Semper Introspiciens

My Year in Review (2018)

When expectations crash against reality.

I am always working on language to express our ever changing process of faith. Deconstruction is the label I give this — and yet, I also want to unpack such a term. This station is created from work I am doing that I call, ‘Semper Introspiciens’ or Always Deconstructing between Love and Loss.

FIND A COMFORTABLE SPOT
READ AND SEE IF YOU IDENTIFY IN PARTICULAR
WITH ANY OF THE ICONS

[excerpts from my upcoming AlwaysDeconstructing book series website]

ICONS OF DECONSTRUCTION

This ‘Icons of Deconstruction’ series has been born out of the marrying of the two disciplines that often give voice to my faith & life — my experience and exploration through two decades of ministry and my art and graphic design work over my lifetime. The icons their descriptions (below) are not meant to be a timeline or to even speak wholly about the deconstruction process. The order of these icons are not meant to be a progression, steps to be followed, or phases that speak to everything one goes through in deconstructing faith. But they might be markers that give voice to your experience.

For me, it has always been especially comforting to find a song, a work of art, a confession, or a friend who puts words to what I’m experiencing. Sometimes it takes another to fully express what we cannot ourselves. Maybe, just maybe, these icons will be something that gives you a sense of comfort in knowing while your process IS yours alone, it isn’t always foreign to others.

BOUNDLESS: Unmanageable & Uncontrolled

The contemplative tradition echoes the idea that through great love and great loss we are changed. It is in this way — our life is a bundle of beauty and loss — too much to even wrap our minds around. Life is this deep and devastating heartbreak that we realize that we cannot control everything. It is in such moments of life that we are profoundly aware of how boundless life can be — how utterly unmanageable and uncontrollable are our days.

What is your experience of the boundlessness of life?
Overwhelming beauty? Devastating heartbreak?

This is never a small thing to find life as uncontrollable. It’s like holding an octopus that changes shape and appearance with no consistency or warning. And when it seems you are the only one who cannot keep it together, just know that you are not alone.

THE LOSS OF CERTAINTY: No Longer Rescued from Doubt

To truly live is to face things that don’t have answers. We often naturally want things to be like mathematics — formulas and steps that if followed — all things result in a way that is guaranteed.

Nope.

That is not the life many of us (if we are honest, all of us) are facing. Whether your faith tradition or your basic outlook on life have woven certainty as a main thread in understanding life — at some point — you will face a time when the voices of doubt, the vantage point of others, the limited scope of your own (well established) views crumble.

It’s in the midst of such loss that we can become quite anxious and angry. Loss of certainty can mean we double down on our beliefs no matter what they are — to fight violently against the doubt that “haunts” us.

But what if the doubt could be a movement toward compassion? toward kindness? toward making room for “other”?

What doubts have lingered for you? What might those doubts speak about your own desire to live a life of love and compassion?

Could embracing such uncertainty be a way of softening your life? Embracing doubt just might be a movement in love.

LISTEN TO YOUR LIFE: Navigating Below the Surface

I am using the latin, ‘Semper Introspiciens’ for the language of ‘Always Deconstructing’ but at it’s most literal form it might read more accurately ‘Always Introspective.’ Rather than thinking of introspection as always this brooding melancholy it could more accurately be seen as listening to your life.

Deconstructing is a sensory approach to life: listening, seeing, feeling, considering, and processing. We can so easily float along the surface of things — never considering meaning or future trajectory or past experiences. This isn’t about making everything complex, it’s also not reducing everything to the same kind of simplicity either. Can we live with a simplexity, as Leonard Sweet puts it so well, that holds the two together in our lives?

What are you experiencing that seems to feel more like a maze of complication? What are you avoiding in order to “not go there” that might mean you face some emotions and meaning that isn’t something you want to see?

Navigating below the surface is often a mine-field, but find a trusted friend to process some of this out loud. Living in your head only becomes an exercise in isolation.

DISORIENTATION: What Made Sense No Longer Does

One day we will turn down a road we’ve been on a hundred times before and our surroundings will no longer look familiar; nothing will seem quite right; and we will feel lost in a land we’ve always known.

This is disorienting.

This is life.

What in your life no longer makes sense? When is a time that you felt like your compass no longer pointed north accurately? We can live in this new unfamiliar land — but it is not comfortable, at all. It may not be a matter of immediate remapping of things to show something more accurate. Maybe what this moment is about is staying here, as uncomfortable as it may be, in order to see how deeply that old map is flawed.

LAMENTATIONS: The Vulnerability of Feeling Deeply

I’m drawn to vulnerability as a quality and value I hope to embrace in my life. Honesty and authenticity are part of vulnerability — but those often seem to be co-opted by arrogance and manipulation.

“I will be honest with you.”
— now deal with it.
(manipulative honesty)

“This is me.”
— take it or leave it.
(arrogant authenticity)

And while those qualities always have their place — and must not be devalued — vulnerability carries with it something more. In vulnerability we are honest, we are authentic — but we are also willing to listen and be hurt (or encouraged). Vulnerability brings with it an amount of risk that few are willing to, well, RISK.

