(Author’s Note: I wrote this for a class. Each section corresponds to a question I was to answer. The headings may not make perfect sense outside of that context.)
Meeting Christ
One of my earliest memories is of a fervent prayer for forgiveness. Whether it was my own, inborn sensibilities that lead me, at the tender age of three or four, to what in retrospect seems a deeply religious inclination, or the general atmosphere surrounding me—growing up at a Christian college—of which, as any child will, I endeavored to partake in, I cannot say. I was, and still am, I pray I always shall be, heavily impressed by the knowledge of God, and upon self reflection, deeply impressed by my own meanness.
Though I am Protestant, the term Catholic guilt seems too good a descriptor for that child of my memories (and even of myself today). The memory is visceral, and I can still feel the groves of the couch I sat upon, still see the mixed pattern of its cloth in my mind. I knelt, sat, and lay on that couch as I tried to repent of everything, and I mean everything. I was determined that not the smallest jot of sin would remain, and that I would bring it all before myself and God. From stealing candy—what a crime that was!—to spying out my birthday presents, even if it was only that I harbored the slightest ill thought, I would, as the song goes, “. . . confess ’til all my sleeves [were] stained red from all the truth that I shed.”
And in the midst of this religious passion, I took after the apostles who fell asleep in Gethsemane when the hour of darkness approached and our Lord prayed desperately that the cup should pass over Him. It was a comfortable couch. Soon, I awoke with a start, and greatly distressed, began all over again. I knew as I went on with my prayers and confessions that I was already forgetting things from my last confession, but I needed to get it all out, to make a clean break of it. So I tried again. I fell asleep quicker this time.
I awoke again, barely able to rouse myself. Still, I tried once more to mumble out my full confession to God. It was impossible. I knew I was, despite everything, going to fall asleep again at any moment. That was when I felt the peace of God. A comfort, perhaps the Comfort, came over me, and though I didn’t understand, though I could not explain the doctrine of grace nor fully understand the bits and pieces of the Gospel which had stuck in my head, I chose to trust that this was God, and that, though I could not confess it all to Him, He saw my heart.
I let go, and I slept.
God’s Works
I do not claim to know significance, whether the greatest labor of my life will be worth more than some happenchance meeting between myself and a stranger. I claim to know nothing of the future, little of the past, and confess that I do not understand the present. However, I will say that in two consecutive days I had two distinct and dramatic experiences.
But before the first, I had a dream, and it was an all too common dream, widely reported among those under stress: I was naked.
I assume you know the dream of which I speak; you’ve probably had it yourself: I was at school, and I was naked in front of the whole class which laughed and pointed at me. Fine and good. Men have dreams, odd dreams, and much, far too much, can be made of a dream. Yet, there was something more. The dream was a bit more detailed than just, “Oh no! I’m naked in front of everybody.”
I like to sing, not well, but I like to. I grew up taking music classes, and music seems embroiled in my family. Choir and band practice were the norm for me in my teens. I’d like to reiterate, however, that all throughout those years, I still couldn’t match pitch very well. I don’t know why; I think I don’t have the best hearing in the world. Anyway, some friends, goodhearted but annoyed friends, suggested I actually take singing classes, much different from choir, and actually learn how to sing well.
Well, I dreamed of my upcoming “midterm” for the voice lessons I eventually agreed to take. I dreamed that I got on the stage before the whole class and that our teacher, with an invisible hand, removed from me all my dressing in an instant. I stood before them all as Adam stood after eating the forbidden fruit, exposed.
But here is where the dream shifted from the norm. Instead of the usual fear and embarrassment associated with this type of dream, that is, instead of cowering and hiding as my classmates laughed at me, I found myself facing this jeering crowd. I think I made some comment that we were all naked under our clothes, and I argued that I had nothing to be ashamed about.
I remember walking up the aisle to leave, booing and jeering back at them, calling them naked.
I gave this dream no significance. It was only a dream; like the dew on the grass, the morning swept it all away. However, I do not commit this all to paper in vain idiocy: I recount this dream because it became true.
It became true, not in detail but in form, and it happened just as the dream did, at my recital.
I had been working on a favorite song of mine, Mad World. It stretched my voice a little, but not much, and I felt I had it down pat. I was going to “kill” it, and, I like to think I did. I don’t know when I was ever able to put so much emotion and skill together in a performance, so much of myself. It’s an understated song. It’s not loud, and it’s not angry: It’s realization. It is the spirit of Ecclesiastes put to Rock and Roll (in the original Tears for Fears version).
The thing was, I was naked. Standing on the stage when the lights are shining on you and the audience is sitting below in the shadows, you stare into darkness. I stared into the darkness, and I saw myself. There was, as it were, a projector’s booth in the back of the room; its window, a piece of dark glass, was facing me. In that black mirror, I saw myself reflected; and I heard myself singing; and I knew I was singing about myself.
