The Id and the I Am

I had my second session with Rev. Linda this morning. I showed up on time, instead of 15 minutes early, which is indicative of my lack of enthusiasm for the meeting. I felt unprepared and unmoved but of course, I can ramble just as good as any other self-obsessed megalomaniac that gets high off of hearing his own abstract vocabulary on rotation. So I bantered for a few minutes until I was able to pick up on a theme that tied together my scattered observations of the last month.

It seems that I am searching for authentic Christianity, one that has an evangelical hermeneutic combined with a postmodern ethic. I want certainty without judgementalism, love without relativism and wonder without ignorance. That is why I often find myself interested in the lives of high profile Christians. I want to investigate how they live out their faith and, more importantly, if they are able to do so consistently. Anyone can conceive of the ideal, but few can live it and Christianity is a system that is best practiced live. But so many fall short and although I know that this is a function of human frailty and finitude, it still irks me that the majority of people who profess to know the mind of God can still live steeped in so much mundanity.

The irony of my quest for authentic Christianity is that even if I were able to find it and could unpack it, I would be least likely of all to be able to live it. This authentic Christianity is like a beautiful young woman who is most desirable whilst her virginity is intact. To try to live this ideal would be to reveal the sheer impossibility of such an endeavor but maybe this is what Christ meant to demonstrate in the Sermon on the Mount. I recall one of Frank's co-pastors interpreting the narrow gate verse this way, "the road is narrow because without grace few are able to live it." Of course that leaves the possibility open for some, Mother Teresa, The Dalai Lama, etc. but for the majority of us, authentic communion with the Divine seems only possible through grace.

But as Bonhoeffer points out, this grace is not cheap. The truth is, I have found examples of authentic Christianity, aside from negligible human flaws, I just know that I could never live those lives. I am frustrated by my utter inability to attain to greatness--to walk that narrow path upright and on my own two feet. Rev. Linda says that my problem is sin, more accurately, my obsession with the problem of evil. She went out to suggest that because my problem is actually a conglomeration of several different issues, self-loathing, fear, hurt and intellectual angst, that I should consider seeing a spiritual counselor. In line with this suggestion, she is going to investigate some retreat options for me. Maybe this will all lead me to where I should have started to begin with--a psychologist. My malaise is as psychological as it is spiritual.

As an aside to our meeting, I asked Rev. Linda if she loved Christ. To my relief and amazement, she did not immediately respond but sat back in her chair and contemplated the question, then, after several moments, answered, "I feel more comfortable saying that I know that I am loved by Him." It is in these quirky answers and insights that I begin to see shafts of light in the darkness. I can walk forward guided by these flashes, although blindly, in the hope that I will not have to turn back into the dessert from whence I came.

The Scope of Truth

My next meeting with Rev. Linda is rapidly approaching and I feel like a child with a project deadline. What has changed over the last month? I've been back and forth, sometimes I feel enlightened, inspired and free to accept my destiny and move forward in it, while other times, I am frustrated and lost or totally distracted--satisfied on the surface to continue playing out this farce. The good that I see is too good to be true while the muck that surrounds me has already permeated my being. Which is more real?

In my desire to push myself along the path and not linger for too long at any one point, I started reading Merton's No Man is an Island. It seemed to be written for the general seeker, whereas Nouwen is written for Christians in crisis. Despite his niche, I find it odd that a lot of what Nouwen writes resonates with me...and how could it. I am definitely not at the same place Nouwen was when he composed this book and yet he is still able to reach out and touch me with the insight of one who is in the midst of the dark night.

Sometimes I feel as if I am fighting too hard..."why do you kick against the pricks," while other times I feel as if I will give in too easily. Of course, Merton is profound and not at all orthodox in his explanations. He is able to balance between belief and rationality as he untangles the mysterious web of the conscious cosmos. I just don't want to believe because I need to believe. I want to understand what I believe. Blind faith is like blind love, without any real value because it is totally ignorant to the object of its devotion.

There needs to be a distinction between faith in a God and faith in Christianity. For me, once I accept by faith that God exists, then I must decide between the various explanations of that existence. These explanations, or religions, rise and fall on their ability to rationally, systematically and consistently elucidate their position. Having faith in God is difficult enough without adding the extra burden of accepting ridiculous explanations as to the nature of that existence.

Yes, truth may be elusive and mysterious, it may even be messy but it is not sloppy. It is not slapped together without any thought given to the whole. Truth is pervasive and therefore must be internally consistent, that is not to say there are no paradoxes but the paradoxes should be fundamental--they should stem from the very core of a system, they should not arise at the intersection of the resulting tenets. I do not mind a grandiose explanation of reality, however, I do take issue with one that fails to appreciate scope of truth.