In deconstructing, we embrace the risk of vulnerability. We write songs of mourning. We enter into liturgies of lament. We are honest and authentic about our struggles. We give voice to our pain and our uncertainty.

And it is in this vulnerability that we might absolutely BE EATEN ALIVE by others who don’t understand; by friends that no longer look like ones; by lovers who just cannot go there with us.

When have you last been vulnerable? What would it meant to lay down cynicism or protection and feel deeply?

This is such a brutal process — and don’t be fooled — the wolves will come. You will be hurt, offended, and misunderstood. But you may also find a new way of being — that some will echo and draw nearer to in your vulnerable places. Beware and be aware.

LIMINAL SPACE: The Vertigo of In-Between-Ness

Vertigo is the worst. I mean, actual mind altering, stomach swirling, world spinning, vertigo — if you’ve had it you know it is utterly perplexing to the point of puking your guts up. You know that the world around you isn’t spinning AND YET, there is no amount of internal convincing your mind that stops the upside-down-ness.

The language of ‘liminal space’ is again drawing from contemplative traditions. Liminal meaning the space between. The term references being in the threshold of a doorway. It’s no longer in the room you were in — nor are you in the room ahead.

You are in the in-between-ness of the threshold.

No-one wants to be nowhere — we all want to be somewhere. Somewhere we can name. Somewhere we can count on. Somewhere that our phone can identify in the location finder.

Again, nope.

Liminal space isn’t found on our maps. No use of Find a Friend will track us down. Google cannot locate us. We cannot readily identify the “where we are” for ourselves or anyone else. Nothing stops the vertigo — certainly not avoiding it. But their is something about acknowledging it — and finding a way within it.

Is there a time when you feel like you haven’t arrived anywhere? Can you recognize a time where you felt very much in-between? Maybe being present in our life is about recognizing the in-between-ness. Rather than transporting ourselves to the “one day” dream or the “back when” memory — we just encounter what is — as it is. This isn’t easy, it isn’t optimistic or pessimistic either — but it is also not hopeless. Hang in there, the threshold does not have to be a place of isolation.

WRESTING WITH DOUBT: Questioning Everything

The juxtaposition of faith and doubt has alienated way to many of us from the conversation with our spiritual roots (if we have them). Doubt has been a label given to people who aren’t “really committed” to their faith. Doubt has been that scary darkness that you dare not step into. Doubt has been that thing that you just push down deep enough — hoping it won’t resurface.

Have you recognized doubt in your own life of faith?

If it isn’t the opposite of faith, what is it?

I think it goes hand-in-hand with faith. If we believe, we will also doubt. Doubt gives us the possibility to grow, to become, to transform. Doubt gives us the ability to be passionate and truly wrestle with that which does not seem to set right in our gut.

Maybe the wrestler is a meaningful image because it means there is a process taking place. It’s not a foregone conclusion — but an undergoing of a tangled mess of give and take, stress and strain, that makes the wrestler the person they are becoming.

THE DARK NIGHT: The Journey of a Jarring Silence

Silence.

Pause.

No response.

Quiet.

It’s miserable at times (maybe all the time). This for me has most notably defined my understanding of the Dark Night of the Soul.

It is a jarring silence where once there was feedback. It is a room the has gone dark, and you still smell the candle flame extinguished into smoke.

Their exists a long history in contemplative life that references The Dark Night of the Soul. Resources abound describing what it is and what it does. Please dig into this more — it has a complexity and richness that is worth delving into. But I can sum my own experience up through the language of ‘jarring silence.’

Prayers. No feedback.

Answers. No feedback.

Comfort the way it used to come. Nothing.

And it isn’t a silence because you deserve it. It isn’t a silence that you caused. It also isn’t a silence that will be gone by morning. While it might be a season, I tend to think that this dark night is something we need to let our eyes get used to.

REBUILDING AGAIN: Knowing Tides Will Come

If you are a beachgoer you know that sand castles are built by the shore. The combination of dry sand and wet is essential to forming the kind of structure you are imagining. You also well know that anything you build today won’t make it through the night. You build knowing that while some lumps of sand might remain, some dug out places might not get fully filled back in, but for the most part, the tide will overtake all that was built.

The life of faith, for me, has become a building with the tide in mind. I know things will change. I know things won’t always be the same. But my response isn’t to never build again because of the tides. It’s to build knowing the permanence of it all isn’t dictated by me.

I will build.

I will build again.

I won’t abandon the beach. I will, however, leave the notion that if I build my sandcastle well enough, it will withstand the tide.

First, if you made it this far — congratulations 🙀👏💥🏆🎉

Identify “your” Icon

Choose an icon that really stood out to your time of life (IF ANY DID).

It’s okay if nothing connected. But if one did in particular:

• Grab a sticky tab
• Write your name on it
• And place it near the icon

Thank you for working through this long station.

The next several articles will include the content from the two evenings we prepared/encountered over two Sundays as a community. But you can download the full PDF.