See Me

I have been reading Rainer Maria Rilke's elegies this weekend. I never had before. Such a loss not to have found him before. Throughout these poems he wonders and grieves our transience and the indescribableness of our interior life. We sweep through life that is filled with the solid and concrete but that which seems to be our core leaves no mark. How can something that is so real to us pass from one moment to the next and be entirely new?

I think it is the enigmatic indescribableness that drives us to want to be known. If someone could just see us entirely for who we are wouldn't we be fixed eternally? If fully known and yet loved, wouldn't we be eternally content?

"Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? . . . the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee . . . ." The all-seeing. The all-loving. Our eternal desire.

Embracing Chaos

There is chaos
And yet we dare to measure it
But only as shifting probabilities
Structure made of space and energy
But subject to mathematics.
The chaos made comprehendible.

From expansion and space
More empty and alone than anything else
From pockets that coalesce
Perhaps from asymmetrical chance
Arises mind and comprehension
Embracing chaos in dance

Tales

You don't get to have the feelings
while ignoring what love does.
And I must not be flattered
by mere tales of your heart.

Tokens False and True

It was not trivial, that love.
But, the lie? It was.
Why is it so important to you?
You do not express regret.
You do not even acknowledge
A lie in itself.

If you strive to defend the trivial,
If they are so worth preserving,
What of ones that carry weight?
Could you lie for any reason,
For none at all
Never admit to any?

It is not trivial, love - -
An exchange of vulnerabilities
given and received as tokens of trust.
You receive mine
but give false tokens in return,
Only you know
The exchange never happened.

Restore the trust.
Offer an honest token. Admit the lie.
Offer a true token. Show remorse.
To open that exchange.
show me that you will
reciprocate an open heart.

Exchange of Trust (revised 7/13)

Beneath the crusted brine and shutters,
nothing enters, nothing leaves.
Doubt, perhaps,
but nothing more.
Swollen clapboards, mildewed and mossed,
deny any exchange,
save an occasional breath of caution
or stale indignation
if one should test their integrity.
Well protected
from transactions with the sea,
the house rests, secure
in its own personal deceit
of participation
with the shore.
Yet, the tidal pools
protected by jetties below,
participate unthreatened
in an easy, quiet exchange with the influx of the sea.
Filling up, seeping out.
Filling up, overflowing.
Replenished again --
each awash, in nascent offerings of the sea,
each returning that fragile trust
by releasing life
that, until that moment,was held at heart,
as it's own personal secret.

Danger! Thin Ice (revised 7/14)

Years ago, my grandfather, took me skating on one of the many rural ponds around our neck of the woods. Those rural ponds always have crazing. You know. Small cracks scattered all over, and even below, the surface. They could make you cautious, if you hadn't learned better. They certainly made me cautious. I wouldn't venture far from the edges. I would keep my head down to watch for imminent, dangerous openings rather than freely skating to the middle or from end to end. I would worry that every snap and pop would indicate the ice was going to give way.

On this particular pond, someone had drilled a hole near the edge of the ice to bring up water to flood the surface and make it smooth. When I looked into that hole and saw that the ice was a foot thick, my caution and fear got sucked away, probably down that very hole. In any event, I knew, then, the small cracks were not precursors of the ice giving way. And, I finally could hear and take to heart what my grandfather had been saying all along: those small cracks were small adjustments and changes that relieved pressure and, strangely enough, made the ice stronger. I could skate without worrying if it would hold.

In relationships, small things, like small cracks, can cause distrust and make us cautious. We start staying on the fringes rather than going over the deep parts. We fear the foundation might be about to break apart. We watch for clues.

Looking in the hole for evidence can show our doubts are baseless. Those cracks are merely small adjustments and changes that actually prevent the relationship from forming large dangerous cracks. Looking for hard evidence can restore full trust, allowing us to skate to the middle and freely to the other side and back, without fear. Of course, it can also show us that we need to abandon the ice entirely. But, aren't either of those results preferable to living only on the fringes of a relationship? We look down that hole for the very purpose of freeing ourselves from a restricted relationship, regardless of whether that freedom means jumping to firm ground or skating fearlessly to the middle.

Truth's Deceit

Truth and love are not
As would seem.
One would think that of the two
Truth would be more solid,
Love the fleeting mist.
Truth, after all, is the unseen
Reality
Supporting our perceptions.
Love
The capricious imp.
But who has seen truth
Except through perceptions?
Love
We see and know.
Is the underlying
Truth
But a deceit of our
Flawed perceptions?
Love,
Is it not the
Truth
That belies our heart?

