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When we built our church facility back in 1999, our general contractor installed industrial-quality, Corbin Russwin automatic door closers on every door in the place. These things are fascinating. When you push on a door to open it, there is resistance because that action is forcing a plunger into a cylinder, compressing the air inside it. Energy from your body is being transferred in some mysterious way to the cylinder, which then holds that energy in a potential form. When you let go of the door, the plunger is forced out of the cylinder, which then closes the door by means of a system of connected rods.

Here’s another way to think about it: because the cylinder makes the door harder to open, you are forced to use additional energy to open it, but that energy is then stored and used to close the door automatically when you let go of it.

The whole thing is quite clever.

These heavy-duty, door closing units are pretty sophisticated and cost about $100 each. We have 20 doors in our building, so we have about $2000 invested in automatic door closing, which is a pity since as it turns out, only the external doors and the restroom doors have any need for this luxury. In fact, a door that always closes automatically can be a pain-in-the-ass. I got tired of trying to hold doors open with my rear end when my hands were full of boxes or books or whatever.

So a few months after we moved into our building, I arrived one morning with 20 door-holding-open machines, commonly known as stoppers. These particular stoppers are metal pegs with rubber feet. You attach them to the bottom of the door. Then you can flip the peg down with your foot when you want to prop the door open. They were $11 a piece.

As I understand it, the stoppers increase the inertia of the door to a point where the air pressure in the cylinder is not sufficient to close it. But that’s just fancy talk. They keep the doors open; that’s the important thing.

And so it was that we came to this ridiculous place: on the top of each door is a $100 machine that converts human energy into potential energy that is constantly pushing against the door, wanting to close it. At the bottom of each door is a simpler, but no less effective, $11 machine that makes the door so hard to close that the top machine is unable to do the job it was designed for and for which we paid good money for it to do.

It was four years before I saw this absurdity for what it was. It hit me like a flash of enlightenment one summer day while I was looking at one of the doors. Suddenly the scales fell from my eyes and I saw things as they were. I laughed out loud at the sight of a $100 door closer straining as hard as it could to close a door held open by an $11 stopper.

“This is insane,” I said to myself. “All of this work, worry, and energy serves to create a state of affairs that we could have had if we had never installed closers or stoppers at all. We have set energy against inertia, all to maintain a kind of doorway deadlock. We could have had immobility if we had done nothing at all.”

I got up from my chair and wandered around the church, looking at all the door closers and their corresponding stoppers. One of these doors, the door to the kitchen, had been held open since the previous summer. I think I was the last one to open it, which means that energy from the breakfast taco I had that morning ended up being stored inside this cylinder for more than a year.

I reached up and touched the cylinder. For some reason I expected it to be warm. Warm from the exertion of pushing against a door for a solid year. But of course the energy inside is potential. It’s somehow real but not real until the door is released. Don’t you think that when the air whooshed out of the cylinder, it should have smelled like tacos?

It didn’t, but that would have been cool, right?

I decided to do something about this situation. I brought my drill to church along with a set of screwdriver bits. I removed 6 or 7 screws and took down the Corbin Russwin door closing machine. Then I knelt and removed the four screws holding the door stopper in place. Once liberated from these opposing forces, the kitchen door swung easily on its hinges. I can now open the door with one finger. I can move it to any position between open and closed and there it sits happily until someone moves it. I’m working with inertia now, instead of fighting against it. It’s an amazingly efficient way to do things.

The only thing more absurd than the whole situation was how excited I was about the newly liberated door. I had to tell the very next person who came down the hall.

“Hey, check this out.”

I swung the door open and shut.

“Open, shut, or anywhere in between. The door does whatever I want. Isn’t that cool?”

I don’t remember who it was, but she was understandably perplexed by my enthusiasm. Come to think of it, she might have been this woman who left the church around that time. She probably had the idea that the pastor should be working on sermons or visiting the sick or something like that instead of doing junior physics experiments with the door hardware. And I must admit, she’s probably right. Thank goodness I’m alone at the church most of the time so nobody knows what the hell I’m up to.

Anyway, this whole thing with doors got me thinking that deadlock is such a tiring way to stand still and do nothing. All of that straining and grunting. Losing a little ground, then gritting your teeth and pushing harder against whatever force is opposing you.

But we humans love to grapple. We like to lock arms and growl and push each other around. We like the feeling of one force moving another. We like power, and we like to use power. And if you look around the world, a lot of things that appear to be stationary are not moving because they are pushing hard against something that is immovable. You see this all the time. Especially at family reunions.

We set power against power and force against inertia. It’s what we like to do. We move things around our world and it makes us so happy. And there are times when force and power and moving things around is the right thing. There are times for that.

But there are also times when it is so much better to stop pushing against things and let them be. There are times when the doors should swing freely. Let them be open or closed. Just let them be. There are times to walk gently on our planet and see if it is possible that you pass on your way and leave not one stone overturned or one tender branch bent.

There are times.

Times to get out of the way and let people or plants grow as they will.

Times to let go of someone and allow them to live their life for better or for worse.

Times to sit quietly around the fire with mother myth and all the other earth children. Just listen to the story, child. Let it be.

Times to let the children eat when they are hungry and go to bed when they are sleepy. Perhaps not every night, but there are times.

