You Must Be Born Again

 

It's been almost two years since I last posted on this blog. I had reached a point in my life and in my writing where I felt there was simply nothing left to say. I stopped writing articles for the most part, pushed off the idea of reincarnating in a Substack or what have you, and basically tried to enjoy the copious amount of free time I now had. I was tired of being publicly exposed, tired of being just another voice in the already cacophonous internet sphere, tired of taking time away from my family to write for nothing, tired of the wearisome infighting in the Catholic sphere, just...tired. I had published two books in that time, and not surprisingly, sale volume was pathetic. Thankfully I do not make my living by writing, but I was surprised at how resentful I felt that one could pour so much of themselves into something like that and receive such little recompense. "What's the point?" is a refrain that kept coming up again and again. 

Years ago, I identified with the young Isaiah, who unreservedly exclaimed, "Here I am. Send me!" like the songs we would sing on retreat in college..."I will go Lord, if You lead me." I would write what the Spirit used me for. I would be a pencil in His hand. 

But now, at age 46, it was the prophet Jonah who I felt in my bones. The Lord calls, and Jonah at once runs away; he flees from the Lord (Jonah 1:3). The Lord, in response, sends a great storm to rise up against Jonah's vessel. "What have you done?" the shipmates cry in horror, for they knew he was running away from the Lord. So Jonah has himself thrown overboard, to appease the Lord and save himself and the men aboard the ship. He is swallowed by a giant fish and spends three days in darkness before being vomited on land to get to work.

I took the Jonah route in trying to bury my writing in the field so that it would not accrue interest for the Landowner. Like the brother in the parable who is told to go work in the vineyard, I said, "I will not." I would spite the Lord. I would have the last word.

My friends said they understood, and I think quietly stopped reading for lack of material. My wife supported me, though she didn't understand and felt I was thwarting something. My blog had always held a special place in her heart, as she had discovered it prior to us meeting for our first date, and it felt like a delicious secret she relished in "knowing" me before meeting me for the first time. My audience...well, life goes on. You find other sources of content. The internet is a smorgasbord where you can feast to your heart's content.  

But it hasn't been a blissful retirement; quite the contrary. And this is where the Lord has the upper hand. You had pledged yourself as a slave, but in trying to reclaim your own life again you are beaten. Or, in another scenario, He bids you free to go, but you find yourself penniless wandering through the country eating corn husks to survive. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from the Hound who has claimed you. And misery ensues. 

Like Jonah, I also felt in a new way the terror of King Saul when "The Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit troubled him." (1 Sam 16:14). This was the result of Saul's disobedience in refusing to destroy the Amalekites and their spoils in their entirety, because he "feared the people, and obeyed their voice" rather than the command of the Lord. The only thing that brought Saul comfort after the Spirit of God left him was David playing the harp for him. I would languish on the couch through the winter months, doing nothing, writing nothing, and ironically, the only thing that helped was when I called to my son to play his guitar to comfort me. The Lord is patient and kind, but when one refuses grace enough times, or remains obstinate in disobedience, He will withhold it from a man. 

My faith has suffered, atrophying in this refusal to go where the Lord commands, do what He bids, as I always said I would. The Latin Mass, a consolation for so many liturgical orphans, has not provided consolation for me; in fact, in attending it for the past seven years, it has only compounded this trap the Lord has set. You cannot go back to the Novus Ordo, but if you lose faith while steeped in Tradition, full-blown apostasy seems to be the only option. I surmise this is what happened to Steve Skojec, who was all-in until the bottom fell out from under him. If your faith is in Tradition and Tradition fails you, to whom can you go?

As a result of my disobedience and obstinance ("I will not write!"), it feels as if the Lord, in His loving willingness not to withhold the rod, has withheld the grace of the theological virtues of faith in my life as an appropriate punishment. In an analogous way, prayer has become as impotent as writing books, articles, blog posts ("What's the point?"). "What's the point?" has bled out to all areas of my life. As a result, rather than be fortified to grasp more fervently in a dark night where God seems hidden, to cry out more desperately, I have simply stopped treading water, determined to sink through non-effort, run away like Jonah, tell Him to send someone else like Moses, ask for a sign like Gideon, make excuses like Jeremiah. Or if I do supply the effort, it feels just like that...effort, devoid of consolation or meaning. To say I am proving my faith by continuing to go through the motions of Mass attendance, adoration, etc would be disingenuous. Though I continue with these things, I feel nothing but a void, ritual emptiness, and a great sea of doubt has swallowed me up. 

