Voices

Dude, what the hell is going to happen with Greg? That guy seems to be going kinda crazy.  I'm worried about him because it seems like he might be going through a kind of nervous breakdown or midlife identity crisis or whatever you want to call it.  Even HE admits that he thinks he could be losing his mind.  And then there's the whole addiction thing.  So sad. That poor guy just can't catch a break.  He goes to the inner city because he thinks God is calling him there, then he gets his ideals crushed and loses his faith, he tries the only option available to him: teach.  And he's good at it too! But with his luck all the theology teaching jobs are drying up as education changes. Then, of course, this year happened... the divorce, rehab, total loss of faith, separation from his daughters... God, I cannot even imagine that!  I wonder how I would do if all of that was taken from me all at once.  I kinda wanna say something helpful to him, but don't even know what to say.  I have no idea what he's dealing with and it seems like I'd be lying if I said something like, 'I understand what you're going through ' because I don't!  I guess no one's pain is the same.  Pain can't be weighed or measured.  It's a mystery.  So... all I can do is pray and hope.  Let's trust Greg to God.  Whatever happens, it'll sure be interesting! Lol.

Why doesn't that guy just pull his shit together? Look at all he has! He has this huge network of friends and family and he just takes it all for granted.  Typical white male privilege.  Here's a guy who is born 1) white, 2) male, 3) straight and in 4) the United States of America! Talk about winning the lottery! So why the hell doesn't he just pull his shit together, get up off his ass, and work like the rest of us!  He thinks he's got some kind of monopoly on suffering, but listen, man, we all suffer so just get over it!

Poor Greg and his Coates family! It must be so humiliating to be such an important family in the Free Methodist Church and have a child that goes so, so, SO far astray!  We should pray for him.  He is so LOST.  We need to get on our knees and pray that he will come back to the flock. Oh, I would hate to be Herb and Sheryl!

Greg is so deeply mentally ill that he is a lost cause.  I'm amazed he hasn't already done himself in.

I wish Greg could just get out of his head.  His brain has always been his bane and his blessing.  He needs to just get out and work with his hands, rub shoulders with other humans, etc.  He knows the way forward, but he just doesn't take it!  He knows that meditation and yoga and eating healthy and exercise would be crazy good for him, but he just doesn't do it!  It's almost as though he wants to be miserable. Ugh. It's maddening.  I wish I could just get out there and do it for him but I can't. I sure do love Greg though.

Have you seen him lately? Greg doesn't even look like he used to.  His unshaven beard and mop of messy hair.  The guy basically LOOKS homeless. And I heard that he smokes pot now. Poor guy, he's jumping out of one addiction and right into another. Then again, some say he has PTSD and that he's just medicating himself.  I don't know what I think about that.

What a self-pitying, entitled prick.

I don't think Greg is a very good father.  If he were he would figure out a way to be more present in his girls' lives.  What's his deal? What kind of a man abandons his own children?!? There's a special place in hell for people like that.

Who is Greg again?

--

Me, now:

Well, God, I do fear their judgement.  I hate shame and rejection.  I hate it more than death. And those voices are always in my head, but here's what I know: You love me just as I am.  I believe, now help my unbelief. Amen.

Film Review: Columbus (2017)

Director Kogonada’s debut film Columbus is a love letter to art, architecture, nature, and the universal human quest for meaning.  It’s a very deliberately paced and careful film that may turn off a wider public audience – an audience that is currently engulfed, according to one of the film’s protagonists, not in a crisis of attention, but a crisis of interest.  The long (almost unsettling) shots of trees, buildings, and human faces communicates that this film is fundamentally a story of spiritual odyssey.  Cassandra (played masterfully by Haley Lu Richardson) is just a simple Hoosier girl who longs to leave town, but feels compelled to stay in Columbus, Indiana to care for her mentally ill mother.  She providentially meets Jin (John Cho), a Korean-American visiting town due to his father’s sudden illness, and the film centers around the unlikely friendship that forms around these two souls adrift and how their friendship sets both on a new trajectory. 