There are these times. And if you can learn to see them and embrace them, you will begin to develop the soul of an artist and a saint.

rlp

In his book "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time," Marcus Borg describes the confusion and trauma that occurred when his childish images of Jesus collided with the scientific worldview of our culture. As I read his words, I felt like he was telling my own story. How well I remember when that collision began.

The year was 1969. I watched the moon landing that July in our living room in El Paso, Texas. My parents made me watch it. They said, “Someday you’ll be glad you saw this.” I saw a stark, black horizon and a man with a strange bounce coming down a ladder. I was mildly interested, but not old enough to appreciate the changes that science was bringing to my world.

At the end of the summer we moved into a small home in Forth Worth, so that my father could do some post-graduate work at the Baptist seminary in town. I began second grade that fall at Hubbard Heights Elementary, which was about half a mile away. My best friend Mickey and I walked to school together every day. I admired Mickey because he had to pack his own lunch. Usually it consisted of ketchup sandwiches and candy bars.

Hubbard Heights Elementary

I got the G.I. Joe Astronaut with space capsule that Christmas, which was a huge thrill for me. Space toys were replacing Cowboy toys. Roy Rogers was out, and Apollo was in. I played little league baseball for the first time that Spring. It was my first experience with organized sports. I was the catcher for our team, but I didn’t have a catcher’s mitt, which bothered me greatly.

Mickey and I both fell in love with the same girl at school. I don’t remember her name, but she had brown hair and wore it in pigtails. I was too shy even to wave at her and was standing around wondering how to proceed when Mickey, showing a surprising streak of romantic sophistication, swooped in and gave her a small bottle of perfume. Somehow that sealed the deal, and the two of them walked around the playground whispering for a week or so. I was annoyed but at the same time impressed with his savoir faire. He knew you should give a girl perfume, AND he knew how and where to get perfume. He was completely out of my league.

Our family went to Gambrell Street Baptist Church, which was across from the seminary and a fairly well-known Baptist church in that city. Martin Estep, whose father was a famous Baptist historian and professor at the seminary, was in my Sunday school class. He had leukemia, and we were told quietly that someday soon he would die. The idea of a child dying was so far outside my view of the world that I didn’t know how to receive the information. I just filed it away and forgot about it.

Martin loved dinosaurs and was allowed to bring toy dinosaurs to church, which was against standard policy, but no one made an issue of it, perhaps because his situation was so grim. Many Sundays Martin and I played together with his extensive collection of plastic and rubber dinosaurs.

Years later, long after Martin had died, I attended that seminary and had his father for a number of history classes. I told him I remembered Martin and his dinosaurs. He looked off in the distance and said, "Yes, Martin did love his dinosaurs."

I knew about dinosaurs, of course, but had never considered how they fit into the story of creation that I heard at church. Up until that time, the only story of the origin of the earth I knew was the one found in Genesis. God had created the world in six days, resting on the 7^th. He had created human beings on one of those days, but there was some kind of a glitch, and then Adam and Eve were on the outs with God. That’s why Jesus had to come to the world.

Children have a capacity to hold many thoughts and views at once. Truly, we all have this capacity but it is particularly pronounced in children. So I played dinosaurs with Martin, thoroughly believing that they existed millions and millions of years ago, while at the same time holding to the simple view of creation taught to me at church.

And then one day at school, I discovered a strange book, a book filled with new information and stories I had never heard before.

In second grade I had just discovered the joy of reading. The first book that thrilled me was Matt Christopher’s “Catcher With A Glass Arm,” the story of a boy who was a catcher, like me, only he had a real mitt. Sadly, his arm was a bit lacking, and this created the drama of the story. I also read my mother’s old copy of “The Bobbsey Twins” by Laura Lee Hope, falling in love with it immediately. I read that book 15 or 20 times over the years, even when I was in high school.

My second grade teacher had a collection of books in the corner of the room, which we were allowed to browse and read if we finished our work. One day I pulled out an ancient looking book from behind the others. My memories of this book are very dim. It had an old, cloth cover. I suspect that it was published in the first half of the 20^th century, but it might have been published at the turn of the century. The book was about ancient humans - cavemen and cavewomen, as they were called at the time.

According to this book, many thousands of years ago, people lived in caves and wore clothing made from animal skins. They made their own tools and arrow points, and they lived before modern technology, even before Jesus and the people of the Bible. I remember being absolutely fascinated by the book's theory of how cooking began. The author theorized that a tree might have burst into flames after a lightning strike, cooking a squirrel or some animal in the trunk. Primitive humans chanced upon this tree and found that they liked the flavor of cooked meat. This is a ridiculously simplistic view of how human technology develops, but at the time it made perfect sense to me.

I don't know why, but I became obsessed with this book for many months. Every chance I got I pulled it from the shelves and sat on a little carpet in the corner of the classroom, poring over it. I believed every word of it with the same level of innocent trust that I had given to my Sunday school teachers.

This simple book didn't address the incredibly complex questions of human prehistory or evolution, but it suggested a history of the world and humanity that was different from what was in the Bible. And these new ideas seemed to make sense to me, even then.

That was the moment the collision began. It was the moment that my Biblical worldview first collided with the modern worldview of science. The violence of this collision wasn’t immediately apparent. It was more like two galaxies slowly passing through each other.