But like the Lord who traps us ("Though hast deceived me, and I am deceived! Though hast been stronger than I, and thou hast prevailed." Jer 20:7), there is nowhere to go. If it is all worth nothing, if none of this is real, then I lose everything. 98% of my friends are believing Catholics, and as I wrote in the first chapter of my book, "Friendship is conditional." Those friendships are conditional upon the shared value of being Catholic together, of worshiping together, of raising our kids up in the Faith together. So I can't leave, or if I do the fallout is immense. So I am trapped. I am a believer on the precipice of unbelief, with my only prayer of recourse being "I believe. Help my unbelief!" (Mk 9:24). Save me from this body of death! I have no faith, but I will pray, (not knowing how to pray). Though you slay me, I will praise You still.

If I lost the grace of faith through an obstinate refusal to write, it is a reluctant but desperate attempt here then to beg the Lord to restore my faith by agreeing to write again, however flaccid. "Then I said: I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name: and there came in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was wearied, not being able to bear it" (Jer 20:9). I don't know what else to do. I have been battling a persistent anhedonia (the inability to experience joy, pleasure, or interest in anything) for a couple years now, and nothing I try helps. Is this also a withholding of God's grace from me, a punishment? One day I went to the garage to drill holes in a trashcan to make a pannier for my bike, and when my wife asked what I was doing, I replied that I was doing something, anything, "to create meaning" in my life when everything felt meaningless. Maybe that is this blog--drilling holes in a trashcan to make meaning in my life, if nothing else. If I started writing again with the obedience of the brother that was told to go work in the vineyard and refuses, but goes anyway, maybe the Lord would treat me like Jonah and spit me out on the land of the living once again. But that means writing again, something I don't want to do. I am, however, out of options. 

One comfort at least in all this is that I have most likely lost all my audience through this two year hiatus, so anything I write here will probably not been seen by many. So maybe I can treat it as an online diary, ("If a man blogs in the woods and there is no one to read it, does it still make a mark?). There is some freedom in that. The self-censoring as a Catholic writer has felt constricting at times. Or you write with an audience in mind, and so unconsciously write in a way to appease those readers or score points or likes. I'm tired of all that. I bought a typewriter a year or two ago to journal, but I find I only do so in limited circumstances. So, I suppose, here we are, back online.

I have thought about leaving the Catholic faith for the first time in my life recently, and though I cannot, the fact the thought occurred to me signaled to me that something is a miss that needs attention. "Pray your way through it!" "Cry out to the Lord in the darkness!" "Do this devotion!" Vanity of vanity, it feels, all is vanity (Ecc 1:2). I even thought about psychedelics as a way to perhaps free my constrained mind and spirit from the prison it is in, and though I should not (that is, drop LSD), the fact the thought occurred to me signaled that I need to be born again somehow (preferably without drugs, even though it seems the Trump administration has recently approved the use of therapeutic psychedelics).

Having attended the Latin Mass for the past seven years, I have devolved to being more of a Pharisee than I have ever been in my life. The liturgy has not redeemed me. If anything, I am more trapped by the righteousness of the liturgy now than when I attended the Novus Ordo, which I cannot go back to. And like the Pharisee Nicodemus, I am incredulous when the Lord says one must be born again in order to see the kingdom of God (Jn 3:3). Thinking not with the mind of God but as a Pharisee of the Law, Nicodemus responds, "How can a man go back into his mother's womb and be born when he is old?" But the Lord reasserts the mystical road, "You must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

My prayer is that of David, who danced stripped down to a linen ephod and unrestrained before the Lord, inviting the scorn of his wife Michal. He was angry with the Lord who had struck dead Uzzah simply for touching the Ark when the oxen stumbled and sent the Ark to Obed-Edom the Gittite for three months because he was not willing to have it with him in the City of David, saying "how can the ark of the Lord ever come to me?" During that three months, the Lord blessed Obed-Edom and his entire household. So David decided then to take the ark into the city of David. And it was then that he danced unrestrained and with all his might. His wife reproaches him in disgust and David replied, "I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor. (2 Sam 6:22).” David is exhaled while the chastising Michal became barren til the day of her death. This is my prayer. 

I am a dead man walking. I write dead words with lifeless fingers, for I do not have the Spirit of God in me. I cannot return to the land of unbelief, but I am languishing in the world of faith, failing the test, squandering my inheritance. I make no promises in terms of frequency of posts or quality of content in this Pascal's Wager. This is my last ditch effort to obey the Lord. I do not want to write. But forgive me, for I know not what I do.