Honesty and Risk

I half expected to wake up this morning and find my laptop a sizzling lump of char. After writing a post about the difficult year I've had, and some betrayal that I've experienced, I felt like I'd turned my skin inside out and left my guts drying on the computer screen. Honesty makes one vulnerable in general, but when there's the public perception that things are a certain way when really they are another, speaking the truth feels dangerous.

It's funny-- this isn't the first time that writing about my spirituality on this blog has felt like a risk. Way back in 2009, when I made my very first public foray into speaking about my faith, I was incredibly jumpy. At the time I was a closeted Christian, growing deeper and deeper into a belief that it took months to come forward about on the blog. And when I did, I held my breath, and...

Absolutely nothing happened. Sweet and blissful nothing, because it gave me the space to process and explore the strange new stirrings of faith.

And I blossomed and grew in that faith, in a wonderful new direction, and started to feel a strange pressure to always be positive or write only positive things about God and my journey here in this space.

I have to say-- in a way, it was dishonest. And also bullshit. Because concurrently with the difficulties and doubts I now feel-- related to the way we enact corporate faith, and whether it's harmful, and also a deadened ability to feel the Spirit (which is the most alarming facet)-- I still feel called to the priesthood. Not only that, encouraging others in their explorations and doubt remains a major element of that call. If I can't shine a light into my own darkness, how can I expect to help others shine a light into theirs?

I was left with a choice: to choose silence, which increasingly felt like choosing to smother myself with a pillow, or to be open and honest and risk the ire of those who might believe that difficulties on this particular path are a bad thing.

Good or bad, I'm here to say this: they exist. I am living in them. Their thingness cannot be denied, so it seems to me that the only way out is through. It is so important to me to find a way back to the still small voice. In the midst of sadness and apathy and a hell of a lot of confusion, it may be that the urge to turn toward the maelstrom may in fact be a push from the Spirit.

I guess we'll see.