my comment filter, myself

I was coming from a weekly coffee with one of my best friends, in which I shared about the terrible thing of His silence and learning to accept it, about how I was coming to a place where I was learning to want the good of God more than the goods of this world, how God hadn't owed me an explanation for the years I had spent feeling isolated, made fun of, but that they did somehow make sense, that they had brought me to this fierce place, this sure place, in which I was willing to lose all for the sake of following if, in an upset of the many waters, Holy Ghost rolled across and breathed out, "It's time to go!" And as I walked away, I checked my email ...

[caption id="attachment_1398" align="aligncenter" width="434" caption="A blurred email and IP adress, along with the specific curse word, as that's not really what all this is about."][/caption]

If you're unable to read it from the above, I shall reproduce here.

For such a classifying [sic] yourself as such a "Christian" person, you're a real d*** [my censoring] in everyday life. Not at all an example of Christ or His love for humanity. In other words, a hypocrite.

It came like a hammer to my gut. Blood ran down fast into legs and pressed into feet, breath got lost somewhere in my throat and I wanted to run away.

I wasn't going to approve it, because while I tolerate disagreement in the comments, I cannot abide direct cruelty toward anyone, myself included.

But the comment tugged at me, not only in the sense that I am, I admit, incredibly insecure (I spent a portion of the afternoon teetering between justification and anxiety) but also because while I don't think it quite true in the sense meant by the person--for they did not leave a name, so I cannot begin to imagine the particular offense or offenses--I do think there is an absolute truth buried beneath with regard to the work of the writer and the writer as person.

Let me speak it honestly: I am a hypocrite.

I swear on occasion--and pointlessly at that. I struggle with lust. I get jealous easily. I am tempted far too often to lie to make myself feel better about who I am. I can turn a very clever but very evil phrase far too quickly. I expect too much from others and, in turn, don't always give enough myself. And these are but a few examples. So in this, I plainly submit, I am first and foremost among the sinners.

But, I am also called to write.

And I speak this plainly in the same breath, that the reason I write is not because I find myself to be a talent at it or because I think myself intelligent enough to impart some special wisdom.

I write because it is my deep conviction that our Lord, God Almighty, has placed upon me the call that in my fingers are words that must be given, and that they are given not of myself but for His glory and honor.

But this is tricky business.

A writer, a Christian writer especially, is a prophetic voice.

We speak of the things that others do not wish to notice. We hold up the orphan and the widow and demand they be cared for. We fear not the ugly, but go with Christ to it. For this is part of the calling and it cannot be ignored.

But we are hypocrites--for there is none righteous, no, not one.

We neglect the orphan, the widow; we flee the ugly.

We write the Beauty we long to touch; we weave the Truth we cannot fathom; we illumine the Good we struggle knowing.

Yet what's to be done? We are not writing for ourselves, but for you, dear reader. We write because we hope against hope that you shall be better than we are. We see in you a talent, a gift, a calling, and to the point of tears we labor in fervor hoping that you might feel and sense a God that oftentimes feels so far from our reach.

Are you listening? Do you hear the choke in my throat as I whisper this to you?

You are exceptional. You are grace. You are a good creation. I want you to live better because He is better; I want you to live better because if you did, I see the beauty that could overwhelm just by it. More than I could ever make, more than I could ever be. So I long for you, yes you, to be the glory He has called you too.

For I am not. I am a hypocrite. I am trying, I am toiling, but I am failing every day. But would that you knew that even as I failed, I longed and labored that you would not.

But by nature of writing, blogging, putting yourself out into the public eye every single day, people assume that they have an invitation to take a portion of the life they observe and determine the whole. It's a failure to see cosmos, but it is an understandable one, as we all do it.

May I make here an apology to the anonymous commenter, for I have obviously wounded you deeply. For the offense or for the offenses, I am truly sorry, and should you like to at some point discuss them and help me understand how I have wronged you, my literal and cyber door are always open to you.

But as to the point of being like Christ, I cannot provide a satisfactory response. None of us are as like Christ as we should be, myself most of all. This I admit freely, for it is the easiest sort of truth to acknowledge.

I hope you understand the hard place of being a writer, how it is an ache and struggle simply to be let alone to write. I have spent today in prayer, asking our Father that I would be found a much more gracious person to you in the future and that you would find it in the goodness of yourself to forgive me the wrong. Would that you would.

I write this in the quiet place, in the dark hour. It is Advent. More than ever, expecto patronum. (I await a saviour.) And I write this for all of you, friends near and far, who blog, who write, who have submitted to the call to prophecy, and who live in the between place of who we are and like Whom we wish to be.

