Impatience with Imperfection
Do you ever get frustrated with how hard it is to connect with people? To dance the dance of cultural norms and social graces, work through the limited medium of language, and get over the inner life of our minds to enter into the life of the Other while making ourselves known. Enter dishonesty, pride, fear, apathy, and selfishness, and there's not much hope left for authentic communication.
I mean, that's not true. Because somehow we humans still manage to communicate with each other semi-effectively most of the time. My point is just that it can be really difficult.
I've been in a phase lately of wishing I could just shed my skin and leave behind the clutter and brokenness of this life. Of myself. I have little patience for imperfection right now. Admittedly that is a problematic place, one that I hope to grow away from soon. But for now, I'm here.
I'm reading a book called Soul Making for class, about one man's journey of discovering desert spirituality and wanting to choose parts of it for his own way of knowing God. And it's cool and all, but it’s making me wonder something. It’s making me wonder if we’re all just making up a bunch of crap and justifying it and living for it and dancing around it. Crap about God and Truth and what it means to be human and stuff. Not that those things are crap; I’m just wondering if maybe what we all think and feel and say about them is.
Tradition is weird. Location in time and history is weird. Churches and synagogues and temples and mosques and whereverelsepeopleworship are weird. And it kinda irks me how so many people write so many books making sense of all of it and claiming to be right and revolutionary.
Maybe it irks me because I’m jealous of that feeling of correctness. Or maybe it irks me because I’m tired of trying to find a home in any of it. I really do hope, however, that my motivations here aren’t quite so selfish.
I just think that maybe we are ALL wrong. Maybe it’s not a question of faith versus science, tradition versus revolution, doctrinal truth versus experience, because both are wrong, all is wrong, and everything we have ever built categories upon is false ground.
If what I’m comfortable with is wrong, ok. That sucks. But if what I’m uncomfortable with is wrong too, what’s the point of believing anything at all? It makes me feel better? I suppose that might be a valid reason. I suppose God might forgive me for that.
I’m not being nihilistic here. I’m not saying life isn’t worth living or people aren’t worth loving. I just hate thinking in these categories we’ve constructed, and I don’t care about who is RIGHT anymore. I just really want to clean it all up, push it all away, and get to the heart of who GOD is, even outside of that word GOD, which we don’t even understand anyway...
I found myself asking the Lord tonight, as I ran down Belmont Boulevard dodging low-hanging tree branches in the moonlight, if maybe he would just forgive us for all of it. For all of our traditions that are surely wrong. For all of our thoughts about him and newfangled ideas that presume validity. For those of us who never question and those of us who question everything. We all just do the best we can. We all just really love truth and love safety and want to see our world succeed. A lot of us love God a whole lot, and try to take everything we have access to and fashion it into a worldview that honors him. I know I do. And I feel like most people are really good people.
Just probably really wrong. I’m probably really wrong.
So God, can you redeem us from that? Do you think you can take all of our traditions and boxes and categories and presumptions and throw them away in a gentle way that doesn’t break us? We don’t mean to be so attached to them. It’s just the only way we know how to live.
I mean, that's not true. Because somehow we humans still manage to communicate with each other semi-effectively most of the time. My point is just that it can be really difficult.
I've been in a phase lately of wishing I could just shed my skin and leave behind the clutter and brokenness of this life. Of myself. I have little patience for imperfection right now. Admittedly that is a problematic place, one that I hope to grow away from soon. But for now, I'm here.
I'm reading a book called Soul Making for class, about one man's journey of discovering desert spirituality and wanting to choose parts of it for his own way of knowing God. And it's cool and all, but it’s making me wonder something. It’s making me wonder if we’re all just making up a bunch of crap and justifying it and living for it and dancing around it. Crap about God and Truth and what it means to be human and stuff. Not that those things are crap; I’m just wondering if maybe what we all think and feel and say about them is.
Tradition is weird. Location in time and history is weird. Churches and synagogues and temples and mosques and whereverelsepeopleworship are weird. And it kinda irks me how so many people write so many books making sense of all of it and claiming to be right and revolutionary.
Maybe it irks me because I’m jealous of that feeling of correctness. Or maybe it irks me because I’m tired of trying to find a home in any of it. I really do hope, however, that my motivations here aren’t quite so selfish.
I just think that maybe we are ALL wrong. Maybe it’s not a question of faith versus science, tradition versus revolution, doctrinal truth versus experience, because both are wrong, all is wrong, and everything we have ever built categories upon is false ground.
If what I’m comfortable with is wrong, ok. That sucks. But if what I’m uncomfortable with is wrong too, what’s the point of believing anything at all? It makes me feel better? I suppose that might be a valid reason. I suppose God might forgive me for that.
I’m not being nihilistic here. I’m not saying life isn’t worth living or people aren’t worth loving. I just hate thinking in these categories we’ve constructed, and I don’t care about who is RIGHT anymore. I just really want to clean it all up, push it all away, and get to the heart of who GOD is, even outside of that word GOD, which we don’t even understand anyway...
I found myself asking the Lord tonight, as I ran down Belmont Boulevard dodging low-hanging tree branches in the moonlight, if maybe he would just forgive us for all of it. For all of our traditions that are surely wrong. For all of our thoughts about him and newfangled ideas that presume validity. For those of us who never question and those of us who question everything. We all just do the best we can. We all just really love truth and love safety and want to see our world succeed. A lot of us love God a whole lot, and try to take everything we have access to and fashion it into a worldview that honors him. I know I do. And I feel like most people are really good people.
Just probably really wrong. I’m probably really wrong.
So God, can you redeem us from that? Do you think you can take all of our traditions and boxes and categories and presumptions and throw them away in a gentle way that doesn’t break us? We don’t mean to be so attached to them. It’s just the only way we know how to live.
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