But when galaxies collide, nothing stays the same.

rlp

Just a little update. I've received very nice emails and comments about my recent little heart glitch, and I truly appreciate it. In fact, I'm at the place where I feel a little guilty about it. You write something that is true about yourself, but if your blog is (for whatever reason) one of those blogs that a lot of people read, suddenly there is this gush of kind and sincere concern. At some point you begin to feel like you're drawing attention to yourself, which of course you are.

Or I am. I used the vague, American-style "you as indefinite pronoun" above because when I do that it feels like I'm once-removed from what I write. I like using the word you in that way. Hemingway did it, so I'm not going to apologize. I want to write like a man ripping chunks of meat off the bone. Not like a dandy fellow, all prim and proper, dabbing his lips with a napkin and keeping his pinky extended from his knife. "One cannot be too careful..." - you know all that kind of stuff.

You want to write with a touch of brute strength. Just a touch, and then be gentle as a lamb.

But back to my main point. Whatever pronoun I choose, this blog is a personal thing. Blogs are intended to be that. They are, we might say, a record of a person's life. An old way of thinking might lead you to say, "What makes you think anyone wants to read your personal diary, you self-absorbed fool?" A new way of thinking suggests that we are all adding to the collective information network of the blogosphere. Whether or not anyone reads your work isn't the most important question. It's the larger idea that's important. We are reading each other's lives. We are learning about each other and beginning to know each other across previously insurmountable geographical and cultural barriers. I like being part of that.

I think of Real Live Preacher as my gift to the movement. And it pays off personally too. I imagine my grandchildren could pick through these essays and know something about me, even if I were to die too young to know them. So I'm constantly weighing my desire for honesty and openness against the privacy of my family and church. And I weigh the uncomfortable sense that I'm writing too much about myself against the reality of this new medium of expression. Sometimes saying "You" instead of "I" helps me with that.

So enough about me; let's talk some more about me. ;-)

My cardio stress test went well. I am, apparently, strong as a horse. Good strong heart. Nothing physically wrong with me that is causing a persistent arrhythmia in my heart. Jeanene and I talked with our doctor at length about what it means to carry around too much stress.

Let's say that stress = anxiety. In that case, are you walking around worried and anxious, never finished with your work, always with a pressing project hanging over you? That's me. I'm never done because the things I do for a living are things that will never be finished.

And there is also this little messy problem of being a minister. Other people's lives are, to a certain and hopefully proper extent, my concern. I don't want to carry that burden in an awkward, clumsy fashion and with grandiose ideas. Grandiosity is foolish, whether you think you can conquer the whole world or care for it. I struggle mightily with this because I am in a helping profession. This struggle goes with the territory.

I see myself making adjustments to my sleep, my caffeine, and my exercise. Well, the exercise that looms large in my very near future. I quit one job and now only have two. What does this doctor want from me anyway? Having two jobs seems reasonable, given the freedom my jobs provide. My goal is always to be growing more healthy with both of my callings.

So thanks. I feel good to have gotten good news. I have a good life, and I'm thankful for it. I hope I'll be a good steward of it.

rlp

I always assumed that people who lived in prehistoric times had it rough. Bad housing, no toothbrushes, scratchy clothes and no protection from wild animals or marauding bands of thieves. I imagined a person from the ancient world working all day just to gather some edible roots and maybe kill a weasel to eat, only to be killed himself by a hungry saber-toothed cat or someone who wanted his campsite and the weasel dinner.

Click here to read the rest of this essay at The Christian Century online.

Archive of Christian Century Articles by Gordon Atkinson

Coming soon via satellite and the internet - it’s the Gordon Show!

This is the television production of the ages. Continually running for 45 seasons with a cast of millions, and every set is perfect down to the last detail. The backdrops are stunning, every prop is historically correct, and the houses are all authentic; the dressers even have socks in them.

The actors have spent their lives preparing for their roles, even those who only have walk-ons. The truck driver who passed the star in scene 27-7/13-18:20 was groomed from childhood to be a truck driver for that part. He drove trucks for 25 years, immersed in the culture of the road, all so that he might be authentic for his brief appearance on the show. It’s the same for all the actors on the Gordon Show. Every school teacher, coach, neighbor, and friend were raised from childhood to be thoroughly prepared for their various roles.

The studio maintains several retirement communities and recreational facilities for the actors whose parts in the Gordon show are over. Occasionally they get called back for a dream scene or a memory sequence, but mostly they lounge around the pool and take advantage of the generous buffet tables.

Why look, there’s Carmen, the little girl Gordon loved back in kindergarten because she could color in the lines. That was such a sweet episode, wasn’t it? A real crowd pleaser. Funny how she hasn’t grown. Over there by the shuffleboard is Gordon’s grandmother, still smoking her Pal Mals. And there’s Lance, Gordon’s best friend for most of the 10^th and 11^th seasons. I hear the cast from last season’s Colorado episode are having a reunion tonight at Bennigan’s.

Yes, it’s the fabulous, fantastic, Gordon show, where a neo-Ptolemaic revolution has revealed that the universe not only revolves around the earth, but specifically around whatever point on the earth that Gordon happens to occupy. Whole galaxies have existed before recorded time only to provide one or two stars in Gordon’s personal night sky.

