THE FALLEN CLERIC

Sunday, 8:37 a.m.  Two things I noticed this morning that I do not want to neglect to write down.  First, when I rolled out of bed this morning, I immediately began packing my bags, folding my sheets, and making preparations to go home.  I was doing it even before I realized it, almost without thinking.  Deep down in me I have heard the call of home all along.  Sometimes it has been very real – a deep ache that distracts me from all else.  Other times I have not been conscious of it, but when I recall it I am suddenly aware that, conscious or not, I have been living all along in light of that voice that calls me home.  It is, quite simply, the deepest cry of my heart.  And it is that because I have been there.  Not just as a visitor (if you are visiting someplace, that’s a sure sign you’re not home) but as an inhabitant.  I know all the people in that place.  I’m familiar with every nook and cranny.  It is home.  It sends out a constant signal to me when I am gone.  It beckons to me wherever I am, not to return home and do this or accomplish that, but to return home and simply be.  Home is the place where I “am” the best.  All of my aspirations, my highest hopes, even my farthest-flung dreams of speaking or teaching in this place or that – it all originates at home.  Home is where I leave from, and where I return to.  In fact, the way you know you’re home is that you reach the place where you’re no longer trying to take the next step to get back there.

Was it St. Augustine who said, “O God, our hearts will never rest until they rest in you.”  ?

Barely even consciously aware of it, I got up this morning and began preparing to go home, responding to that constant, if not always conscious, beacon in my heart.  Likewise, a thousand times a day I am preparing to be, finally, home with God.  Emotional pleas, questions, doubts, prayers – all of it happens in light of home.  I am from there, “of” that place, and returning to it.  Moment by moment, consciously or unconsciously, I live in light of my constant call to come home.  Sometimes I ache for home: to see God, to be joined with him.  Often I am not even thinking of God, but the call continues.  And in those moments where I am conscious of it, I realize the call has been sounding all along and I have been living either in response to  it, or in rebellion against it, but that call – the call is the thing from which I cannot escape.  And why would I want to?  It’s a call to come home.  And so each day I will continue to live in light of that call.  Sometimes I will make conscious preparations.  Sometimes I will simply live in the moment, with that call ringing out constantly all day long.  And one day, though I do not know when it will be, it will really be time to go home.  I will finally know I am home, because there will be no more steps to take to get back there.  Until then, the call continues.

10:07 pm.  My experience in the chapel tonight was quite different.  I was in my room thinking of going to bed around 8 pm, then I felt myself compelled to return to the chapel for more prayer.  I have read that at some point a transition takes place from “I should pray” to “I must pray” – I think in the Manning book.  Not sure what happens when I get home, but here at the retreat house, this has certainly happened.

This was after spending 40 minutes reading through the underlined portions of my gospel of John, and reflecting on the notes scribbled there.  And so I went back to the chapel.  But upon entering, I was gripped by something.  Not physically, but emotionally.  I stood there, silent, in the back.  My heart rate quickened, and I dropped to my knees in the aisle.  It’s not that I could not stand, only that I knew I needed to kneel.  There, on my knees, I did not pray.  I did not say anything but I clearly remember wondering why it was so different this time.  I had actually felt compelled to return to this place.  Now I was there, just kneeling, waiting until I knew it was okay to stand again.  It was just a few minutes.  Then I stood and walked slowly, almost cautiously, to my customary seat at the front.  Then I sat, feeling slightly nervous and overwhelmed.  This was not fear, but it was certainly not the warm fuzziness I had experienced nearly every other time I had entered the chapel.  I still do not fully understand it, except to suggest that perhaps it was the first time I had shown up there fully expecting God to show up as well.  In my prayer, earlier that day, I had asked to see God.  What struck me then was that it took me 12 years to move toward contemplation because I was not ready for it.  What evils might I commit if I were allowed to actually see God?

What strikes me now is that I clearly saw something in that chapel, and that is why I dropped to my knees.  I do not know what I saw, and I did not see it with physical eyes.  Of course even on a spiritual retreat such as this, there’s nothing wrong with being open to the possibility that I ate something bad the night before, or that I had somehow psyched myself out.  (Although it wasn’t a terrifying experience – just unsettling).