Jin, an ambitious yet broken out-of-towner with a deeply unhealthy relationship with his father, tends to drown his sorrows in alcohol.  He laments that he cannot appreciate architecture since his father was an expert on the subject and, in Jin’s words, “you grow up around something and it feels like nothing.”  Yet he sees within this young stranger Cassandra an almost mystical, spiritual love for the beauty and order of architecture.  Her mysticism intrigues him, all the more so since he is a wandering soul without any relationship to the spiritual realm.  For Cassie the seemingly mundane, ordinary places of her hometown – two different banks, a church, her elementary school – have taken on a sort of healing power in her life that she does not understand and cannot explain.  Speaking of a bank building, Cassandra attempts to explain to Jin the significance of where they are standing, “I’d probably seen it thousands times before, but one night I looked up and just saw it.”  (I cannot help but think of what John Wesley called the spiritual sensorium, which awakens within those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.)  Jin, always the skeptic, isn’t sure he even believes in the healing power of architecture or holy places so he chooses to ignore Cassie’s testimony.  It is a story of spiritual sight vs. spiritual blindness, yet neither is fully in the dark nor fully enlightened.  Both are on a very complicated journey.  The realism of this is very refreshing.

Throughout the film, Cassandra seems to be lost and yet she also catches glimpses of profound beauty, glimpses that gives her a sort of orientation to life when she doesn’t know her life’s purpose.  Though there is plenty to contrast between Jin and Cassie, they do share some important commonalities:  both wandering souls are given clarity and direction by the other.  Jin seems to begin to gain “sight” thanks to his serendipitous encounter with the odd Hoosier girl.  And Cassie received the answer to her question about where to go in life (isn’t the choice to leave one’s home and family one of the most difficult and universal choices we all have to make?) from this odd and unhappy sojourner.  

“You need to stop feeling bad,” Jin tells Cassandra near the end of the film.  She simply replies, “Yeah, so do you.”  Neither of them are able to extend such grace to themselves and so they give it to one another.  This is a healing, salvific moment for them both.

I loved this film since it wrestles with questions that consume my own mind these days:  Where should I go in life? How does one determine where to go?  And what does all the damn beauty around me mean?  As my friend Bill recently told me around a campfire in Wyoming, for Plato the beginning of all religion is in the pure appreciation of beauty because when it strikes you, there is no denying it.  Beauty becomes a sort of self-evident principle upon which many people choose to orient their lives.  When the architect builds, when the painter paints, when the hurting and lonely dance out their pain under a starry sky, when a child gets lost while looking at a flower, when two strangers become friends – all of these are acts of worship and surrender to beauty.  

The film ultimately challenges us all with a haunting question: Do you appreciate the beauty that is all around you or do you just let it all pass you by?  The answer to this question is, I believe, the difference between living in heaven or living in hell.

Shame: Foe or Friend?

Shame is a long-time companion for me.  In fact, our relationship goes back to the day I was four years old and, tagging along with a neighbor friend, we stole some green beans from a neighbor's garden.  I can still her the voice of the woman yelling out the window, "Hey!  Stop!  I'm going to call the police!"  It was a moment of moral awakening for me. I remember the hot flash of shame consuming my whole body.  It's almost as if I had taken a bite of the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden, my eyes were opened for the first time, innocence was lost, I knew the difference between good and evil (or so I thought), and I was aware of my nakedness.

Shame has been a companion on my journey ever since.  I lived roughly four years without it and have now lived over thirty-two years with it.  But I still can't always determine if this sensation is a friend or a foe.  Maybe someone else will read this and help me decide.

On the one hand, Shame often makes me reject myself.  It makes me want to run and hide from others lest they see who I really, truly am and also decide to reject me.  On the other, Shame is often the thing that prevents me from judging others.  Shame makes me the tax collector at the back of the temple who beats his chest and screams, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner!"  Without Shame I would be the Pharisee standing in the front, saying, "Thank you, God, that I am not like that sinner over there!"  And, because I really don't want to be the Pharisee, I thank my Shame.

Nevertheless, Shame has at times driven me to the very brink of complete self-rejection.  Those who have been there know what I mean.  In these moments, I suspect that Shame is my deepest, oldest enemy.  I suspect it becomes (or was it all along?) what the ancient ones called "the Accuser" or "ha satan."  But then, is the answer to utterly reject shame in all of its forms?  I hope not.  Because if I did not feel any Shame whatsoever about any behavior, then I could very easily become a monster to others, a selfish black hole that sucks in all the joy and happiness around me.  And, if that is what I become, it would be better for me not to exist at all.  That is, if I became my own god, I think I would become a tyrant.  Unless I have a Master to submit myself to I will become the very "accuser" that I so loathe.

