*as mentioned elsewhere in this space, these installments are my intention to get a very rough draft of a personal project I have been working on for a numbers of years (writing my life story) off the word d and somewhere where it could hold me accountable to doing something with it.
At this point I am jumping ahead in the timeline, as the period between 2000 and 2003 plays a significant role in shaping what I could (and will) call the two sides of my life. If there is a whole lot of life lived in-between that aformentioned experience frommy Grade 5 year, it would be this later period where it begins to take on new and fresh meaning in the scope of my story.
Having just graduated with my degree in Youth Leadership from a local college/seminary (Providence College), my church, the church that had played in a significant role in my formation from the time I joined is humble beginnings as a house church at 18, was also in the midst of it’s own crisis. It’s worth mentioning that not only was this church birthed from a similar conflict, one that once left my then graduating self lost and confused before handing me what would become a new found identity, it would be sometihng I can say I helped build from the ground up.
It could be argued that this (then) present conflict paralleled a larger sense of disatisfaction and deconstruction that was reaching well beyond the walls of this specific church body, embodied in what could fairly be described as a mass exodus of many in my generation from the church culture we had inhereted from the 80’s and 90’s. What’s notable about this exodus is that it was far from uniform. On one side were those leaving what had become labeled a post-modern, watered down Christianity, for the then burgeoning and, at the time, emergent neo-reformed circles taking North America by storm. This movement was marketed as a demand for more intelligent, more bookish, more “biblical,” more robust credal expressions of the Church driven by a need to reclaim and thus preserve the hallmarks of historic orthodox theology.
Meanwhile, on the other side stood those for whom the whole post-modern climate had pushed them towards a different sort of “critique” of the same problem. Rather than seeking to reclaim orthodoxy, they were seeking to abandon the whole enterprise altogether,
These two sides did not get along
And neither did the two central pastors at my church.
Where did this leave me? Thinking back on it, there definitely was a degree to which I found myself trying to figure things out for myself, and largely without a whole lot of support. Equally so while my once coherent world was once again being pulled out from under me. For the nearly 8 years prior to this stuff all coming to a head, my identity had been rooted in my connection to a place that had been defined by these people. They were my world, as they were that Church. And like the shifting tides, I often found a tendency, probably out of desperation to hold on to some sense of coherency while silently grieving a still undefined and unclarified loss, to double down in defence of whichever side was being attacked in a given moment. Which isolated me more than anything. I think a part of me believed, or at least hoped, that we were somehow, at the heart of it all, fighting for the same thing, and that somehow something of what had helped the world to make sense might be preserved. Instead, the more people began to leave and disappear, the more alone I felt.
Or perhaps better put, the more alone I became (sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between feelings and truth). In this case there was, without a doubt, a tangible and physical change when it came to the space itself. And given the degree to which my own sense of self was attached to this place, I was becoming more and more unfamiliar and uncertain in the process of my own handle on truth and identity as well.
And for that matter, who God was.
As I’ve heard it put by some, it led to a kind of homelessness.
There were other factors at play too, all playing an equal role in my feeling lost at this particular moment of my life. I’ll speak more about these things later, but 10 years of pursuing a career in music had come to an abrupt end. A part catalyist for that shift- my investment in the youth ministry at my church- had culminated in a quiet, unspoken rejection by the powers that be. Both brothers had now moved out of my parents home, leaving me unable to clarify where my own home was. I had lost my dog Ginger, my best friend. One of the pastors at my church who had been a vital mentor through the choas of these moments in my life had become a casualty of the exodus.
On top of this, everything I had been taught to believe was being called into question at the same time.
I no longer recognized the world that I had been formed within. I no longer knew who I was.
I no longer knew what was true.
I would press this even further and say it more concretely- everything felt like a lie.
Shifting for a brief moment of time into the world of neo-reformed zelousness, led as it was by its patron saint John Piper, had only served to create more uncertainty and more confusion. Whatever bookishness it had promised me ultimately revealed itself to be more about gatekeeping than actual honest inquiry. The post-modern liberalism on the other end of the spectrum felt equally problematic, being more obsessed with targeted (and often angry) deconstruction than coherent, rational conversation. And to stay where I was, in what was a highly competitive church environment seeking to reinforce the fortress and stop the bleeding, seemed to be constantly telling me, with it’s type A level vigour, that who I was was inevitably not good enough to belong to this circle, leaving me on the outside of all three of these spaces.
