calm! serene!

We have a patch of woods behind our home. It’s not exactly Wild America, but it’s about as close as you can get to it, whilst living in crowded Chicago suburbia. We pile on hats, boots, gloves, coats, and tramp down the icy path. It’s not exactly quiet – there’s a major highway just a short distance away – but for the most part, you can’t see anything but trees, trees, trees. I imagine that, for my little guys, “the woods” are a huge, magical place, and the little berm we hike down to get there is like climbing down a mountainside. I heave their little bodies over fallen logs, or hold their hands as they balance on top. Charlie tries to find frozen puddles to “skate” on, and Joshie runs around, picking up animal poop and getting hit in the face with branches. 

I love our little winter nature hikes (…minus the fecal matter episodes). In the summer, everything grows over, and the mosquitos breed by the thousands. The ground gets moist and squishy. The paths disappear in a sea of green, and we stay away, for the most part. But during the colder months, the bugs are gone. The snow catches our feet, makes our footing sure. The overgrowth withers and dies, and the land becomes bare, clear, accessible.

I’ve been looking for things to love about winter, and I’m finding a new rhythm, a sort of way to navigate this chilly season. Winter walks in the woods are one of them. It’s a way for me to celebrate the dormancy, and a way for my boys to blow off a little bit of steam. We look for stumps gnawed by beavers. I breathe deeply.

I wanted to tell you about this, because (1) I wanted you to know that an hour or two before you’re getting ready to crawl out of bed, we’re on the other side of the world in a tizzy, trying to get out the door for our calm! peaceful! serene! WINTER WALK IN THE WOODS! I’m shoving little hands into mittens, jamming tiny feet into boots, insisting on snow pants while the two-year-old insists against my insisting, and telling Charlie that no, we can’t have hot chocolate before the walk. After, baby. AFTER. Consider us your wake-up call from the opposite side of the earth.

And (2). As regards to this talk we’ve been having of meaning, significance, hope… Sometimes it’s very clear to me. God is here, we are close, we are friends. And other times, I can’t see very far. I ask, where did You go? It’s like the woods in the summertime. I’ve walked these same paths a hundred times, but somehow, they grow over. I lose the way, and choose to stay back behind the fence, Yard Guard in hand.

I’m really interested in Ms. Ehrenreich’s book – thanks for mentioning it. She sounds thoughtful, and very, very brave, and I say that without a bit of condescension. We God-believers have Power and Sovereignty and a Creator to back us (or hide behind). I take comfort in the fact that God is in control, at least in the abstract. But I go there, sometimes. I remove God from the world, in my mind, and see what is left. And suddenly, things are more echoey, lonely, more cavernous. It takes great courage to live there, in a God-less world. (It takes courage to live anywhere, period, but that’s another story.)

Last night, I finished Lauren Winner’s Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis. (Do you know Lauren Winner? Her first book, Girl Meets God, blew me away my senior year of college. I was utterly charmed by the woman, her writing, and the thousands of books she claimed to own.) This book deals with death and divorce, and a rift that grows between her and the God she once served. It’s raw, and honest. One reviewer said that it was too whiny, too “stuck,” but I appreciated the melancholy. I relate.

At one point, she talks about the feast of Purim and its origins in the book of Esther, the only book in the Bible where God goes unmentioned:

“Call it not the Book of Esther, but the Book of God’s Hiddenness, the Book of God’s Hidden Face. Though God is at work, God hides.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps God is not hiding, but absent. Perhaps it is not God working to save the Jews of Persia, but only Mordecai, only Esther; not God, but coincidence that a Jew wound up married to the king, in the perfect position to petition for her people. You have a choice: see God here or not; see salvation, or see only human courage; see the divine subtly at work, or see chance, luck of the draw on this day of lots.”

God? or No God? Winner goes on to resolve that tension, in bits and pieces, throughout the book, and well before it was over, I knew that she was writing this book for herself. Reading it was like watching her find her path again, a new way through the trees.