So after I got up and went to my seat I prayed.  Then meditated.  I again bowed at the front as I left, but whatever I had sensed at the beginning was now gone.  Again, I was never afraid, but something was clearly different and I had known that my rightful place was on my knees.  Perhaps this was a reminder from God.  “All this Abba-Daddy-Love stuff is well and good, but remember who you’re dealing with.”  I remembered.

It is now 10:25.  On my last night here I have learned how to actually have a full day.  And what a full day it was.

My spiritual journey
Epoch 1 – Awakening (Birth): 0-6 years
Epoch 2 – Striving I: 6 years-22 years
Epoch 3 – Cleansing: 22 years-25 years
Epoch 4 – Striving II: 25 years-41 years
Epoch 5 – Awakening II (Rebirth): 41 years-Present

In epoch 1 I became aware of a spiritual need in my life.  At a young age, I knew there was a God and that I wanted to know him.

That led to epoch 2, Striving, which was the start of all the efforts Christians usually make to know God. Prayer, Bible study, commitment to church attendance, journaling, etc.  I did this for years with considerable intensity and a sense that it was “working” – that I was really coming to know God.  Though it had some good effects, I am embarrassed now to think about how unlovingly I was often able to treat people, while seeing that behavior as being completely consistent with my faith, since “the Bible says” this or that.

Cindy’s death in November of ’90, and my diagnosis with MS a month later, brought epoch 2 to a close.  Though I tried to hang on for a while, I began to feel like my life experience had outgrown my faith.  What I had learned didn’t make sense anymore in light of the brutality of the world that I was experiencing.  I gave up.  For about three years I identified as an agnostic.  I stopped reading the Bible, stopping going to church, stopped doing the things “good Christians” are supposed to do.  Though I used to identify this as “the falling away,” I now realize that those years were important for me because they helped me think through what I really believed.  I realized during those years that I just was not ultimately capable of living as an agnostic or atheist.  Faith ran too deep for me to be able to do that.  But I tried!  This does not mean I didn’t continue struggling with doubt.  But I left epoch 3 when I decided to take up the struggle again and begin striving once more.

And striving it was.  When I reengaged actively with my faith in epoch 4, I naturally took up all the means of knowing God that I had previously tried and then dropped.  Only now it wasn’t “working” for me.  So I tried harder.  The harder I tried, the more discouraged I became.  So I’d give up for long periods – months at a time.  It just took too much energy.  The striving that I had previously done willingly and that had been fulfilling was now a huge burden that I not only could not do anymore, but that I finally realized recently I don’t even really WANT to do anymore.  In short, that way of knowing  God was not actually helping me know God.  Instead, it was helping me know guilt, self-criticism, frustration, failure, and loneliness.  Over the past 16 years I have rarely been able to find God in the mix.  My ministry was oftentimes a ministry of what I knew and deeply believed to be true for others, but struggled to actualize in my own life.  I could not accept God’s love, God’s grace, or the mystery and suffering of life.

Period 5.  In the past year, this has come to a head.  It took many years to move from, “I can’t seem to ‘get back’ to where I used to be ‘with God’” to “I don’t even want to go back to the way things used to be.  I don’t know how to know God in that way.”  And so I have been in a new period of awakening.  If I called the first one birth, this one could only be called rebirth.

Fr. Tom gave me a book to look over that described St. John of the Cross’ “Dark Night of the Soul.”  The dark night is a time of intense spiritual dryness that is experienced as a separation from God, but during which a person is actually brought to the end of him/herself in preparation for the beginning of a new, deeper, and more vital union with God. The dark night is characterized by three things:

a. Dryness and impotence in prayer/life
b. Lack of desire for the old ways
c. Simple desire to love God

I realized this is where I have been.  This, for me, has been epoch 4.  I have spent nearly 16 years in the dark night.  I am on this retreat having just begun to emerge from it into this simple desire to love God and to know him, not just in my head but daily – moment by moment.

Question: How do I live in love when the world presses in?  How does one learn to remain in the place of love and not be thrust again into ego, into striving, into one’s own insufficient efforts to “fix things,” born out of one’s own brokenness and desperation?

5:35 pm.  Managed to finally sleep for 30 minutes.  Time to go to dinner.

6:32 pm.  Dinner was fantastic.  Tilapia fillets, beer bread, broccoli & cauliflower, pasta shells w/ sauce, coffee, cookies.  Sat in a much bigger room, at a much smaller table.  Alone most of the time, but last ten minutes sat directly across from a perfect stranger and said not a word.  Ten minutes is the most I can stand right now.  I never knew there is an art to living with others in silence.

