(From Simple Abundance; A Daybook of Comfort and Joy) .....Annie Dillard tells that the Old Testament prophet Ezekial was wary of those who hadn't floundered in the gaps (of doubt) before finding their way back across deserts of the heart. "The gaps are the thing" she points out. The gaps are the Spirit's own home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clear that Spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once blind man unbound.....If there is no doubt, why would we need faith? Perhaps the doubts must be acknowledged, accepted, embraced, and pushed past before our faith is strong enough, not just to talk about, but to sustain.
This reading takes on a new meaning for me this year as I have come through the "valley of the shadow of death" and had my doubts about whether there was a God or heaven at all. ...Did I make the whole thing up so that I could lean on it and I wouldn't be afraid? Was my belief in God and heaven just a culturally conditioned early learning that I took as a fact, but which had no basis in reality? Was there a heaven in that "little girl way" I learned, or do we just rot in the ground, gone, and our most important job after death is sustaining the eco-system for the next generation as we rot away? No spirit to heaven, no meeting with God in that traditional sense? These were the thoughts that rocked the foundation of my "ground of being". These thoughts challenged everthing that I believed and had taken for granted. This is the faith that was being put to the test in a way that it had never been tested before.
Some of these thoughts, to be sure, came from the experience of praying with all my might for my sister and most of my prayers from my perspective, going unanswered. Reality hit me in the face. We all must die, and sometimes it will be painful. There are some things, most things, that are completely out of our control. I was angry at what was previously known as God, which fuelled a LARGE DOUBT that there was any God at all....so ineffectual all prayers on all fronts seemed.
It has been a long way across this desert of doubt, but slowly, I have been able to see where God was for me along the way. I have been able to build survival skills like meditation, visioning,and emotionalization prayers. I have returned to some old practices like journaling, writing, wanting to take up drawing again. I have used yoga and am beginning to use Tai Chi to change my thoughts and center me back into my being when no amount of "mind work" can do that for me. These skills will remain with me and will be useful for years to come, there will be other deserts, to be sure. That much I know and believe. Disintegration is followed by integration, dying is followed by rising, death is followed by life that arises from that very same death; that is the pattern of my life I can remember since my Daddy died when I was six.
What I have come to realize is that life is life with all it's death and resurrection; there are moments, times of glorious rapture, love, compassion, joy, happiness, security, and there are times of searing pain and despair. God is there throughout the whole of it. As I look back in my darkest times, I see how God provided real support in the way of people and situations. Even though I didn't believe in God, God did not stop believing in me. The other result from this time is a shift in my understanding of how God Is in my life. On one level, God became more abstract, and on another level God is as close as my breathing. There is no place where God is not. The spirit of God animates all living things. At the same time the older, more "ancient" feelings of God in my world have also been restored, with a richer context. My belief, my faith has been tried, and I have become richer for it.
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