A broken tulip

What am I doing here?  at some point, this question hits all of us.

(It comes up from behind you, on tiptoes, and when you least expect it, suddenly flings itself into your face.)

Maybe the light falls different on a certain day and your familiar paths and habits are suddenly washed in a new colour. Unsettled, you realize you thought you had plumbed the depths of your life but really you’ve only ever lived on the surfaces.

For some people it’s a devastating feeling. They crumple up inside. For some people it’s a thrilling feeling. It invites them into mystery. Probably for most people, it’s a little bit of both.

Some get it when they see a landscape in a mirror – the familiar scene is suddenly soft, different. It reminds me of the dark glass I saw in a watchtower at the Grand Canyon. Artists, overwhelmed by the dizzying detail of the Grand Canyon, would paint its reflection in the dark glass.

My hunch is that those of us who routinely trade lifestyles, residential addresses, climates and occupations get hit with this awareness more often than most.

Today it got me. What am I doing here, driving on a rainy day, with wet hair and vibrant purple pants, to rescue an old piano?

My sister had texted me a few minutes earlier, “Come now if you want it. We’re busting it apart.”

Frantically, I googled how to repurpose an old piano – because I didn’t even know which pieces to want.

Life. It changes so fast, from moment to moment. Who knew I cared about a piano no one wanted? Enough to take home its disembodied parts – the curved keys, the carved legs, a solid piece of varnished wood.

Reimagining brokenness appeals to me. But let’s be real, I also went because I had just finished  reading ‘Night Train to Lisbon’ and watched some of Lauren Daigle’s live performances online – not for her lyrics necessarily, but for the raw energy that flows out of her. Watching her perform makes me want to live.

On a rainy day when you want to live, you just can’t let a piano get torn apart and stand by.

My life is absurd, yes, I know.

So I drive the familiar road, trying to dodge the potholes.

As I arrive at the church and pull apart the pile of piano pieces, it is hard to tell what they even are. Sometimes the things of life are taken apart, pulled into bits, and you’re left wondering if you ever knew them.

——————————–

The same morning that I pulled apart those piano pieces, Joshua Harris announced that he is going through “deconstruction” and is no longer a Christian. Deconstruction is when the question, “what am I doing here?” goes up by a million notches.

Deconstruction can happen when a land-mine goes off in a person’s life and blows their understanding of God and the world to pieces by the sheer force of experience.

Deconstruction can also be the slow trickle of doubt, like water dropping on the same life for years, until the water has worn a deep hole of uncertainty straight through a person’s heart.

Deconstruction can happen when Christians are so frustrated with the church and the church’s interpretation of Scripture that they intentionally question everything they had believed.

What am I doing here? is the question of the day. 

I would hazard a guess that missionaries, pastors, and artists of the Christian faith most often go through the process of deconstruction. Perhaps that’s why I’ve seen so much of it close at hand in recent years. From day one, my life has been interwoven with the lives of those who have staked everything on their beliefs. And anyone who honestly desires to live a united life between faith and action will have their beliefs about God, themselves, and the world shaken.

Sometimes it happens in just one area. Sometimes it is an overhaul of the whole system.

I believe that doubt can dig the soul into fresh, turned-up soil where truth and grace can grow.

It is an exciting time to be along in someone else’s journey, or to be going through your own. The scary part of deconstruction is that when the structures the mind built are blown away, what the heart truly knows of God becomes visible. Trust can be exploded alongside knowledge. The heart’s (re)discovery of God might be shelved until the mind has put things together again – and, like Humpty Dumpty, what gets put back together might be less than satisfactory.

The mind and the heart need to grow together. Whenever the mind outpaces the heart, something will crack and fall apart. You will need to take a few steps back, remember where you last saw the face of God, and sit with him there. There is no reason to doubt that God will sit with you in your doubt, in your lament. Think of the book of Lamentations, where God is silent, honouring human grief. Think of the book of Job, where God is silent for so many agonizingly long chapters, allowing Job to grieve. Sometimes what we grieve is the loss of belief, and maybe grief is the path towards accepting the more complex, mysterious relationship of trust that God invites us into.