Ask anyone who’s known me for the last handful of years and I’m sure they’ll be familiar with That Blog I Keep Saying I Should Start Soon. Despite telling myself that “soon” is a relative term, I’ll admit that using even the loosest definition I’ve been testing its limits. When every message, every sign, every professional divination, every off-handed opinion from a friend on the idea of That Blog can be summarized by “yeah, it’d be pretty swell if you did that”, maybe it’s time. Maybe I should start questioning my ever-expanding definition of “soon”, pushing past all the hidden pitfalls that look like progress, but are really procrastination. I’ve become a great gourmet of procrastination techniques. Like a depressed connoisseur looking for something to help them feel again, I’m into the kind of stuff that needs an “acquired taste”, that comes with a heavy price for the privilege of even experiencing. So before I completely lose this new taste for progress, I figure it would be best to just bulldoze through my anxiety and get That Blog going.
And in February 2020, I set Ash Wednesday as when I would start. Not necessarily as the start of posting, but the start of writing every single day for the length of Lent until something of use came out. And with that stubborn goal in mind and my internal bulldozer revving, I began searching the internet for ash-smudging services in the area to start this off right. The amount I travel means I’m rarely sure what church I’m going to be near for any given holiday, but this year actually found me where I’ve been paying rent. Remembering a sign I had driven past earlier in the week lead to ending up at the nearby Episcopal church.
Having only been there once the year before on Good Friday, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Usually the morning Ash Wednesday services I’ve found myself at are focused on quickly getting people out the door to the rest of their day. Instead I was chilling in a back pew for almost an hour below a stained glass St. Michael, watching others for the sign to stand, sit, or kneel. I felt the awkwardness of my Methodist upbringing as well as my height as I fumbled with a kneeling pillow in a space not designed for a worshipper over six feet tall. Part way through the service, the staff realized they had forgotten to put out the programs beforehand and apologized, making a joke about how it was good to start the Lenten season by asking for forgiveness. I was just grateful for the moment of solidarity, knowing I was among other confused worshippers.
But the sermon, oh the sermon. It was as timely as I had hoped it might be — inspired by Matthew 6:19-20, where Jesus teaches to not simply hoard treasures here on Earth where they will be exposed to rust and moths and thieves, but to instead create treasures to await us in Heaven. The preacher took this reading and decided that rather than focus on how to do as instructed, to speak on how we are still human. Of how we are still of this world of rust and moths and thieves, and to not turn our backs on that. The sermon slowly shifted to address those of us who may receive callings that don’t look properly religious to others, and especially not to ourselves. We were encouraged to be brave in our faith as we found and grew in the calling we had received… even if it meant revealing to the world that we were a confused mess about it.
Suddenly I went from looking at a pulpit to staring down that as of yet un-bulldozed anxiety. These were familiar words. This was the Jesus I had been following for years. The one of the rust and moths and thieves. The one whose human feet were dirty from walking and whose living mouth had feasted. The one with the eternally broken, eternal body. The one of laughter and joy. The one I love. Many years ago he had been waiting for me by the doors of the Church, so I left through them to follow.
However, while I follow Jesus, I only call myself a Christian when it isn’t the right time for a longer explanation. I’m trotting along with him as best as I can, but the “Christ” part of Christian started to chafe years ago. I gave my heart to the Son of Man, not the Christ, and for some reason I have yet to understand that’s a very important distinction. But in the past decade this has meant wandering through some once-strange Pagan lands as the dirty hippie I had always known I could be. I began devotional relationships with deities I had never heard of before. I learned how to ritually honor my dead. Prayer and divination became the guidelines I use to steer my life. The primary function of my art and music went from self-expression to spiritual work.
And writing… well, that one’s been a bit different. It doesn’t matter that I have taught here or written there before, because once the excitement of sharing dies down, anxiety and doubt are my primary takeaways. This is a place where my fear has taken over. My faith in my fear has become stronger than my faith in Jesus. While that’s not a new phenomena in my spiritual life, it is one instance of it that I have been unable to find my way through for nearly a decade. (Yes, I meant it when I said I was a procrastination connoisseur.)
So I guess it’s time to listen to that sermon and follow the call to write as well. That call to be an openly confused mess. I mean, it’s not like I’ve ever fooled people into thinking I was put together at any other point in my life. But making that leap to trusting that just maybe my particular confused mess, this roiling mass of rust and moths and thieves that I am, might help someone else instead of wasting their time… it’s scary. I found myself praying without even realizing it that anyone who finds their way here can sift through these words to find something that might help them. Because my bulldozer is done idling. I’m pushing through. And weirdly enough, what I’m seeing in myself on the other side of my anxiety so far isn’t the incompetence or even arrogance that I feared, but a chance to connect with people through some of the greatest and messiest joys of our lives.