesser life.

I can tell when I am in that settling place by the echo of my heart. I read, hear, and even write or preach your words of hope and love, and inside I hear those words echo in emptied spaces. The shadowed chambers of my soul ring the deep notes of that disappointment. My hearts feels the pre-creation void as an echo of that old shadow. And those days feel so small.

I wonder though, why would You torture me with this vision of abundant life if you had no intention of truly providing it for me. You wouldn’t do that would you? That wouldn’t be fun or fair. It would be so much easier to just stop dreaming, to accept that this vision of abundance is just illusion and that this little life is all I will ever get. The dying inside will hurt some at first, but then after a while I won’t know or care anymore. have accepted my small life while still yearning for abundance.

I think of my Grandmother. As her dementia began she was terrified. She had watched her Mother disappear before her eyes and recognized within herself the same progression. Then she reached that part of the disease where she forgot and was no longer afraid. Her world had grown small enough that she again felt safe.

Is that what is available? Spiritual dementia? Accepting the lesser “vision?”

If that is all you are ever going to give me, then in your kindness and grace take these extravagant dreams away from me.

However, you still invite me to this abundant life.

I will not accept the shadow idea that you are cruel and arbitrary. I will not accept the idea that you would offer us only empty promises. If you invite us to live your abundance, I will trust that you will make it real.

Strengthen me when the siren song pulls me toward the rocks of Less. Carry me through the times of transition and transformation to the place of grace.

God, help me to always remain open to your invitational knock. Don’t let me slip into my little world where your dreams are all dead. Resurrect my soul, illumine my heart, and free me for your life abundant.

One of those strange phenomenons I see in my own life is the cycle of discouragement.

The first step in the cycle is that I do something, or something happens to me that is wonderful. Maybe I am blessed with a surprising and special grace from someone. Maybe out of the blue, I have one of those experiences of God’s living and loving presence. Or maybe, I have done something that I know has truly touched someone’s life. A great success. A tangible and visible fruit of my words or leadership. I feel on top of the world. The day is a very good day.

Then, the other part of the cycle kicks in. The doubts arise. The emptiness in my heart is palatable. It comes as wilderness. My well is dry. The grip of inertia mocks any attempt I make to rouse my mind or spirit.

I hate it. It drives me crazy. It is virtually predictable and ever dependable.

Yet, I found myself today with the revelation that this cycle might be a great gift from the same loving God who blesses me with the mountaintops.

Well, Paul in this week’s lectionary helped in that seeing…

I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven–whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person–whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows–was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses.
But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.  – 2 Corinthians 12:2-10 – NRSV

Now, I don’t really know what Paul’s thorn was, yet I don’t think that detail matters as much as Paul’s process of taking something which really bothered him and frustrated him, and recasts it in light of God’s grace into something that does serve God and Paul’s love relationship with God.

Could my cycle of discouragement be God’s gracious antidote to feeding my own ego-centric tendencies? When I feel empty, is it a wonderful invitation from God to let go of my own experience of God’s goodness and to really trust in God’s goodness alone? I still find the discouragement hanging over my head as I write, but I think I will thank God for the shade and wait to see what God will do next in my life.

When I first started becoming aware of the presence of depression in my life, I would describe it as a void of emotion. At one level, the emptiness felt like a nothingness. I would look inside and would not find feelings or words. Even now as I see signs of burn out and even acedia in my inner landscape it would appear to be life/God forsaken.

One of the things I have been learning over the years is my experience of emptiness is more akin to overload. Instead of not feeling, I am over-feeling and my soul clicks a switch to protect itself from self-destruct. This remembering does help calm the fear and soothe the guilt which amplifies the emotional overload and keeps the breaker switch tripped.

While the image of the desert does come from time to time, the prevailing image for me is that of dense fog or overgrown swamp. It isn’t so much that I can’t find feelings to feel, it is a matter of I can’t sort through all that are there.

For example, there are many times when I feel like I have no strength at all and I am tempted to run away and not come out until I feel all better. Yet, as I continue to explore and accept my 8 Enneatype, I recognize that deep strength and energy are at the core of my essence. I learn to look for the ways I have lost sight of that essential connection with my core. And that core is really there all the time.

