I see the way you cling to your last thread of faith, hoping by willpower you could hold onto the God that is slipping through your fingers.
I see the way that thread has become a rope around your neck, choking the breath from your body.
I see the way you cling to it still.
I want you to know it’s ok to let go.
//
Once upon a time I wrote profusely on the internet about my relationship to God and Jesus and the Church and these days it’s hard to find words.
How do I speak of my relationship with an absence?
How do I speak of unknowing?
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When I was a child, I was shown a drawing of a cross suspended across a chasm, cliffs on either side labeled MANKIND and GOD.
They told me that this chasm was because I had rebelled against God. It was my sin that kept me far from the divine.
I do not recall ever rebelling against God.
I recall years of praying for a cross to manifest itself and for Christ to bring about the much-promised union with God I longed for. Years I tried to will myself into feeling in my chest the words I read in that Book.
Years I felt the separation like a millstone around my young body.
//
I went looking for God and found only absence. At first, I was afraid.
I had put all my hope and meaning and purpose in the idea of somebody on the other side of the chasm who loved me. If I could not find anyone there, how would I be ok?
But as I sought the God who loved me, He receded deeper into the mystery. Then God was gone.
//
I did not expect that the absence would be my salvation, but —
Without God , there is no separation — for what is left from which to be separated?
Without God, there is no chasm. Without God, there is no where to be but here.
Belief in God was alienation for me.
Unbelief has been my homecoming.
//
How do I speak of my relationship with an absence?
I can say only this: the death of God was my salvation.
God was the weight on my shoulders, the ache in my chest.
God was shame.
God was fear.
God is gone, and I am free.
//
This is my story. Yours may be different.
Maybe in your story God is real. Maybe in your story God is good. Maybe in your story there’s somebody waiting for you on the other side of the chasm, and maybe Jesus is the bridge.
That’s not my story.
In my story, I search for God and God is nowhere to be found. In my story I reach out to take the hand of Jesus and find only a fistful of platitudes and manmade constructs.
In my story, I search for something solid on which to build my faith and find only this unlikely cliff. There is only this bit of earth on which I stand, surrounded by infinite mystery in all directions.
//
I see the way you cling to your last thread of faith.
You can’t imagine your story any other way.
You have tried long enough.
Love’s gentle invitation is to let go of the God on the other side of the chasm and make your home here in the world.
And take off your shoes, because you are already standing on holy ground.
I appreciate your unpacking here. I too grew up (or perhaps I infer too much about you) raised to not question, and as I have finally grown into my questioning, my world and my heart have grown with it.
Peace in your searching ...