It makes sense to me. Do you see what I mean?
Let me tell you about security. Here is the honest truth. Over the course of several years, I lost what was once a very devout Christian faith. It was the very core and center of my life. And the years passed and it slipped away from me and suddenly I saw it with new eyes and I let it go. Then, one morning, a sunny summer morning on some wooden steps with a plate of eggs in my lap, I was saying the words: I don't think I believe in God. I can tell you that it was relief and freedom because it was. I can also tell you that it was a new fear and loneliness that I had never known.
Most strongly, I felt two things. I felt the loss of it, the way you feel the loss of a friend or lover. It truly felt like grief and I grieved alone, very much alone. I also felt a wide-open insecurity that gripped me hard. Suddenly a safety net that was supposed to catch me was gone. I couldn't stop thinking about death and loss. There was no quiet peace in the darkness, at least not the peace I had known. Or the peace I thought I had known. The questions that were left, that are still left - they're enormous. Questions of death and purpose and love. Questions of decision and motive and action.
I have, for the last few years, been trying to acclimate myself to this new world of insecurity. I had more or less accepted that this was what life was really like without a God. I was not searching for security somewhere - I was trying to get by without it. This made sense to me at first. It was the wild beauty of the world - of the unknown. My awe was my new religion.
After the initial emotional and intellectual shock of embracing my thoughts and choices I was left in a sort of lull. I haven't been able to settle myself down. Love and adventure have left me afraid of their loss - in fact, sure of their loss. There have been days where I can only dwell on the fact that one day it will all be gone. Not just my love and my small life that I've carefully shaped up for myself. It will all be gone. And what?
Yesterday I saw with crystalline awareness how my life in these last months has been ruled by my past and future. I have allowed the guilt and hurt and loss from the past (which we all have) to consume me. I have let my fear of the future and my repeatedly laughable attempts to control it occupy my every thought. I think, in some way, I've thought that I would find my security there. If I could just understand what has happened and align the future, just make a plan, that would be my security. But of course it isn't. The tenuity of it is, in fact, terrifying.
Well I'm always searching for the point, so I'll get to it. This new awareness has brought me this: there is a security to be found in the transience of all things. It is looking up at the sky and seeing that it will rain and it will snow and the sun will shine and through it all it will just be the sky above my head. It will all pass me by and there will still be the sky. Meaning, of course, that nothing lasts. Not the happiness, not the sadness. And the immense thread that exists, the connection between myself and every other human, every other living thing, that can hold me. I think I can rest in that.
***
I realize this is not the sort of writing I normally put up here. The funny thing about writing is that sometimes you sit down to write one thing and something completely different comes out of you. I believe, perhaps naively, that this means there are things you sometimes need to say and, try as you might, you can't avoid them. I swear, I raised up my fingers and this is what happened.
Loosen your grip a small bit and you might find that you have other things to say.
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