What I Apparently Grieve Most

I come to the page today aware of resistance to a deep grief I have stewarded for years now: loss of what used to be trustworthy (as I received it) and the resulting loneliness all around me because of such loss. 

Almost everyone in my establishment communities looks to Scripture for clarity and discernment about the presence of God in their lives, a compendium of how to be human within our Created form: enspirited flesh, enfleshed spirit, built for community and healed in a community that witnesses, trusts each of us to show up, offer, receive. (That configuration is coming in my next book). I was reared with a devotion to scripture, eventually finding my own life’s path in pursuit of its expositions into theological disciplines stewarded by deeply faithful mentors, elders. I was therefore existentially driven to encounter God more deeply–for my own interests, curiosities, not just those of my elders.

At the same time, it’s like Scripture has become the Emperor with No Clothes to me, as I see more and more of us--people of faith--weaponizing it without care or concern for how our words will be used. It feels lonely because very few committed to my root tradition are willing to name or honor its transgressive uses, its weaponization, its utter distraction of the point of faith–God's love, human-divine lovingkindness, spiritual maturity we most resist, becoming fully human, fully alive. Scripture-is-to-be-trusted has become such habit that it addicts us, pointing to proclaimed promises of Scripture instead of listening deeply to the discomforts arising all around us, becoming present with our fellow human beings, without response or answer but with heart.

This summer’s online class is demonstrating such behaviors, increasingly defensive and reactive to any challenge to consider the More of God, which means I am facing my own triggers, fears, receiving their unconscious projections and refusals. It’s not insignificant that I am continuing to work on a manuscript project which these students would (probably) judge harshly. As I continue to write to all that has been Given me, all that I sense as sacred within all human beings–them included, or perhaps even moreso, given my growing aversion–I find myself feeling their fear within me. Or feeling my own fears, wounded as I am by so many refusals, disdain, and unconscious judgments of congregational Christians today.

No one likes someone who questions the habitual idolatry in scripture’s use today, I guess. Days like this, I want to be returned to a world where clearly the thing of faith is to examine scripture, make an argument from its history of interpretation, and weaponize my interpretation against those who disagree with me.

But I don’t, really. Wisdom beckons from beyond these Gates, content to know the Joy she’s been Given, palpable in Stillness.

Maybe I just feel lonely today, which will pass eventually when I sense into the feelings of Who and How Godde is, interconnecting all of us with beautiful, courageous people living into an unknown, emergent future.