Pulling My Son Up From Under the Water

Pulling my son up from under the water, his eyes closed and dead, his fingers pinching his nose, there is a moment when I recognize death for what it is. I see it, right there in front of me. But this is a momentary death, and my recognition of it is fleeting. His eyes open, and his flat line mouth turns into sputters, and life, pure life, lights up into a smile.

The water that runs off the head of my son, freshly baptized, is like no water I’ve ever seen. I want to bottle it and take it home. Set it reverently in the corner of my desk, in front of the picture of him when he was crawling around naked after a bath, two years old. I want to put it in front of the picture of my father and I (the three of us share a first name) at my graduation so that I can see that event, that relationship, new, through the magnifying glass of my son’s baptismal water.

I wonder what I would see in that water, if I put it on a small glass slide and viewed it through a microscope. What single cell organisms participated in his rebirth? What tiny amoeba lost its relatives in a drop of water he may have swallowed? The moment was so holy that I find it hard to believe the water wouldn’t be full of signs, full of molecules that point to new life.

* * * * *

Unless a seed dies, it remains a single seed.

* * * * *

And then, my daughter crawled lightly into the tank, so buoyant it felt like I had to hold her down just to keep her from floating into the air. So small. So young. She shook with excitement and nervousness. I wondered what she was thinking at that moment. I wondered what she expected this submersion to accomplish.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Then she was under and coming back up, face first, water running.

I wonder what death she will experience in this life, what disappointments, what discouragements. Sickness and sadness – it waits for all of us, often when we least expect it. I hope this second birth will help her through these things, later, when this baptism is just a distant memory, when all that remains are shadows and dreams of the day her father and grandfather baptized her in a tank of extraordinary water in a small church in Gap, Pennsylvania.

* * * * *

I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

* * * * *

Baptism by fire. Now there’s an image.

I can’t confess to understanding this God, the one who dies, the one who leads us into death, the one who baptizes, not with water but with fire. For while I can collect the water that runs off my children’s heads and stare into it, study it, analyze the minute life that swims in it, I cannot do that with fire. I cannot put fire under a microscope. I cannot soak it’s puddles up with a towel. I cannot stand in it with my children.

None of us even have the will to enter into fire. That sort of baptism – you have to wait for it to fall down.

When I Ask Myself, “Why Do I Still Go To Church?”

One of my favorite parts of a great movie involves a little kid sitting on his tricycle at the end of a short driveway, somewhere in suburbia. Then, Mr. Incredible, depressed and discouraged from his recent lack of involvement in crime fighting and the way he has been shoehorned into an average, ordinary life, arrives home and climbs out of his tiny little car. He looks over his shoulder and sees that boy on a tricycle, staring.

“What are you waiting for?” he demands, still in a foul mood at the boring turn his life has taken.

“I don’t know,” the kid replies, then shrugs and admits, “something amazing, I guess.”

That’s how I feel these days when I go to church.

* * * * *

You can read the rest of this post over at Deeper Church. Just click HERE.

How to Find Peace in a Noisy World

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As I pull back from various aspects of my life where I used to shout, “Look at me! Look at me!”, those areas are filled with a kind of silence, a silence that very gently transforms into the voice of God whispering, “Here I am.”

There is initially a sense of loss when we choose obscurity over self-promotion, a sense of regret coupled with anxiety as we watch others build their kingdoms larger than ours. The ego is clamoring for its own survival. The ego is worried that it will be annihilated. It becomes a small animal, scratching and clawing for attention, for life, for recognition. But the more we diminish and the longer we allow ourselves to travel down this peaceful path into obscurity, the calmer the ego becomes.

Fame and recognition are like drugs, and when we deny ourselves these temporary ecstacies, the ego experiences the pain of withdrawal. But then, after the tremors and the emotional vomiting, the begging and the anxiety, comes something unexpected.

Peace.

It’s a wonderful freedom, those first few days after your self has come to peaceful terms with the idea that fame is not the goal. The world around you seems more calm and less frenetic. The critical voices in your mind recede because the things they are criticizing about you (your lack of popularity, your lack of wealth, your lack of accomplishments) no longer bear such weight. Those “crucial” beams you once thought were load-bearing turned out to be inconsequential, and in their absence, space opens up.

I found that, for myself, diminishing has allowed me to focus on the voice reminding me that “You are God’s beloved.” When I spend less time worried about what I am accomplishing, accomplishments become less important, and I can see with clarity, perhaps for the first time, that (as Henri Nouwen says), my identity is not found in what I do, what people say about me, or what I own.

My identity is this: I am God’s beloved.

What would it look like for you to diminish? What are some things you would need to relinquish? What are some areas where you would need to let go? How does the idea of traveling into obscurity make you feel?