A Myth’s Reflection

Strong myths are created by gifted artists striving to describe essential personal truths.

If done well, those essential truths described in the myth will be recognized by others whose experiences are similar. Each one who looks upon the myth sees a nearly exact rendering of their own experience causing them to be drawn close to the myth maker and to others who recognize the truth but it also deludes each one into thinking that the image the myth shows them is the exact same image the myth shows to each of the others. In other words, the myth comes to be seen as the truth itself.

And so, myth, the imperfect but powerful vessel into which human experience is poured comes to be seen, not as a general proposition or template encompassing the many imperfect truths, but as truth itself. That which should be a focal point for an outpouring of human expression for the purpose of drawing people together into a common experience and a common understanding becomes, instead, attempt to draw from the myth as if it is the source of the power. The problem with this is that the myth is a description or a rendering of many shared multi-faceted understandings having a common essence. The truth is only understood best by seeing many of the the facets; the myth is the guide to see the underlying essence or commonality of those facets. It is important as a guide but it has fewer dimensions and less complexity and less ambiguity than the truth it describes. The power drawn from it, then, is much less; if the flow is drawn from the myth to empower individuals it of necessity is a limited and puny power. If the flow, instead, is one that goes in the direction to the myth from the many human expressions, voicing similar experiences or similar truth, then the power is unlimited and magnified and vital.

Setting aside for the moment the question of whether Jesus is God or if the Christian God even exists, the fact is that there is no way to prove either and that each person’s understanding of Jesus and God is, and cannot be anything but, a personal, individual understanding that each believes to be perfectly described in the Bible, not knowing that each other person, whose experience and understanding are different, also think the Bible is the perfect description of their own experience. In other words the Bible’s description of God and of Jesus is a perfect myth example. It is a focal point. It is a means by which many individuals can draw close and attempt to find the commonalities in their experiences and rejoice in the similarities. It can be a powerful force in each of their lives. Similarly, if each stops pouring their own expressions of truth out and stops refining the myth and stops attempting to relate to it in their own words and stops finding the commonalities they have with others as they also express their experiences, and instead, decides that the myth is the truth itself, then they will be trading a vibrant, vital and powerful experience for an impotent, diluted and puny power.

It seems to me that not many Christians approach their faith this way. There should be no fear that the myth will become irrelevant or shifting sand. The power of great myths is that they so ably describe vital truths of human experience and are, therefore, lasting. The truth of human experience may be due to God’s influence and due to the divinity and resurrection of Jesus or it may be due to human drives and essences alone but, in either case, the myth is strong and vital and descriptive of true experience that is commonly held. A strong myth such as this is a wonderful stone against which each individual can press against and test their own experiences to see how closely the grooves and cracks and pores of their own lives mesh against those of the stone.

Prayer exemplifies the direction and degree of the flow that should be toward, not from, the focal point myth. Those of the conservative Christian faith view the Bible myth as the actual truth and pour nothing into it and do not test themselves against it. There is no room for a dialog with other believers as to how each interprets the Bible so that they may find the common ground of the Bible closest to the truth. To enter such a faith, to test one’s experience against a mere interpretation of the Bible, is seen as an admission of the inerrancy of the Bible. There is no room to consider that the inerrant truth imperfectly described in Biblical words is really outside of the Bible. So, conservative Christians expect the power to flow from the Bible to them and their prayer takes the form of examining the Bible myth and seeking the truth there and expecting the answers to their prayers to be found there and flow to them.

For others, the Christ story and the creation story are the best attempts of an artist rendering the truth from the artist’s own experience. It is the closest to truth that words can come but it is not the truth itself. The truth is in the comparison of each person’s experience held up to the Bible myth and tested against the myth to find the commonalities of experiences with others and with the myth maker. Their prayer is an outpouring of all they find within themselves that resonates with the myth and a delight in how well the myth describes their own experience. Their prayer is a communion also with others who relate as they do. The prayer and the fellowship is vital and vibrant and powerful. In this way the atheist can pray with the theist.

