"Close to the Ground Spirituality"
My story of deconstruction, absence, and a new way of understanding spirituality.
I will never forget when what used to “work” in connecting me to the Divine no longer “worked.” The darkest time of my entire life came about 8 years ago when I faced the near-death experiences of two of my kids. My daughter was emergently delivered the same year that my 2-year-old was in a four-wheeler accident and had to be lifeflighted to a podunk hospital in West Texas. In a matter of moments, the illusion of control that had guided my life and kept my feet on the ground dissipated as a mist. My anxiety that I had kept at bay for my entire life until this point began working overtime in this season, and there were moments when I thought I would die. Literally die. The demands of working full time in ministry, raising three babies, being in seminary, and deconstructing my faith became like lead blocks pulling me to the bottom of the sea. I could barely keep my head above water.
During this time I couldn’t hear from the Divine at all. Somehow, it felt like God went quiet. I would try to have my normal, good evangelical Jesus Freak girl quiet time that I had done since I was saved at 15. I would open my bible, get out my journal, and the Spirit would fall. I would get revelation and healing and I would write about it and then share it with my friends. The Holy Spirit really was my counselor as a child and young adult. This is really how it happened for me. The Spirit was my closest companion. I would try to put on worship music and lift my hands, and dance as I used to when I felt so close to God. And then one day, around the time I had my first child, I realized, it all stopped “working. I felt nothing, heard nothing, experienced nothing.
I started meeting with a Spiritual Director, which you should do if this is something you are going through. Week after week, I would cry, telling her how desperate I was to hear from God, how God had left me, how I doubted now if any of it was ever true. And the strangest thing happened.
I learned how to know God in the unknowable places.
I found God in the silence, in the absence, in the void, in the darkness. I did this spiritual practice one time, where the leader asked me to envision God. All that came to my prayerful imagination was this big, dark room, almost like a jail cell. It was concrete and empty and cold and disinterested. That’s what God feels like sometimes for me. As I sat and breathed deep, in through my nose and out through my mouth, as the leader instructed us, I came face to face with my experience of God, and here it was. Here God was. Here I was. This is one reason why spiritual practices are so important, especially when done in community with others, because it helps us name reality. Or at least, how we are experiencing reality.
I learned to “find” God in places I had never looked before.
I found God in the dirt, in the chaos, in the stress, in the bedtime stories, diaper changing tables, and middle of the night sicknesses. I found God in the leaves dropping from trees, waves crashing on to shores, and sunlight on my face.
I don’t know exactly when it changed or shifted or evolved, but I learned to be OK with not being OK. I learned that God’s “absence” isn’t really “absence” the way that I had formerly been taught or understood. Absence or presence are not binary categories. I learned that God exceeds these categories. This allowed me to find God in the absent places, the dark places, the desolate places, and even the places that once seemed cold.
It always makes me think of the Psalmist’s claim that “even dark is as light to you.”
This is how I define my spirituality now. Maybe you are with me.
Close to the Ground
Nancy Thomas, Manor
I choke on the word spirituality.
Not so much the reality
but the sometimes solitary focus
on the ethereal, mystical, and utterly
invisible. I lose my way in the mist.
My spirit hums closer
to the ground, often emerges
with mud on its face. It scrounges
truth among the mushrooms and
lichen. Peels off labels from
discarded tin cans, and there among
the roaches and other vagrants,
finds its theology in funky
configurations. Prefers single
syllable words and saints
with sullied reputations.
Loves it when Jesus plays
with little kids. Joins him
for hot dogs and Kool Aid
afterwards. Laughs
during the prayer. Sometimes
forgets to say “Amen.”