Another example is the bad thought of acedia (my Enneatype 9 wing), which is at its base an uncaring. In the grip of that thought I don’t care. I can’t care for myself, I can’t care for my family, my ministry, or anyone/anything. So I just sit unmoving. But Essence comes to me and bothers me. I find myself caring that I don’t care. I remember that I am a caring person, and if I feel uncaring, I have lost sight of that essential connection to my core (yes, I just repeated myself from above). Caring deeply for life and others (including myself) is part of how God made each of us and I need to believe that Essence is not lost even when I have lost the sight of the connection.

Usually, when I rediscover the connection, it is because I have too much. I am lost in the everything unable to focus on the lines and threads of life’s Essence.

I feel the same way with my longing and yearning to write. I have a growing folder of random pieces of paper that represent thoughts and ideas to reflect further on and write to share with others. Some of those become the source of my blog posts (the purpose of this nice technology for me) in a more raw form. I don’t do much editing with my blog posts (you can probably tell) by choice. Someone I read suggested that the raw nature of the medium provides some way to slip thoughts past my very active internal critic. The only critic I engage is the one that assesses whether the words will bring harm to others especially my family.

I talk about grace and compassion a lot. Part of the reason for that is that I find myself needing to practice that grace and compassion with myself as well. To not only invite my inner critic to have compassion upon me, but to have compassion on the inner critic part of me as well.

Only that personal and divine grace will bring clarifying light to the fear-filled fog/darkness/swamp/whatever in my life. And a big part of that grace is not to give up on myself or the work of the Holy Spirit.

A month or so ago, I started my journal with the old Simon and Garfunkle lyrics: Hello darkness, my old friend. It was the start of accepting the return of the depression that I have been relatively free from for quite a while. But with the fallout grief of moving almost two years ago, and the ongoing stress of a church that was needing and asking for a lot from me, I have not been staying on top of my self-care balancing act. The darkness and the wilderness have again become important considerations in my life. More and more days have found me just staring at my computer/list/desk/life without caring or having energy to devote to meet the moments.

The shadows have again come and I am afraid.

It isn’t the old terrors when I was actively avoiding the darkness and whatever might lurk in its depths, but fear nonetheless. I can accept it even if I am not happy with it. Hopefully in the next week or so, I will be able to talk with a trusted counselor to move out of the shadows.

However, last night I found myself with a different view on things.

I was late at the church again and making sure things were all locked up before heading home. I remembered I needed something which was in the front of the darkened sanctuary. Rather than turn on the lights I just walked up the center aisle into the darkness. Fortunately I had a little pocket LED light so I was able to avoid the small table in the center of the aisle, but it was dark. As I walked into the space, it was very dark. There were 4 hallway lights behind me, but before me I could see nothing. Absolutely nothing aside from the eternal flame at the very front.

When I say nothing I mean nothing. I knew there were pews there and I knew there was chancel furniture up there, but other than the first 2 sets of pews, it was total darkness.

I made my way to front, avoided the small table and retrieved the book that I wanted to take home with me. Then I turned to walk out. I was amazed.

As I looked from the darkness to the light, I could see all the pews. I could see the other pieces of chancel furniture around me. I could even see the little table I almost ran into. All from the little bit of light coming from in front of me.

I didn’t stop to marvel too long, I wanted to go home. But I stop to see it. When I was in the light looking into the darkness, I could see nothing. I know in a previous time I would have been racked with fear at that sight. Yet when I was in the midst of the darkness looking toward the light, I could see more. It wasn’t fully lit, but it was more.

Maybe as I begin my journey from the darkness of depression (again) I can remember that wisdom. Looking into the darkness, things look grim. Looking out of the darkness, hope provides new vision.

I spent some time today trying to figure out what approach to take into preaching through Lent this year. For some reason, the lectionary passages didn’t capture my attention as they usually do when I do my seasonal planning.

As I reflected on themes, one idea kept resurfacing: what are we in danger of losing in life in the face of crisis.

Of course, a big crisis on people’s minds today is the economic one. Our finance committee had some unpleasant moments as they looked at lower donation numbers and higher winter heating costs. Yet, in the last few days I have been in conversation with people who are facing the crisis of marriage disintegration, cancer, emergency surgery, as well as job loss or the threat of it.

While hearing all those voices of fear and anxiety and despair and even panic, I hear the whisper of another voice. A voice that is seeking to remind me that life is still a good thing and that we are held beyond what we can remember.

