Echoes Of Prayer And Writing Towards New Definitions...

I haven’t read much of Mary Karr’s work, save for an interview here and there, so what I know about her feels much like fragments drawn out from a fraction—she’s a poet, memoir writer and teacher, a former alcoholic and an agnostic turned Catholic.

Lately, I find that I am fascinated by the process in which skeptics come into faith, even as I furiously wrestle within mine. It is not that I am tethering towards complete abandon of belief; in fact, my Christian convictions remain the premise upon which I negotiate my life. Still, I am keen to admit that there is a rift; that the earth has shifted for me in a way that is irreparable, a way that leaves me estranged from what I considered to be true and singular and fixed.  I am drawn to Karr because I am compelled by her re-invention of herself—losing the alcohol, finding God; that mid-life switch up that changes us from one person to another; also, her finding of Jesus outside of Sunday pamphlets and institutional dogma; the strength and confidence of her theological individuality even as she throws herself into the history and culture of Catholicism; I am also drawn to the language she has given her spiritual experiences, the weight of her private meditations, that necessary rigor of matching intellect with the metaphysical, it is nothing like what I experienced as a teenager who grew up in a staunch Pentecostal background defined by fixed cultural values and a performative approach towards doctrine and life.  

Some days ago, I had a conversation about prayer with a friend who is somewhat of a skeptic—but whose approach to life is filled with abundant curiosity that keeps him in a posture of constant investigation—constant searching and thirsting. If there is something I have learned from this friend, (and there are many) it is that faith, just like doubt, is unfinished, that we can exist, in humility, in an ongoing conversation about ourselves and about the world we have to live in.

For me this ongoing conversation of faith revolves around language, (prayer and worship) grace, love, as well as all the loud absences in my life; a past filled with violence, scraps of residual trauma that litter my consciousness now and then, a kind of acquired restlessness in the face of suffering and loneliness; my faith is the room in which I nurse these conflicting realities, both and at once. Yet, I have to believe that the task of faith, among others, is in the very least to acknowledge these opposing sides of human experience, hope and despondency, love and fear, truth and doubt. I’m thinking of a faith that is vulnerable and honest, grounded but curious, firm but also malleable, contextual, embodying, willing to reassess, expand, include.

I think of my Pentecostal background as a pendulum tilted towards one side, often cofounding in its absurdity—the insistence on a singular kind of life fixated on rules and exclusion. Yet refusing to acknowledge human pain as fact of life, and in the context of faith, perhaps with a purifying effect. This brand of faith is less accepting, overly corrective and bent on escapism and control of destiny.

Often, I think about my prayer warring mother and her ceaseless battles and I wonder: What exactly is faith or prayer in the absence of desire and fear? If we, with our tall aspirations of life do not come to God constant with need, or fall at his feet bloated by fear, what would it look like to hope in someone who is neither a profit engine nor a self-preservative tactic? My exposition is clearly reductionist but to tackle the extreme, I have to think in extremes.

I think of writers like Flannery O Connor and Christian Wiman, different generations and genres, but both of whom embraced their faith in seasons of their life confronted with loud bodily pain and suffering—it is this kind of freedom I want, to come to God, not in blind, mindless pursuit, but in surrender; not with compulsive, desperate, arm twisting demands but fully trusting. It is not that I want to dismiss human need, I just want to de-center it. And it’s not that I want to amplify human pain, I am merely interested in a broader construction of what a miracle is, also in the language and intentional articulation of our experiences of God, whether through his presence or absence.

My final thoughts is for those of us who are subscribers of faith to consider drawing in more consciously towards fearless devotion, there is beauty in hope that is honest, wrestled, pain acknowledged and finally, in God, who is not blind to suffering, nor dismayed by it, but is, even with pain, able to work out a greater good.

I leave you with something more soothing and light, newly discovered music by Micheal Kiwanuka.

and this,

Please write me, or leave a comment to rant, or share, or just to say hello.

p.s

I am missing my usual book list, I know. Thanks for your patience as I continue to gather myself.

Till soon.