And so, as you can see from my wanderings in this post, I am unable to answer this question.  It is very disorienting to not know which voices inside of oneself to trust.  Now I know that some will say, "Greg, you need to distinguish between guilt and shame.  Guilt is productive whereas shame is destructive."  But that only pushed the question back a step.  Even if I did agree to this distinction (and I'm not sure I do as I wonder sometimes if it is a Western mental construct to divide our internal experiences into such sharply distinguished categories), it only pushes the question back one step.  Because then the question becomes, "So how does one distinguish between guilt and shame?" And I, for one, have never had this internal, spiritual "sixth sense" for determining when I am feeling a so-called "healthy guilt" vs. a so-called "toxic shame."  Or at least I certainly don't have that sense right now.

Pain Changes Us

I've written vaguely and in bits and pieces about this painful year in my life and some who know me well know that it has been pure hell.  Yet it has also changed and refined me in certain ways.  I don't lie anymore. Lies marked my old life and I refuse to mislead people anymore because I am incapable of being honest with myself.  When I say "lie" I mean "telling another what you think they want to hear in order to better yourself in their eyes."  It was a form of people-pleasing.

But I've changed in little, perhaps less important ways too.  I used to listen to news and podcasts 24/7; now I prefer music or silence.  I used to play video games for hours; now all those games are long gone and I prefer to spend my hours walking or sitting in nature. I used to think only as a male, but am now coming to slowly see how "toxic masculinity" warped my mind and theology.  I cry more and worry less.  I'm still deeply selfish and have a very long way to go, but at least I can acknowledge that without it suffocating me.  Many of these inward mental and spiritual changes are also starting to impact my body too; what we believe doesn't matter -- what we do is what counts.

Now I'm rambling, but this is all just for my eyes anywho.  I didn't tell my daughters of these changes, but their little minds were blown when they learned that I drink more water than Diet Coke now and that I've given up dried mango.  Lol.  I love those kiddos.

Smartphones and Teens

Proposition: I think that smartphones should be illegal to handle by anyone under the age of 18.  I certainly don't want my own daughters to own them until at least that age.

Rationale:

1) Smartphone technology is so new -- and so fundamentally unique -- that we do not yet know what its long-term impact might be on the individual human brain, let alone on the evolution of the brain for future generations (see recent Atlantic article on this).

2) The uncritical adoption of technologies which are leading us down the path of cyborg-like human/computer integration could very well also eventually lead to the end of our species (as proposed in Homo Deus).

3) Christians need to figure out how to be peculiar again or the faith with die.  I am attempting to raise my daughters to be Christians and this could be a counter-cultural practice that will help define our people for centuries.  But theologians need to think carefully about technological change to see if they agree that this is the way forward.

4) Benefit: our children will be forced to interact with the real, physical, embodied world and with real physical human beings/bodies/faces.  This will be their salvation.  The alternative is what we already see:  teens spending entire summers in their bedrooms on their beds with blue screens in their faces.  If this trajectory continues for generations, our physical bodies will gradually evolve into something almost inhuman as we integrate more intimately with our computers.

A Fish Named Pip

Pip was a small fish even compared to the other fish in his school.  More than anything, he loved his school, but you might also call it his "family."  It was everyone that he'd ever loved and known and they were a very happy school.  Pip liked to stay as close to the center of the school as possible because a few times while swimming together Pip would find himself on the outside edges of the school and he didn't like what he saw.  In fact, it really scared him.  The ocean was so very big and he was so very small.  Whenever he got to the edge of his school, he would look out into the vast emptiness of the ocean and it would fill him with a deep fear, almost a panic.  And so Pip made it his mission in life to be as committed to his school as he could be.  "I will follow all of the rules," Pip would tell himself, "because maybe if I do, then I won't ever be stuck out on the edge of the school again.  Then I won't have to look out at the scary place."