So, my Lenten preaching is unfolding as a series of reflections on what the scripture and the Spirit want to tell us we are at risk of losing when we only hear the voices of fear and loss. And what is the more we can gain as we again attend to that tender voice of  the Beloved.

The list of themes is still forming and may spill over beyond Easter, but isn’t that the way it is supposed to be. In the midst of our darkness and fear, Life spills over out of the shadows to carry us beyond Easter eternally.

I’ve been enjoying getting connected on Twitter the last couple days. I started out just using it to keep my facebook status updated, but I found myself wanting to Tweet more than Facebook would allow updates. I also found myself wanting to write things that weren’t really what Facebook status updates were meant to be. But with a little work, I have a few people following my Tweet-life so disconnected the two.

But what I find interesting in this process is how taking the risk to write even those less than 140 character updates intersects with some new freedom to write (as my output on this blog demonstrates). As I think about this “coincidence” my mind returns to the important question of self-image: what do I see when I look in the mirror?

One of the treats of Twitter today is the inside scoop on Wil Wheaton’s latest book, Sunken Treasure being released as a downloadable file. I just started reading it (I actually am supposed to be doing something else at the moment, but am enjoying a “Creative Distraction”). In the first chapter he writes about his struggle with continuing to see himself as an actor when it wasn’t working that well for him anymore and the emerging image as a writer. While he still acts, he is enjoying his life more when he writes.

This overlaps well with my own ongoing adventure with my mirror. I would love to be a writer and utilize this venue as a playground as I try to find my own voice. Yet, the voice of the Inner Critic still weighs in with the proposition that there is little about my life or ideas that would interest anyone else. So why bother.

However, the fallout from following that Critic voice go far beyond any possible future (or not) with writing. It affects my relationships in my family and church. It affects my voice in preaching and teaching. It affects me when I think about getting my camera out again or when I think about diving into that computer programming project I have been dabbling with for years. The voice can squash even entertaining ideas let alone doing anything with them.

So, my strategy to realign the voice of the Critic is to be quick and to persevere. I’ve been reading an older book by Janet Hagberg: Wrestling With Your Angels: A Spiritual Journey to Great Writing. In it she counsels that we befriend our Critic and use that voice later in the writing process. So, my blog posts are “raw.” (As if you can’t tell) Very little editing happens, I just sit down and write, then when I get to a stopping point I hit Publish. Same thing with my Tweets. A short sentence that expresses an idea, then off it goes.

In order to do that, though I have to address the question of the Mirror: Who do you think you are that anyone else might be interested in your thoughts and activities? My answer has to be a simple, “I am me, that’s all, no more and no less.” I don’t really know if people find any of this interesting, but it is all I have and that is good enough.

A couple months ago, I wrote that little postit note and stuck it up near my desk. It was an expression of frustration and an attempt to get something going in my psyche. Something akin to energy. It has remained as a rally call, trying to muster up some anger energy to not sink into the swamp again, to not accept this gray as the inevitable conclusion to life and such. It had moved off to the side lately and I had forgotten it was there until the other day. I saw it and realized I was allowing myself to sink again.

There has to come a point when I have to say “No” to the force of gray and darkness and open my life up to the “Yes” which is life. I guess I have to acknowledge that I have to keep choosing that “Yes.” I don’t have to accept the depression, but I do have to accept the idea that depression is always just around the corner trying to tempt me into the fog of not caring about life. That isn’t a cure all, but until I realize that, any cures will be temporary and the pride of “being healed” will only set me up for surprise.

Earlier this week, we had a leadership orientation for the church (because of snow we only had 8 people come). I was introducing the idea that we need to have a time for prayer at board and committee meetings. One of the passages I used to support that idea was Psalm 127:1-2:

If God doesn’t build the house, the builders only build shacks. If God doesn’t guard the city, the night watchman might as well nap. It’s useless to rise early and go to bed late, and work your worried fingers to the bone. Don’t you know he enjoys giving rest to those he loves? [The Message]

As I caught myself in the middle of a no-energy day this week and trying to decide if giving up was really the best thing to do, these words came to mind. It reminded me that while I have things to do seeking healing in my life, they must follow the cry to God for God’s presence. With that presence, the other healing tools become powerful. I had been trying to do it all on my own again (that old control, not need any help from anyone trap).
No magic in that moment, but a step in the direction of God’s healing touch.