Said another way, let’s say that God exists and that Jesus is God and has been resurrected and lives in a spiritual realm where he influences our lives and waits to judge and reward the dead and resurrected. Words alone, whether divinely inspired or not, are an imperfect representation of the truth. Words can only be an imperfect reflection of the truth. The Bible’s words, though, give us something to bump up against, something to test our experience against, something by which we say, “This that I am reading I relate to. This that I am reading resonates with an experience in my life. I know what this means when it says, for instance, perfect love casts our all fear. I may understand it in some ways differently than you but those words tie us together. There is something in those words that we each relate to and we know that there is something we have both experienced in common that is true.” This is the power of myth. It is a superb artist’s expression that is so good that it stands the test of time and we know that it speaks of something true and common to all. If I, as an atheist, resonate with those same truths and those same experiences, the only difference in your communion and mine is that I attribute that experience to our common humanity, alone, while you attribute it to a God who inspired the artist to write the words to direct you to those truths. We nonetheless have found a commonality, a communion, a touchstone and focal point that draw us together.

I personally believe that the more Christians stop looking to the Bible and church doctrine as the truth itself and instead look to the Bible’s teachings and doctrine as focal touchstone that enables and requests a pouring forth of each one’s own experience and encourages each one to enter a dialogue with others as to how each interprets the myth in their own experience, the more vital and powerful the religion will be. It’s as if, not being able to look on the glory of God directly, the artist stood God at his back shining his image through the artist to write the myth. When we each look upon the reflection of that myth, each from a slightly different perspective, we can compare how each of our perspectives differs and discover the commonality that is the truth. Some of us may think that truth is God, some of us may think that truth comes only from ourselves but we all have something upon which we can have a dialogue and test our experiences. The only ones with whom we cannot have this conversation are those who insist that the artist’s words are themselves the truth and that the truth they see must be the only truth that others must see.

Tempering the Rights of Man

Most Americans don’t realize that our preoccupation with individual rights (expanding or contracting those rights) makes us all liberals. The Enlightenment was liberal in its approach advocating the individual above the king. Americans took it to heart and overthrew their King and established a country ruled by law and by a representative democracy of individuals. This is all liberal; it is anti-caste. It advocates against entitled power. It advocates for each one making his or her own way as their ability dictates. No class or aristocracy will impede them.

Individuals who are free to follow enterprise, free to make their way by merit and skill, must of necessity be free to associate and assemble with others of like mind and to form alliances and allegiances but the founders of this country saw a problem in unfettered individualism. The problem was that alliances and allegiances can encompass a majority and that majority, just as a king, an aristocracy or a class system, can snuff out the freedom of individuals not part of the majority. This was the basis for our Bill of Rights: to ensure that a majority vote in representative government would be limited to prevent the majority from becoming the new entrenched power overrunning individual rights.

Conservatives defend the individual’s right to do as he or she chooses (restrained only from doing harm to others), to earn his or her own way and to form allegiances with whom the individual chooses. Liberals defend individuals’ rights by imposing limits on the extent of some individuals’ freedom to ensure that other individuals retain some basic rights. Both are championing the rights of individuals. Either stance will result in some limitation on individual freedom. Liberals, in choosing to limit those with allegiances in order to preserve basic freedoms for those who have no allies or other source of power, reveal an underlying pessimism about human nature and human motives.

This same dichotomy and liberal pessimism can be seen in our religious institutions. On the conservative side there is a defense of unfettered individualism by an emphasis on the Reformation dogma of “by faith alone,” “sola scriptura,” personal salvation and unmediated prayer and confession. These tenets carry the message that God accomplishes his will by working directly through the individual, speaking directly to the individual and motivating the individual to act. The avowed belief is that God will inspire the individual to care for the poor and tend to the needy. Organized social agenda are seen as suspect in that it might limit God’s inspired action through the individual and might lead the individual to rely less on faith and more on good works for their salvation. An organization and hierarchical priesthood is seen only as inhibiting individually inspired faith. It is not mere coincidence that it is within the conservative churches that the phrase “a personal relationship with God” is used. It is, in fact, a badge of one’s dismissal of liberal theology and the more liturgical denominations.

The liberal churches emphasize social justice, liturgical services, mediated intercession with God and books of common prayer. These emphases carry the message that God works through the church as a community, that individual motives and internal urgings are suspect. As a result, the liberal churches are more likely to believe that organized social action is necessary and that an organized priesthood or pastorate protects against individuals mistaking their personal motives as God’s will or God's voice. Jesus' example is sought more than his mystical inspiration. If there is a liberal counterpart to the conservative’s avowal of “personal relationship with God” it is probably “God works through his church” or “follow Jesus.”