Wait a minute! There’s our star now, walking though the parking lot and toward his next scene. He waves to the crowds, nods to bit players from previous episodes, pauses to comfort weeping girlfriends from those classic 17^th and 18^th seasons, and all the while he is signing autographs.

Oh, he’s heading toward us. Hush now, for there is quiet on the set. A new scene is about to begin. A spotlight falls, making you squint. You are now on the Gordon Show; I hope you don’t mind.

The first step is admitting that this is the way you see the world. It’s the only way you can see the world, for you are trapped in your brain and behind your eyes. And while you may come to believe that you are not the center of everything, your gut doesn’t buy it.

So own that. Own up to it.

The second step is taking a serious look at the people around you. As it turns out, each of them is the star of his or her own show. On their shows, you are the bit player. Your name might not even make the credits. It's true; they are all stars. From this point forward, dedicate yourself to treating the people around you with the respect we normally reserve for famous people. Maybe you should even get impressions of their footprints in your sidewalk.

Now look at the animals, plants, rocks, and trees. There are no cheap copies, no storefronts, no mountains painted on a screen in the background. Every grain of sand took a million years to form. Every animal species developed painfully and slowly over millions of years to fit perfectly in its environment. Every leaf on every tree grew from a tender bud and has a fragrance and a life all its own. Once you thought the earth was here for your good pleasure, a stage upon which your life is played out. But that’s not true. Our world is a beautiful and rare thing in itself. Why, there might not be another like it in the entire Milky Way.

Yes, I see it in your eyes. You are beginning to understand. It is the greatest of gifts to have been given life and allowed to live amidst such beauty and in perfect step with others and with our environment. Is it possible that a higher intelligence of some kind gave you this gift? And if so, how should you respond? If you understand these things, you have discovered Shalom, the deepest, richest, and most rare form of peace.

Quiet on the set. The spotlight is on you, and I think you have a speaking part this time. Take a deep breath and speak naturally, from the heart.

“Shalom.”

rlp

It’s been just about a year since I’ve written about my ongoing struggle with depression.

So how are things, you ask?

Just fine. Good. Mostly good. I think good. I’ve been on Wellbutrin for over a year now. Three little white pills every morning. I don’t ask questions; I just take them.

I think this is the way I’m supposed to feel. I remember feeling like this before. I get happy and excited about things now. I get sad sometimes, but the sadness seems appropriate. It comes and it goes. I’m an introspective kind of guy, so a certain amount of ennui is in my makeup.

So, good I think. I’m feeling good.

But I have lost something over the last two years. What depression took from me was my simple way of thinking about the human psyche. Depression has made things messy for me, and it has made me much more forgiving and gentle when I meet people who are emotionally out of control.

I used to think that the human mind divided neatly into two spheres, a right and a left. It’s a metaphoric division, of course, but yeah, two sides that one imagines could be pulled apart like two halves of an orange. Left brain and right brain. Your basic dualism. That sort of thing.

We think and we feel. We have reason and we have emotion. Of the two kinds of human experience, the emotional part was not to be trusted, as far as I was concerned. Not in relationships; not in daily living; and most of all, not in the spiritual realm. I have always had a deep fear and loathing of overly emotional religion.

Emotion, it seemed to me, was very arbitrary. It often led you in the wrong directions. It made you do things that did not make sense. Whereas the rational part of the human mind was careful and reasoning and able to see truth, even through a fog of emotion.

I proudly labeled myself as a cerebral person. I spent a lot of time thinking and talking and arguing and reasoning. Not so much time feeling things. I thought I was in control of all that silly, emotional stuff. I felt numb, mostly. And I assumed that you weren’t feeling things unless you, well, FELT them.

Oh, you feel things. Here’s a shocker. No one feels things in more dangerous ways than the person who thinks he feels nothing. That’s the guy you have to watch out for.

Jung said it this way: If you do not come to terms with your shadow side, the opposite of your strengths, you will be ruled by that shadow side. I believe that now.  In my case, all of my unexplored feelings were sucked into a vortex of anger. Of course, I was too sophisticated to let my anger out in healthy ways. So I ate my anger. I ate it dry. It was like swallowing unshelled peanuts. It did not sit well in my gut.

That’s when depression exploded my simple ways of thinking. You can say whatever you want about the emotional side of human beings, but emotions rule the day. They dictate our actions FAR more than we think. People live right out of their guts. We are primitive in that way.

When my depression became critical, it rose from beneath me like a dark wave. It tossed me about, laughing at my feeble words of protest. It kicked my ass, but good. I was unable to act in ways that made sense. My feelings of sorrow and panic washed away my control like a tsunami washes away the hammocks hanging near the beach.

I hid my sorrow as long as I could, and then I began to pick compulsively at the skin on my right hand until it bled. It hurt so bad, and I would swear I would never do it again. But then my left hand would start creeping over to my right hand. I couldn’t stop it.

So much for Mr. Cerebral.

And then, just to make sure that my worldview was completely shattered, that one stone was not left standing on another, and that salt was sown in my fields, I began to think crazy thoughts. Depression made me think crazy things.

THINK them.

I
Thought
Crazy
Things

I had thoughts that were not based in reality. Do you know how frightening and horrifying that is to a person like me?

At one point I decided that my wife of twenty years no longer loved me. I thought that, baby. THOUGHT IT.