It’s hard to explain in words what I saw, what I felt. It was, as I sang that song, that I was finally made bare: I was naked, and I was able to see myself.
I hated what I saw. It wasn’t exactly disgust, only the realization that everything I valued I failed to be, and that everything I condemned, I was.
I went home that night in a daze, and I knew something had to break.
This was, I believe, a wake up call from God, but it wasn’t the end. The next day God would show up again.
Unlike the first story, this one had no prelude, no prophetic vision in the night, no build up. I was devastated after my recital, not that I had bombed—the reviews from my classmates were only dropped jaws and praise—but I was left with an impossible problem: I needed change, and I couldn’t change.
It was a late night snack of tuna sandwiches with a side of never ending YouTube videos (my preferred opiate), that was how I planned to spend the night: I would get a small bite to eat, drown out the screaming in my head with nonsense from the internet, and find my way to bed. (I think Bradbury based one of his characters off of me.) That was the plan, but there was an interruption.
It was a nagging sensation to turn off YouTube, to stop shutting out the noise inside my head. I turned the screen off, and I realized that I had finished eating long ago. I moved to the sink, turned on the faucet, waited for the warm water. I as began to wash the day’s dishes, that nagging sensation returned, and there in the kitchen I was assaulted.
The love of God poured over me, and I began to cry.
Life Journey
A life journey, if it is to be anything, needs to be a complete thing; it at least needs to be completed theoretically, to be planned out: A journey, the moving from point A to point B, cannot be analyzed without these points of reference. One must have a map, must know where he is going. I barely have a logbook of where I’ve been, and I have no direction to head towards within the metaphorical Life Journey.
I am completely ignorant of my Life Journey, and I cannot make reference to how it has impacted my relationship to God. I cannot tell you how my Kajoh has impacted my relationship with God because it is just a meaningless pair of syllables I came up with. The term, Life Journey, is meaningless to me.
Walk With God: Strengths and Weaknesses
I fear answering this question for the major area I wish to see corrected: My pride would love to testify to all my spiritual and intellectual strengths, as well as flaunt my great humility in listing all the ways in which I fail. Pride is my greatest spiritual fault, and a great fault it is indeed.
I would not end it there. Keeping with the traditional vices, the next which I would have to confess is my rage, what is often referred to as the sin of wrath. A favorite podcaster of mine, Andrew Klavan, often admonishes that “anger is the Devil’s cocaine.” It is so satisfying and addictive to be angry; how alike it is to feeling just.
I could touch upon each of the seven, but let it be known that there is no sin of man which I have not felt temptation towards, and there is no depravity on this planet alien to me. Yet, if I understand the truth, this nakedness of mine may be clothed, and I may put upon myself Christ. That is my desired growth, to grow into these garments, this character which I am not yet.
But if I am to tout my gifts, I hope and long that I am true, that no falseness rests in me.
Developing
I hope to develop, that is true, but I maintain my ignorance of what or how or even the should of this developing. I hope to develop my faith, let me say that. I pray God increases my faith that it should never be shaken. I hope that I shall ever trust my God, for it is He who will develop me, and it is He who knows the what‘s and the how‘s to come.
Vision
I have hints, but only hints, of what I am, of the destination I’m approaching, but is the clay to say to the potter, “make of me thus”? I seek for God to shape me as he will shape me; to use me as he will use me. It is my meagre part to hold the form He tells me to hold, and to give up the shape he demands I give up. I think I see the end of some of this work: I am driven to write, I find pleasure in the Romantic, and language enchants me.
A Question
I ask of God questions regularly, but one particular question I often ask is why, more specifically, why do I exist? If it were a democratic process, I doubt I would have voted for my own creation.
Yet, God has answered this question. I am of creation, and creation was made to be Good; I am of man, and God has made Man a sort of animal-priest within His world, a hybrid of spirit and flesh; And I am me, I am the weeping dishwasher late at night discovering that God loves me.
Favorite Scripture
Ecclesiastes is a favorite of mine, and within the Preacher’s words, one admonition has always stood out to me:
Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun: But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many. All that cometh is vanity.
But if I were given a second shot at answering this question, I would have to defer to a section in Mark:
And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.
These two scriptures work well together I find, for I think that this blind man who was no longer a blind man will rejoice in the light. Yet, he will not forget the days of darkness. So, whereas in the Old Testament, the days of vanity and darkness are to be remembered, that is, you young bucks should not forget that you too will be old, Jesus does something knew under the sun, and reverses the principle. Those following after Christ do not look forward but behind on darkness and vanity. Let us look forward to walking with our Lord.
Tale Told 