I like talking through this with you. It’s helping me find my own way. Thank you, thank you, for being a part of it. And thank you for putting words to what I’ve always felt but didn’t know how to say. I never knew that the reason I had so much trouble with “God’s glory is the highest purpose” is because it is heavy, scary theology. (I’ve heard many, many describe it otherwise, burrowing in, snuggling right up to it.)

Also, you asked if we are building, excavating, or dancing. 

I pick dancing. Definitely dancing.

It’s midnight here. Are you eating lunch? I should be sleeping…

Love, Sherah

I'm Hopeful I'll Figure Out Everything

January is almost over, girl—will you make it? I know you will, but I’m sorry to say that your reward for surviving January is February. I keep telling you I have a guest room…

So. Sher. (Mind if I jump ahead?)

I’ve always thought that I would enjoy discussing matters of faith and belief with you more in depth, and my suspicions were confirmed with your last letter. I read the article you posted, as well as the conversation it sparked between you and your friend. I’m surprised I didn’t get notifications as it was unfolding, seeing as how I was the first to comment with my brilliant take: “Bummer, the mobile site wants me to subscribe in order to read this article.” Likely I was sleeping while you were plumbing the depths of reality, so I missed it in real time.

In that thread you describe yourself as a questioning pessimist who’s sympathetic to the skeptic. I think I would describe myself as a skeptical idealist. I question my ability to know anything, but I’m hopeful I’ll figure out everything. Which is why I was drawn to the title of the book I’m currently reading: Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth about Everything, by Barbara Ehrenreich. (Based on the questions you were asking your friend about how he derives meaning in a God-less life, I’m assuming the title grabs you, too.)

I’m still early in the book, just past her first dissociative episode (which I’m pretty sure I’ve also had a few times, by the way… another topic for another day, or perhaps a question for the next psychiatrist I meet) and not yet to the “cataclysmic mystical experience” I’ve been promised in the book description. Right now I’m reading her circular, claustrophobic musings about how to figure out anything when the only two things she is convinced of are (1) that she exists and (2) that she doesn’t know anything else. (I exist, and I know nothing. I have those days.) She gets a little dark when she starts on the matter of meaning, which she describes as a seasoning that we add to make “even the most fetid piece of meat” palatable; and she gets moodier still when she talks about reading her favorite poetry:

“They were just doing their job, these poets, which is really the job of all of us—to keep applying coat after coat of human passion and grandiosity to the world around us, trying to cover up whatever it is that lies beneath.”

Interesting. She thinks of meaning as something we create, build, or coat upon “whatever lies beneath.” I think of meaning as what lies beneath. Are we builders, or are we excavators? (Or are we dancers?)

Either way, whether we’re building or digging, we’re asking questions. If this is an accident, what purpose can we create out of it? If this is design, what purpose was there behind it? I thought it was interesting that your friend’s ultimate answer to the meaning of life was “love,” when that’s mine, too. Other Christians (those of a less humanist bent than me, those with heavier and scarier theology than I can sanely manage) would argue that God’s glory is the highest purpose. But I see love under and over and through it all. My soul is reverberating with recognition and purpose when I’m a participant or a witness of love. So I gravitate to the places in scripture where everything is boiled down to that one essence. God is love. The whole law is love. Do anything without love and you’ve done nothing.

You asked if I could hope with you.

Friend, there are two things I do persistently in this life. I ask questions, and I hope. Even when I’m confused, even when I’m scared, even when I’m wildly disapproving of God, even when my belief and unbelief are so jumbled up that I’m not sure which one was which, even when I’m confronted with something horrific and all I can manage is a quiet, uninteresting, desperate little why?—I’ve always been able to ask questions, and I’ve always been able to hope. So yes, let’s hope together. 

One of my favorite conversations with you was as we were walking in the park this last summer with our little boys, and I made mention of some question that bothers me. You said, “You know what? I’ve started writing all of those questions down in a list.” I asked, “What for?” You said, “Because I actually want God to answer them. It’s a long list.” I asked, “And how many do you have answers for yet?” You said, “Oh, none. But they’re coming.”

I thought, “This girl’s got nerve." 

Love,

Joy