Disillusionment and growth

Dana Vanderlugt, in the Reformed Journal recently wrote about disillusionment and growth in a way that resonated with this season of Sabbatical: of how letting go of our false beliefs (our illusions) is connected to (spiritual) growth. 

The following are Dana's words as given in her July 10 article, Straddling Worlds: Disillusionment and the Call to Discomfort - Reformed Journal. It includes a thoughtful quote from Barbara Brown Taylor's book, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith.

Dana starts with her own story of her turning to God when she was far from home and when she was "questioning, disoriented, and uncertain:"

"Disillusionment is defined as the state of being freed from an illusion or false belief. It can be a letting go, rather than a disappointment. A dying, but in order to make room for new growth.

I’ve long been a fan of Barbara Brown Taylor—author of Leaving Church and Learning to Walk in the Dark. But recently, I came across a used copy of her 1993 memoir and collection of sermons, The Preaching Life. In its first chapter, “The Truth in Ruins,” she writes: 

Disillusionment is a loss of Illusion— about ourselves, about the world, about God— and while it is almost always painful, it is not a bad thing to lose the lies we have mistaken for the truth. Disillusioned, we come to understand that God does not conform to our expectations. We glimpse our own relative size in the universe and see that no human being can say who God should be or how God should act. We review our requirements of God and recognize them as our own fictions, our own frail shelters against the vast night sky. Disillusioned we find out what is not true and are set free to seek what is— if we dare. "

Sabbatical reflections

The Sabbatical has been a gift of perspective. It was an opportunity to be far enough and long enough away, so that I could let go of the regular burdens and weariness that I carried. And embark on this adventure that was a gift from my community and God. 

It was truly a Sabbath, a time away to help me let go of my sense of being needed so I could remember what was good. Those I left behind were more than able to care for things when I wasn't there. I had enough distance from the hard things to remember what I love about my job and our life in Canada. I know people have been praying for us as we've been gone, and we've received encouraging notes and many reminders that we are not the only ones looking forward to us coming home soon. 

I received so much hospitality: from the people who offered us a place to stay in the Netherlands to the many people who I could talk to about campus ministry or bibliodrama to the meals and childcare provided by my in-laws. How can I not return with a sense of wanting to share that hospitality, particularly after having my own cup overflow? 

We got to have adventures as a family: the kinds which involve trains, mountains, museums, castles, bikes, and good food. We connected with friends and family, delighting in our daughter's ability to communicate with others (part now in Dutch) and her getting to really know Matthijs' family. 

Like many of my projects, there are things I didn't get done. In these last two weeks, I feel pressure to work as hard as possible now to finish them off, forgetting that the projects of the Sabbatical were a means to an end: learning to practice listening to the nudges of the Spirit and pay attention to where God is working and how best to use my gifts and experiences. A Sabbatical won't make me a different person, so much as it has hopefully helped me be more content with who I am and the life that I already have, even as I hope to continue to grow and change in good and holy ways. 

The hope is that this blog (and perhaps other places) will be a place for me to write more about the Sabbatical: as a way of remembering and processing, as well as sharing this gift I've received with others. 

Eulogy for my father (June 2024)

My father wasn't one for fancy words, but if there's one thing my Dad would want you to know about him it's how much his faith meant to him. My Dad loved God deeply and sincerely and church meant a lot to him. He always prayed at our meals, ending his prayer with 'forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.' Dad wanted us children to love God like he did and so they sent us to Christian school even though couldn't always afford it.

Life for my Dad was hard at times. He was strong-willed and stubborn, which sometimes helped and sometimes didn't. He would often say 'my way or the highway.' He wasn't good at taking advice which meant he sometimes had to learn things the hard way. And while I know many of us enjoyed arguing with him, his need to share his opinion sometimes hurt others. But his stubbornness also kept him going when times were tough. He worked hard and taught us children the value of perseverence, as he changed jobs and careers as needed. 

We worried about him after Mom died, but that strength, along with the help of God, family, friends, and church community (many of whom are present here at this funeral), got him through and back to enjoying life.

And did he ever enjoy life! He loved camping, good food, joking around, dropping by for a chat. And nothing gave him joy like those tables stretching into the living room so there'd be space enough for all 25 of us. He loved having his family together, being with his children and grandchildren. And when he married Gerda, he gained a few more to love, enjoy, and help out.

