The second of three excerpts from my book proposal, Edge Dwellers: finding your way to a new kind of faith. Intro here: backstory here. It might be too much of the same compared to the intro. What do you think?

The Itch at the Top of your Nose
Tell-tale signs that you have put on a new set of lenses

Sometime in my thirties, just after getting my first gig as an ordained minister in an evangelical church, something about how I was living my religious life started to feel not quite right.

The first itchy little problem was that I was having an increasingly hard time hiding the fact that I disliked Bible study. The truth of the matter was I’d never been one for ‘devotions.’ I was forever setting my good intentions towards daily readings, only to find that my Bible ended up on the shelf covered in dust. In seminary I took as few Bible courses as possible, and although I loved studying Hebrew, I never did develop a heart for that Biblical studies mainstream, exegesis. I dreaded any small group session that involved Bible study, text-based sermons made me nuts, and any staff devotional I had to sign up for was mercifully brief.

By this time I had taken on a preaching roll in the church, and I was good at it. True, my sermons were more stories that scripture, but the words rolled off my tongue and I was getting animated responses from the congregation. But the truth was I was tired of sermons. Suddenly I, the person who could take non-stop notes for three solid hours in a graduate school seminar, could not sit still through a simple Sunday morning message. (And I certainly didn’t remember much of what was said once I was outside the church doors.) I felt as though I had developed some sort of adult-onset ADD. I just could not absorb a twenty minute sermon, much less for the hour-long pulpit sessions which were in vogue at my church.

Then, much to my dismay, the standard versions of prayer started not working so well. The “prayers and praise” format which had carried me most of the way through college was making my skin crawl, and I was practically developing an allergic reaction to meeting with a “prayer partner” or spending an hour praying for people in a small group. The long prayer session that were popular in my charismatic church began to feel like a laundry list of worries and demands, and in our intense healing prayer circles I felt twitchy and discouraged. The church staff I was on was quite large at the time, and we had called in a specialist to come and do some communication training with us. He asked us to pray prior to the meeting, something that had been standard practice for us in the past. But when ten minutes went by with only one or two moments of spoken prayer, the trainer called the prayer session to a close. He was quite disturbed by what he perceived to be our lack of participation, and when the younger pastors in the group tried to explain that we had become more accustomed to silent prayer and meditative listening in recent years, the trainer chastised us for not doing “real prayer” more often.

All of this was a little concerning, but I had one ace in the hole that was preventing me from having a full-blown spiritual crisis: “Worship”. I still adored the worship activities at church. We had great musical worship sets. Man could our church bands play! We had original songs that were seriously hip, adaptations of Fat Boy Slim mixes that rocked the joint, and ballads so plaintive they could bring you to tears.

Not only did we have great music, but the artists were really coming into their stride in our congregation and the place was filled with beauty. Most months there was something fabulous and inspiring in the Sunday morning services: a series of paintings on walls and easels; interactive sculptures for various sermon series; and for Lent and Advent whole services created completely of visuals and music.

I was thrilled. I should have been thrilled. I was trying to be thrilled.

But the truth of the matter was, the worship sets? I’d been working myself into them for quite a while, trying to convince myself that they were ‘working’ for me as a connection to God. In truth, they were feeling a little forced and repetitive. Moreover, after the high of jumping up and down with 200 people wore off, I was left with just me walking out the doors and into the rest of my life. There was little connection between the ecstasy of Sunday morning rock and everyday reality of Monday morning living.

And the art? I adored the art. But it turned out to be a secret agent. The art was my undoing.

During my second year on staff one of the artists, Stephen Wood, made an enormous sculptural installation for Advent. It was Mother Mary, her figure formed of bent bamboo and draped in gauzy cloth. Her arms were arched up and outward like a dancer and her belly glowed with an internal light. Each Sunday, while the worship band played, while people clapped and sang and raised their hands, while the senior pastor gave us good and wise words in a sermon–I sat at the feet of Mary. There was a little half-wall that curved around one side of the sculpture, and if I leaned against it I could sit behind Mary’s draping sleeve. Crouched there, something solid at my back and something beautiful at my side, I could be present to the congregation I was serving, but at the same time feel protected from a system of faith practices I no longer understood. I could soak in the reality of what I really needed, while still being tethered to what was familiar but no longer functional.

It was in this small Marian way station that I finally acknowledged that everything I’d grown up with as a Christian had stopped working – probably hadn’t been working for a long time. I’d been talking myself into so many things: convincing myself that prayer was a discipline; that the Bible had to be helpful somehow; that God needed me to express my devotion to him through lots and lots of emotive songs; and that I needed to be lectured at for at least 30 minutes a week or I’d backslide my way into hell. But as I gave each of those things up, then after a bit of a delay realized that I’d given them up, a stunning reality came rushing in. It didn’t really matter. I still loved Jesus. I still lived as morally or immorally as I had before. I still felt randomly connected or disconnected from God on any given day or any given hour.