When God Tears Off Your Skin

At some point in this back and forth, I stop and let the engine idle until it dies out. Then I sit in the snow silence and stare through the lines of trees to where the sun drops down behind the hills, over the river that’s too far away to see. I sit there and I marvel to myself about how much God asks of us. Nothing short of tearing off our old skin. Nothing short of baring us naked before the world, tender and stinging. Nothing short of that.

That’s a snippet of the blog I wrote that you can find today over at Deeper Story. Click HERE to read the entire post.

* * * * *

I’ve found this whole break from social media and self-promotion an interesting and revealing practice – I’ll blog more about that next week. It’s not easy, when you’ve been shouting for a long time, when you’re used to the attention, to sit down quietly on the park bench and watch all the people walk by. But it’s a good thing.

I hope this is a solid week for you. I hope you find what you’re looking for.

Why We Feel Worthless

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“‘He must become greater; I must become less.’” (John 3:30)

“…unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed….” (John 12:24)

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

My daughter is my little adventurer. She is the one who wants to learn to ride the four-wheeler first. She is the one who wants to climb the tree, to creep to the top of the mountain, to let her legs dangle and swing her way across the monkey bars.

Recently we were at a climbing gym and, with her long legs, she scaled the side of the boulder. But she couldn’t quite get to the top. She couldn’t quite bring herself to reach up into the unseen and find a grip, pull herself up.

She came back down and the disappointment hovered around her eyes.

“Next time, Kid,” I said, wrapping her in a hug.

* * * * *

Ever since I decided to give up social media and spend some time “diminishing,” I have questioned the decision. Why? What am I trying to get out of this? What’s the point?

I’m not an ascetic for ascetic’s sake. I don’t want this to become a practice of denying myself simply for the sake of denial – I find that, at least in myself, that sort of thing tends to lead less to awareness and contemplation than it does to a subtle pride. Look at me. Look at how spiritual I can be.

That’s not what I’m after.

So why? Why step out of the small limelight I had created? Why stop promoting my writing? Why take a path that would lead, if followed to its logical end, to complete obscurity?

These are the questions I keep asking myself.

* * * * *

I’ve been listening to an Henri Nouwen sermon I found online, one in which he speaks about how each of us is the Beloved (the first part of the sermon is at the bottom of this post). In the sermon he talks about how we try to answer the question, “Who am I?” by analyzing different things in our lives: What do I do? What do people say about me? What do I own?

And as I accomplish wonderful things, as people say nice things about me, and as I purchase things that make me happy, I feel good. I feel like a productive individual. I feel like I am worth something.

But then I fail at something. People say bad things about me. My finances drop and I do not own the things that make me feel good. Suddenly I feel worthless.

This is a never-ending cycle, Nouwen explains, a treadmill from which we must escape because there is no end to it, no end to the striving and the deep-sea crashes. But how? How do we stop defining ourselves by what we do, what people say about us, or what we own?

There is only one way, and that is to understand that I am God’s Beloved. No matter what I do, no matter who I influence, no matter what I have, that remains true.

Do I believe it?

* * * * *

My daughter climbed up to the top of the climbing boulder and sat there. She had finally made it to the top. I could see her head just above the ridge, and she was smiling.

I don’t love her because she made it to the top of the boulder. I don’t love her because the adult next to me looked at me and smiled, thinking good thoughts about her. I don’t love her because of any earthly thing she owns.

I love her, I adore her, because of who she is. She is my daughter, created in my image, and there is nothing she could do to lose that love.

Could I love better than God loves? Could I somehow be more kind or caring towards my daughter than God is towards me? Could I love my daughter with no strings attached while God can only love based on merit or behavior?

No. The simple answer to that is a resounding no.

And this is the lesson I am learning while I let myself diminish, while I watch my blog numbers plummet due to lack of promotion, while I miss out on connecting with agents or publishers because I’m not on Twitter or Facebook. Layers of me are being stripped away, and I am left with the simple knowledge that I am the Beloved, and that is enough.

It’s Not You, It’s Me: On Attending the Funeral of a Friend and Saying Good-Bye to Social Media

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Last Sunday afternoon I drove under gray skies, through rain that was soon to be sleet, to the funeral of a young man I went to high school with. His name is Peter. The calendar said spring was less than three weeks away, but there was another snow storm on the way. Canadian geese circled the fields, uncertain as to whether they should be heading north or south, which was kind of how I felt, driving to a funeral being held for a 35-year-old father of three. I felt disoriented, unsure which way to fly. These things aren’t supposed to happen. 35-year-olds shouldn’t die of cancer, leaving their wife and children and parents behind.