And so I quietly left the whole enterprise- Christianity, the world- life- behind. I went through the motions, but internally I was becoming more and more the hardened cynic. I shoved my degree in my pocket, slowly left the ministries I had been serving with (namely youth and music), and got a job at a government agency involved with social services relating to high risk youth, dipping in and out of delivering papers on the side (later bringing in a short stint with my childhood hero, Scholastic Book Fairs).
It was around this time, now about 27 years of age, that I eventually moved out of my parents house and into a shared split level house with a friend. Which is really where I hit my lowest point, my existential crisis coming to a boiling point. Sadly affecting my friend in the process.
Usually when we speak of such crisis points we are also speaking of notable transitions. This might be seen as points of no return. It can be points of revelation or points of change and redirection. This was true for me. The reason I see this as my lowest point is because it was the moment my life took an unexpected turn, bringing me back full circle to that pivotal Grade 5 moment where I found myself confronting a whole new manifestation of those fears.
My parents had decided to go away, and they asked me to house sit/dog sit. I agreed. Looking back, I do wonder whether this was a moment that I leaned into with intention precisely because it afforded me space to disappear into. When you can’t handle life, even living with a roomate becomes too much to navigate. When you’re in a dark spot, that isolation and aloneness becomes something that we desperately seek and crave.
It was late one evening sitting alone in front of my parent’s computer, after having hashed out yet another conversation with my older brother online (our relationship had come to be defined by these kinds of cyclical conversations for a while now, ever since he had disappeared from the picture at 16 (for me, 14) years of age. To be honest his physical absence had been in play ever since elementary school found our lives incidentally parting ways). Having come to define myself as an atheist, which is really a term that emerges from and justifies ones rejection of their religious upbringing, thus being somewhat redundant, this particular convo. although arguably reflecting nothing out of the norm, had led me to present myself with a challenge. I had been asking people within the online atheist communities I was engaging, whether there was a genuine answer to this simple question- why should I not kill myself.
An important caveat here- this is not to say I was necessarily suicidal. This was a hypothetical exercise. I don’t think I cared either way. Whatever was driving me was based on a singular concern, which was a haunted need to know the integrity of my belief. Meaning, knowing that my choices and actions and the way I lived my life lined up with what I genuintely thought to be true about reality and this world. Why was that so important? I’m not sure. I might suggest, as I’ve hinted at through my story up to this point, that this was ingrained in me as a young kid pouring myself into books. The more stories I encountered the more questions it raised about reality and the world. As a young kid i felt, and inuitively understood, that such questions could not be detached from the way I lived my life. All I knew was that it seemed to matter what I believed to be true if my convictions were going to be rational, coherent and revelant.
The question about suicide sseemed to be a microcosm of this greater concern, and one which poked at some of our most tightly held assumptions and values. If one was to simply say no, you should not end your life., the next question would be, why not? What is it that prevents me from doing so? A cognitive/biological resistance? An ideological one? An emotional one? If there are good rational reasons to do so, why do I choose not to? And why would I call this necessary? My hope was to be able to get underneath the limits I was seeing (and feeling) to exist within the entire rational enterprise, at least when it came to confronting what people were willing to accept within the atheistic framework I had taken on for myself. After all, if we ridicule religious communities for apparently being unwilling to face reality and instead holding on to comfortable illusions in response, our atheism should not be doing the exact the same thing if we want to take it seriously.
I never got a real, genuine answer to my question, and so I concluded that people simply didn’t like the answer atheism rationally demanded from us in its necessary logical process.
Great, now I’ve isolated myself in these cricles too. Turns out atheists didn’t like being challenged any more than the christians.
I honestly don’t remember what precisely triggered the following move, but it emerged from this particular conversation on that particular night that I had with my brother. I also wouldn’t say this was a completely serious endeavor, although it was rooted in a weird sort of appeal to seek that aformentioned integrity. The question of God lingered in the background of my past life. So why not play to it’s relevance? Playing off something my brother had said, I reached into my backpack of cliches and pulled out a tried and true trope. I prayed to God right there in the darkness of that empty house and said, hey God, here’s my challenge. Let’s see if you can move a chess piece. If you are real, give me something, anything, that you know would make me believe.
After all, as every good atheist knows, the problem of divine hiddenness is one of the most damning realities for religion, right?
And then I went to sleep.
And I got up.
Nothing.
Not that I was really considering it. Not that I was expecting anything. My mind was still on the rational problem of my question, not the spiritual crisis problem. For me that was a silly game. The challenge I had conjured up in the moment as part had been a momentary expression of my cyncism.
