Holy Bewilderment

I have shared with many folks over the last few years that I feel deeper and more solid in my faith than I ever have before.  But, at the same time, I have more questions and wrestle with my faith more than ever.  These seem to be contradictory at first but that is reality.  As I heard on a podcast yesterday, I can hold both of these things together and they can both be true.

The last few mornings, two things came together that spoke to this.  The first was some concerning news from a dear friend about a health battle that they’ve been fighting in their life over the last few years.  It is not my story to tell so I’ll leave it at that.  But it deeply grieved me with an initial report yesterday and more details this morning.  This news is still very much present for me in sadness, grief, and anger as well.  Shortly after reading yesterday’s update, I read Richard Rohr’s daily email which was a reflection by Debie Thomas about the faith of Mary (the mother of Jesus).  You can read the full reflection here.   What really got me was what she wrote towards the end (including quoting a poet named Christian Wiman).  Sorry for the long quote but all of this fits together - also emphasis is mine on the last two sentences.

If we agree to embark on a journey with this God, we will face periods of bewilderment.

But this frightens us, so we compartmentalize our spiritual lives, trying to hold our relationships with God at a sanitized remove from our actual circumstances. We don’t realize that such efforts leave us with a faith that’s rigid, inflexible, and stale. In his wise and beautiful memoir, My Bright Abyss, poet Christian Wiman writes,

Life is not an error, even when it is. That is to say, whatever faith you emerge with at the end of your life is going to be not simply affected by that life but intimately dependent upon it, for faith in God is, in the deepest sense, faith in life—which means that even the staunchest life of faith is a life of great change. It follows that if you believe at fifty what you believed at fifteen, then you have not lived—or have denied the reality of your life.

In other words, it’s when our inherited beliefs collide with the messy circumstances of our lives that we go from a two-dimensional faith to one that is vibrant and textured.

I do not believe the same things about my faith as I am nearing fifty as I did when I was around fifteen.   Life has happened over those decades and things that seemed to fit back then no longer fit any longer.  What seemed clear and crisp then feels a lot fuzzier and diffuse now, much like what you see in my photo for today.  But what is now is deeper, more vibrant, and textured as Ms Thomas wrote at the end.  The health update I heard yesterday morning continues to add to this.  I have been holding a deep spirit of lament all day yesterday and today.  It isn’t fair.  It isn’t right.  It isn’t explainable.  I am sad.  I am angry.   And I am grieving.

And so, there is further texture to my faith as it add to all that has come before it and all that will come in the days, months, and years ahead.