Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Barnacles from a Night Sea

My mother says I get it from her . . . the inability to sleep well at times. Last night was one of those times. I awaken at 1:30 AM and it felt like 8 AM except with a foggy head and raw thoughts.

I don’t know what it is about the middle of the night, but it is a horrible . . . or who knows, maybe a good . . . time to think about things. Problems look bigger and more insurmountable. Sometimes I think the night-time prevents reality . . . sometimes I think it exposes it for what it really is.

I spent a few hours cruising the dark, black sea of the night with my wondering mind at the helm. It always seems that the most emotionally charged thoughts rise to the surface first, especially if they were from a recent experience, such as the previous day or evening. These thoughts stuck like barnacles to the hull of my ghostly schooner of the night.

It was cold last night (relatively speaking) and I didn’t have the motivation to do a lot before retiring. I tired to work on some papers I need to write. But I kept drifting back to the Internet, reading and commenting here and there.

I visited Imonk’s page and read about Mark Driscoll’s statement that Avatar was the most demonic movie of all time.

It was only about a year ago that I started thinking that maybe Mark’s Mars Hill Church was the church I had been looking for, if not his very church (70 miles away) then a church in its likeness.

But after reading the postings on Imonk, then going to the source (a Seattle newspaper story), I started to feel this great loss. I wasn’t so surprised to find that his thinking and mine are on different planets (speaking of Avatar). While I thought the script of the movie was corny at best, the visual imagery was worth the money, especially when viewed in 3 D. I sensed the presence of God in that film, not the devil. Of course not in the spiritual teaching, as if I would ever go to a secular movie for that. But in the beauty of the Pandoran world, created by men (and women) who were in turn created by God. It doesn’t matter what the screenwriters, director, special effects people believe about God and spirituality, they can’t escape God’s fingerprint on their creativity. When I see beauty anywhere, I feel closer to God.

To suggest that the movie was demonic sounds a little kindergarten-ish to me. Will demons actually crawl across the sticky Milk-dud coated theater floor, then up your ankle and sneak into your soul as you sit and watch the movie? Will you go home and start to worship the trees or switch to a pantheistic view of reality because of that movie? If so, then Mark’s church has done a horrible job in preparing you to think for yourself.

But with that said, I started to feel that Invasion of the Body Snatchers feeling again. Where, one by one, everyone around you is being replaced by plant-like clones. Then you find yourself alone in the world.

I’ve taken so many wild goose chases in my life looking for the ideal church. Each time, I’m greatly disappointed. I’m not looking for perfect people, just people with whom I can communicate with outside my own head without having to constantly be on the defensive. I know they exist. I’ve met many at LAbri functions. I’ve met them at Imonk and here. Rarely do I meet them in my own world of everyday life.

No, I’m not looking for a perfect church. Actually I’m not looking for a church at all anymore. I’ve given up on the task. Not because there is no hope of finding a better church home, but knowing of the marital conflict I would create if I did find another church.

I’m not looking for perfect people, actually . . . just the opposite. I’m looking for people who really believe in their souls that there is no hope for perfection in this world. That by going to the right movies, avoiding the right drinks, saying the right things, voting for the right party, will not make you closer to perfection because they know that perfection is unobtainable and is allusive as chasing your own shadow.

I did finally get to sleep . . . it must have been around 4 AM. But before that, my mind gathered more barnacles.

Once again I find a lacking of purpose in my life. There is no way I would admit that when I was an Evangelical because the number one caveat of our personal testimony was that “In Christ We’ve Found a Purpose.” Maybe that was true . . . but again, maybe we were lying to ourselves.

I don’t mean this feeling of lack of purpose in any more dynamic terms than Solomon’s observations about the vanity of efforts. It is easier to feel this way when you are done being a father of little, dependent children. Then, my “purpose” was forced on me every morning when I woke up. There was no time to wonder about it.

But this barnacle came as the result of another hard day at work. I knew that I had gone to bed with stress from a couple of nasty confrontations . . . which are typical.

I entered health care thinking it was about helping people to get better. It was my role in the master plan of God redeeming the world from suffering.

While I do see many patients who want healing and participate in their healing, the ones that leave me drained are those who have no desire for healing. They just want a primal chemical fulfillment of their opioid receptors (narcotic seeking), or they are mad as hell that I didn’t document their pain for their lawyer . . . seeking monetary fulfillment from their fall at Walmart. Or they want to use their pain as a permanent paid vacation . . . and they, once again, are mad as hell that I made them better and that I documented their good health. In the book The Singer (by Calvin Murphy), there is a statement that goes something like this, “For some people you can not wish for health and happiness, because for them, illness and happiness rest comfortably in the same bed.”

I say this in the spirit of Solomon . . . or maybe Caulfield. I come home every night drained and hand over my check to my wife. She pays the bills and there is never a penny left over.

So, this may be another fall-out from a midlife crisis thing, but I do wonder what I should be doing with my life. I don’t want to lay on my death bed with regrets and now I fear I will have them. But at the same time, I don’t have the idealism that I once had about a very specific calling on one’s life from God.

We were always taught that God had one very particular purpose for each person. If you weren’t squarely in the center of that calling, then your life will be made hell on earth. If you were in the center of that obscure calling, then your entire life would be filled with good health, perfect children, perfect marriage and complete Jesus-bliss bubbling over into a constant smirk.