Awakening From Another Spiritual Stupor

It all seems too ridiculous...the concept of God and the afterlife, the need for a savior and the master plan. I can see it all unfolding before me, its true genealogy revealing its most humble beginnings in the newly awakened minds of our earliest ancestors. When first able to put into words the reality of death, instead of embracing the realization that they were just like the flower and the deer, they chose to elevate themselves above the rest of the natural world. They told stories of another life for their forebearers to reinforce their importance to their children. They honored their dead with gifts and offerings that would help sustain them in this next life. But some began to question, how can the revered rest with the unworthy; the very question that was echoed by David in the Psalms. It was then that we see the formation of a place for the righteous and a place for the wicked--a Heaven and a Hell. But this, too, needed to be clarified, explained to the illiterate masses. Thus, a code was established, abide by it, they were told, and you will live, break it and you too will be broken. But the code was hard, costly and unbearable, so there came a Savior who promised to pay the debt of sin that had been levied against them.

All major religions follow a similar course, the fallen condition, the code to completion and the hope to come--that is what makes them religions, whether the goal is enlightenment, self-fulfillment, Valhalla or Heaven. They all promise a way out. The reality of this pluralism in the world always sours the taste of Christianity for me. Often, when I awake from the spiritual stupor that descends on me, I am appalled to find that I would even consider this collection of fables to be the very keys that unlock the Real.

And yet, this cynical position, though intellectually safe from ridicule, is itself absurd. True, pluralism seems to reject out of hand any claim to absolute truth but what does the proliferation of religion reveal about the human condition. Of course I am not the first one to suggest that therein lies one nucleus, a kernel of the Real, that all the other particular religious orbit around. I never have any original thoughts, any feelings of creativity and genius are merely the function of my profound ignorance.

Despite the feelings expressed in this post, a line from Nouwen made tears well up in my eyes when I read it. He wrote, "This is a sincere desire," speaking of the search for meaning, "don't look on it as an expression of your own neediness or as a symptom of your own neurosis." I had expressed a very similar thought to Rev. Linda in our last meeting. I don't know why that it strikes me as so unique when another person writes what is written on my heart. We are all the same, why do I feel as if I am the only one? But it is in the commonality of conscious experience, like the ubiquity of religion, that a transcendent truth is hidden, but what it is or who it points to remains a mystery to me.

Related To Estrangement

It is hard to rule the world from a deluxe townhouse development on the outer rim of the suburbs. Where I, like the trees have been emasculated, their once viral phalanxes reduced to mulch only to be reborn as flaccid samplings rising from well manicured patches of sod. They bend, nearly creased, with the slightest passing breeze because they have neither the inner strength nor the outer shelter of other, more mature, trees to sustain them. It is a desert landscape punctuated by a small plastic oasis where one only spends the night before making the next journey back to civilization.

I am a nomad who utterly refuses to claim this place as his home. I traveled back to what I have always considered to be the center of the universe--my birthplace in northern New Jersey. I grew up there perched a top the first cliffs that rose beyond the elongated skyline of New York just pass the industrial sea of the Meadowlands. Every point west, north and south seemed like an arid wasteland in comparison to the vibrant metropolis I could see and smell from my bedroom window. This is my home; this is where my identity resonates from and yet I have not lived there in more than 15 years.

I visit often but only as a stranger, there are no longer familiar faces behind the doors on my street ready to welcome me into their kitchens and backyards to play. I can only pass them slowly in disbelief that I was ever a frequent guest in these homes. But it will never be to me what it once was and I am not sure that it ever truly was what I think it was to me. I have to let go off it, put it into perspective with who I have been for these past 15 years. I am afraid to really look forward; I am content to contingency plan for the future. I continue to upgrade the parts on the ship as I drift down the river so that I can be ready for whatever I encounter, but planning for any possibility leaves not time and resources for the one course that I should be on.

When it comes down to it, I just don't want to choose and I can feel a decision coming on. I was invited to hear Frank speak this morning and usually it is my practice to visit his church when he is scheduled to deliver the sermon; however, I could not bring myself to attend today. I couldn't bare to listen to the songs and hear the scriptures again. Christianity is like a beautiful woman with a tremendous amount of baggage. We were together once but it did not last and now as the years pass I have started to idealize her. But in reality she has let herself go, she no longer possess the curves that once drew me to her, underneath the emotion and poise is a body misshapen by fat and wrinkled by age. But if that is all that drew me to her in the beginning, did I ever really love her or is it all hope's propaganda. Perhaps, I never left her and she is my estranged spouse.

My life in two worlds has left me with little peace. I want to get away from the distraction of my duel obligations but I cannot. I am conflicted, what I want, I dare not have and what I have, I refuse to embrace. I keep telling myself that this is not me. That I am someone else, somewhere else. But that is a lie. I am here, for good or for ill. This is my place. I can run, but it is only as if on a treadmill, I can never leave where I am. I cannot escape the person I am or will become. This is the throne in my flesh.