Dad was always strong and independent. It was hard to see him this last while, unable to do the things he loved. But in these last months, we also saw his faith. He deeply appreciated our prayers, and he trusted that his life and death were in God's hands. We'll miss him, but we trust that he's in heaven, where he'll enjoy lots of opportunities to just stop by and have a chat.

Grief

The last few days I've been unmotivated and somewhat short-tempered. It took me until yesterday to realize that the out-of-sorts feeling that I had was actually grief. This time, grief has felt like an extra layer of clothing, something that gets too warm at times but otherwise you don't notice it even though you carry it with you everywhere. 

When we went through the death of my Mom more than 12 years ago, I wrote about how grief shows up in different forms. I don't why, but I expected this time to be different with the loss of my Dad. With my Mom everything felt so sudden, and the grief felt raw. With my Dad, he'd been in the ICU multiple times in the last five months. I'd become a semi-expert in his health conditions and had re-arranged my life on an almost bi-weekly basis so that I could visit him and help out where possible. I'd been prepared to say good-bye to him several times and so had already begun grieving the possibility of his death. I'd also started grieving my Dad's growing inability to live life as robustly as he'd like, including and especially gallavanting around and 'stopping by for a chat.' And yet, some of the grief of my Dad's death has been tempered by a relief that he's not struggling anymore and that we, his children, made it through this season of caring for him as well as we could with our relationships remaining as healthy as they have been. 

But grief is still grief. I'm feeling the loss of someone I care about, a loss of new memories to be made, and an emptiness when I think of how I'd like to turn to him. Not just about that funny sound my car is (still) making, but also to remember things, like the box spring he pretty much took apart to fit into one of our houses when we moved. We managed to get the other boxspring in with enough shoving. But with the most recent move into a new house, shoving wouldn't have worked. So we cut some boards and folded it in half. And Matthijs used the staple gun my Dad made us buy for the last boxspring adventure to get everything back to almost new. And the memory, which reminded me of how much my Dad desired to care for us, going the extra mile, made me feel his absence.

The Spirit makes me uncomfortable?

I wrote the following in the summer of2020 (and posted on the Campus Edge ministry blog). As we are looking at 1 Peter as part of our study at Graduate Christian Fellowship, I thought it might be helpful to post it again: 

As we were reading 1 Peter 2 and 3 this past week at study, a student noted that the text made her uncomfortable. As the text was talking about slavery, women, and submission, it was easy for me to understand why she felt uncomfortable. As we noted in our study on Colossians a number of years ago, too often those of us who’ve grown up in the church have seen how submission has been used to validate abuse, or, at the least, make women second-class citizens.

It would be easy thus to dismiss this text as no longer being culturally relevant to today. Yet, to do so would be to lose an opportunity for the Holy Spirit to work to challenge what assumptions we might bring to the text, whether that be errors in our own perception or unhealthy assumptions that we have learned from church/Christian culture and/or society at large.

For instance, the dominant voices of our society invite and encourage us to put me first and not let anyone hold us back from unleashing our inner potential. Might our discomfort with the word submission be because such a narrative of me first leaves little space or validation for submission of any sort? What picture of God’s love might we show when we actively choose to let go of some of our own personal wants and desires for the good of others?

Yet, might our discomfort with the word submission be a misunderstanding of the word submission? Might our submission be less of a diminishing of self and more of a living more fully into who God has called us to be, including through challenging systems of oppression, as Walsh and Keesmaat propose in their book, Colossians Remixed?

While dismissing the text might be the easiest way to get rid of the discomfort brought by the text, it is worthwhile to sit awhile with the text and acknowledge that discomfort. Through consulting wise teachers and allowing the Spirit to work (sometimes also through our peers), God can use our discomfort to help us grow in wisdom about the biblical text and ourselves.

Less agency, less pressure, more grace, more hope.

Jonathan Haidt, made infamous for his article on trigger warnings and coddling of the American Mind, was recently in the news again concerning the well-being of teens and young adults (see article, and Haidt's own words in article1 and article2). The argument once again points to social media as playing a significant role in the well-being of youth (see also Twenge's now famous article on whether smartphones have destroyed a generation).

Another part of Haidt's argument about the decreased well-being of young adults is his articulation that certain ways of thinking, "say identifying with, or privileging victims and a victim status, tends to disempower people because it puts someone else in charge of your life." (Robinson) While we should acknowledge that many of us, and some more than others for various reasons, have been and continue to be victims of unjust behaviour and/or institutions, the problem comes not from recognizing that we are victims, but by allowing being a victim to become one's sense of identity. Victims have limited agency and there is limited focus on resiliency. Without conversations about resilience and agency, people are more likely to become depressed.