In spite of the art, liturgy, and ritual, church still wasn’t helping me. It wasn’t transformative. I didn’t help me be a more Jesus-like person. Rather than letting me be a minister and servant to the world around me, the tasks of running the Sunday morning show just kept me trapped in the church. I began to see the church as a castle, holding me inside with the Ruler, but isolated from the rest of the population outside. The amount of time it demanded of me, and the amount of energy I spent feeling badly that I wasn’t doing Bible study, prayer, or worship left me unable to be present to the people outside the walls of the church – unable to be part of the broad range of God’s kingdom.

There, sitting behind Mary, something had happened. My nose had started to itch. When I reached up to scratch it, there at the top right between my eyes, I found that I had a pair of new glasses fairly permanently affixed to my face. I started to think of it as wearing a pair of very funky cat’s eyes glasses – orange maybe—a style linked to the past, but hip enough for the future. Everything looked different now, through those funky lenses.

Perhaps this is happening to you. Perhaps after a life time of devotion you are waking up on Sunday mornings and feeling sick at heart. Perhaps you are starting to feel angry that what you say you believe and the way your life in “the world” really works are not in alignment. I’m here to tell you: Don’t be Afraid.

What you are experiencing is not a dark night of the soul. It’s not a crisis of faith or a season of doubt. What you are experiencing is a shift away from one kind of Christian faith practice to another. In technical terms you are moving away from traditional Christianity – probably evangelical Christianity, but possibly some form of mainstream Christianity—and into what is referred to as “postmodern” or “emergent Christianity.” Now, we aren’t going to get into what all those things mean yet. That’s for the next chapter. For now let’s look at a list of symptoms.

Symptoms

• Former religious practices (sermons, prayer, Bible study, small groups, worship sets) are no longer meaningful to you.
• You are beginning to suspect that Christianity may not have cornered the market on Truth.
• Your intellectual life and your spiritual life no longer seem to be able to play nice together.
• You are increasingly interested in spending time outside the four walls of the church.
• Many non-Christians seem suspiciously Christ-like to you.
• If you are a woman, you may have begun longing for a God that looks like you.
• You have started asking questions that worry your family, friends, and pastor.
• You have begun to suspect that you might have to give up your faith in order live with integrity.

Don’t worry my friend. This discomfort you are feeling, this disconnect, is just a portal you step through into being what Brian McLaren calls A New Kind of Christian. You’ve just put on a new pair of glasses, and that’s a good thing. They are going to help you see things more clearly, and with that clearer vision you are going to be able to craft a new version of your faith that is going to work for you. It’s going to be a true reflection of what you believe and how you intuitively want to live. It’s going to bring integrity back into your life, and allow you to honor what you truly value about God, Jesus, and the Christian life. A new kind of faith is growing– is emerging out of your soul. You are forming a new kind of spirituality:

• A spirituality which finds its inspiration in ancient teachers and newly published writers.
• A spirituality which spins out of fresh translations of the Bible.
• A spirituality which will be messier and more open-ended, but ultimately more genuine to you and truer to the deepest parts of your soul.

Joseph Campbell, the godfather of comparative religion, tells us a story in his videography The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In these interviews he talks about the epic hero’s journey which is captured in the myths and traditions of every culture and every faith. According to Campbell, we are all on a hero’s journey—intentionally or because of life’s unexpected circumstances. He tells us that each of us will come to what appears to be a great impasse. For Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz it is the field of poisoned poppies near her journey’s end. For Luke Sykwalker it is the great literal and metaphorical divide between him and his unknown father, Darth Vadar. For Indiana Jones it is literally a deep chasm between himself and the Holy Grail. Campbell says “On your journey, you will come to a great chasm. Jump.”

Are you ready? Give your cat’s eyes glasses a rub and make sure they’re nice and clean. Can you see the chasm? Go ahead. Jump.

My dreamboard book for November. Isn’t it charming. More pics here.

I’ve been working with life coach Jena Strong of Strong Coaching for the past few months and things are starting to break out all over. After years of driving Jen Lemen crazy with my whining, I’ve finally realized that the only thing left that’s keeping me from publishing is fear itself. Fear that I can’t sustain a book length project. Fear that I can’t get around to finsihing. Fear that I don’t have enough material. (In rational moments, that one really makes me laugh!) Fear that once I get something out there no one will buy it. Fear that once I get something out there everyone will buy it and I’ll be pigeonholed as the “girl who writes about X” for the rest of my live long days. Fear. Fear. Fear. Fear. Fear.

