I am sorry for the absence in writing these past several weeks. I think I was in a pretty dark place with these blogs and the world around us – as we’re still shuffling through the dread of Covid-19. Also, taking care of two dementia patients (in laws) is like herding cats. Thank you very much.
I digress.
I ran across a statement made by Mark Twain that I found ironically funny in my circumstances. He said, “Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.”
And isn’t that really the case?
Knowledge has weight and I am not just talking about student loan debt or a certain level of education attained and verified through a certificate program – although those things have their own heft.
I am talking about things we learn in an education setting and things we learn through living life.
There are things we seek to know and understand and there are things we could go our entire lives not knowing and yet are sometimes forced to learn. Those things conspire and work to drive down on our shoulders, and bend our necks, and put lines on our faces.
They make us worry. We fret. We struggle.
The hardest professor, or teacher, or anything attained through any type of institutional learning is by far much gentler on us than the experiences that we are often made to endure.
I think of a nurse, for instance, who steps out of the protection of a classroom setting and into her or his very first internship at a hospital to do what they’ve been training for.
They are bringing their book knowledge together with practice of their field via learned experience.
Yet, even in those ‘protected’ clinical settings the experience they gain can be brutal and yet they become necessary for that student to understand and practice their chosen profession.
That experience coupled with their education carries weight. And for those nurses, the cockiness of being ‘head of the class’ may get shaved off a bit by the reality of real world knowledge attained through experience.
I’ve had the flip of that example. I had a whole lot of experience but I had fundamentalism trying to teach a faith it didn’t understand or it tried to manipulate to certain ends.
I think the past several weeks I’ve been writing this blog and have been shaking the dust off old things that I had put away in my mind. These experiences that I’ve had – these lessons that I’ve learned came back to bruise me in ways I thought I had long since become numb to.
But there is this “blessing” of sorts about writing that I don’t think many others outside of this discipline quite understand. And that is, pulling something out of the ephemeral (A thought, and idea) and bringing it into the physical realm (on a laptop, a piece of paper) allows you to “see it”, physically, perhaps for the very first time. And in doing so, also perhaps for the very first time, we can make a value judgement upon that “thing”. Whatever that ‘thing’ is.
For me, Evangelicalism and Evangelical Fundamentalism as it was presented in my life is bad. Full stop. The actors involved with it were also bad. Full stop. I also, and this just popped into my head so we’ll see how it feels once it is transcribed here, owe it no allegiance. Yes. That’s correct. Full stop.
Now then, when I’ve superimposed these experiences upon knowledge that I’ve sought in my life, through secular means, or through the works of people who’ve also lived the life that I’ve lived, I see the humanness of it all. I see the politics of it all, the ruthless ambition of men seeking power, its revelatory in newer ways regarding both the secular world and spirituality.
I didn’t know that Mark Twain quote prior to the start of this blog writing thing. Hell, I didn’t know it two weeks ago. But like Twain, I know the truth of it.
Moving away from certainty to being unsure of oneself is unnerving. To be honest, it’s downright scary and misery inducing.
Yet, in the midst of all that I’ve gone through in life, one thing remained steady – the message of Jesus Christ is something that I have not been able to simply set aside. As a matter of fact, in my secular work in writing horror novels or even romance novels I’ve struggled with questions about life after death or I find myself asking the question “What is love?” What is this thing? Where does it originate? Is it simply a biological need? Is it chemical? Is it evolutionary instinct? Is it more?
To be fair, I am now obsessed with the questions people have asked themselves since the beginning of time.
And as my past and my experiences bleed onto the page of whatever I write, so too, do these questions begin to roll around in my mind. It’s like opening a door and with any doorway – you can either go out or you can go in. There’s a transfer point.
Today, I met with a pastor of an E.L.C.A Church that I am interested in attending. Ten years ago, if I told you that I would actively seek out a church in which to attend, I would have laughed at you and declared that to be impossible.
And yet…
There is something in me that is not yet settled. There is something in the message of Christ that is still pulling at me that I must attend to. To what ends, I don’t know. But I do believe that this knowledge, this weight that I carry around with me, in some kind of way needs to be set down.
I thought that therapy and drugs and books and blogs would be enough, and I think I’m wrong. And I’m wrong in that this was simply me taking this weight and poking at it with a stick. Wrong also (or perhaps simply misguided) in trying to flee from it through running from it both literally and figuratively speaking.
Or maybe I am not “wrong” but that, given the extremity of the weight, these secular things simply aren’t enough for me to deal with it in a way that is satisfactory to me. Perhaps a spiritual question, or a spiritual experience, must be answered through those means.
I am in absolutely no way ‘returning to the fold’ of Evangelical Fundamentalism. Hell no. Nope. I am not a masochist. Well….not for this LOL! I am a tortured soul for poetry and poverty but that’s another conversation.
I am, however, and perhaps the first time in my life, seeking Christ as he was Biblically. As he was historically. As He is and without all the added bullshit of people who said “no” who, in reality, never had the right to say ‘yes’, in the first place.
Nadia Bolz – Weber in one of her “Have a little Grace” sermons produced for YouTube said something to the effect of, “Perhaps the origin of the harm can be the most powerful source of healing.”
So, yes, I am going back to the source. To the beginning. I am going back to learn the knowledge of this ancient faith and couple it with what I’ve experienced. To what end? Again, I don’t know but I’ll let you know when I do.
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