The Lutheran church was packed and just as I walked in they set up an extra row of chairs at the very front, which is where I sat. Then the family came in. Peter’s father was my music teacher in middle school. Peter’s uncle was my first baseball coach. We called him Mr. P. He taught me how to keep my elbow up, how to pitch with my fingers along the seams, how to turn my glove so the ball wouldn’t skip off my palm and hit me in the face.

Peter’s cousin, Johnny, was one of my closest friends, someone I’ve known since I was six years old. We grew up playing baseball together. He was the catcher and I was the pitcher and we created a series of signals – one for a fastball, two for a curveball, and three for an off-speed (even though every pitch I ever threw pretty much did the same thing). I remember how the seams felt against my fingers, rough and spinning out of control. I remember how I accidentally hit my fourth grade girlfriend in the hand while she was batting for the opposing team. I remember how she came to school with a splint on her finger. I gave her a jar of root beer barrels for Christmas later that year.

While I was never extremely close to Peter, his family always formed a backdrop to my existence, like the mountains do for those who live in California – always off in the distance, always there. Peter’s older brothers were the cool upperclassmen. His father introduced me to John Denver. His uncle taught me the great American past time.

I saw them all walk in, single file, and sit in a pew across the way from me. All of them with their families and their children. Then Peter’s wife came in and sat down, her two little girls dressed in beautiful dresses, one of them looking exactly like Peter. They didn’t cry. They were too young to understand the weight of such a moment. They giggled at something, then sang with all their hearts when the hymns were sung. At some point in the service they got down on their knees and colored on papers, the pew serving as their desk.

She’s a wonderful mother who lets her children smile and draw pictures at their father’s funeral. There was so much I learned in that moment about life and death and creativity. So much.

* * * * *

One of my favorite scenes from The Lord of the Rings movie is when Frodo offers the Ring of Power to Lady Galadriel. He is already tired of carrying it, and the mission feels impossible to him.

Have you felt that before, the weight of life, the heaviness of being? Perhaps you feel it right now, this very moment. The downward pull of discouragement or sadness or death. Pain. Hopelessness.

Galadriel seems intrigued by Frodo’s offer, and as she imagines what it would be like to wield the Ring of Power and be in complete control of everything, she grows large and ominous.

“You offer it to me freely?” she asks. “I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired this…In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!”

It is so easy to convince ourselves that great power would not tarnish us as it has so many others. I am different, somehow. My resolve would hold. I would be fair and wonderful.

Just as she is about to take the ring, something inside of Galadriel changes, and she seems relieved as she turns down Frodo’s offer.

“I have passed the test,” she says. “I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.”

* * * * *

At one point during Peter’s funeral the Lutheran clergy led us through communion. It was a beautiful moment, watching so many of my old high school friends and teachers and absolute strangers walk to the front.

“The body of Christ, given for you.”

A small piece of bread.

“Amen.”

“The blood of Christ shed for you.”

A sip of wine from a single cup.

There was something disarming there, walking slowly in a long line, taking part with so many others. There was a healthy diminishing, a coming back into line with who I truly am, not who I’m so often striving to be. There was, for the briefest moment, an understanding that I am not the center of everything.

I sighed, and I looked over at Peter’s family. They watched the crowd receive communion. There was wonder on the children’s faces, as if all of these people were doing this for their father. And in many ways they were right.

* * * * *

Every so often, I read through Brennan Manning’s book, Ruthless Trust. Maybe once a year. This time one particular quote pierced me to the marrow.

“The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future…The reality of naked trust is the life of a pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise.”

I realize that there are areas of my life where I do not trust God. One of them is my writing. I am determined to follow any predetermined, clearly delineated plan that I can find. I listen to all the gurus who say this is how you build a platform, this is how you gain an audience, this is how you get a book deal. I resist obscurity. I want future guarantees.

But I’m tired. I’m tired of promoting myself. I’m tired of relying on my own ability. I’m tired of trying to convince people to read what I write.

So, for a time, I’m walking away from the clearly defined path. I’m going to take a break from social media, the main driver of traffic to my blog, and I’m going to simply write. No sharing. No endless Facebook promoting. No mind-numbing Tweets.

I don’t say this to criticize what others are doing. There are some excellent bloggers out there making an amazing difference in the world, and receiving their status updates and reminders has always been a pleasure. I think that by being on Facebook and Twitter they’re making the world a better place. But for me, the time has come to walk a different path, even if it doesn’t make sense or appear to head in the direction I’ve always wanted to go.

I’ll still be posting here every Wednesday, so I hope you’ll join me. I’ll still occasionally send out emails to those of you on my list, updating you on my latest projects or letting you know what some of my writer friends have been up to. I’d love to get emails from you, anytime: shawnsmucker(at)yahoo.com. But after today I won’t be on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, at least not for a little while.

It’s actually a huge relief, the diminishing. The trusting.

What unorthodox path are you being called to follow?