If my blog seems to have taken on religious overtones lately, well, that’s just because the winter season provides a lot of tradition that is handy for a writer to use. And this place is one of many forms into which I pour some of myself out, as a drink offering.
Today is supposed to be the 30th Anniversary of my Spiritual Birthday. For anyone who has not been part of an evangelical faith, I will explain: your spiritual birthday is the day you decided to repent of your earthly and worldly ways and receive the Holy Spirit by way of the acknowledgment of Jesus Christ as your lord and savior. I’ve already lost half you reading this, because you’ve had some sort of bad experience with these kinds of words, or they don’t interest you, or this description of spiritual transactions are as confusing and numbing as legalese, or because you disdain religion altogether, or you are currently following a different path of faith. I get that, and that’s fine. I just want to tell my story, because that’s what this blog is for. It’s not an easy story for me to tell, simply because it’s so inescapably part of my history. I’ll try to make it easy to hear.
I have often sensed that someone is with me— a presence— as it is sometimes called. I know how that can sound. Please bear with me a little longer. I like to be around people in general, and I love to be with the people that I know personally. But, I also need to be alone much of the time. Sometimes this is because I prefer experiencing the world solo, which means I am not under the influence of someone else. It’s direct and uncomplicated. Sometimes the world is a bit much and I need to withdraw. Yet many times, this is because I want to be in the company of this presence, because I feel accepted as myself, no matter where I am exploring or what I am observing, imagining, doing or creating. People of the Buddhist tradition might call this the Buddha Baby who lives in all of us. A pop psychologist might call this the inner child. A theist would title it God.
I was about to say, “I don’t care what that eternal presence is called” in some conciliatory fashion, but that’s not entirely true. Rather, I should say that I care a great deal about what is said of the eternal presence that I experienced first-hand, because my conversion experience— my spiritual birthday— messed it up for a long time. That doesn’t mean that I have lost my faith, it’s just that I have since reclaimed the faith that I’ve always had and can never lose, regardless of what is said in words. But, here comes a bunch of words, anyway.
In my senior year of High School, I accepted an invitation from a good friend to attend a spiritual retreat in the White Mountains of Arizona. I was feeling a bit lonely and untethered at the time, which is usually a ripe condition to be in for all sorts of spiritual shenanigans to transpire. It’s as if a flare goes up, signaling that there is an empty space, and all sorts of things start to compete to take up residence, for better or worse. In my decision to move across the country from the place and people I knew before, I had lost my sense of home. I think I mistook that feeling for a loss of the neutral witnessing presence I was familiar with. I didn’t realize that the presence was experiencing the loss of home as well, and was facing the unfamiliar right along with me, even if it knew better. I was in a homesick and empty emotional state, but not an empty spiritual state. But at that time, I couldn’t tell the difference. It’s still difficult.
Before I go any further, I want to be clear that I’m not going to say that I “came to Jesus” on this retreat and found my home, and that you should, too. I’m also not going to say, instead, that I was fooled or tricked into fakery and now I’m embittered. I’m just going to tell what happened.
The people that I went with on this mountain retreat were lovely, hospitable people. Nothing strange or creepy or lurid happened around the bonfire or in the cabins or woods. I didn’t feel coerced or hypnotized into following a cult leader or anything of that nature. In fact, the pine trees and the altitude and the fluctuating energy of the other kids made me feel more awake than usual. I remember laughing a lot. But I admit that my emotional state was still one of vulnerability. And being on the edge of seventeen, everything is turned up to eleven.
The youth pastor was an upstanding young man. The guest speaker was a nice older man with a white, well-groomed beard. I think his name might have been Bill. Their wives and children were there, too. All of the other kids were perhaps on their best behavior, because there were “the unsaved” among them. That meant me, and a few others. At the time, I didn’t think that I was in any sort of peril, other than the daily challenge of trying to find my way around hundreds of strangers and buildings and streets in a new city. All I knew was that these polite and gracious kids seemed to want me to be one of them for a while, and that felt fine. What I didn’t know was that I was a part of someone’s mission; someone who believed they had both the right and the wherewithal to mess with something as undefined and innocent as my soul.
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| Photo credit: E.J. Peiker, Apache Nat'l Forest |
Bill told several stories in a gentle and captivating style. There were campy songs and skits, and because I was raised with the church, praying as a group was routine and nothing to be uncomfortable about. What was different about this church-like setting was the earnestness and focused attention on me, even if it was just furtive glances or sometimes stares from others at my reactions to everything that was going on. There was definitely something in the air asking, “Does she get it, now?” If that question had been spoken aloud, I could have replied, “I’ve always had it.”
Here’s where I got turned around on the Mountaintop and stuck in my journey. Bill gave a speech on the last evening, a Saturday night. In his speech, he made an analogy regarding the freedom offered by Christ. He told a parable about an average guy named Richard standing before a judge. Since the speech was directed at unsaved targets like myself, it was actually a parable about me. I was the average Richard, and suddenly I was picturing myself in a courtroom, and I didn’t even remember having been arrested. The imaginary judge looks over my crimes against God and everything in the universe and rules that I am to be sentenced to prison. It’s nothing personal, it’s because I’m a sinful human. But lo and behold, in walks Jesus, himself, and says, “I will carry out the sentence in your place!” He goes into the prison cell, and bingo-bango, I am free to go! I’ve been liberated, saved, bought and paid for, redeemed. Except I felt none of those things.
As I was listening to this story, I felt like the presence I had known all my life had been named as Jesus. I didn't have much of a chance to check this idea. Because suddenly, Jesus is in jail, and it’s all my fault. I didn’t feel free. I felt obligated and honor-bound to his plight. I wasn’t going to abandon— what had mistakenly been identified as the core of my being— to a life behind bars. Instead, my mind turned around and faced the Jesus in that cell, and from there, my body went in search of ways to get him out: regular attendance at church functions, service to mankind in a variety of ways, studying and memorizing scriptural passages, praying and journaling and pleading and fretting without one taste of freedom.
None of the tasks that had been set before me were hardships in themselves. There were many rewards. The religious education and observance of ritual expanded and disciplined my thinking. But as all of this contemplation and activity grew and blossomed into a prudent and profitable lifestyle, my spirit diminished, still standing outside the prison cell, holding onto the bars, guilt-ridden for having put him there just by my being born with an outstanding debt. In the scenario Bill had described, my part was a cypher, someone who can assume many forms and roles in the service of the greater good. That’s not a spiritual covenant drawn up between a Person and a person. That’s a social contract, which is self-limiting. Worse, yet, it's a double bind.
Did anyone intend for me to take that courtroom analogy so literally? I highly doubt it. I know I didn’t intend to. But the implications did take root inside that temporarily empty emotional place which I can see only in hindsight. And with the grace of hindsight, I can go back and preface the story I was told with, “The following program is brought to you by very well-meaning people. They will go on to show you many kindnesses, and excepting a few individuals, they mostly just want to serve alongside you to increase the love. Now, to the more imaginative among you, don’t go crazy with all the heavy symbolism.”
When it comes to stories about souls, even the Apostle Paul said, “For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power” (1 Cor 4:20). That sounds right, because words are an invention. They can obviously carry power in them, but they are never a substitute for the power itself. They just sort of hover and point at it. So, here at the end of my topsy-turvy testimony, I offer you a hopeful song, like all good “goin’ to meetin’” rituals do. Wherever your power is, please feel truly free to go to that rich and never-closed-for-repairs kingdom at hand as you listen, not to the literal words, but to the spirit of the song. Kick it.
