vancerains.com

I just started reading Makoto Fujimura’s, Art Is: A Journey Into the Light.

Fujimura is a Japanese American artist and author, who is also a profound theologian and follower of Jesus. He has, in my opinion, a remarkable gift for seeing life and faith through the eyes of an artist and an extraordinary ability to communicate deep, insightful, meaningful, living spiritual and theological truths.

Fujimura’s primary art is a 16^th century Japanese painting technique called “Nihonga,” utilizing crushed, refractive minerals (that often change color over time) and a traditional hand-made glue.  His paintings require many layers, and each layer requires time to dry, allowing time for writing and reflection while he waits.

Regarding his art and writing, Fujimura writes, “Art… has always been a quest for authenticity… Writing, too, is an introspective journey with vulnerable footsteps of a soul’s pilgrimage toward the truth. The process of writing, like layers of painting, seeks to create a refractive experience with words as prismatic shards of our spiritual journey toward the light.”

I’m struck by Fujimura’s describing his writing as a quest, an introspective journey, as footsteps, a pilgrimage, a spiritual journey – all in pursuit of authenticity, truth and light.

As I read this, I wondered, “Why do I write?”

Knowing my love for reading, I’ve often been asked if I might ever write a book. I love the idea of being an author, but I’ve never felt moved to invest the time and energy simply for the sake of being published or seeing my name on a book cover (though that would be cool!). I suppose I’ve never found a topic that sufficiently stirred my passions, or captured my interest, or for which I possessed sufficient expertise to write about. I tend to be a “Jack of all trades and master of none.” I can talk about many things, but none with the authority of mastery.

Truth be told, I originally started blogging with a future book in mind.  I thought the discipline of writing shorter pieces would improve my writing skills, accumulate a body of work, and may lead to something publishable.  It hasn’t. But it;s served a much greater purpose.

Most of my past blog posts were written in the aftermath of the Parkland, FL tragedy, at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, on February 14, 2018, when seventeen students and faculty were fatally shot and killed, another eighteen wounded, and an entire High School and surrounding community severely traumatized.

I lived near the school and served a nearby United Methodist Church. Gina Montalato, one of the victims had recently served as an angel at our annual live nativity. As I recall, about fifteen students or faculty, who attended our church, were on campus – some very close to the shootings. Seemingly everyone in our community knew one of the victims or someone at the school.

In the coming hours, days and weeks, I was called upon by reporters and a host of others to reflect on the tragedy. The day of the tragedy was Ash Wednesday, and I scrambled to assemble a new sermon in the few hours between the tragedy and the service, to speak to my own traumatized parishioners. Though, as a pastor, I’d previously spoken theologically about evil, pain and suffering – and God’s faithfulness and mercy – in the aftermath of previous tragedies, I now couldn’t find adequate words – for myself or my congregation – in a time of greatest need.  It’s one thing to wax theological when a tragedy is hundreds or thousands of miles away. It’s another to look into the eyes of the traumatized and grieving, not believing your own words, and realizing your own pitiful inadequacy.

As it was Lent, I’d already planned to take on daily blogging, as a spiritual discipline. I didn’t have a plan for what I’d write – I would just write whatever was on my mind. Little did I realize my blogs would be my personal tool for sorting out my spiritual angst and confusion. While my faith, beliefs and theological precepts were teetering and falling – like lined-up dominoes – reading, writing and a few well-timed spiritual conversations with mentors helped me re-discover my spiritual footing – THANK GOD!

Though I still – eight years later – live with the pain and trauma of that tragedy, my question gradually shifted from the oh-so common, “Why would a good God let something like this happen?” to “Why are we blaming God? Why did WE let this happen? Where were WE when this obviously-troubled shooter needed help or intervention? Why are WE complacently allowing our society to devolve to state where mass shootings keep happening? ” Whether or not that is the correct theological conclusion, I don’t know.

I do know that writing – the quest and journey of seeking truth and understanding through my written rants and wonderings and laments and reflections and questioning – led me from shock and spiritual insecurity to a place of deeper faith and trust. That I wrote publicly, on a blog, forced me out of the circular, spiraling, despairing, depressing, darkening interior fear and confusion. My greatest fear was the idea of the last domino falling and being left spiritual bereft. Publicly naming the dominoes, in writing, gave me a sense of control and created space for God to work.  Again, THANK GOD!

Though I am blessed to be a preacher and have generous opportunities to publicly share my thoughts on a host of spiritual subjects, speaking from a pulpit and writing are very different mediums for me and serve very different purposes. Though I seek to be authentic and transparent in my preaching, preaching still has a different purpose. And there’s a distance between the preacher in his/her pulpit and the congregation in the pews, versus the intimacy of reading someone’s innermost thoughts expressed in writing.

I’m also currently reading Sue Monk Kidd’s, First Light: The Early Inspirational Writings of Sue Monk Kidd. Kidd was originally a nurse, but discovered that her true calling was to write, and that writing became an outlet for her own spiritual journey, writing, “At the core of personal writing is a hungering for wholeness, for self, for meaning. The question ‘Who am I?’ reverberates quietly in these pages, as does a willingness to be known. I wonder why I chose to make my spiritual musing visible. I want to believe it is mostly because such vulnerability creates what we might call ‘a soulful being together’ between the reader and the author. A kind of communion born through the meeting of vulnerability and identification.”

I resonate with that.

I don’t know why you’re reading this. But I hope something I’m thinking and processing in my spiritual quest and self-discovery – in this post and others – resonates as also true for you.

So here I am; a recent grandfather, a man on the cusp of his 59^th birthday, six-ish years from retirement, nearing the end of a “renewal leave” from full-time pastoral ministry, pondering again my faith, my calling, and my purpose for the remaining years of my ministry and life. And here I am again writing – revealing myself to friends and strangers in hopes of finding some truths in my written thoughts and wonderings.

Thanks for being part of my journey of thoughts and words!