This is the fundamental divide in American Christianity. Both conservative and liberal faiths believe God acts through individuals but one gives free reign to the internal inspiration received by the individual and the other sees a need to temper the individual more with a structured community of believers and established theological scholarship and tradition. It is the same dynamic as on the political stage: Can individuals be trusted to do good and take care of the less fortunate without regulation or restraint? The Bill of Rights, by its very existence, implicitly says, “No.” So does the Bible.

Images

I see you.
In image after image
you are looking down.
I imagine
you look at the earth
rather than see the eyes
of your beholders.
They see
you are afraid.
They imagine something missing in you.
Or was it
that you were too young yet
to imagine a smile?

Jibbelty Jye

Hinkey pinkey jibbelty jye
Ever play catcher in the rye?
No, not ever. Why would I?
Lost my way in jibbelty jye.

Too Close To The Flame

I am not ready yet.
I may never be.
How can I draw close?
I see it is as metaphor;
You do, too, but do not realize it is so.
Without recognition you immerse yourself in it,
It fills you and sustains you.
It defines who you are.
My drawing close would change me in your eyes.
I would lose my metaphor.
You would lose nothing.

Happenstance

Pebbles on a drumhead
Racing in a swirling slurry to reach the perimeter:
“Here! Over here! Get here quick!”
“No, there, go back, all of us now.”
Wind-driven rain upon the hide.

The Chimera

Same house
Same flesh
So similar
But yet deformed
One by pain and the other by hurt
One seeking escape the other seeking redemption
Who was whole?
Who was damaged?

Our Next War

The subject of our contented happy life in the US at the expense of many in the world is one I have thought about quite a bit. I don't think we realize how much of our life styles are artificially supported by underlying inequities that cannot continue. I don't necessarily mean "inequity" in the sense of unjust, though in many cases, it is that, too. I mean mostly that there has been an inequity of the economic equation and that a balancing is inevitable. Also, when I say the inequities "cannot continue," I don't mean it as a manifesto to rise up give away all our goods, though that may be a noble reaction, I mean it more practically -- that it is inevitable and beyond our control.

Just this morning I saw a headline about a school system in Kansas that closed half of its schools in a last ditch effort to stay afloat. It frightened me. I think there is more of this to come. Our whole economic system is crumbling under its own weight of inflated wages and built-in assurances of security that we have paid for by ginning up our own isolated market and, now that we are having to compete globally, the rug is being pulled out from under us and the artificiality of the supports is becoming apparent. I wonder if I really shouldn’t move to India or at least to Ireland.

What scares me most is that even in a blog of friends, when I write about what appears to be inevitabilities to me, the response was in no instance about discussing whether it is or is not inevitable or whether my view of the economics might be incorrect. Rather the response was almost entirely an emotional fear response from a position of feeling threatened. The responses were either to rail against scapegoats like corporate CEOs for causing the situation and insinuating that those scapegoats need only be slaughtered for us to retain our good fortune or the response was one of blindly misinterpreting the issue as if I was demanding that we all voluntarily, out of some leftist philosophy, go out and give the world all of our money and take vows of poverty.

To me the whole effort was very revealing. It is not like this blog group to not be willing to discuss issues. If this group of friends could be so fearful and blinded and reactionary, what does that say about the country as a whole? This is the sort of thing that erupts in war. It makes me fear that more economic upheaval (which in my view is certain still to come) will eventually result in us looking outside this country for the scapegoats and going on the attack. If we do, it will sure to be under the guise of nation building or spreading democracy or defense of country but what it in fact will be will be aggression to defend our standard of living that we have been so spoiled to enjoy.

I remember on September 11, even at the very time I was watching the towers collapse live on TV, thinking, “The fear from this will cause us to strike out disproportionately,” and, “The fear from this is going to result in us stupidly surrendering some of our constitutional rights just so someone will protect us.” Both of those thoughts turned out to be correct. The fears I have now of us going to war over this economic collapse feels the like the same premonition.

Coal Shed

There was a time when I came
to visit almost daily,
the old intriguing the very young.
But mistaking the past for permanence,
I squandered the present,
missing the chance to know.

Though weathered to a shade
that from a distance was gray,
closer conversation revealed
the hues of earlier years.

Within the reach of a child’s arm,
I saw the glimmer
deep in the grooves between the joints and swollen grain.
The mossy brows,
gave contrast to motes of dust in the sun
lifted from its sides like slow breath.

The softened texture seduced touch
but, in its grievance with age, replied with slivers to the palm.
Open crevices were black with ancient dust of coal
Grit and fragments supported the foundation,
becoming part of it, shoring it up with the mined past
that once lived,
once was known.