Coming Out Of The Closet of Abstraction

I have realized a disturbing characteristic of my narcissism; it lusts after potential and what can be gained in the future while at the same time disdaining what is already possessed but true self love embraces the present. I live in two worlds, the present and the future, the pragmatic and the principled, the tactile and the rhetorical. To me, my life appears to be so abstract, even my writing only makes passing references to my lived experiences, my relationships, my job, my studies, but how I live out my waking hours is like a gay man's heterosexual marriage--a sham, not at all representative of who I am. Yet, I am terrified of coming out of the closet of abstraction. Abstraction used to be an escape from the delusion of the mundane but now it has become the securest of all prisons. I am like a replica put on display at a museum for fear the original will be damaged if brought into the light. The stakes are too high for me to do what I am constantly being pushed towards.

I like to think on all of these things from a theoretical perspective. I say to myself, 'if I came back I would do this and that thing' or 'it is clear that this is the way such and such should be done.' But I remain motionless, sulking with my arms folded beneath a withering tree. I am unsatisfied with my life yet I refuse to change it. Writing is cathartic but it gives only the illusion of change for those who are searching for a reprieve from action. I realize that what I need I do not have and what I have relied on to meet that need could never have fulfilled it. I have wrongly blamed others for my own lethargy and shortsightedness. They were never the answer yet I sought to press them into the void that cannot be filled by my ideal. Perhaps, the emptiness I feel is not from any void inside me; rather the fulfillment of my being comes when I myself fill the void that exists outside me, the same void which holds my place and my purpose in the world.

In The Quiet of Being

In a previous entry, I wrote how I loathed my perception of myself. It think this disdain must be examined further for in lies some hidden truth about my quest for meaning. I have heard it said that you cannot give or receive love until you love yourself. I always thought of that kind of reasoning to be too soppy to be true. I thought it was natural to love oneself, even someone who commits suicide does so not because she hates herself but because she loves her life too much to continue in pain. But there are many types of love, I'm not referring here to the difference between the love of a mother or a sibling, a friend or a lover--the various objects of love, but rather the variety of intentions of love.

Some are intent on possession and control, others oneness or destruction and then there are many who simply desire with an intensity that appears to be love because it burns so strongly. The latter is commonly called lust, which has come to have a sexual connotation exclusively but I think there is another kind of lust. It is a mix of fantasy and longing just as regular lust, but this lust covets the ideal. It refuses to see imperfection until it is forced to in the intimacy of that long awaited embrace; it is then that familiarity truly breeds contempt.

In my opinion, most people lust after themselves only to realize they were not who they hoped they would be and then they quickly come to despise themselves with an intensity that far surpasses the that lust. This is what I believe has happened to me. The few times in my life that I have lifted the veil that shrouded my being, I was appalled to find the grotesque features of an imperfect face staring back at me. This is why I prefer the state of becoming to that of being. I spend my life in the pursuit of attainment never relenting for one moment to embrace my being. Before I have completed a task, I am already engulfed in another. My life has become a series of refinements and readjustments rather than a project. I am continual on a diet but am afraid to step on the scale and weigh the choices that comprise who I am. I study and research but seldom apply my knowledge. I define myself with verbs such as seeking, learning and contemplating but never with nouns which I fear will shed to much light on my darkness.

With this relentless running how can I have time to realize who I am now. How can I love what I cannot hold for even a moment. I had hoped that in the pursuit of attainment there would be meaning enough or a least ample distraction but there is not. One cannot help but look back periodically to find the way forward--a trajectory that thrusts one higher at a definite angle but there is no such thing when I look back on my life presently just a thousand random acts events hung together like notes scribbled frantically on a staff, it can neither be called a song nor a life. Despite this feeling, this pungent disappointment, I must tune out all the superfluous sounds and listen for my life. Perhaps, it is the deafening noise of a distracted life, a life spend on becoming, that I loathe and not the authentic me. Perhaps it is in the quiet of being that the true melody of my life will emerge.

Returning To The Scene Of The Crime

I thought for a long time that my faith was dead, rotting to the point that I was able to loosen the knot it had tied around me. Then, for some unknown reason, I found the rope again, clinging to my leg like a frayed piece of cloth, and decided to follow it back to the place it started, presumably the very place I had formally been so entangled. At first, I thought I knew exactly where it would lead me, so I intentionally meandered back for fear that I would get to the end too quickly and the journey would be over. But I soon realized that I was lost again. Maybe the rope I found at my feet was not the same one that I had previously unraveled. But why this compulsion to return to the scene of the crime.

