It is my birthday. Today, I turn thirty-six.
My grandfather used to say he felt always eighteen behind the eyes. Perhaps he was saying only that he maintained his sense of childish wonder. Perhaps he was alluding to the fact that he never saw the shape of a woman he didn’t rather enjoy. Perhaps, though, he was saying something more. Perhaps it was his subtle way of recognizing the ego, recognizing how the stubborn pride of adolescence forever stunts maturity, or at least is a reminder of the never-refined parts of us.
I am thirty-six, and I wonder if I’m only now stumbling into the wisdom of adulthood. I still feel eighteen behind the eyes.
Heather sent me happy birthday wishes today, speaking her signature quiet kind of truth. The message read, “Happy Birthday, Mr. Seth. It’s kind of cool how we get to be born so many times in life. It probably doesn’t feel like it at all, but you just recently got born. Like a month ago. So many birthdays, so much living to do. It’s exhausting, but you are terribly worth it. Peace.”
It is exhausting, I think; she is right. I do feel as if I am newreborn. Just as much, I feel recently killed too. I write Heather my thanks, adding, “It’s so awkward to be a phoenix.”
It’s the only way I know how to describe this last month. Every day a new death, a new ship to sink.
Lord, I’m tired of this kind of daily dying, the daily dying of the will. I’m not like the others, though, the ones who can control the drink. The sicker parts of me love it too much.
So I die and die and die; I sink and sink and sink the will. My survival tactics vary day to day. Sometimes I white-knuckle through. Sometimes I pray. Lord, when will these growing pains cease? Sometimes I listen to good tunes, let the vibes sink deep. But every day, I die anew. I live a phoenix’s flaming calendar.
I wonder, do you know the phoenix of myth which, from time to time, combusts only to rise more beautiful from its own ashes? It is the embodiment of the cycles of life: the setting and rising sun, the falling and rising of empires, death and resurrection. It is a bird of metamorphosis, of transition, and of ultimate transcendence.
The phoenix is no biblical creature, but could he be a type and shadow? Can’t all metaphors be?
Death is not the whole story for the phoenix. There is an eternal new rising. But for there to be phoenix risings, there must first come the death of the drab.
I’ve been practicing the daily death to my desire to drink. So when does the rebirth happen? When the metamorphosis? When does the weak man take heart in the voice of God’s calling, allow it to invade, to take shape, to give purpose? There has to be a resurrection moment.
Maybe today? It is, after all, my birthday.
Erika, our punk-hippie friend from Connecticut, sent me a text message today wishing me a happy birthday. She is unafraid, a wild, free-spirited work of art. She asked what I thought of the new charismatics, those people who walk so in tune with the mystic whispers of God that they see no distinction between life and communion with the Eternal. I mulled over the word charismatic. I don’t remember a time when this word didn’t raise every red flag. These were the people who prayed for healings and signs and wonders. These were the people who ever and always asked me to put faith to the test. These were the people who tried to cram down my best life.
The word charismatic reminded me of the faith healer and sparked anxiety. So when I read her text, the familiar dark spiral set in. I stopped in the spiral, examined the anxiety with honest eyes, listened with honest ears. These were the questions.
What if there is no healing? What does that say of faith—is it too weak a thing? If it is too weak a thing, whose voice do I hear between my ears? Is this the voice of the Spirit or the wanderings of my own crazy, spinning consciousness?
I decided this will not be the day I give in to anxious thoughts, nor will it be the day I give in to the craving for gin. This is my birthday, the day of being born again. So I listened to the questions and refused to own the anxious lies. Instead, I turned to my now-familiar prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Help my unbelief.
This is where the clarity comes. The new charismatics—yes. Perhaps that term is laced with negative implications for some? Perhaps for me? But what if it’s just a way of owning Jesus’ promise? “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age,” he said (Matt. 28:20). He is eternal and present. I’m going with that.
There will always be lies whispered about new birth. We can own them or not. Today, I chose not.
It’s all fine and sometimes good to say we can rise like phoenixes or saints, or that we can stand against the death spiral of panic. The truth is these are platitudes that might help to calcify the will in some moments, but only for a moment.
If I’m going to rise resplendent, how? If I’m going to master the darker places of the cave—the faith healer, my gaunt doppelganger—then how? If I’m going to see God as ever present, as active in all, then I must make a shift. How does one murder the fickle fear that keeps us bound?
If I listen closely, I hear it.
Go back to the mesquite trees; go back and find the childlike faith, the mustard seed that was never given the chance to grow. Find the essence of things, your once unscarred, untainted faith.