An Atheist's Prayer

When I was deeply involved in the church, it frustrated me to hear what many accepted as prayer. It seemed to me that most public prayer was more of an affirmation of shared belief or a recital of vows and doctrine than it was prayer. Often, when listening to pulpit prayers, I felt that I was doing nothing more than sitting through a sermon except with my head bowed and my eyes closed. I thought, “Prayer should not be like this. If we are talking to God, if this is communication between us and our creator, shouldn’t we be addressing him rather than each other? Shouldn’t we either be humbly asking God to act or drawing close to God to feels his presence?” I felt that prayer should be petition to and worship of God.

My views have not changed much over time. Twenty-five to forty years later, I still, as an atheist, think petition does us good. It is good to be humble, to acknowledge our inadequacies and our need for help. The tempering of arrogance, in itself is the help we most need whether it is what we consciously seek in prayer or not. Audible petitions in the presence of others open avenues of grace from those who hear our prayers. Those with whom we commune bring us compassion in response to our needs. The difference for me now is that I see my fellow petitioners as answering my prayers where I previously saw their actions as God’s hand through his people. Somehow, the concept that flawed and imperfect people being capable of bringing consolation and rising in compassion without any maneuvering of an outside agency is to me much more fearsomely powerful and worthy of awe than ascribing some hidden hand to their actions.

Worshipful prayer, too, has this new perspective for me. It, like petition, is just as real as it was before but I see it through a different lens. The object of my adoration has changed but I still remember times of prayerfully drawing close in communion with God that felt beatific. I remember prayer that left me laughing out loud in joy and feeling as though God’s presence were tangible in the room. I thought for sure there were times his finger reached out and touched the core of my heart. I may deny now that it was a deity that was the source of those experiences but I do not deny the experiences themselves. They are not false memories but recollections of true uplifting. They were expressions of wonder and awe and an openness to receive grace. This adoration is what worshipful prayer, in its essence, is. It is an opening of oneself to all the mysteries and standing in awe. It is the recognition of things overpoweringly greater than oneself.

It is awe that drops me to my knees. I need the time in that sort of contemplation that leaves me in adoration and wonderment. It is a worshipful thing that we can contemplate and comprehend a universe so vast that it makes our insignificant contemplation itself vast. Humility, adoration, openness to grace – all good things and worshipful. What better than to audibly express these things in the presence of others who, in turn are lifted up?

The source of my salvation is in the care of others responding to my petitions in need. The source of my worship is in, not just the wonder of the world around me, but in the openness of others sharing that wonder and accepting grace in the form of my offer of compassion. This lifting up of petitions, the consolation in need and the communion with friends is my church and my prayer. Selah.

Wake up!

The President, in his State of the Union address sympathized with the country by bemoaning the “longer hours for less pay” that Americans are working.

We have been spoiled.

Most of the rest of the world has been laboring under depressed wages that barely sustain and in some cases are not enough to do even that. We should not be surprised that a just leveling factor has started to impose itself. We had been immune for so long because we had the luxury of not living in a global economy. We could suck in imports at reduced prices and export goods made at our wage levels.

Now the world is not only our market but also our competitor in wages. We started to see the impact a several decades ago when it was noted how many many more hours per day and days per year Americans worked than other developed countries. Those additional hours were the trade off to enable our goods to be sold overseas at competitive prices while we enjoyed higher wages. Then we started to see a slowdown in wage increases. Then, when the current repression hit, companies took the opportunity to adjust.

In my own company, I first saw pension cut-backs, then cuts on vacations, then withheld bonuses, then lay-offs, then transfers of jobs to overseas divisions where wages were lower and most recently, wage cuts -- all within a year and a half. In addition, more and more expenses are being pushed out to the employees. The very prevalence of telecommuting is turning each employee in my company into a quasi-independent contractor bearing his or her own costs and bargaining for their jobs.

Who do we think we are bargaining against except the world? We are not quite yet waking up. The world is willing to work at much cheaper wages because they live at much lower standards than we Americans. I get tired of hearing the public and our politicians (Republican and Democrat alike) rail against the sending of jobs overseas and against the lowering of wages and the standard of living.

Until we are willing to pay for what we consume our standard of living SHOULD decrease. We have been living at the expense of the rest of the world and cry at our misfortune of seeing our standard of living now decrease. We have decried the sweat shops and child labor and deforestation of tropical rainforests but we don’t want those areas to compete on a level playing field for our jobs.

