On most mornings, I wake early, brew a pot of coffee, and find my way to the plush blue chair in the corner of the living room. This is the quiet space for listening or sorting things out. Sometimes I hear the wind blowing through the trees outside. On this particular autumn morning, I hear it blowing through the trees, hear the acorns pelting the skylight, they being undone from their branches and sent flying like wooden hail.
The wind rustles the mesquite tree branches of my memory, the essence of my young faith, the place I’m trying to return to. Go into the pain. This is the advice of therapists, sages, and poets. Eleventh-century Persian poet Rumi wrote, “The remedy for the pain is the pain.” Starting your morning with a steaming cup of coffee and an accoutrement of pain, however, can be a jolt more than one can bear, so instead, I reach for a distraction: Robert Mulholland’s book Invitation to a Journey, a book about spiritual formation.
Distractions—aren’t they all around? When life slides its shiv into the soft spot between two ribs, when the pain shoots through every nerve, common sense dictates that we run to the doctor or therapist. Common sense dictates that we allow them to take it out and bind our wounds. Why, then, do we so often ignore the shivs? Why do we allow them to bleed us dry while we reach for our manmade salves?
I open to chapter 3 of Mulholland’s book, where he writes, “The process of being conformed to the image of Christ takes place primarily at the points of unlikeness to Christ’s image. God is present to us in the most destructive aspects of our cultural captivity. God is involved with us in the most imprisoning bondage of our brokenness. God meets us in those places of our lives most alienated from him. God is there, in grace, offering us the forgiveness, the cleansing, the liberation, the healing we need to begin the journey toward our wholeness and fulfillment in Christ.”
This is the challenge, I think: to find the places of unlikeness to God, the places where I am most alienated from him. I am reminded of Paul’s words on the matter. In his letter to the Romans, he wrote, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Rom. 12:2).
Transformed—that is the hard work of a phoenix, is it not?
Most mornings, my reading and prayer hour wakes at a slower pace. I begin in the chair, eyes closed and smelling coffee while the remnants of dreams linger. Often my attempts to wipe the groggy fog of sleep clean with prayer feels more like an exercise in effort, in the application of mental elbow grease. Often my prayers turn to nonsensical gibberish about long-lost aunts or churches I never attended or pasta or the like. This morning, though, the fog is being cut, being blown away by a sharper, cleaner wind. The words of Mullholland, the echoes of Paul—they are like smelling salts awakening the unconscious.
In what ways am I most alienated from God?
This question alone is enough to induce anxiety. The skin tingle is an indicator of the pain that is right at the surface. I consider nonconformity and alienation, and everything is ablaze.
In what ways am I alienated from God? I am a Christian who has used systems and liquor—both addictions in their own right—to numb the pain that God might not answer my prayers, that he might not heal, and that ultimately, he might not be present in my life. The pain is evidence of this area of nonconformity, and I have used these vices to dull the pain.
Here, though, in the quiet before the waking of the house, I sense a gentle truth taking hold. God wants to conform me, and that process, as Mulholland wrote, means God is involved in my life. This brings to mind the words of Jesus. “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” he said, and this morning, I’m beginning to sense this truth.
Yes, therapist; yes, Rumi; I will go into the pain, but I will not go alone.
In this early hour of risk, I return my questions to God. “Why do I feel the fire of anxiety when I consider Christ, when I consider his working or his not working, his healing or his not healing?” I sit and wait, but the questions only smolder.
Go back to the mesquite trees.
It is the still small voice, carried on a Spirit wind. It is less of a hearing, more of a knowing.
Go back to the mesquite trees of your childlike faith and commune with me.
It occurs to me: Jesus had his own tree grove once.
The Mount of Olives. I turn to the Gospel story. There is Jesus on Passion Eve. He is kneeling, praying, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Take away the pain, he prays, and when his prayer is not answered, he gives in to the mystery, and an angel comes to give him solace.
I consider my appetite for liquor and realize my overdrinking is not the area of my nonconformity. Instead, it’s my inability to accept that God’s plan might be opposed to my own human will, my desire for immediate healing. And the mismatch between my will and God’s gives rise to the anxiety, to the pain.
I consider Jesus again, how he rescued everyone who asked, but refrained from imposing his own will and rescuing himself. What a mystery! I see him, yielded in the garden on the Mount of Olives. He walked into a death that was not of his choosing, not of his own will. Instead, he walked headlong into death, turned broadside into the Roman spear that was the pointed will of God. And walking through the pain and into the will of God, Jesus showed his healing power both to those who sought to do violence to him, and to innocent bystanders. He healed the dismembered ear of a slave of the high priest (Luke 22:51); he provided for the pardon of the thief Barabbas (Luke 23:25). He asked his father to forgive his murderers (Luke 23:34). He forgave all humankind, from prehistory to eternity (1 Peter 3:18–19). He conformed himself to the will of God and, in it, defeated death and its sting, healed all of creation!
In the comfort of my living room, rich coffee aroma lingering, I hear it again.
Like Jesus, do not avoid the pain. Like Jesus, do not avoid the mystery. Allow conformity to my will. Go and you will find I am with you. I will heal you, and you will bring healing to others.
This kind of going, though, takes yielding to the possibility that God’s will might look a lot like a death.
Do you like childhood games? I do.
Let’s play a game somewhat akin to If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. If I give Seth the option, he’ll choose the certainty of a particular theology, whether that of the faith healer or the cessationist preacher. If he chooses certainty over the mystery of faith, he’ll be let down. If he is let down, he will feel the pain, the fires of nonconformity and incongruity. If he feels the pain of his unfulfilled will, he’ll dull the fires with alcohol. If he dulls the fires with alcohol, he’ll feel like a Christian fraud. If he feels like a Christian fraud, he’ll blame the faith healer and the cessationist preacher, those who taught him only easy theologies of God. If he blames the faith healer and cessationist preacher, he’ll fail to forgive them their folly. If he fails to forgive them their folly, he’ll find no reconciliation. If there is no reconciliation, the voice of God will remain as quiet as the coming of winter frost. And if this is so, he’ll feel the fires of pain and reach for the bottle of gin again.
And so on and so forth. In this death spiral, I have found myself in the great drunk alone.
He is calling me back—back to the essence of faith. And somehow I know the path begins with sitting in the pain of God’s mystery. Sometimes our thorns are not removed. Sometimes our children fall ill. Sometimes they die. Sometimes we lose homes, jobs, or churches. Sometimes we turn cancerous or our spouses walk out the door.
I have tried to dissect these ways in which life wounds us, to construct some foolproof theological explanation, and I cannot. There is only mystery left, and if this is so, then being a follower of Christ must mean yielding to the mystery. In this, we are conformed to Christ’s garden likeness. And then, in that likeness, we can be agents of forgiveness, agents of reconciliation and healing.
There is a way back to the mesquite trees, to the faith of my youth. It goes into the pain, embraces the mystery without needing theological certainties for each of life’s happenings. It requires forgiveness of ghosts and demons. After all, how can I be healed without releasing the agents of pain in my past?
Here is where it all starts: in prayer.
I am resistant to bending into your mystery, God. There is pain there. Heal it. There is fire. Quench it. There is nonconformity. Conform it. Lead me into reconciliation. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.