But as Pip grew up in safety and in the cozy comfort of the center of his school, there was a part of him that was mesmerized by memories of the open ocean.  True, he still feared it, but there was also something kind of alluring about it.  It made him wild with wonder and his imagination kept telling him that he should some day travel to the edge of the school on purpose just to see it again.  After all, he reasoned, he could always come back if he got too frightened.  Some of the other fish had told him stories about the "open ocean" and most of them were very scary indeed.  Evidently, there were monsters out there in the deep that were so much larger than any fish Pip had ever seen.  Some, they said, didn't even look at all like the fish in Pip's school.  The very idea sent shivers down his spine whenever Pip would think about it.  But usually he just doubted the stories.  "People like to make things us," Pip reminded himself. "It is the way of our people." Yet something deep inside of Pip -- you might call it his soul if fish have souls -- kept whispering to him, "Go out there and find out for yourself."

For a long time Pip ignored the voice inside that kept speaking to him.  He liked his life in the school.  He had made many good friends there.  In fact, he even fell in love with one particular fish that just drove him wild and he eventually married her.  She became his moon and stars and he loved her deeply.  They even had children together and built a nice family.  It was a charmed life, one that many other fish really envied.  They would look at Pip and his family and say, "I wish I had that.  They look so happy."  And, on most days, it was true.  Pip loved his life and was thankful for the sweet simple pleasures of his school and his new family.

But even during these years of great happiness the still, small voice inside of Pip never completely went away.  It kept inviting him to explore the edges of the school or -- and this was a very frightening thought -- to even swim out on his own someday, away from the school.  He wanted to know if there really were monsters out there.

But Pip shut these thoughts out of his mind.  "How could I possibly go take such a journey now?!?  I have a wife and family to think of!  I have a job and a profession.  I have a school that I love.  I would be completely insane to leave all of this in order to chase some silly, childish curiosity about what lives out in the open ocean."  And, reasoning in this way, Pip would manage to fall asleep at night... though as time passed the voice became louder and more persistent and Pip didn't sleep very well.  "At least the rest of my family is sleeping well," he thought.  "That's something."

That's when Pip's entire world came crashing down all at once. On a day just like any other day, without any warning at all a fishnet came down from the skies out of nowhere.  The school panicked and swam in every direction.  Everyone was trying to follow everyone else, but it was like the blind leading the blind.  Everything became chaos and confusion and all Pip could think was, "Where is my wife?  Where are my kids?  I can't see them!"  Pip swam faster than he'd ever swam in his life, searching with all the strength in his little body for the family he had lost, but as time passed and the fishnets disappeared and the school slowly started to piece itself back together, it began to ever so slowly and painfully dawn on Pip that his precious wife and kids were gone and it didn't seem like they were ever coming back.  This slow, dreadful realization took over Pip's little mind and he tried the best he could to think positively, but the pain was so great.  How could he live without his family?  The very thought of it made Pip wish that he too had been caught up in the fishnet.

Pip was still surrounded by fish within his school and they really tried to help him.  They all felt badly for Pip and what he had lost and some would say things to him like, "I have no idea what I would do if I were in your shoes.  I'm so sorry."  And, even though he was surrounded by so many fish who loved and cared for him, Pip felt alone and crushed.  Sometimes the other fish would try to encourage him, but Pip wouldn't even respond.  His sadness was more than he could bear.

After weeks and even months of living like a zombie-fish, one night Pip heard that little voice inside himself again, the one that he had heard ever since he could remember.  The voice said, "Hey there, Pip!  It's really terrible what you've been through.  But remember how you always wanted to go out and explore the open ocean?  Try to think of the disaster with the fishnets not only as a loss -- for it certainly is that! -- but also as the opening up of another opportunity.  This is your chance to go out and explore.  In a way, it is what you always wanted, even though you often ignored it."  Pip fought the voice though.  He didn't like the idea of going out into the open ocean alone, especially now.  The only things that brought him any comfort were those simple things he grew up with.  Still the voice wouldn't go away and it kept saying to him, "C'mon!  What do you have to lose?!?"  And Pip couldn't argue with that.  He couldn't think of what he had to lose.