Nouwen writes extensively about love and he has definitely given me a greater appreciation for its importance but at the same time, in my opinion, the phrase, 'I understand you,' spoken truthfully, fulfills me more deeply than the more commonly sought after, 'I love you' because one can love, quite genuinely, in spite a lack of personal knowledge whereas there is no such deficiency with real understanding. In fact, love and understanding could be seen as mutually exclusive. Love is an act of faith while understanding is an activity of the mind. It is very close to the distinction between sympathy and empathy; while a sympathetic person can hold you, an empathetic one will be able to walk with you.

I look for love, because that is what I been conditioned to do, but I long for understanding naturally. Perhaps my search for purpose is really a quest for understanding. If there is a great plan of which I am part of, then once I realize my place in it I become one with the designer. I am fulfilled by fulfilling my role. A square peg can find both its purpose and its truest counterpart within the emptiness of a quadrangle void.

I had resigned myself to a life lived in the avoidance of pain. I had packaged it up in eloquent monologues and even I bought the lie that mine was a deep and tortured path only a few would dare tread. I realize now that my path is a crowded one, trafficked by a host of others seeking the very same through personal freedom and financial independence. But if the avoidance of pain--the tolerable life I speak so often of, has truly been my goal, then I have utterly failed by all accounts. But now, instead of focusing my hate on others, I loathe myself because I have been one of them. Here I defer to the words of St. Paul, 'Oh, wrecked man that I am, who will save me from the body of this death.'

Just a Morsel of the Real

I feel myself slipping into a funk, my mind is heavy with thoughts, reminiscing, reliving and second-guessing. I read part of a journal from 1992, it wasn't much different from one of my recent posts. It wasn't as pensive and whiny, rather it was raw and primordial but the same old person shone through. This isn't a phase I am going through, I've just come up again briefly for air before I am plunged beneath the waves again, delightfully drowning in delusion. Up the clarity that comes with that air both revives and tortures because at once I sense the real hope of escape but also the futility of my efforts--I am conscious but powerless, a throbbing heart trapped within the flesh of a corpse.

I am caught in one huge cycle of hope, disappointment, rage and exhaustion and it would seem that Christianity is just a part of that cycle. I cannot fill the void, the lonely emptiness I feel. I am weighed down by it. Every way out turns out to be another way back into the depression, but each time it is much deeper and more despairing because I know that there is one less route of escape than I originally thought.

I just want to figure out how it is that I got here. I wish that I could remember how long time was so that I could have some sense of the effort and energy it took me to get to the present. That journey is all but lost among the mangled parts of a once elegance sculpture. Maybe that is the definition of brokenness; however, it could also be an accurate, albeit stark, description of existence--not a sickness, as such, though it appears that way to some, but rather an immutable condition.

I want to be drawn out of this. My life sickens me, no, it is my perception of my life that sickens me. I long for something greater to hold onto but I must live authentically even if that means wallowing in the filth of domesticity. If it is not real, then I want not part of it. It is true that I have been searching for meaning and perhaps relying on means that were not meant that need. But is Christianity just another veneer that will be unable to support the full weight of meaning? I have toyed with the notion of mystery in faith but even the most faithful have some sense of the object of their faith and though it may not be defined as certainty it must be palpable--perhaps just an aftertaste without the meal. I know that I cannot accomplish this myself; even the greatest person of faith cannot go on completed starved, they must taste a just morsel of the real.

Uncertain About Certainty

Maybe its not truth I am after but rather certainty. What's the difference? Truth is an object while certainty is a feeling. Of course it would seem obvious that as the veracity of a claim increases the certainty associated with believing that claim would also increase. However, I am not so sure that this is the case. Often the most fervent defenders of an ideology are those who fear that its weakness will be revealed the most. No one vehemently argues for obvious, it is only on issues where doubt may arise, that we find those using the offensive as their best method for defending their position which they fear could not stand on its own.

Now then, is it faith which is the opposite of doubt or is certainty the more appropriate antonym? It has been said that as faith increases so does certainty but this seems counterintuitive for if one is certain what need is there for faith? It seems more likely that certainty is the opposite of doubt and that faith is required in part because of the likelihood of doubt rather than the prevalence of certainty. If this is the case, and I am still not certain that it is, then how has certainty creep so insidiously into the community of faith? Why has certainty become the litmus test for faith? What possible place could hope have in an economy that trades in certainty exclusively? Could it be that certainty is a mask that hides deeply rooted doubt and with it immutable pride that prevents the wearer from crying out, 'help my unbelief'?

Those who struggle to believe are trampled on their way to the altar by those who rush ahead to proclaim their creeds in hopes that the sheer volume of their outbursts will silence the torrent of unbelief within them. I continue to give myself that litmus test, and each time I fail because the concept of God in His cosmic relationship with humanity becomes more complex and Christ's sacrifice although a simple act of sacrifice and love reveals the inner thoughts of the Almighty which my mind cannot hope to comprehend let alone have the audacity to be certain of in its finitude.