Thesis 36: A Turning (or, What the Darkness Taught Me)

This post is part of a series of meditations on each of Luther's "95 Theses." You can view all posts in the series here.

36. Any truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without indulgence letters.

+++

Around 3 a.m. on May 20th of this year, I reached the deepest point of loneliness and fear I had ever reached.

My wife, Ashley, was finally asleep and trying to heal. My son, Anson, was only about four hours old, and had just been put in what I can only describe as a life support machine/beast the size of a tiny car in order to be transported to St. Louis Children's Hospital.

I was utterly alone. The yellowy texture of the dark parking lot outside Ashley's hospital window was somehow darker and more intimidating than pitch. Yes, I'd reached out to friends and family on the phone, but I didn't know what to ask for. I was tired and petrified. Would my son die? Would Ashley be ok soon?

And so, I prayed into the void. And I found nothing.

I searched for the 23rd Psalm on my phone and prayed it over and over and over, somehow hoping that the words would become incantatory and make God appear out of the nothingness. But God never did.

I was alone.

+++

Of course, no emotion arises without context. Two years prior, I'd left the ordination process in the United Methodist Church. In retrospect, there was absolutely a rash element to that decision, but it is surely done. That decision opened the mental possibility for me to consider leaving church, for how long I didn't know. Ashley and I were married on the next to last day of 2016. We didn't return to church after that.

Too many of us can define our journeys in the church as demarcated by pain, disappointment, and anger, myself included. For me, it felt like a stereotypical abusive relationship, one that I would return to time and again with little regard for the immensity of damage that had been done to me in the past. It will be different this time, I would say to myself.

What exacerbated everything for me was my jealousy. Of friends who continued to thrive and do good work within the borders of the institutional church. Of acquaintances who effected positive change through their writing, their influence, their voice. Of loved ones just as damaged by the church as I was who continued to hold onto hope, unlike me.

After becoming a parent, I found staying in touch with people so much more difficult than it had been before. This drove me further inward. The Trump administration presented me with a deluge of abhorrent behavior that I felt ill-equipped to comprehend or respond to, especially since I felt as though I didn't have the same social network and platforms I'd had when connected to the church. I decided to delete all my social media accounts.

This drove me even further inward. What I've realized only recently is that I felt as though I deserved my loneliness.

For leaving the church. For being too overwhelmed by the news cycle to respond in a meaningful way to issues of justice. For not believing hard enough, or maybe being good enough.

I felt as though I deserved it.

The good news of the 36th thesis is that if I am truly repentant, then I may be free. What are indulgence letters in our current context but the way that the USAmerican church implies that we need to assent to its standards before we are made worthy? Increasingly, as so many of our churches become conduits for a nationalist Trumpian ideology unfathomable to Christ, perhaps the new indulgence letter is a red MAGA hat.

+++

I still don't know why God didn't make Godself known to me that night. I still want answers. I'm still not ok with that absence. But I'm ok asking that question now. I'm convicted in my decision to leave the ordination process, and have returned to feeling comfortable in claiming that the process was influenced negatively outside of my control. All I can do is name my truth.

It's been a long time since I've written publicly beyond just poems, or, frankly, this personally. But I'm trying. Ashley, Anson, and I went to church again last week and it felt wonderful. It was as normal as a Sunday morning Methodist early service can be, and it was perfect.

I'm holding on tightly to two things friends have told me in the last few years:

My friend Kim once told a couple of years ago me that, as a Jesus-follower, I am not allowed to give up hope. That despite all my other perfectly legitimate emotions and frustrations over everything, hope is not something that I can ever release.

My friend Hannah was recently texting with me and another friend about the ups and downs of our faith lives, and she said that she was beginning to wonder if this rockiness, this up-and-down-ness, wasn't actually faith itself.

I am ready for repentance. Repentance. Regret again. Metanoia. A change of mind. There is nothing I need to purchase in order to be ready.

###

Original image by flickr user Leo Reynolds. Used under Creative Commons license.