As I wrote in one of my answers to the birthday questions, fear is the one thing I am working hard to shed from my self-definition. Instead, I’m ready to embrace whimsy, to do the impractical and live the impulsive life.

So, I decided to write a book this month. Yes, an entire shitty first draft in one wonderful month. And when darling Jena asked me what I was ready for this list poured out:

I’m ready to be seen as an expert.
I’m ready to get paid for my work.
I’m ready to publish.
I’m ready to embrace whimsy.
I’m ready to jump.

My former neighbor and soulful friend Claire Mack is an amazing artist, and I blame and praise her for introducing me to the playground that is mixed media art. (I’m just a novice, but she’s a real pro, as you can see here. I helped inspire the birdcages! Woot me!) When Claire went to Greece a couple of years ago she took a travel art kit with her and made a lovely little abstract book about her adventures. I’ve always adored it, so this month for dreamboarding, with the November Book Experiment on my mind and Claire in my heart, I made not a board but a book. Some of the pages are already filled with the things I need to get to bookville. Others are waiting for words. Every page is lovely. Every page is full of color, and life, and hope. (I’ve scanned them in here, if you’d like to see.)

I’m so enthralled with this charming little number — it kind of reminds me of those little dance cards women used to wear on silk threds around thier wrist in the era of Jane Austin, only with more chutzpah. It’s completely captured my fancy. I carry it around from room to room. Yesterday I even put it in a ziploc bag and carried it with me in my purse!

Sacred Suzie says that the Tarus moon in November is good for breaking boundaries. So here’s what I think. Let’s break the boundary of fear. What fear-free adventure will you dream into reality this month? What will you ask of the Universe? In the words of my beloved Joseph Campbell, “Jump!”

In my ongoing struggle to make peace with time, I’ve hit a brick wall. I’m having a very difficult time coming to terms with the amount of time I have to write; the way my illness and my children’s needs impacts my writing time; and what I achieve in the time I have.

In order to see if I can get a little break through, my life-coach Jena Strong has given me the assignment of only writing one hour day for the next two weeks. (Well, one week and then we’ll re-evaluate and see if we should keep it up another week.) I’m having a good migraine week right now, so I’m nervous that I’ll be well during these 1-hour weeks, then sick again when I’m free to write as many hours as I want. But, I’m curious to see if I can surprise myself about what I can get done in a short, focused amount of time.

That being said, there may be fewer written posts on Magpie Girl, although I’m thinking of trying my hand at more non-verbals, so stay tuned. I’m also planning on feeding my insights regarding this experiment into my new obsession with Twitter. If you’re interested in how this one-hour restriction affects the creative process, I’ll be channeling my thoughts into a daily update there (just 140 characters, so it will only take a sec.) You can track me here.

See you on the flip side!

p.s. Today I wrote this plus half a chapter (1,400 words) in an hour!

Notes from an Exhibition
Patrick Gale

When it comes to museum gift shops, I am an undeniable sucker. I usually manage to resist buying the paint-your-own-Van-Gogh tee shirt set for the kids. But beyond that my will power fades.

Last month at the National Gallery in London I discovered a new and marvelous new gift shop offering – novels with art-and-artists tie ins! I am so in love!

The culprit this visit was Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale. This moody, complicated novel drew and me in and kept me captivated from beginning to end. It’s one of those books you just devour.

Rachel Kelly is an abstract artist with fabulous execution and ground breaking ideas. She’s also schizophrenic, bipolar, and fond of hiding her meds. For some reason having four kids seemed like a good idea, and her longsuffering family is shaped by her difficult personal world—inheriting both her brilliance and her madness.

When Rachel dies suddenly in her locked studio, her family begins to peer tentatively into their past and face into their mental and emotional present. As each character unwinds his or her story, we see how Rachel’s dominate presence has influenced each of them– for good and for ill. Author Patrick Gale also shows us how each character’s individual personality, talents, and perspectives forms their own story and shapes their family’s history.

You know how I love clever, and Gale uses a very clever technique, beginning each chapter with an exhibition card from Rachel’s posthumous final show. But where many authors stop at clever hooks, Gale manages to go on to craft a very fine story. With the exception of the youngest child Petroc, each character is well developed, showing us both their flaws and the things which makes them endearing. And while the book moves back and forth through time, at times telling us the same piece of family history from a different viewer’s perspective, Gale manages to avoid that annoying re-hashing phenomenon that most authors fall prey to when employing this timeline technique. Finally, Gale manages to weave together meaty themes without preaching at the reader or bogging down the narrative.
With finely developed characters and topics as diverse as faith, family, art, passion, illness, death, and creation, Notes from an Exhibition feels as enriching as it is intriguing. Today’s Flavor: Complex and satisfying.

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