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Be patient
toward all that is unsolved in your heart. And try to love the questions
themselves.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
According to a famous Zen Patriarch, “the Great Way is not difficult for those
who have no preferences.” Yet I do have preferences! In this moment
my preference is that I be filled with new-found spiritual insight and a
palpable sense of Divine Presence. But alas that is not my current
reality, or at least not my experience of my current reality.
Lacking an abiding faith as a minister is a challenging conundrum. It’s difficult for me not to feel like a disappointment; like I’m letting my community down. Not that any of you have given me any reason to feel that way; you’ve been amazingly understanding and supportive. That speaks well of your spiritual capacity to embrace the human and offer compassion to the less than perfect in others, even the spiritual leader. I however, have been less than generous with myself, feeling like a traffic cop who has lost his sense of direction and no longer reliable in his ability to lead others on their way.
Despite my personal doubts about my leadership capacity, I remain convicted that staying with the questions is good medicine for spiritual growth. As observed by Hosea Balbou, “doubt is an incentive to truth, and patient inquiry leadeth the way.” I believe that anything substantial ought to hold up to scrutiny and withstand the abrading effects of inquiry and doubt. I believe that true faith must come out of uncertainty. The scriptures are rife with paradox and seeming contradictions. Just this morning I discovered the contradiction in adjacent scriptures, with Psalms 22 (My God why have you forsaken me) immediately followed by Psalms 23 (The Lord is my Shepherd).
Ultimately what I’m after, what I suspect we’re all after, is not just a set of concepts about a higher Power but a living faith, a relationship with a living God. And we all know that relationships have their ups and downs, times of real closeness and profound intimacy and times of feeling separate and doubtful. So I continue to live these doubts, though I am equally willing to doubt my doubts as my faith; trusting that in due course and time, Truth will emerge and its purity and true voice will rise above the rest and be my touchstone once more.
Lacking an abiding faith as a minister is a challenging conundrum. It’s difficult for me not to feel like a disappointment; like I’m letting my community down. Not that any of you have given me any reason to feel that way; you’ve been amazingly understanding and supportive. That speaks well of your spiritual capacity to embrace the human and offer compassion to the less than perfect in others, even the spiritual leader. I however, have been less than generous with myself, feeling like a traffic cop who has lost his sense of direction and no longer reliable in his ability to lead others on their way.
Despite my personal doubts about my leadership capacity, I remain convicted that staying with the questions is good medicine for spiritual growth. As observed by Hosea Balbou, “doubt is an incentive to truth, and patient inquiry leadeth the way.” I believe that anything substantial ought to hold up to scrutiny and withstand the abrading effects of inquiry and doubt. I believe that true faith must come out of uncertainty. The scriptures are rife with paradox and seeming contradictions. Just this morning I discovered the contradiction in adjacent scriptures, with Psalms 22 (My God why have you forsaken me) immediately followed by Psalms 23 (The Lord is my Shepherd).
Ultimately what I’m after, what I suspect we’re all after, is not just a set of concepts about a higher Power but a living faith, a relationship with a living God. And we all know that relationships have their ups and downs, times of real closeness and profound intimacy and times of feeling separate and doubtful. So I continue to live these doubts, though I am equally willing to doubt my doubts as my faith; trusting that in due course and time, Truth will emerge and its purity and true voice will rise above the rest and be my touchstone once more.
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