The Slow Way: Longing and the Truer World
In the Dream of God, as Tolkien wrote, “everything sad is going to come untrue.”
The weeping redbud I planted in my dad’s memory for his birthday at the end of April lost all its pink flowers soon after it went into the ground. And now its leaves are big and green, reaching its twenty thin arms down to the ground, its baby-sized trunk swaying in the wind. It seems almost countercultural to be a weeping tree. I mean, what kind of tree reaches to the ground instead of the sun? Aren’t trees and plants and flowers all meant to seek the sun with their bodies, to watch it move across the sky? But, I’ll confess, when I bought this tree, knowing I wanted to plant something to mark this loss in my life, I couldn’t bring myself to pick a happy one. Not one of those that grows big and strong and makes for great climbing. I wanted droopiness, sadness. Not because I’m one of those cartoon characters with a cloud raining over my head (well, maybe I am?), but because I find sorrow somehow truer than happiness, more authentic. And I wanted my reminder of my dad’s death to be beautiful, but not happy. After all, beauty often looks like a lot of things, and happiness is only sometimes one of them.
When I heard Susan Cain talk about her new book Bittersweet, I immediately bought it. I have spent my life feeling somewhat outside of normal, experiencing my feelings in a way that felt unacceptable to the culture I was raised in. I cried too much as a kid, spent too much time alone in my room writing in my journal as a teen, or listening to sad, meaningful music as a young twenty-something. I often felt like my sadness didn’t measure up with the story of God I wanted to live into. I was supposed to find joy in the Lord! I was supposed to be fun and cool and especially caring so other people would want to know about Jesus. But I often found sorrow in the stories of the Bible I read each day as a 16-year-old Jesus-kid. Why didn’t people talk about how sad the Bible was? All those sick people needing healing? All the people who rejected Jesus’s words and went away confused? And, of course, death and resurrection and ascension? Why didn’t Jesus get to stay with his friends? And why was I supposed to be happy about the mysterious leaving that Jesus did when his resurrected body shot up to heaven and we were all left here trying to figure out if the voice in our heads was the Holy Spirit or the after-affects of the three helpings of spaghetti we ate for dinner.
The Christian faith is sad, and mysterious, and sometimes leaves me aching more than it fills me up with joy. (I know, I know, plenty of pastors out there would have something to say to me about this. They’d point to All The Verses and that’s fine. But I’m not writing this for them. I’m writing it for you. I want you to know that if you’re sad you’re not alone.) At this point in my life, the life of faith feels less like a wave-your-arms-in-the-air pop song, and more like a weeping, baby red-bud swaying in the breeze. Melancholy. Good, but filled with an ache.
This past Sunday was Pentecost in the church calendar. One of the reasons I attend churches that follow the church calendar is my need for a reminder of the whole story of Jesus. Left to my own devices, I would focus on whatever narrative suits my mood. The Pentecost story is wild. Flames descending, folks speaking in whatever language God decided to push through the megaphone of their mouths. And belief welling up in the souls of strangers so much that an entirely new religion gets born in one explosive sermon. Pentecost is for the Type A personalities, folks who know how to build a thriving organization, people who love a good show. I don’t really relate.
In Bittersweet, Cain talks about the “melancholic mode,” the part of us that feels the not-enoughness of being alive, the longing for a world that isn’t at war with itself, a beauty we can never quite attain. We all know what it means to long for that world, the one where we don’t hurt one another, where we don’t lose one another to disease, where kids don’t run out in front of cars, and where we finally feel whole and healed and, as Revelation says, all things are made new.
That kind of longing, Cain says, “is momentum in disguise: It’s active, not passive; touched with the creative, the tender, and the divine. We long for something, or someone. We reach for it, move toward it. The word longing derives from the old English lagian, meaning to ‘to grow long,’ and the German langen—to reach, to extend. The word yearning is linguistically associated with hunger and thirst, but also desire. In Hebrew, it comes from the same root as the word for passion.” Remember when we talked about “attending”? Reaching toward. To grow long. There’s something deep about this truth in all of us: We long for something better, for a truer world. We discover this ache in the way sweet moments of connection or art or music remind us of a world that could be. And when we recognize that ache, what we’re tuning into is more than a passive feeling. That ache can be active. And the Christian faith tells us that our calling is to lean into the momentum of that longing, leading us to work toward justice, to make beautiful art, to love our people better. Because in the Dream of God, as Tolkein wrote, “everything sad is going to come untrue.”
Cain says it like this, “The place you suffer . . . is the same place you care profoundly—care enough to act.” Where is the place you suffer? Where is your longing? And what is God inviting you to do with that active ache of your soul?
A Slow Practice
When my older boys were little and their anxiety often appeared at bedtime, we took to listening to a children’s meditation app in bed at night. In it the kids would be led through a few different imaginative meditations. One imagined blowing a giant red balloon full of their worries until it finally lifted into the sky and floated away.
Another imagined them coming upon a giant tree that had a door in its trunk where they could place their worries, and store them for the night. One by one they would place their fears into that space inside the tree until they could finally close the door, knowing the tree would protect it as they went on to the rest of the bedtime story.
I wonder if you can imagine one of those things with me today. When you think about longing and aching for a better, truer world, what comes to mind?
Can you take some time to imagine a red balloon that you hold in your lap. And as you begin to list the things that break your heart about living in the world, I invite you to imagine filling your balloon with them, one breath at a time. Each time you place a worry in the balloon, combine it with your breath. Release the things that break your heart, your fears, your aches. And as you come to the end of your worries, imagine tying that balloon tight and letting it go, watching it raise up higher and higher into the sky, floating until it leaves your sight. As it rises up, pray, Spirit, take my fears and aches and transform this world.
If you’d rather not follow the red balloon, you can imagine yourself walking in a beautiful forest full of flowers, until you come upon a giant tree. In the trunk of the tree you find a small door about eye level, and when you touch it, it opens. Inside the door is a space made the exact size for holding the things that break your heart, your grief, your sorrow over our culture's violence, the divisions you see around you. Speak those fears out loud and watch them go into the tree until your longings have filled that space. Close the door. Pray: Spirit, hold my fears and aches and transform this world.
You can end by sitting with this gem from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, chapter 4, The Message version: “Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down.”
A List of Things
Next week I’ll be here with a fresh newsletter! After that, beginning June 25 through the end of July, I’m taking a break from this newsletter and The Slow Way podcast, enjoying some time off with the family. Each week throughout July I’ll re-release an earlier podcast episode into your feed, so you have the chance to experiences some oldies. I love writing these, but I know I need I need a break if we’re going to do this slow thing authentically. I hope you can find room to take a rest as well.
The book I referred to this week is Bittersweet by Susan Cain, which I’m finding deeply true and meaningful. Highly recommend.
This opinion piece in The New York Times from Esau McCalley gets right at the breakdown of Christian theology of evil in this country: that there is a “deficient doctrine of sin and evil, limiting it to the individual.” In other words, until we recognize that societies and systems can also be evil, we will share responsibility for the mass harm done within those systems.
Micha, I first came across your writing in your book Found, which I loved. I’m so glad to have found your podcast and newsletter. I have the Susan Cain book sitting on my nightstand and I want to get to it soon! As I read your essay today it made me think of the C. S. Lewis quote about when we have desires that are unsatisfied by this world it is because we are made for another. I too think that longing can bring us closer to God.
This was great Micha. I especially love the Message version of the Phillipians passage.