My little sign is back in front of me to remind me to never give up to the existing gray of depression, but to surrender and trust the God of the full color life.

Sorry for not being very communicative lately. I am hoping to renew a rhythm of reflecting and posting in the next few days. This is a personal saga so you don’t have to read.
So whence the chaos?

A combination of personal factors have left me arid in thoughts to write about, well sort of. This has not been an unproductive time, as I have collected seeds of ideas on my scattered pieces of  5 1/2 X 8 1/2 yellow paper. I haven’t been able to sit down and allow the seeds to grow. Of course we have the natural chaos of the Christmas holiday season, both in preparing for, worshiping through, and sharing with family. It was an enjoyable celebration season, now comes the cleaning up and the regathering energy.

I became ambitious and moved furniture in my home office. Not too long ago, I moved it from a small room upstairs to a big room in the basement. After using it for a while, I realized I did not choose the best place for it. So I moved it. The cost? I still have 3 boxes of stuff that is waiting a usable home. I have a lower back that has been reminding me constantly that I am 48 and half and I need to be careful moving furniture now.

Oh, did I mention a nasty head cold that left me without a full voice (a tragedy for preaching and singing) and developed into bronchitis (that I don’t think completely went away).

My journey through depression has taken an interesting turn, and it too is a factor in the chaos. I have been getting better. The counseling and spiritual direction has been laying bare some important clusters of thought, attitude, and emotion that led to the failure factor. By not running away form them (much) the failure factor has been diminishing enough to begin to cut back on the medication (step one). This brings a whole new set of stresses and coping mechanisms that need to be reinstated or remade to keep the reality in place. That is good and not so good. Not so good in the sense that the waters are stirred up and the silt swirls with chaos, but good, because the waters are stirred up and the silt has a chance to wash down the stream. This is good in that 30 year old crap is being unearthed, moved out and allowed to air itself toward fertility instead of toxicity, bad because other resistances (old and new) are needing to discovered, explored and integrated into life.

The nice thing is that I know that while Chaos will never be completely removed from my life I am able to sort through it and tame it for a while … again … and again … and again.

Tomorrow will be a good day.

The other night I was up really late after trying to cough up my lungs (or at least that is how it felt) while struggling with my fall head cold. While up trying to settle my breathing down to return to bed, I flipped on the television and found Bill Nye the Science Guy. I am still too much of a geek; I love that show. The topic? Newton’s law of inertia: a body at rest stays at rest (or a body in motion stays in motion) until acted upon by an outside force.

I’m stuck in spiritual inertial pause right now.

I can name some of the forces that have stopped my inner motion: the physical affects of this bad cold, fatigue from possible sleep apnea (I have to say possible because we know I have apnea, Linda observes it regularly, but my sleep study a couple weeks ago didn’t show any–primarily because I didn’t sleep), and the ongoing affect of both depression and the anti-depressants; there have been many people trying to force my ministry direction but not in helpful ways or counter to the direction I keep trying to get myself going.

Every once in a while I try to get myself started. I try to grab onto some task or project that I will break the inertial pause. Yet other than a quiver of brief movement, things end up returning to the same place but only now I am frustrated and self-judgmental (which reinforces the failure voice of the depression). Then I give up. It’s too hard. I can’t do it. Maybe I never could and never can. Why don’t I just give up the illusion. That at least temporarily deadens the frustration.

But then I wake up and tell myself the Depression Sucks and I really don’t want this to be my life. Yet, what am I to do.

Thanks be to God,  that usually whenever I wake up to that thought, I also remember that I am not an outside force, I am the one needing to be moved. And even another person, while outside of myself, is not outside enough to really break the bonds of failure and weakness that hold me here.

In that “doh” moment I remember God.

The Beloved who is just waiting. Waiting for me to stop being so absorbed in my own little frustrations to reach out for real help. Waiting for me to realize I have tripped over my own toys and need a hand to get up. Waiting for me to realize that I need to clean up those toys and put away all those distractions and let go of all those attachments so I have a place to go when I am moved. Waiting for me to remember that spending time together helps me to let go of all those forces that stop me.

Now I must become the one waiting. Waiting with hands unclenched for the firm push of grace. Waiting without knowing which direction love will choose. Waiting knowing that healing does not come on my terms, but always with love. Waiting with anticipation that God is already moving my life.