And I thought that the people in my church didn’t like me anymore and were probably talking about how to fire me without totally devastating our family. I figured they would be nice in the way they did it, but yes, people were talking about me and trying to find a way to get rid of me.

Um, that’s some crazy shit. I am many things, but unloved and unappreciated are not among them.

So I was wrong about all of it. The simple division between thought and emotion, the control I thought I had by denying things I felt, and my arrogant pride in thinking that I understood myself well enough to have clear thoughts.

That’s what depression took from me.

What’s left? Let’s see…

A lot of humility and grace. I feel sorrow when I see men whose faces are hard and whose anger is beyond their control. I wish I could make them little boys again and hold them in my lap.

A new respect for people who deal well with their emotions, trusting them and experiencing them and nurturing them.

Gratitude for how I feel. Feeling good is very nice. I like it. I like to see my daughters and feel happy about it. I like to look forward to doing things instead of just doing them because duty calls.

Silliness. I’m such a silly person. You can’t believe how silly I am. I’m the silliest person in our whole family. Just a silly, giddy, goofy, funny boy.

Spiritual joy. I feel a deep, wondrous joy about my spiritual journey. Paying ritual homage to the power/intelligence behind the cosmos is a rich and meaningful thing to me. It is closely tied to humility. In the absence of any hope of figuring things out all by myself, I join myself to pilgrims across the ages, singing songs, reciting poetry, and telling sacred stories under the stars. Depression stole the joy from my faith, and I'm glad to have it back.

And last, love. Love was left behind after the depression went away. I’ve rediscovered love, and it’s like finding a baby bunny hiding under a zucchini leaf. You may pick her up and hold her, but be very careful. She’s trembling. But isn’t she the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen in all your life?

rlp

I think that this will be my last depression entry. I’ve said enough, and now is the time for living. If something happens and I get in bad shape again, I’ll be honest and tell you about it. Until then, if you don’t hear from me, assume that no news is good news.

The exterior of my house is very pleasing to the eye. It’s a modest, prairie home that is aging well and is comforting to look at. The porch is large, with chairs and a couple of swings. On the porch I am the perfect host - chatting, making people feel welcome, and carrying drinks around on a little tray. I’m very engaged in the conversations, actively listening, and moving smoothly from one group to the next.

People like the outside of my house and the front porch. I take great pride in that.

But I don’t invite many people inside my house. I need to know you pretty well before I let you see the interior, though I do have a variety of photo albums available on the porch. These photos are a carefully chosen selection from the various rooms inside my house. I’ve included a few safe, but slightly intimate photos of my private rooms, so that you’ll almost think you’ve been inside.

“Wow, these are great photos,” someone on the porch says. “So intimate and beautiful and daring.”

“Thank you,” I say with a big smile. “More lemonade?”

The people I allow inside are surprised to find that the interior looks nothing like what you’d expect in a prairie home. Through the front door is a large, open room that looks like a warehouse. Mounds of papers, books, and dirty plates cover the tops of tables and desks. Even some of the chairs have things stacked on them. Here and there are half-finished projects, some buried under piles of financial statements, unused calendars, and receipts. There is sawdust and trash all over the floor. Everywhere you look there are chewed pencils.

In the warehouse I rush back and forth in a mad panic, slapping things together, scribbling on papers, and stuffing things into envelopes. A phone is cradled on my shoulder, and I am shouting apologies into it. These apologies are as messy as the room, stitched together with lies and half-truths.

If I see you in my warehouse, I am deeply embarrassed and want to hustle you out of there as quickly as possible. I want everyone to think that things are as calm and peaceful inside as they are on the porch.

There is a door in one wall of the warehouse that leads to the family room, which is a kind of secret club. There is a very large lock on this door. Jeanene and I and the three sisters are the only ones with keys. Occasionally one of the girls rushes through the front door, dashes across the warehouse, and fumbles with the lock while looking over her shoulder in a panic. When the door opens, she slips inside with an audible sigh of relief.

One corner of the warehouse is more cluttered than the rest of the room. As you approach it, the mess gets more extreme until you think it can’t get any worse. Then you see the hidden, circular staircase that leads to a room below. Soft music floats up the stairs along with scents of patchouli and rosemary. Flickering lights from a fireplace below leap out of the hole in the floor and beckon to you to enter.

The stairs lead to my sanctuary. Because of the chaos above, it is astonishing that this room is perfectly neat and tidy, though it is obviously well used. Famous paintings are on the walls, and elegant, wooden shelves are filled with fine books with leather covers. The couches in front of the fireplace look deliciously comfortable, and you can smell pipe tobacco coming from tins on the mantel.

There is a home theater in one corner with a fabulous collection of movies and music. Fountain pens, inkwells, and heavy paper sit neatly on several wooden desks. All of my writing is done in this room. Finished works are stored here in perfectly organized filing cabinets.

I’m very proud of this room. In truth, it is the room I hope most defines me. When people visit here, I look up and acknowledge their presence, then go back to whatever I was doing. I sometimes find it difficult to engage people in my sanctuary; indeed I can barely hear their voices.

There is a circular, hobbit door in one wall of the sanctuary. It leads to a different sanctuary, one I abandoned in 1984. This room is filled with juvenile literature, science fiction, a record player, and an astonishing variety of sporting equipment. There are beanbag chairs all around and shag carpet. 70s and 80s rock and roll posters fill the walls. On one wall there are some framed pictures of girls in prom dresses. Their names are carefully carved into the frames. The colors of these photographs are fading, but they were clearly hung, long ago, in a place of honor and with great care.