And this brings me to my last point . . . the death bed. In the early hours of the morning (here on the West Coast) I saw the blog update by Denise Spencer. I already knew that Michael was dying so that was no surprise. But to hear her say that in the written word was startling. I’m about the same age as Michael. I care about this virtual friend very much. I’m sorry to turn this into a selfish pondering, but I think Michael would understand. I thought that once again I dodged the lighting bolt of fatality. Just a year ago this week another good (not virtual) friend who was the same age as me died. I felt the same way then. Why wasn’t it me? There is no reason it couldn’t have been me. It wasn’t like my friend was playing with bombs and had an accident. He, like Michael, had cancer. We all are vulnerable.

This always makes me think about our own mortality. If I were to leave a legacy, I would love (besides through my kids) to do it through what I love to do . . . write. I have three completed novels and one non-fiction work that I wish I could have others read. But in the strange raw presence, in the quietness of the dark, my emotions tell me that it is just a silly fantasy. Like those who desire to sing on the stage but never will, I’m just one of millions who long to write worthy enough to be read and to stir people to think about the human condition in ways they may never have before.

8 comments:

Don said...

MJ, I used to ache for Micheal to get out of that school and find someplace where his honesty and post evangelical gifts could blossom. I was surprised that he got a book deal, although I knew his skill at sharing ideas was impressive. I do not see his cancer as any sort of divine removal at the completion of his task, but that crazy reality that allows one friend to die in a crash and another to die at 95 inspite of horrible habits. I had a heart attack at 50 and almost ten years later I have been forced to retreat to a traditional ministry that robs me of the freedom to grow in the direction of my own dreams. Maybe shit just happens. My mother in law gave me a novel years ago she bought out the truck of a car. A lawyer pushing his dreams while practicing law in Brookhaven Ms. It was John Grisham.

MJ said...

I agree with the meaning, or maybe the meaningless of Michael's cancer.

Sorry about your heart attack. Speaking of mid-life crisis. That would be a jolt to your sense of getting older and facing mortality.

Interested story about Grisham. I heard the story about Stephen King when he got his first book deal (I think it was Carrie). I think he was living in a trailer and teaching lit at a small college (if I remember the story correctly).

abmo said...

Hi, sorry for asking but I want to know if you have any christian friends? And by that I do mean friends "first". Friends who know you inside and out? Friends that provide a place of safety for you to be you?

Anonymous said...

We were always taught that God had one very particular purpose for each person. If you weren’t squarely in the center of that calling, then your life will be made hell on earth. If you were in the center of that obscure calling, then your entire life would be filled with good health, perfect children, perfect marriage and complete Jesus-bliss bubbling over into a constant smirk.

And usually "that particular purpose" was either become a pastor or go to Africa (or Egypt) to get martyred as a Missionary. (Now becoming a Praise & Worship rock star has been added to the Acceptable Godly Purpose list, but that's it.)

And this brings me to my last point . . . the death bed. In the early hours of the morning (here on the West Coast) I saw the blog update by Denise Spencer. I already knew that Michael was dying so that was no surprise. But to hear her say that in the written word was startling. I’m about the same age as Michael. I care about this virtual friend very much.

So do I. I've been commenting regularly at IMonk for at least five years. IMonk was one of the few Christians I've come across with his head screwed on straight.

And both him and Jollyblogger are the same age as me. I lost both my parents to cancer, so I've always been very pessimistic on the subject.

Headless Unicorn Guy

P.S. A lot of the recent stuff I've been writing (more like writing itself) since January seems to mesh with a lot of the stuff on your blog in the same period. I'll send you the roughs later in the week.

MJ said...

abmo, I do not have any good Christian friends here, although I do in other places. I have a lot of surface Christian friends. I've really tried. But once we start to get beyond the superficial, and they start to see how I think, they tend to see me as a flake. After all, if my tire goes flat, I don't say that God did it specifically to teach me something.

If I, or anyone in my circle of Christian friends, had a personal crisis . . . they (and I) would probably turn to our non-Christian friends who would listen without judgement.

I've tried very hard to present an accepting front (trying to help people feel safe) but it just doesn't seem to work.

Anna A said...

MJ,

I'm glad that you saw Denise's posting. (if you hadn't I would have mentioned it).

I can't be over there much at the moment because I am going through it squared. Micheal and my cousin Teri.

You have written stuff that is nourishing and spiritually fattening.(as it should be). Thank you.

MJ said...

I'm sorry about Terri. May God's presence be sensed by your family.

Anonymous said...

I saw Driscoll's rant about Avatar and, yet again, had to fight the urge to chuck Christianity altogether, just to be far far from the likes of that kind of thinking.

Grumble...

On a different note, I was so sad to hear about the prognosis for Michael. It's almost hard to believe. For a time, his essays were like a lifeline to me.

Pursue writing, in your spare time, please, please, please. All the insipid fluff out there that gets published...surely there has got to be a market for thoughtful words that aren't afraid to wander outside of the tightly cramped approved quarters for evangelicals. Think of the stir that Blue Like Jazz and The Shack made..... Yours is no different. We just have to find you a publisher who can SEE that...

:)

Molly