---

While I appreciate how many of you would observe this as a time to encourage me in the comments, tell me how wrong this whole thing was, I would ask that you refrain. First of all, I have offended someone and, right or wrong, I am still responsible. Until the situation has been sorted, which may be never, I and no one else has a right to judge anyone in the right. Second, let's keep the comments to the issue of being a writer and, at the same time, not living up to the high demand we place upon ourselves, for our Source is impossibly high.

going through the motions

This isn't my best, as I am a touch exhausted, but the prompting was it needed saying. Sometimes, you simply have to let go ... We are in the midst of the season of expectation, remembering the coming of Christ and looking to His return. What a mystery, the Incarnation, that God hallowed this wounded thing called body when He took on flesh. Laughter, running, motion itself took on holiness, for the Holy pressed into limbs and declared the body to be good, reaffirmed the splendor of the Creation--that all from the mouth of God through the power of Christ and in the fidelity of the Spirit was purposed from inception as good, as His, and that these fingers and toes wiggling in search of warmth are too made good, made holy.

And for me, this is in some ways everything.

I had occasion this past week to explain to someone I love very much why I, among other Anglican-leaning things, cross myself. I had been asked before, but I had not yet found the vocabulary to explain it, to bridge tactile touch of forehead, stomach, and across my breast with the words of meaning and the explanation of grace. But sitting there, all transparent self and offered being, I realized that it has everything to do with this hallowing of the body.

I have been exhausted for the past month, a word I do not use lightly.

I have come to grapple and embrace the silence of the present walk He has given me, which itself, aside from the massive thesis (chapter one, of four, just hit word 13,000, in footnotes, 3,000, and we're nearly just past what I estimate to be half-way done), and the basic demands of attending class, is wearing me quite thin.

In these moments, I need to cross myself. Not because ritual demands it or because it's simply what's expected, I must cross myself because I need to tell the whole of my body, to remind the whole of my body, that exhausted as I am there is still something foundational, something Real, and I believe in it absolutely. I kick weak flesh into motion and touch fingers to forehead, stomach, and across my breast and declare the memorial of the crucifixion, the vouchsafe hope of the resurrection, and the eternal dance of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

There is nothing lost in the hallowing of our bodies in the Incarnation of our Lord; there is everything gained.

My motions become acts of Spirit, become moments in which Holy Ghost can be catalyst, can be felt in gesture as much as in the warm feeling in heart. I attend the Anglican Rite for the very reason that it sees the Eucharist as extraordinarily bodied: sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste are all present, all involved, all engaged, and the very whole of my being cannot escape that in that rhythmed space everything in the physical of me is either prodding forth the spiritual in me or joining with it in the resounding chorus, that God, our God, is.

Have I made much sense here? Perhaps not.

This is something, a thought, that lives there on the edge. But I think it sad how many good Protestant churches have settled for gnosticism without realizing it. Bodies don't matter, just spirit. As long as you're "saved," whatever that means, to Hell with the rest. And I mean that, I mean that phrase, because that's the attitude. The belief that the creation is bad, that we need to escape here and go to Heaven.

What purpose is the Incarnation then? If this is true, what was the point?

What then is salvation, if body is simply shell?

But if fingers and toes became holy when Christ dignified them in His very mortal body, when Divine enfleshed and was at once Man and God, then movement--fingers on keys and facial expressions--matter beyond what we could even begin to imagine.

So I cross myself; because this, too, is an act of Faith.

accepting His silence -- today at deeper story

Today, I share at Deeper Story ... I pool myself on the table in front of him to try and make him understand, which is silly, because he does. But I have come to think that metered words and breathed prose somehow makes sense of my tangled mess of being, that I have to explain myself aloud, neglecting the power of the sacrament of the unspoken word—things betrayed and conveyed in eyes, in half-nods, in unspoken prayers.

“He’s silent,” it’s more choked than I would have liked, but this is part of the unspoken revelation, too. It’s been this way since September, a feeling that God is abundantly present, a sense of peace in the very core of my soul, and yet no kindling tickle of wings against my heart, against my being, so that I am caught betwixt an absolute certainty and trust that He exists, that He saturates the cosmos, but these truths, this Truth, does not feel present, does not feel true.

And I’m desperate. Eyes betray, convey.

I fear the future. I fear that He has led me into a time of such profound certain uncertainty, that this ground beneath my feet feels so absolutely solid and yet each step forward into darkness feels as if it could be a step off into the abyss.

And I pool. I pool all this in mangled words in front of him and he understands, but I keep talking, because what I’m not saying is that I’m scared and talking about it helps me be less afraid. At least, I think it does. I’m not certain of much apart from Him in this strange land of exile.

Join me on this journey today, over at Deeper Story?