I continued on with my day. This was a day when I happened to be going to meet with someone who was associated with my church. After all, when it comes to such shifts in ones worldview it’s not like you are able to completely change the shape of your world. You co-exist within it. This is when I happened upon someone whom I did not know. As it turns out, this individual, who did not know me or my struggles, had been praying the evening prior and had felt prompted to write down some words. She wasn’t sure if they were meant for anything, but she wrote them down. In this moment she felt like they were meant for me. And so she gave them to me.
They recounted the words of my prayer from the previous night.
More than that, they tasked me with the act of remembering, recalling the events on my bike from Grade 5. I came to call this my letter from God. And this started a journey through comparative religions and eventually back to Christianity, albeit a Christianity that looked a lot different than the one I had left behind.
It also did something that, for me, was quite profound- it broke the chains of what I would now call a present manifestation of that aforementioned fear. A fear rooted in this haunting need to get things right. For my beliefs to be truly rational and logical, and for my life to be willing to match the implications of whatever that truth demanded. I will get further into this with my story as well, but part of what was being uncovered in these moments was also a fear of being midusnderstood, something that I have come to see as intimately connected to that need to get things right.
These years of my life were captured by patterns of conversations, encounters, relationships, social circles, work environments, all meeting this same seemingly insurmountable wall when it came to my need to challenge what I perceived as constructs and conventions and gaps in the world’s reasoning and logic. Perhaps most aware in the area of assumptions regarding personhood and conceptions of the self. As I have come to learn over my now near 50 years of life, we can fight and fight to convince ourselves that we are a self-made individual, which is the assumption most social and societal constructs are built on, but we are never more or less than the person we are in someone else’s story. Thus, to feel misunderstood is one of the most frightening feelings there is, precisely because it’s the thing that holds your entire life in its grip. It is shaping and telling our story. As the old adage goes, to know and be known. One of the truest cliches regarding the nature of the human experience.
Side note- I read a few helpful books regarding how to write your life story as an amateur, and one of the common refrains I came across was the freedom these authors gave to both tell your story as you see it, but also to understand that your story is similtaneously telling the story of the many “others” whom find roles on your stage and in your play. There is no easy answer to this end, simply the freedom to recognize the push and pull and to let go of the fear of gettting it wrong. After all, “as you see it,” can more aptly be described as one’s wrestling with the different versions of “you” the world has defined and created.
One of the interesting things that surfaced for me in reflecting on this important transition in my life is the way it calls forward the thoughts in my first chapter on the importance of distinguishing between what is life and what is death. As I suggested, the minute we lose the ability to define Death (capitalized with intention), we lose the ability to define Life.
And I don’t use these words in the sense of simple existence and non-existence. I don’t think fear of death in the sense of “non-existence,” which is how it is commonly used, is ever the point. Assumptions that we fear that kind of death are always a mask for the true fears running underneath. Instead, I use these words in the broader sense of two different kinds of reality. Death embodies decay, suffering, oppression, division, chaos. Life embodies transformation, order, freedom, unity.
One of the great inconsistencies that I engaged in my atheism was the fact that I found it deemed it to be rational and acceptable to play fast and loose with these categories of Life and Death. Doing so might have the appearance of coherency, and even intellectual integrity, but beyond not being logically coherent, such an approach has a hard time making sense of our actual experience of this world. In the living I find it is the exact opposite- we assume these to be hard and fast categories embedded within reality. The sort of willfull ignorance required to play fast and loose with our definitions is in fact masking a real cognitive dissonance. A cognitive disonnance which, in my opinion, is built on modern resistance to binaries and polarities. Pull back the curtain on how this world works and you find these binaries at work all over the place.
In many ways, over the course of telling my story I will keep coming back to where I started on this basic observation- the need to constantly be defining, in changing contexts and cirucmstance, Life and Death as distinguishable from one another was ingrained in me from my very youngest years. Without that nothing else can possibly make sense. It is what drew me to the power of story in the first place. It is what drew me to the necessary place of the imagination. It is what frames my longing for ongoing discussion and debate and critique, for the pursuit of the rational in partnership with what I have come to know as the spirit.
And yes, it is what makes sense of my deeply felt need to be understood.
On that level, I don’t know if that chronic restlessness is a curse or a blessing. It certainly has the power to create enemies and form rifts. And yet I have also found likeminded souls along the way, people with shared language and shared concern whom could not be understood without it. Some of which I know personally, others which remain encounters from a distance, be it writers, filmmakers, thinkers, philosophers. Which helps me feel a little less crazy at the very least. On my brightest days, a little less alone.
Or as I once hear it said from the famed avante garde filmmaker, Alejandro Jodorowsky, “We all exist in our own personal reality of craziness.” It’s simply a matter of learning to see that others share that reality with us.
The Stories of my Life 