Last year I entered this room for the first time in many years. I looked around a bit, smiled at the pictures of the girls, and then gasped when I saw my worn and beloved baseball mitt. I picked it up, smelled it, and took it with me when I left.

There is also a secret door in my sanctuary. If you push a hidden lever near the fireplace, a bookcase pops open to reveal a hidden room. There is only one person who knows how to push this lever. When she enters the room, her eyes sweep across the walls and shelves and then grow wide. She giggles and puts her hand over her mouth. Something on the other side of the room catches her eye. She stares at it intently. Her head tilts a little, and she squints. A smile slowly grows on her face. It is the Mona Lisa smile of a woman who knows that she is the one.

In the far wall of my hidden room is a door that has wedges and spikes pounded under it and around the edges. The door itself is scarred and splintered in places. It looks as though there has been a fight over whether to open it or keep it closed. From inside there is a furious pounding. Someone wants to come out. Someone selfish and extremely sensual, someone rude and very indulgent. Someone who would sacrifice anything for the pleasure of the moment. He needs pleasure, and he doesn’t give a damn about anything or anyone else. He’s angry as hell to be locked inside. You can hear him howling at night. And he swears that one day he will have his revenge.

On the floor, in a corner of my sanctuary, there is a heavy, wooden trap door. In the center is a black, iron ring. This is the door to the caverns beneath my house. It is very difficult to open this door. It takes a lot of courage and an enormous amount of strength. You have to grab the ring and pull with all your might. But sometimes this door pops open by itself, especially at night. If you walk by and find that it is open, it will slam shut as soon as you approach it.

Below the trapdoor are steps leading down into the darkness. Mysterious and frightening sounds rise from below. There is the sound of running water, the insane laughter of demons and lunatics, and grinding noises, like large gears slowly turning. Sometimes you hear the groans of slaves and prisoners who are apparently trapped below the house.

I’ve only gained the strength to open the trapdoor in the last ten years or so. In 2002 I began opening it regularly and going down the stairs. I bring up strange artifacts and set them on the mantle, where I puff away at my pipe and gaze at them in wonder. Sometimes I write about the things I find below. But it’s hard because when you write about what’s below, you cannot pass judgment. You can only describe what you have found. So many people do not understand that.

There are many other doors in the house. Some I have opened and others I have not. There is even a mysterious hallway that leads out of the house to places unknown. I do not know this house yet, but I am exploring more of it with each passing year.

These days a lot of people have been stopping by my front porch. The photos are there, of course, but lately I’ve been going down to the sanctuary and bringing up things I have written. I nail them to my front door or leave them on tables beside the swings. Sometimes I look out the window and am amazed to find that people are reading my work. All of it. Every blessed word.

A dear friend, one who spends time with me in front of the fireplace, recently asked me where God was to be found in my house. I tamped tobacco into the bowl of a simple wooden pipe and considered the question.

“It has taken me many years to discover the answer to that puzzle,” I say while lighting the pipe.

“As it turns out, God can be found in every room in this house. In all of them. And I am slowly learning to be comfortable with that.”

rlp

Prairie style home

Covenant Baptist Church Advent Set
3-sided rectangle with diagonal aisles and 2-chair offset rows
Click for larger view

I've been setting up chairs at our church since 1991. When I began, we were meeting in temporary places—a school, a fire station, and even a bar for a time. Setting up chairs and taking them down after worship is routine business for migrant churches.

I have handled many chairs over the years. There were the fancy wooden chairs at the Duck Blind Lounge. I used to set them up in three rows around three sides of the dance floor, facing the bar. If you got bored during my sermon, you could check out the variety of beers available on tap or look at the sign that told you when happy hour began.

You don't see that in church very often...

Click here to read the rest of this essay at The Christian Century online.

Archive of Christian Century Articles by Gordon Atkinson

• The embracing of paradox.
• The love of mystery in the presence of unanswered questions.
• The acceptance of your small place in reality.
• The willingness to engage in spiritual exercises without knowing how they will work or even what it would mean for them to work.
• The increase of the love, grace, forgiveness, and patience visible in your life.

Every human being is on a journey to discover the meaning of life. You cannot avoid this journey. It is the price and the gift of self-awareness. You can be intentional about the journey. You can embrace the idea of journey, seek out paths in the spiritual wilderness, listen and learn about the journeys of fellow pilgrims, and find joy in all of the above. Or you can follow a straight path from birth to death, taking life as it comes to you and straining bits of enlightenment with the spiritual baleen that is a natural part of your psyche.

But if you are a human being – and of course you are - you will be gathering truth and meaning as you go. You’ll be putting it all together in your mind and in your heart. By mind I mean the center of your intellect. By heart I mean the center of your emotions.

Here is a hard truth. The journey of every person is filled with pain. We like pain. It helps us find the edges of reality. It reminds us that we are real. We inflict pain on others, willingly and unwillingly, and if we find no pain in ourselves, we will seek it out. We will gnaw, pick, pinch, and worry the places that hurt us. Pain, like dreams, plays some unknown but essential role in our development.

