About four years ago, I bought my first piece of art. She was $80 at a consignment shop, and I had never spent that much on something that wasn’t necessary before. I was moving in to my first ever adult apartment, and I was there to buy a couch.
She was leaning up against a dresser, and I loved her. I hung her in my 400 square foot studio apartment and named her “She Climbs the Sky.”
I loved this absolutely stark naked climbing woman, bold and strong and needing nothing but her muscles and determination (and especially not needing clothes!). She wasn’t climbing to the sky, she is climbing the sky itself.
Four years ago, when this painting found me, I was climbing really hard. I wrote and wrote and pushed myself and pushed myself, continuing to add disciplines to my life, promoting my writing, going to conferences, going on podcasts, going on pilgrimage, workshopping with publishers and editors, writing a book proposal and then another book proposal. She climbed the sky and I climbed with her.
After I got back from my pilgrimage in Italy in the spring of 2019, and Rachel Held Evans passed away, clouds covered the sky and I could not find my footing.
Then it did feel like trying to climb the sky. There was nothing to hold on to. It was just grabbing at pieces of fog.
Somewhere in there, somewhere mid-pandemic when I was still trying to climb ferociously and not knowing quite how to anymore, I met up with my therapist for writing and self-discipline advice.
“It sounds like you’re pushing against the current,” John said over Zoom while I took copious notes. “It doesn’t sound like you need tips and tricks to help you accomplish things. It sounds like you’re trying very hard to do particular things, but maybe they aren’t the things you want to do. Maybe you’re just swimming upstream.”
“I wonder where the current would take you if you followed it.”
I wonder.
I had not realized how often I was swimming upstream, forcing myself into particular ways of being with God or being in a relationship or writing or vocation. “Swimming upstream” is maybe a fancier way of say “should-ing all over yourself.”
What if, though, I wrote along the current instead of writing against it? What if I worshipped along the current instead of against it? What if my relationships were with the current and not against it, too? What if I was trying harder than I needed to?
So I started listening for the current. At first, that mostly meant noticing when I was swimming against it (which was - almost always? Oh dear). Then it was learning that I couldn’t just hop from shoulding to intuitive action, because in between I had to stop and be still, and be attentive. This was so hard, because being still felt useless and unproductive and scary, and because I didn’t know what was next, and I didn’t know what nudge I would get from the Spirit.
It turns out I was scared the Spirit would tell me to do unpleasant things, and I thought this all the time. I was scared I would get in trouble. I was scared I’d be told to do hard things I didn’t like. I was scared I couldn’t trust the current to carry me safely to a spacious place, to carry me through Grace into more Grace. When I saw a glimpse of the wil’ o’the wisp of the Spirit inviting me deeper in the unknown forest, I did a major fight-flight-freeze, every time. I panicked. I refused. I got angry. I got scared.
How did I come to believe, all the way in my bones, that God is out to get me in trouble?
Who told you that you were naked?
Who told you that you had to be ashamed?
Who told you that when you hear the Spirit, it is unsafe and will hurt?
Beloved one - who told your small, tender soul this.
So of course, it felt theologically suspect, because any theology that doesn’t end in pain or discomfort is probably suspect, because I grew up evangelical and it’s the hard road and the narrow path and cut off your hand theology all the way down.
One day, as I prayed about the current and my own fears about it, I looked at the picture hanging vertically on my wall.
And I saw that she was not climbing the sky at all.
I had been hanging the picture the wrong way.
She was in the current.
Beloved, you thought you had so much climbing and working and striving to do. No, baby girl, it’s always, only, been the current. It’s always, only, been about letting it carry you. It’s safe here in the Water. Don’t worry. I won’t let you drown.
Cease striving. And know.
Following the Current into New Ways
I originally wanted this Substack to be a lectionary newsletter, similar to my old lectionary column with Patheos a few years ago. I’ve missed the weekly discipline of writing through the liturgical year.
But I’m curious about new ways to mark time. I think there are ways to integrate the pattern of fasts and feasts, repentance and celebration, and falling into seasonal patterns that are larger than any of our own individual souls besides just Scripture passages chosen by the Revised Common Lectionary.
As some of the ugliness of leaving evangelicalism fades a bit, there is still the big question of - what now? How do we mark time now? How do we encounter the holy? Where is Jesus in all this? Are the new ways always safe? Do they even feel good, or just uncomfortable? How much of the old stuff can we go back for and refurbish, and what just needs to be burned on the burn pile?
How do we know where the current is? And how do we get brave enough to fall backwards into it?
These are things we practice, and hopefully practice together. Sometimes we are lucky enough to have communities in real life that we can ask these questions with, and sometimes we are lucky to find our people online. I hope this can be a space to practice and wonder a bit about the new ways, and tend curiosity, and notice when we’re swimming upstream and let ourselves release a little bit.
It is still a bit of a miracle, coming out of evangelicalism and homophobia and all the really scary, overwhelming rigidity of that way of reading the Bible and knowing Jesus - and to still be curious about Jesus, and still want to know God, even though things we learned about God were often so terrible or horrifying or cruel. We’re the miracle kids, still standing at the tomb after a traumatic Good Friday and heartbreaking Holy Saturday.
Which also means that we'll still be here on Easter, when Someone we don’t recognize, but we know is safe, says our name. And we know we are home.
I think “the current” is just another way to talk about that moment when you hear Jesus say your name.
In the Current (When We Can Find It)
This Substack, for now, is just current exploration. There are particular things I’m interested in, and I want to play with them, and there are a handful of directions I know feel important right now.
Marking time, and finding where sacred time is underneath our secular, chaotic, unmarked time, feels incredibly important, as days and months and years barrel on with only the world’s “holy days” like Long Weekends and Election Season and Terrible Utility Bill Month to tell us where we are in time.
Taking note of magic when it appears in every day life feels clichéd, but very important, too. I feel goofy when I do it, but there are thin places everywhere, and I want to be attentive to them.
Conversations with and about Jesus, especially the kind that I have with my atheist mechanic gay playwright friend over whiskey at my old tavern - those feel extremely important, the most important. (Hi, Don!)
I want to keep putting pins in the important things as I find them. I want to hunt for the the current, whether or not it is appropriate, or approved of, or cool, or theologically relevant. I want to hunt for the current, even if I make mistakes on the way and have to readjust later and apologize for getting lost.
I want to stop trying to climb the sky and build a tower to heaven, and fall back into this river whose streams make glad the city of God.
So here is my substack! It’s going to be about some things, but I don’t know what. I want to mark sacred time, but I don’t know how. I want to talk about Jesus, but I don’t always know what to say.
I guess we will fall backwards into this river together, and find out where it goes!
I love this all so much. Thank you for writing this and sharing it here. My journey and fears and struggles feel similar to what you name here - especially the part about how it's so hard for me to unlearn that fear of where God's Spirit might want to take me because of evangelicalism. I love that metaphor of the current as well.
Your words are so helpful and soothing to my soul as I try to find the current too. Thank you. 💜