While this is an interesting conversation to be had in terms of how such thinking is affecting young adults, especially at university, it's also an interesting conversation in wondering, like Robinson, "if there is some cross-over to all this in churches." Have we lost our sense of agency in the church? Or, more accurately, have we forgotten God's agency?

Robinson notes that in the "more liberal and progressive church context, there’s a lot of emphasis on the problems of the world, and on what you should be doing about it. Which begins to sound a lot like law, not gospel. It’s all about what you should do or feel or think. If God is in the picture, it’s about what God needs us to do, demands that we do. There’s little emphasis on what God has done or is doing on our behalf or on God’s capacity to bring good out of or in the face of evil. So it’s kind of all on us."

That sounds exhausting and debilitating.

In a world where so many are exhausted and overwhelmed, when we feel like we have too little agency and too much responsibility, church can't be a place that tries to give us more of that. Church - and all Christian organizations - need to be places of grace and hope.

Please pray with that I, along with the Christian Reformed campus ministry at the University of Toronto (and broader) might indeed create spaces where we extend grace and help people hope.

Cross-posted at the blog for my work: http://crc.sa.utoronto.ca/2023/04/less-victim-less-pressure-more-grace-more-hope/ 

Jury Duty

Last May I received a summons to report for jury duty, something which I've never had happen to me before (but apparently is a fairly common experience for people living in Toronto). I couldn't make it then and was asked to choose a week in early 2023 when I could be available for jury duty. In the week after Easter and the semester ends, I'm not particularly motivated to do much of anything, so it seemed a good week to make myself available for something very different.

Leading up to the experience, I was hoping to get out of jury duty. After all, if I did, I'd then have the rest of the week free to catch up on all the odds and ends leftover from the semester! But the evening before, as I watched the recommended video about jury duty, God convicted me enough to help me be open to serving God and others in this way, recognizing that such an openness to serve is how I want to live my life, even if jury duty wasn't entirely my ideal for doing that. 

 

Monday morning I showed up at the Toronto District court at 8:30 and then I waited in a room with about a hundred other people. Around 9:30, they explained the process, and around 11:30 all of us received a questionnaire that let us know about the trial - it named those involved as well as the nature of the case (sexual assault) - and asked us for our connection to either, as well as asking about whether we had any hardships that would prevent us from being able to serve for 7 days on the jury, the anticipated length of the trial. (Note: Court is held from 10-4:30 each day, and the jury goes home at the end of each day, except at the end of the trial if they are still deliberating after the day ends). 

Around 12:30 we moved upstairs to the courtroom, the accused pleaded not guilty, and the judge addressed the potential jurors, explaining the whole process to us. The judge reminded us that though serving on jury would be likely be a hardship in some way for all of us, that this is a way we could serve our country (and there weren't many other ways that we were asked to do so). It felt a bit like being lectured by a teacher (with a bit of a parental guilt trip mixed in), but it was also part of the process of helping me to be open to serving God in this way. 

Potential jurors would be slected to appear before the judge in a random order of selection. As each potential juror appeared before the judge, the judge would look through their questionnaire to see if there was any significant reason they should not be involved in the case (the more detail we provided in the questionnaire, the fewer questions the judge would need to ask which would then be public to the lawyers and accused). If the judge thought they were fit to serve, the person would be asked a series of questions by the judge (to check for bias) and then each of the lawyers had the opportunity to choose to reject or accept the juror. This would continue until 12 people were chosen for the jury (along with 2 alternates).  

After convening for lunch, we returned to select the order in which people would appear before the judge for selection. People's juror numbers were chosen randomly. When the person came forward to get in line, their profession was announced (I was the only pastor in the first 60 people chosen). I was chosen 46, so I figured my chances of being chosen were about 20 percent. 

I spent the afternoon waiting again in a small courtroom with about 30 others (and wondered a bit about the inefficiency of the system). About 40 potential jurors went before the judge before finding enough people to serve. Those of us not chosen were then released around 4:30 and could go home, free from being called to jury duty for the next 3 years. 

I left, mostly thankful at being released, as it would have been an emotionally exhausting experience. But it was also a bit disconcerting and tiring: after a day of waiting and uncertainty and trying to open oneself up to the possibility of having to serve in this way, I had to let go of all those emotions and possibilities and return to regular life.