Joy is also part of the journey. Along the way, some things and some people will light you up like a Christmas tree. Sometimes you will know why you feel joy. Often you will not. I want to say that you should pay close attention to what brings you joy and pain, but of course you will pay attention. How could you not?

I think the journey of enlightenment is a gift offered to creatures that are aware of their own existence. And this gift is not given very often in the universe.

Do you suppose it takes an entire galaxy to support the development of one self-aware species? It may be that only a very small percentage of worlds develop life of any kind. And of those worlds, perhaps only a small percentage will develop complex life forms, like plants and insects. And of those worlds, only a small few will develop life with any recognizable form of intelligence. And of those, a tiny fraction will develop life that is able to ponder the nature and meaning of its own existence.

You can think spatially about our relationship to our galaxy. We exist on the tip of a spiral arm of the Milky Way. Or you could use another model and consider that we sit atop a vast pyramid of life and the absence of life. The base of this pyramid stretches from one end of the galaxy to the other. Stacked beneath us are countless dead planets and other worlds arrested at some point in their development. It is impossible to comprehend the unlikely nature of our life and journey. All of these worlds were needed to produce you and me.

We have won the grandest of lotteries, and yet many of us refuse to take seriously the journey that is our birthright. Instead we sit around in the evenings watching reruns of The Simpsons, bickering over issues that will develop and conclude in the time it takes a star to wink, and picking at the scabs of our old wounds.

rlp

The big day is finally here; you’ve made it to college. You’ve worked hard to get into Cornell, and I assume you are giddy with excitement. Almost drunk with it. This is the beginning of a modern adventure that is almost mythic for our culture, and I hope you see it that way.

I went off to college in the fall of 1980. Sure, the world was a different place then, but I felt much the way you do now. If I recall, my main concern was not looking stupid. I knew I was a freshman, but I didn’t want to look like one, you know?

The first thing I want to say to you is that you should relax. You’re just as clueless now as I was in 1980. It’s okay. Being a freshmen, you’re supposed to be clueless. People expect it of you. And there is a certain freedom that comes with being clueless, so enjoy it. Take advantage of it. Run around the campus poking your head into buildings and asking dumb questions. Feel free. If you try to look sophisticated, you’ll spoil the atmosphere of the campus. Every campus needs a freshmen class, so play your part, okay?

Next year you can pretend to know everything. You won’t, but by then you’ll know enough to LOOK like you know everything. That’s called being a sophomore.

Now up until last Spring when I visited your campus, all I knew about Cornell University was that Carl Sagan taught there, and that it was a fancy, schmancy, sciencey, engineering kind of place. You guys are good with hard knowledge and cold facts. It’s your specialty. That’s cool. The world needs thinkers like you, so play your part.

It’s likely that you have an analytic kind of mind, so what I’m going to say next should not surprise you.

The future is closed to us. You can’t know it. You can guess at it, but that’s about all you can do. If the time interval between a point in the future and the present is short, you might make a pretty good guess at what that future moment will look like. But if the point in the future that interests you is more than a few months away, forget about it. It’s a crap shoot. No one really knows what’s going to happen.

So we don’t know what’s going to happen to you over the next four years. For some of you, the next few years will be wonderful. For others, I’m sorry to say, there will be unexpected grief and even tragedy. I mean, we just don’t know. We don’t know details, but there is one generalization that I think will be helpful for you to keep in mind.

Listen. This is the only thing I can tell you that is almost certainly going to happen to you. You are going to change. You will not be the same person you are now. I know that technically that’s true of everyone, but the next four years are going to mark MAJOR changes in your development as a human being. It is likely that you will never again undergo as much change in so short a period of time.

If you are basically a conservative person - politically, socially - then you will be challenged greatly. You will question those time-honored tenets and traditions that you cling to with such hope and faith. If you are basically a liberal person, you will also be challenged greatly. You will wonder what made you think you were smart enough to so flippantly set aside the time-honored tenets and traditions of your parents and your culture.

Whatever you are now, if over the next four years you do not question everything - your past, your parents, your worldview, your faith or lack of faith in God – you will have thrown away an incredible opportunity. Never again will you have this much leisure to sit around and talk about Truth. If you make it through your Cornell years with no angst or fear, you will have fought very hard to remain just as you are. You will have played it safe.

Please don’t do that. It breaks my heart to think that you might do that. No, no, no. Please be silly, clueless freshmen this year. Let your curiosity be as tender and fearless as a budding shoot that tears away brick and mortar to make a place for itself in the world. As sophomores, take up your new passions and hold your banners high. Be arrogant and a little rude. Think that you know everything. Who knows, maybe you do. As juniors, let the future whisper in your ear. Let the future call you to become a little more serious. But for God’s sake, save room in your heart for a panty raid or two.

Your senior year will be here before you know it. You will actually have a measure of wisdom and sophistication by then. You’ll know some things. It’s kind of sad to think about it.

And after you leave Cornell, years will go by, and if you continue growing as a person, one day you will smile and discover the truth. You are and have always been a small and silly person on a very beautiful planet in a fairly normal solar system on the edge of a vast, spiral galaxy that floats in an ocean of a universe that is completely beyond our comprehension. The search for truth is much bigger than you or I can imagine, so the best you can do is play your part. Playing your part is the best that any of us can do.

Lean in close now, my new friend, so that I can whisper something in your ear. It’s a secret, and I want you to know it.

