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I am beginning a series of responsive essays based on Barbara Brown Taylor's newest book. As
I work out the words for what Learning to Walk in the Dark speaks
to me, I fumble. In the dark, I may offend. But, I hold fast to
this: “There is a light that shines in the darkness and the
darkness has not overcome it.” (John1:5)
As I began these essays,
I
was unsure of the path forward and then it came: I would write my shift from religion to faith. I would write my loss of faith in the institution of Christianity, but my gain of faith in Christ. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36 KJV)
The Darkness Within
Plastic Faith
If
you have understood, then what you have understood is not God.
~ Augustine
From the front seat of the land rover, I grab the colorful catalog full of trinkets from a child:
faith, hope, and love on strings grace the pages. How charming. I swing for the catalog and then jam it
between my car seat and the main console with all the other junk
mail. I holler at them, “You can't have that right now, not when we
aren't living it!” That settled it, or did it?
My kids love the popular
catalog of trinkets selling Christianity in bulk for pint sized
believers. I ask myself: is this value-added Christianity similar to
a McDonald's Happy Meal, but simply with a religious flavor? Do these
trinkets of faith represent anything of true happiness, or true
substance? Plastic faith leads to plastic people. And plastic faith
eventually breaks, like the McDonald's toy or catalog junk. Worse, it
could be thrown out by an adult. At church no less.
Yes, it's hard to build
and live an authentic life filled with true faith. Harder yet in our
first world, consumeristic, holier-than-thou, post modern,
reasoning culture. If we can consume Jesus with our junk,
we've arrived. Yet when plastic faith breaks, we get our hearts
broken. If I find myself throwing my faith out, maybe I need to ask
if it was ever faith in the first place? Maybe it was just
religiousness. Tried and found wanting. Plastic faith and plastic
people be damned.
When our plastic faith
has been broken, thrown out, or both, we are now in a place of
consummation*: God's altar, but it feels like a consuming fire. His
mountain. His presence. His fire. Yet, on His mountain these
three remain: faith, hope, and love. In Oregon, the Three Sisters
peaks of the Cascade mountain range are named Faith, Hope, and
Charity (Love). These peaks remind me that the failure of a plastic
faith can propel you and me up the mountain, into the shroud of God. A
world containing both dark and light.
The God of Moses is
holy, offering no seat belts or other safety features to those who
wish to climb the mountain to enter the dark cloud of the divine
presence. Those who go assume all risk and give up all claim to
reward. Those who return say the dazzling dark inside the cloud is
reward enough.
~ Barbara Brown Taylor,
Learning to Walk in the Dark
And so I climb out of
religious darkness and its soul wearying ways and onto peaks of
truth: Faith, Hope, and Love. But these peaks of truth are often
summited in darkness. Seasons of dark unknowing. Faith. This
unknowing faith clings to mountain rocks and draws me closer to God.
When I can't see in the shroud, I cling to the Rock and rise.
To some, this unknowing
faith appears as abandonment of God, fellow believers, and finally
faith. It's not abandonment. My faith in Christ is intact, but the
rules and creeds men have made to define Christ and Christianity have
gone by the wayside. Ironically, in Oregon, I'm not alone. We are
known as one of the “least churched” states in the nation. On
many a Sunday, Oregonians are found in the cathedral of the woods. I
used to judge those in their wooded sanctuaries on Sundays. Now, I often want to join them.
God may be found in Spirit filled sanctuaries made by men, but He's also found in sanctuaries carpeted with grass, rocks, and water. Christ increased his faith in the woods. He held fast to the mountainous journey he undertook. Filled with God, fully God, He became the
sacrament. We too are called to be filled. We too are called to hold the Sacred. Within us. And so I
journey up the mountain, into the darkness, and seek to behold the
Sacred.
My Soul
Son Sacrament
God Sacred
*Latin for: “to complete” or “to
fulfill"
