Faith in Our Current Moment

   One day, I put my brush to a canvas and created an admirable work. Just like that, I became a painter. The first of many pieces to come was hung as a part of a collection in my hometown, the city which I love. This first piece was hung at the Portland Art Museum (towards the back, but who cares? Still a museum). The following pieces worked their way to the front of a collection spotlighting emerging young artists. And there I was, a talented painter in the prime of my youth. Someone who belonged entirely to himself. Someone who saw no other way but to be fully who he was made to be, my work emanating that same aura of assuredness. That was a lie. Did I have you going there? Forgive my trespass, and know that it is for a reason. Sometimes I admit to my lies. Other times I do not. My meeting with the chaplains only a few Mondays ago was not one of these times.
   I enter their meeting in a window of time they had set aside for me. I’ve come to petition them for their wisdom. For the past weeks and months, a roving band of questions have walked the perimeter of my mind. How can I keep the faith and hold onto hope in a time like this? Where is the beauty, the opportunity, the joy, and the blessing to be found in our current moment in history? Who is God revealing himself to be? What is he revealing to us? It is never a question of if, but how. I don’t think I’ve ever truly doubted the existence of God. The question has only ever been how can I seek him and find him, because the answers have not always been easy to believe and know in my heart. I share with them the heart behind my questions, the words coming out in a rush, fearing I am taking too much of their time. They wait patiently, and they are gracious in their responses, all them sharing what they’ve learned these past few months.
   Chaplain Danielle Pilgrim was pushed back to the beginning of her faith. As a pastor, so much of it has been nurtured by the experience of a church program on a Sabbath morning. She pulled back the layers of tradition so that she could begin to discover newness in her relationship with God. What she found is that he is not held hostage by the predicaments we find ourselves in.
   Ashok Willmott, a first-year seminary student and student chaplain, has been called to slow down, to rest. In that, he’s talked often to God about his hopes and dreams for this campus. God has spoken to him of revival, of culture change. He waits for what God will have him do next, and he prepares.
   Director of Student Missions & Service Teela Ruehle has pondered her inner life. What it means to continue to engage our relationships as all sorts of things pull at our attention. How we can dig deep and discover new ways of participating in the world.
   Chaplain Jose Bourget has wondered if we tire of learning about God. He does not mean to disparage the forms of worship we are well-accustomed to, mainly prayer and singing. He only is trying to say there is so much God is waiting for us to know and experience. Yet here we are, inclined to the familiar. Chap Jose sees an opportunity to incorporate newness into our lives with God, as the world we find ourselves in now is different than the one we were in at the outset of this year. Now more than ever he sees how asking how we can give of ourselves to others has the power to create radical, positive good on our campus. Ashok ends our conversation with the mic-drop statement of “love is life.” We laugh, I thank them for their time, and I make my leave, my mind turning over all that they said.
   My aforementioned lie that day was one of omission. It’s a regular lie of mine. I feel it in the disconnect between what others think of me and who and how I truly am. I do not know what I am doing. I make attempts to seem collected, that anything regarding God and faith comes easily to me. I didn’t then, just I don’t tell many people now that I feel as though I’ve been coming up short with God. That my faith feels fragile. Weak. That I know who I am and what I’m doing at Andrews. I let people think I have it all figured out. I prefer it that way.
   I want to be the painter of the introduction of this story. The remarks I hear from people about me sound like they think I am him. I want his level of self-assuredness. For everything I do, and for everything I am to glow with confidence, too. I know I’m not alone in this desire. Similarly, I know I am not alone in feeling as though I am looking over the shoulders of those that have it all figured out. The canvas of their life before them, me peering over to catch a glimpse of it, capturing what I saw on my own canvas.
   Faith—in myself, in God, in the future—is a puzzle I’ve turned over in my mind for years and years. There are moments when it feels like I’m getting at something. It’s exhilarating, feeling as though I’ve come closer to uncovering its hidden mechanisms, and as though I’m coming closer to finding myself. There are times in which I feel the joyful rush of all of this and more. The silent, parallel side to these moments is this: sometimes, it feels as though I am playing at faith, imitating the faith of a better version of me. Maybe even someone else entirely. The silent side, the parallel world to my joy is the dread I sometimes feel thinking about the future.
   You are likely well acquainted with the thing in the air. You know it in the way the words “uncertain” and “unprecedented” are just a regular part of collective vocabulary. You know it in the ways in which things appear, at least on their surface, to be heading toward decline. I will save you from my rant about the ills of the world. I’ll save us both the heartache. It’s hard, at least for me, to have faith that I can make it through whatever comes next without the chaos of this moment in history. With the levels of stress and fear that are just a normal part of being alive, God can feel just out of reach.
   My depression, and everything that comes with it, is something I must contend with every day. The doubts about who I am, who God is, and the future come and they go. What lies underneath them all, the thing that remains is my mustard seed of faith. There are easy days and difficult days alike. Although the harder ones have seemed to stretch further and further lately, I must believe that simpler days are on the way, even as I cannot see them. Even as I forget what it is like to be in them. When I do make it to the other side of doubt, and return to myself and true perception of myself and the world, I return changed. I return better, able to meet someone with the sort of empathy that comes from braving the difficulties of life. Even on my worst days, God is no further from me. Even in the darkest of days we are on the way to the light.