So one night, feeling especially alone (even though he wasn't!), Pip did venture to the edge of the school and looked out into the dark open ocean.  It both frightened and intrigued him.  "Curiosity killed the cat," he heard his second grade teacher's voice say.  "Yeah, but... so what?" thought Pip.  "What if I do get eaten by a so-called monster?  What have I got to lose?"  Pip agonized over the decision for a long time.  He looked back at his old school and remembered with great fondness how good they had all been to him, especially after the horrible day.  But, looking within himself and staring into the open ocean, Pip realized that the open ocean itself was calling to him.  The open ocean was the voice he'd been hearing all along -- it was the voice "inside himself" but also "beyond himself." And that's when Pip realized that his deepest love all along -- deeper even than his love for his school, his ex-wife, and, yes, even his own precious children -- had always been this scary, wild, mysterious open expanse.

So what would you do, kids, if you were Pip?  Would you swim back to the safety of your school and to everything you've always known?  Or do you think Pip should venture out into the great unknown? That part of the story has yet to be told...

[Note:  I am not Pip.  There are overlaps, but they are not perfect.  In this story Pip is largely a victim and I don't really think that about my own story.]

Circle of Error

Wheels within wheels within wheels

Inhale and exhale
within

Waking and sleeping
within 

Worship and work
within

Holidays and Ordinary Time
within

Despair and hope
within

Depression and joy
within

Marriage and divorce
within

Life and death
within

Inhale and exhale

On this circle of error

I go round and round and round again

Sacrament

We sit in the hovel

Spinning tales within hash clouds

And over his harvest of grapes

I, a lost pilgrim

He, the lordly Host

A sojourner here, and a fool,

I habitually keep reaching for the plump, round choices of his vine,

my rabbi-sage watching, 

mirth in his eyes 

Chuckling his own prayer-joke to the skies

Supping with my Host, 

he points an ancient brown finger to... to what?

To what does my shaman direct my soul? 

Eternity is in this gesture.  

To where does the hand of the Ancient One guide me?

...

He points to the brown and smashed grapes,

He points to the runts, leftovers, misfits

Seeing but not understanding, 

Listening but having no ears to hear,

I am bewildered.

Yet he is laughing, praying

Pointing 

"Take and eat."

Who am I to question God?

Humbly I obey:

I Eat The Misshapen Grapes

... and they are the best of all.

Now, feasting, we laugh at Americans

and their love for the shiny

and how they have forgotten 

the taste of bruised fruit

But not I

I will remember His Salvation 

I am a stranger no longer in this land

For the secrets of the heavens are being laid bare:

eat the cursed grapes;

Consume the God-damned ones.

Their taste is sweetest.

The Gospel of Jeff, Who Lives at Home

Jeff, Who Lives at Home struck a deep emotional chord within me when I first saw it in 2012 -- a very, very dark chapter of my life.  I remember my then wife asking me why it had moved me to such tears and I don't think I even knew how to answer her at that time.  I was so utterly alienated from my True Self (for what I mean by this term, see Richard Rohr) that I could not perceive the nature of her question -- a question fundamentally about me.  Yet now I have rewatched this film twice within the past six months and I think I know what my soul was crying about in 2012. I was encountering the gospel of Jesus in this new story/Story of Jeff.  (By the way, the 32 f-bombs in this rated R film -- and its treatment of homosexuality -- means that most "good Christians" wouldn't even watch this mythical story.  Their loss, I guess.)

*Spoilers ahead*

Jeff constantly points away from himself.

Jeff senses a purpose to his existence which is mysterious and beyond himself.  He loves the movie "Signs" because in the end it is the half-consumed cups of water that saves everyone.

Jeff seems to have a "sixth sense" for what is going on around him, an awareness of the holiness of all of life (birds in the air, phone calls, infomercials, traffic jams, random people); everything matters, Jeff thinks, if we can see with the eyes of faith.

Jeff sometimes doubts himself and, in those moments, he is most convinced that the story is absolutely NOT about himself (which it is!  haha! the joke is on Jeff!).  After all, how could the story be about him if he is just a thirty year old pothead living in his mom's basement!?  What could be more irrelevant than such a man?

Jeff, precisely because he alone considers his own life completely expendable, saves everyone in the end.  His mother reconnects with life and love; his brother does too and the ripple effects carry on infinitely.  Completely unaware of his own agency, Jeff has single-handedly saved us ALL with his courageous act of self-sacrificial love and utter abandonment to even death itself.

Jeff is baptized into death, enters the roaring waters we are drowning in, embraces the chaos, and quite literally dies.

And lastly, of course, Jeff is resurrected.  It could not end any other way since this is the Gospel.

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.