7:16 pm.  Prayer and meditation for 30 minutes.  Set timer for 45, but I just don’t think I’m capable of that right now.  Finding that my attention is starting to drift and all I want to do is set this aside and watch some mindless TV.  I cannot stop thinking about my family.  Knowing I can’t call them is extremely stressful.  I find myself again just wanting to go home.  I want to talk to Steve and ask if it is normal to feel this way, what it means, and if I just continue w/ it or at some point find it so distracting that I should just call them.  I feel like I’m not that guy that intentionally goes someplace where I cannot call home.  Should I be?

8 pm.  Suddenly this passage in Is. 43 takes on new meaning.  As I feel myself sinking into depression, alone, bored, missing my family, I read again about God’s love for me.  And isn’t it in this place that I need to know that?  Isn’t it in the darkness that I need to remember about the light?  Isn’t that what I have come here for?  Even here – even now – I belong fully to  God.  Even in my discouragement and frustration.

When you’re in over your head, I’ll be with you.

That is now.  You are here now.  You love me now, and call to me now.  You tell me now not to fear.

Saturday, – 2:21 pm.
The evening finished well last night. I listened to Ashton/Becker/Dente and went for a walk.  Sat for a while in the chapel, then meditated for another 20 minutes.  Grabbed a candy bar from the commissary and headed back to my room.  Went to bed.  Woke up and went to breakfast, then meditated and prayed before coming back to my room and sleeping another hour.  Then up, in the shower, and off to lunch. After lunch, read Manning for a while, then met with Fr. Tom.

6:35 pm.  Perhaps nothing demonstrates how much better today is than yesterday more than the infrequency of journal entries today compared to yesterday.  Chicken a la’ orange to tonight. I find myself physically hungrier here than I ever am in the world outside, I think because the intensity of the prayer work here (and the aloneness) takes a toll physically.  Today I ate two lunches, but still had to get a snack before dinner.  Then I ate two dinners, then went to the commissary to buy candy, expecting to be hungry again before bed.

Mass is tomorrow.  Not sure yet if I will go.

3:39 pm.  Tired, but sleep is not coming.  The noise of my fan seems like a violent insult over the thick blanket of silence in this place.  Right now I cannot imagine three days of this.  I just want something – anything – to do.  I want to go home.

4:08 pm.  Feels like detox.  Finally gave in and cued up Rich Mullins’ A Liturgy, A Legacy, and A Ragamuffin Band.  Am I praying now?  Right here, in these thoughts of dread and burden?  What could/does God want me to know right now?  According to Rich, at this instant, “Peace of Christ to you.”

I’ve been here less than five hours, but consumed already by thoughts of my family.  Starting to feel very hungry, as I ate a light lunch because I grabbed food on my way here.

Why do I tire of this God thing?  Others can worship for countless hours, but I get bored and sick of it.  I think I can’t maintain anything very long that isn’t hopelessly cerebral.

I want to go home.  I’d rather be anywhere than here.  If I were to get in the car and drive home, I know what I’d be driving to.  But what would I be running from?  That is what I have to stay to find out.

4:28 pm.  Some people’s biggest problem is that no one loves them.  Most people’s biggest problem is that, though deeply loved, we often act as though we are alone and unloved.  That is me.  In my work with teenage girls, I have often found myself saying to them, “You are sitting now next to your father – the man who already loves you like no man on this earth will ever love you.  Why won’t you let him?”  The answer – deep wounds and hurts that prevent it.  Anger and resentment toward him for not being who she thought he was, and who she thinks she needs him to be.  These girls need to let go of their pain and disappointment, learn to let daddy be who he is, and accept the love he freely offers.  This is where they will find joy.

I am at this moment (and all moments) in the presence of the one who loves me more than anyone will ever love me.  But usually I can’t let him.  Why?  Because of deep wounds in me that prevent it.  I carry anger and resentment that God is not who I thought he was – who I think I need him to be.  I need to let go of my pain and disappointment, learn to let God be who he is, and accept the love he freely offers.  I know this is where I will find joy.  God, I am here this weekend praying for the healing of wounds that keep me from taking what you freely offer, and what I most need.