Still:
Notes on a mid-faith crisis
Lauren
F. Winner (Harper Collins, 2012)
In
2003, Lauren Winner published a well-received memoir, Girl Meets
God, about becoming a Christian. The conversion narrative is a
well-established form, which has a natural narrative shape. What
happens afterward may be a little harder to fit into a story line. In
Winner's case, the glory road she set out on has headed into a
desert; she's wondering what this blank wall is in her path, and
whether she should turn back. Still is a memoir, in part, but
also a series of meditations on being stuck and being still. The
chapters are shorter than traditional essays, in a loose weave that
makes poetic connections easier to see.
In
the years after Winner's earlier book, her mother died of cancer, and
she entered a marriage that ended after five years. The troubles in
her marriage separated her from her previous easy practice of prayer,
for reasons she's not proud of. Ending it seemed like a shameful
failure, even as it seemed like an utter necessity. Doubting her
marriage, she also doubted herself, and her relationship with God.
"My faith bristled; it brittled; it snapped, like a bone, like a
pot too long in the kiln."
With
her faith in pieces like so many dry bones, Winner finds some
consolation in the poetry of W. S. Merwin, Anne Sexton, and Emily
Dickinson, who speak to her about the gaps in the world. Sometimes
you can't tell whether God is in those places, or not anywhere at
all. Being stuck, being still, means really having to face the latter
possibility.
Winner
sometimes fills the gaps with bouts of anxiety, and sometimes with
overthinking, naturally enough. Most pernicious, perhaps, is a
feeling of boredom with the whole Christian project. It's a shocking
thought, after she's occupied so much of her adult life with
religion. "Even to my own ear, my complaint of boredom sounds
tinny and childish. The complaint seems to partake of the very
banality boredom tries to name. Boredom sounds petulant: a demand to
be entertained, to be amused."
Yet–still–she
goes to church. It seems, if nothing else, a good place to
contemplate God's absence as the serious matter it is. The Eucharist
and the laying on of hands are still real gifts of hospitality and
healing. From the soothing dullness of the Psalms, a flash of prayer
breaks through: "'Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am
lonely and afflicted,' and the words still me–there at Morning
Prayer, those words are my words; they are the most
straightforward expression of anything I might ever have to say to
God, or to myself." It's only a flash, not repeatable the next
morning, but it's a hopeful promise.
This
is a lovely thing about church, the way it admits doubt and
desolation as a part of life worth mentioning on a regular basis.
Nothing human is alien to the Psalter, or to the church year. Winner
marks the path back to trusting in God within the church's path
through Lent. In the fullness of time, faithfulness becomes a path to
faith. After Winner's struggle with loss, failure, and restlessness,
this sounds like a triumph: "On any given morning, I might not
be able to list for you the facts I know about God. But I can tell
you what I wish to commit myself to, what I want for the foundation
of my life, how I want to see."
Amen, and hallelujah.
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