It’s time to wake up! Our standard of living is neither a right nor necessary. It is certainly not moral to defend. Our country is great because of our hard work, willingness to compete and generosity. We need to start buckling down and, if necessary, throw out the luxuries until the rest of the world can catch up. Are we afraid to compete for a fair wage?

Culture

I commented recently that Twitter, Facebook, and other internet applications are the new unifying media in a time when television is becoming more fractionalized. I called these applications culture, noting that they give us “a much thicker commonality” than television ever did. I think, though, that my characterizing FaceBook as “culture” struck some as profane. Alongside the great arts of poetry, painting, music and architecture how could anyone consider the crass exchange of cyber-cocktails, digital Easter eggs and viral bra colors to be culture?

I do. Culture is that which binds us. It is our shared reference points. It is our currency for communication. I think of an immigrant new to our language struggling with idioms. She would not have a chance of knowing what, for example, a phrase like “pooh-pooh” signifies. In contrast, anyone raised in America (at least in my generation) knows that a person “pooh-poohing” something is “sneering at” it. We know what it means because we swim in that same culture.

Or consider this crossword clue I encountered last week. The clue was for “grant with grammys.” The answer was a three-letter word that turned out to be “amy,” which I recognized because I live in an American community that shares a common knowledge that Amy Grant is a grammy award-winning country singer and that a “grammy” is a an award, not someone’s elderly relative.

Those common reference points are becoming much more numerous and pervasive with the spread of the internet and of social networks in particular. They are creating a “thicker commonality” where more people share the same knowledge. A few years ago most of us might have shared an interesting newspaper article with a friend at lunch where, now, we share it with dozens or hundreds online and many of them share it again. Sure, much of what is shared electronically these days is inane but so was the TV content of past years that is now our common touchstone. Much of that TV content, that which was of the least interest, that which did not go “viral” in our national conversation, has slipped from sight but those references that spread and were shared, like those to Captain Kangaroo and Howdy Dowdy, persist. We recognize, for instance, a reference to Mr. Rogers changing his shoes when he comes in the door. We know the meaning of “Danger Will Robinson! Danger!” or “Beam me up, Scotty.” And, fear not, you protectors of high culture, many of these, too, will be culled out of culture as memory fades but they are, nonetheless, culture, now.

In the same way, even though Twitter and FaceBook have a very low threshold for quality, how can we help but be part of a world who now knows who some Scottish matron named Susan Boyle is? The internet for better or worse has brought us a common language that did not exist a few years ago? For better or worse, we somehow know what is meant if someone says “BTW, IMHO, that’s TMI, biotch.” Hopefully these are examples of culture that will fade but they ARE culture.

Culture is the touchstone of commonality wherever humans congregate, whether it is crass or refined. Mozart was thought to be crass in his time. Many of Shakespeare’s references are bawdy and profane. Who knows? The future may look back with reverence on our graffiti taggers and, in the mean time, we all can share a common culture that is shrinking our world and our differences. Time will shake out the trivial and leave the great works for generations to come.

Faithless

Have you ever come up short, surprised by how people see you or, maybe more to the point, how they don’t see you?

I am a person whose faith has become stronger and stronger over the decades. I see myself that way. I was an ardent and whole-hearted Baptist, convinced of the truth that God, whose attention went to the smallest sparrow, was also intent on me. I was convinced of my sinfulness and God’s willingness to sacrifice himself out of love to reconcile the gap between me and him. I accepted that grace. The wonder of it made me laugh in joy. My faith made me want to hone my life to truth and whittle away falsehoods and inconsistencies.

I studied and taught the Bible and surrounded myself with a fellowship of like believers but I also questioned and prodded to refine what I believed was true. Over the years my faith has become more solid and my joy and wonder deeper. But, in the process, the object of my faith has been gradually but profoundly adjusted. The object of my faith has changed to something more solid, to something material and yet so much more expansive than it was decades ago. So, I see myself as being true to my beliefs. I see myself as a believer, a person of a hard-to-come-by faith that has been honed and tempered. I know what I believe and why.

What brings me up short is that others see me as a nonbeliever and as one who has lost her faith. Even some friends who have known me for years are blind to how important my faith is to me. They seem to think that, if I no longer believe as they do, I must believe nothing. Where they would be respectful if they thought they were addressing someone of a different faith, with me they do not even recognize the need for respect. I feel invisible at those times. When I am invisible to those I thought knew me, it hurts. It feels like a betrayal of faith.