The Good Life and Living with Irrelevance

I was first challenged to think about the idea of living a life of irrelevance by Henri Nouwen, who has been a constant spiritual guide for me since college.  Nouwen, as many know, left a life of great success as a professor at an ivy league university in order to work in a home for the mentally handicapped.  Through this experience he discovered his true self and became a mystical, spiritual writer who has helped millions.  Ironically, it was only by leaving the academy that Nouwen became a true teacher to us all.  He found that "thrown in on the side" if you will.

I confront a similar choice in my life at this point.  I once believed my life was set out before me quite clearly:  I was going to finish my Ph. D, get a job as a professor (since I have always loved teaching), be a good husband and father, and die holding hands with a soul named Courtney Coates.  Up until the end of January of this year, I still thought that was my life.  Now all bets are off.  In some ways, I am a deeply broken man whose life has been wrenched from his tightly clenched fists and, utterly against my own will, I am starting to experience salvation.  The usually silly 90s CCM band Audio Adrenaline describes my condition in life right now remarkably well.  Laugh at the source if you will, but I think this song articulates some deep spiritual truth:



So now I live in my parents' home and smoke pot.  I have become as irrelevant as I think I can, but who knows?  Just when I think I have lost all I can loose, I sometimes learn that I can still surrender over more to my Maker.  "Pain has been the catalyst to my heart's happiness."  And so I thank God for the pain, I thank her for the struggle.  I seek to repent of the "toxic masculinity" that has invaded my life, practice, and thought.  I am abandoned to my Father in Heaven and my Mother in Earth, to whom I will quite readily and joyously surrender my body for good in her perfect, good timing.

A Prayer to the God of Ebb and Flow

Dear Lord, today I thought of the words of Vincent van Gogh: “It is true there is an ebb and flow, but the sea remains the sea.” You are the sea. Although I experience many ups and downs in my emotions and often feel great shifts and changes in my inner life, you remain the same. Your sameness is not the sameness of a rock, but the sameness of a faithful lover. Out of your love I came to life; by your love I am sustained; and to your love I am always called back. There are days of sadness and days of joy; there are feelings of guilt and feelings of gratitude; there are moments of failure and moments of success; but all of them are embraced by your unwavering love.

My only real temptation is to doubt in your love, to think of myself as beyond the reach of your love, to remove myself from the healing radiance of your love. To do these things is to move into the darkness of despair.

O Lord, sea of love and goodness, let me not fear too much the storms and winds of my daily life, and let me know that there is ebb and flow but that the sea remains the sea. Amen.

- Henri Houwen in "A Cry for Mercy"

The Activist Mystic

I'm hoping to get back to blogging more frequently now that I'm finished with the first draft of my project for Wesleyan Publishing House. Also, I made a conscious decision to stop blogging when I feel really depressed. I don't want my blog to be a downer for everyone who reads and so part of the reason for the infrequency of my entries is because I have been wrestling with depression quite a bit lately.

I write a lot about ministry in the inner city. I don't do it to impress anyone. I just do it because it's my life right now and because I hope I will offer something that might cause someone else to pause and reflect for a moment about the mission of God in the world, about the Christ among the least of these, and about the kingdom coming down. If nothing else, perhaps I provide a voice that someone else in similar circumstances can relate to.

Last night I read a wonderful chapter from Henri Nouwen's book Here and Now: Living in the Spirit. Here is a short excerpt:

"The more I think about the human suffering in our world and my desire to offer a healing response, the more I realize how crucial it is not to allow myself to become paralyzed by feelings of impotence and guilt. More important than ever is to be very faithful to my vocation to do well the few things I am called to do and hold on to the joy and peace that they bring me. I must resist the temptation to let the forces of darkness pull me into despair and make me one more of their many victims. I have to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus and on those who followed him and trust that I will know how to live out my mission to be a sign of hope in this world" (46-47).

I can relate perfectly with what Nouwen has written here. Sometimes the level of need around me is so great that I literally begin to feel a weight around my shoulders -- an intangible oppressiveness and heaviness that I cannot shake off. The lack of beauty, the desperation and despair, the violence -- it all has a cumulative effect of making me lose sight of hope at times. What can I do in the face of such overwhelming problems? Am I really so naive as to think I can make a difference here? And if I'm not making a difference, then why not just get out and live a more comfortable life? When these questions enter my mind (and they do almost daily), I must sit and just breathe and realize that I cannot allow myself to become "paralyzed by feelings of impotence and guilt."

This is why I am more convinced than ever that an activist (by which I mean a Christian who lives out his or her spirituality by trying to make an impact on the political, social, economic, and spiritual struggles of mankind) must first and foremost be a mystic (by which I mean someone who regularly practices contemplation, meditation, silence, solitude, prayer, study, and an inner craving for the heart for God). Often the two seem divided: the former are the do-gooder community organizers or social workers and the ladder are those monks hidden away in their cloisters. Yet I am convinced that to remain an activist (and I consider myself to at least be an aspiring one), I must first be a mystic. Otherwise, I run out of gas and have nothing to offer. To rest in the infinite love of God -- that is the source for all outward action and all social justice. The second that I forget that, I become no more than an ant struggling to free himself from a gallon of syrup.

Make me a mystic, O God. And from that inner life with You, help me to flow outwardly as one of Your agents in the world. Amen.