“Start now, every day, becoming, in your actions, your regular actions, what you would like to become in the bigger scheme of things.” ~Anna Deveare Smith
I heard a song today, one that instantly brought up intense emotion. With not even 24 hours elapsed since receiving more heartbreaking news of our youngest adult son, my first instinct was to clamp down. To not feel. Feeling felt inconvenient, painful, and worst of all, it seemed useless.
I have a son who bears a God-given name, a name full of laughter and promise, yet he struggles with addiction. I cannot change that contradiction by feeling the grief of it. So why feel it?
Because cynicism is the cheap and lazy way out of the pain of hope yet again delayed, but not forever denied. Cynicism is the coward’s response to unfaked faith.
And no fruitful mother, believer, or artist gets to be a cynic.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” ~Hebrews 11: 1 NKJV
A believing-believer, artist, or mother is deeply responsible to steward the substance of the not-yet-seen. Our job is to imagine what could be, conceive of what is possible, and we tend to it. We gestate the dream; persevering past mistake, mishap, and even miscarriage to ultimately give birth.
This takes incredible stamina. It takes a deep, abiding emotional attachment to beauty, a fine tuning of the heart to the frequencies of heaven only, and a strapping grip on the promises of God.
The heart really is a muscle, after all.
And so, every believer, mother, and artist is accountable for the management of her heart, to watch over it, keeping it - not from depth, height, or breadth of feeling - from false urgencies and false economies. It is very much our full time job to guard our heart against both the strong temptation towards feelinglessness, and the pull towards excess of all sorts, including emotional drama.
Now the goal of our instruction is sincere love (love from unmixed motives), and a good conscience, and an unfeigned faith. ~1 Timothy 1:5
The devil is the ultimate cynic - he is the vandalizer of the art of faith, always seeking to blemish the beauty of believing.
Cynicism is Holy Imagination’s long goodbye. It is spiritual Alzheimer’s, when the signs, wonders, miracles, and faithfulness of a good God gets forgotten. We retreat into a seemingly safe, smug-but-insincere resignation masquerading as faith.
Meanwhile, few things are more fresh, sincere, and un-cynical than to believe the best for someone else and about someone else.
The opposite of cynicism is a warmly affectionate, unfaked faith.
And now, I have to bring this sermon-to-my-own-soul to some sort of close. It can’t be anything but a messy close, I warn you.
I cannot hide from the truth, hide from telling the truth, or hide from any of the painful emotions that come with wrestling the contradictions to the truth.
For they are many. The resistance is real.
Whether I am growing a faith, a child, or an art practice, true beauty is found not in pretending all the pain away, but in embracing the pangs of becoming. “…it doth not yet appear what we shall be…”
This is labor in hope. This is a worthy work. I must not dilute my energy with false urgency or dissect it with false economy. I must find a focal point-of-sight for my soul, trust, relax, and breathe….and feel it all.
To cling to hope is to have a tiger by the tail: it hurts to hold on, but it will hurt much more to let go. I am holding tight, expecting big, beautiful, good things for my son.
If you too are stewarding the not-yet-seen for a spouse or a friend, or you too are the mother to a prodigal, if you have that sort of tiger by the tail, I leave you with this quote to consider from French philosopher Gabriel Marcel, in his book “Homo Viator: The Metaphysics of Hope”. Though he may not have understood the Gospel, he spent decades deeply considering what it means to hope:
My relationship to myself is mediated by the presence of the other person, by what he is for me and what I am for him. To love anybody is to expect something from him, something which can neither be defined nor foreseen; it is at the same time in someway to make it possible for him to fulfill this expectation. Yes, paradoxical as it may seem, to expect is in some way to give: but the opposite is none the less true; no longer to expect is to strike with sterility the being from whom no more is expected. It is then in some way to deprive him or to take from him in advance what is surely a certain possibility of inventing or creating. Everything looks as though we can only speak of hope where the interaction exists between him who gives and him who receives, where there is that exchange which is the mark of all spiritual life.
I know a person who also suffers from addiction. It was hard for him and for the others who cared for him, especially me. So I know how you feel about seeing your son like that. I'll be praying for his recovery and for your worried heart.
Aside from that, your writing is very beautiful, as are your thoughts.
Oh my, your anguish poured out will be a balm for many hearts, I believe. Praying for you, as you continue to look up into His face and hold on to Hope.
The Spirit is ALL OVER THESE WORDS.