I was listening to an interview with author and scholar Donna Freitas this morning, where she was speaking about her upbringing and her faith journey. Having grown up Catholic, and having long since found herself wrestling with the tensions present between between the problems she could percieve and experience within the institutional church and the intuitions and longings that seemed to poke and prod at that inner desire to seek and find soemthing true, she eventually found herself falling headfirst into the field of philosophy and religion. Somewhat with that familiar story of contrasting figures in her father and her mother in tow. This is what continues to shape her journey both as a woman and as a seeker.
At one point she said something that caught me in an unexpected way. She described how one of the things that feels like it define her relationship to faith is that she seems to find these glimpses of God through the experiences of other people rather than her own. If she has never had that prototypical direct encounter that makes God so real for the mystics and the many, she consistently finds a connection to the transcendent through exploring the stories and lives and actions of others that have. Here she refuses to allow her own skepticism to invalidate the witness of the diverse world that surrounds her.
There’s a subsequent part to this as well that struck me. If one of the ways these mystics and many commune with God is through the practice of prayer, she describes the freedom that came from recognizing that its possible that her writing could be considered an act of praying. These two things really resonated with me and my own journey. While I can point to different experiences in my life as being a particular harbinger of my own wrestling with faith in God, one of the constants that contintues to sustain me is that so many of my life’s most important moments have come from those whom have that apparent gift of direct communion with the Divine. So much so that their own witness tendsd to become my own.
It’s also not suprising to think back on my life and the figures and encounters that I find contained within and note that these same ones who seem to have that privileged connection and gifting are also often dedicated prayers as well. This might be why part of my wrestling has seen this persistant fascination with prayer. A subject I seem to keep coming back to over the years in different seasons and different moments. Partly because I feel like I suck at prayer. Partly because those who are gifted at it occupy such a powerful place in my life, even ast times directly on my behalf.
I’ve long had this intuition that perhaps I have misplaced my understanding of what prayer is. Perhaps the particular gifting that I so cherish in the lives of others isn’t prayer, but a particular characteristic that I lack which opens them up to and sustains their belief. Perhaps what I have long felt terrible at is not prayer, but that particular characteristic that fills in the gaps of that thing I lack and struggle with. More importantly, if this is true, perhaps there is room to say I can pray. In fact, maybe I do pray in ways I don’t realize. And further, maybe my own particular characterstic reflects an equal strength that somehow fills gaps in others. If so, there is motivation to recognize what that is on both fronts, in what I lack and in what I have.
A difficult thought indeed. But when she described her prayer life as the act of writing, something she suggests “is speaking to something or someone,” a light bulb went on in my mind. That’s exactly what my intuition keeps telling me, even as I constantly dismiss it and distrust it. I’m not a writer like her, but this space is an example of a similar act of praying. Perhaps more readily is my love of reading, something she also describes as being fundamental to her own life and wrestling. To read is, for me, to be engaged in an act of prayer. To wrestle with big ideas and big thoughts is an act of prayer. To travel, even to the smallest of places (which seems to be norm for me these days) is an act of prayer. It is in these actions, these spaces, that I would say my spirit is most awaken to that necessary conversation that awakens me to God’s reality.
Which is where it hits me- all of these spaces, these actions, are finding God through the experiences of others. Through things external to my own self and in ways that fill in the gaps that my own character lacks. This is, in fact, seemingly also part of my own strength and gifting as well.
It’s kind of funny actually, because this intuition meets the rational part of my brain that says, but prayer is found in things like quiet and detaching and nature and contemptlation and meditation. I’ve long since read and encountered persistant critique of occupying our minds with other voices. But I know, for me those things do the opposite. I feel furthest from God in nature where the only thing I have is myself and the suppposed awarness of the Divine its supposed to evoke. I feel disconnected in the quiet and the contemplation where I have no access to the thoughts of others. Where do I come most alive? Through encountering the thoughts and experiences of others in books and ideas and encounters, and bringing that into conversation whereever it is I find myself.
Yes, I know this makes me the awkward one at parties. It is typically seconds before I’ve forced any and all conversations underneath the surface. I don’t do well with superficialities and practicalities, largely because if we aren’t discussing why it matters then, for me, it doesn’t matter. And part of what makes this particular characterstic what it is, for me, is that I do not fear the questions. I do not fear the wrestling. Those things actually enliven my faith. I do not fear, as Freitas describes the common burden of the existentialist (she’s a fellow lover of Kierkegaard) being one who is able to stare into the abyss and keep on living.
I’ve also lived long enough to know that somehow this quirk has, in different moments with different people, filled in the gaps that those others lack. My whole self resists such acknowledgments, but that witness exists and persists nonetheless in the notes and memories packed away in totes and those deep recesses of my brain. I know that there exists those whom do fear staring into the abyss, or whom find themselves in a space where they feel it but can’t articulate it, and for whom faith itself hangs in that incoherent and precarious balance. I know that in some cases what I am good at meets those gaps. Perhaps strength is as much recognizing what I lack as it is what I have. And sometimes, or maybe often is the case, the same people with whom I find my persistant existential crisis meaning something important, my connection to their own strenghts equally feeds my own soul.
The Stories of my Life 