"There have always been edge walkers: those who didn’t follow along with the status quo, who didn’t swallow the version of religion offered by those on top of the hierarchy as The Only Way. And at that edge, spirituality and nature are in unbroken relationship."
Victoria Loorz
I will let
share more of the blow by blow about this season of her health crisis. We’re not out of the woods and it’s not yet clear when we may be.Speaking of woods—a couple weeks ago we decided to take a drive as the aspens began to turn and spark in southern Colorado. The fact that KJ was willing and able to do this was a gift to both of us. We’ve tried to capitalize on the fall beauty for several years now. Every time it seems like the aspens have something to gesture, something to reveal, or something to speak over us as benediction. It almost always makes for rich “grief inventory.”
Breathing in the cool, crisp air of October. A welcome sensation to our nervous systems.
Breathing out the agony that was, and is.
If this was our first fall encounter, it felt like a reprieve from probably the hardest season of our life. The daily challenges, setbacks, and cruelties of sickness the last few months have been relentless. It is hard to reflect with any real perspective on what we are presently living. Nevertheless, the drive together was sweet and truly heartening. Seeing the aspen groves warmed us and watching KJ in her element—basking in outdoor beauty—reminded me we can still place ourselves in the path of enchantment.
We can protest despair without words—by the deepened and quickened cadence of our breath.
Home At The Periphery
I haven’t had the appetite to process much ‘theologically’ during this nightmarish period—I haven’t yet perceived its toll on me fully and I couldn’t predict how it’s reorienting me. It is mainly dis-orienting.
We have welcomed the support of friends and family throughout and will continue to do so. We’ve navigated this with community but (mostly) without the institution of the church. As I’ve shared previously, we needed to distance ourselves from church-as-organization in order to heal, as well as to clarify what it is about community, ritual, or faith that we cherish.
Fifteen years ago, there were square and “sound” answers to circumstances like this. Today my faith can no longer withstand systematized rubrics, which means I end up tuning out a lot of jargon about God that I used to eagerly parrot. That doesn’t mean, for example, I cannot extend dignity to, say, conservative evangelicalism, where I once found a spiritual home. It just means that rubric of faith no longer finds resonance with me.
Prior to encountering abuse in the church and fully realizing the depth and scope of the problem, I was led to believe that people who did not devote their lives to a local congregation did so out of waywardness and immaturity. As it turns out, the more acquainted I have become with those at the margins or outside of organized faith structures, the more deeply I see the integrity and congruence that led them there. For many of us, standing at the edge or outside was the only place we could find ballast after being on the inside for so many years, where corruption was protected and projected onto every available target.
Stripped of Strength
At the point a church or faith organization begins to fortify its structures at the cost of human welfare, it exchanges the vitality of soul (in community) for the illusion of stability. In order to achieve this supposed stability, hierarchies and conformity are needed. Not only that, but the reality of human suffering, disability, and frailty are often sequestered until they become “content” for triumph, rather than dimensions of encounter and witness where our fears are confronted by our inherent belonging.
A community of integrity, be it faith-centric or otherwise, is a place where we can be held in honor when stripped of strength. Sometimes there is nothing to do but be, especially when illness or another circumstance affords us no other option. As KJ & I continue to grapple with the cruel and demanding interruptions of crisis and fragility, we are brought back to unwanted terrain. Hopes and plans once again on hold. Are these limitations again our guest? Is choosing what is present (& one another) enough to sustain us through the sadness or rage?
Regardless of outcome, we are not interested in triumph. We will invite people in who can bear with us in the dark. We’ll reject the impulse to package or sermonize the moment. And I won’t desecrate my own fragility for the appearance of success.
Sadly, my former days of pastoral ministry were chock-full of “leadership neurosis.” How to lead a staff, how to lead through change, how to lead leaders, how to lead, how to lead, how to lead. Rarely in these circles did I encounter someone I wanted to emulate, someone to companion with from the bottom.
Today, as we continue to relocate ourselves away from the religious center(s) where leaders were plenty but co-witnesses were few, the air is cleaner. There’s less pollution from power, pretense, and religious arrogance. We can breathe. It does not make the brutality of life easier to metabolize, but it has made it simpler to surround ourselves with people of refuge.
That is not to say there is no place or value in faith institutions whatsoever. It is to say that in order to sift through the damage of religious abuse and corruption, distance was necessary. To what degree one decides to return to traditional religious spaces (myself included) depends on the trajectory of congruence—holding and heeding to the hopefully-malleable conviction or Sacred that steers us inwardly, in order to embody it.
Lately, we’ve hardly had the energy to muster much if any artistic expression. That I have the capacity to post here today is a welcome change. The words will return in due time. These days, congruence has meant choosing to breathe.
Choosing to offer tenderness to one another when we’re both exhausted.
Choosing to accept another season of goddamned medical upheaval and receive the good that somehow remains in spite of it.
We’re still here.
We’re still being tended to by the loving presence of others. We’re still inhabiting our weary bodies, breath by gentle breath.
Thank you Ryan ... KJ 's words have been a great comfort to me over the past few weeks ~ and now, here you are too! Much love to both of you, in and through Jesus 🩵
Thanks for writing this. Congruence isn’t a word I think about often but it is calling to me today. And yes, praying for you both -- for grace to breath in held-ness day by day