We are all freshmen. Always. All of us.

rlp

Note: I was asked to write a simple address to new freshmen at Cornell University by one of the campus ministers. I'm sure some Cornell students will come by and read this, because the campus minister mentioned it Sunday in a service filled with new students and parents. A link to this entry might be announced in the school paper or something. I'm not sure about that. But this is not an official address given at the invitation of the school administration.

I’m alone this morning, and I’m wondering some things.

The roles I play in the world are strong, powerful, and demanding. They require much of me. Perhaps all of me. If these roles were gone, what would be left?

What if I wasn’t Real Live Preacher? What if I wasn’t that guy who writes good and has that blog that everyone reads? If I wasn’t driven to produce, what would become of my soul? Would my mind remain without form and void and with darkness upon the face of my deep? If I hadn’t spoken Real Live Preacher into existence, what of Gordon Atkinson?

What if I wasn’t the pastor of Covenant Baptist Church? What if I never had to proclaim truth, be an example to the flock, or set my own needs aside for duty’s sake? What would be left of my Christianity, I wonder? What would happen to me without such a powerful motivation? Are fear and obligation the only things keeping my faith frosty?

What if I wasn’t father to the three sisters? What if there were no hands buried wrist-deep in my torso, clinging to my heart, seeking anything with purchase, squeezing my ribs like the bars of a cage?

“Please don’t leave us, daddy.”

And finally, what if I was not husband to Jeanene? What if I was alone? What if there was no other person whose vision and body and life I shared? What if there was no warm and soft woman to whom I did cleave and become one flesh?

Imagine if all of these things were gone and you were to stand before the shell of my body. My creativity undifferentiated, formless and weak. My neck calcified and my head forever unbowed. My breast ripped open and the little hands gone. My legs pulled up to my chest with my arms hugging them in loneliness. What if you were to stand before that body and call me forth as a demon is called, resentful and struggling, out of the darkness?

I fear you would shrink from the homunculus that would emerge, soft and wet and pale and blinking, its mouth desperately opening and closing. You would not want to lay your hands on me, but you might nudge me with the toe of your shoe.

And you would say, “There’s not much left of you, Gordon Atkinson. You really did give yourself to those things, didn’t you?”

Yes I did. For better or for worse, I gave myself away.

rlp

I wish I could tell you that I just finished two years of Tai Chi training, and that my body and my mind have slowed to a smooth and gentle crawl, opening a wellspring of peace and insight within me.

I wish I could tell you that I have worn a smooth spot in the shape of my prostrate body on the floor in front of the altar, and that the desperate panting of my soul has slowed to a serene, rhythmic beating.

I wish I could tell you that selfless acts of service have carved a circle into my life, where joy is born of goodness, and goodness is born of work, and work is born of desire, and desire is born of joy. And I wish I could tell you that the circle of my life was bearing the fruit of peace both inside and outside of me.

In short, I wish I could tell you that my sword has been hammered into a ploughshare and that I have put aside my need to be at war with myself.

Instead, I must tell you that in spite of dabbling in various disciplines and gaining the occasional glimpse of serenity, more often than not my life is like a frantic dance, begotten of obsession and driven by guilt, fear, and a lust for production.

For better or for worse, the Ultimate Reality behind the universe is letting me run with this line, spool screaming, until I reach the jarring snap at the end.

The good news is that I am getting a few worthy things done, and that should count for something in anyone's ledger. It is also good news that the lessons of life can be learned the hard way.

For reasons unknown to me at this time, I often learn things the hard way.

rlp

I saw two gay men sitting at the bar of a nice restaurant in Austin. They were drinking a matched set of martinis and completely engrossed in their conversation. Something about their posture and the way they were interacting made me think that they truly cared for each other.

I thought to myself, “I bet they can talk about anything.”

In that moment I found myself wishing that I could sit at the bar with a gay man and talk. We would sip martinis, and I could tell him whatever I wanted. I would cry, I think, and I would talk about how I feel in my worst and best moments. And he would care for me in that soft and vulnerable way that I have only known with women. I would be weak, but he would count my weakness as an endearment. I would be as a child, and he would love that glimpse into my soul.

I would let my feminine side step out of the deep darkness. I would give her a name and pull up a bar stool for her. And he would hand her a martini. She would join us in conversation and be so wise, and so ancient, and so happy to see the light of day.

“Look at me!” I would say. “I feel like a whole person.”

“Good for you,” he would say, wisely, and make a subtle gesture to the bartender for another drink.

When the time was right I would confess my sins and the sins of Christian people. “Bless me, brother, for I have sinned against you, I and the people of my faith. I am a Baptist preacher, and I have been broken for such a long time.”

Our heads would bend close to each other because I would be sobbing and talking in such a quiet whisper. And he would forgive me. I know he would because he would care about me. He would pronounce absolution with mock seriousness, making the sign of the cross like the pope. And absolution would be like the olive at the bottom of the glass. It would have a flavor all its own, a sigh of relief, a marking of the end, a signal that it is time for another round.

I stared at the gay men and their martinis like a hungry child looking into the window of a bakery. I stared because I sense that I am missing something I used to have long ago, before the darkness fell over me and I drove her into the deep.

Poor fractured family of men. Why have we been so afraid? Why have we never learned to care for each other?

You say you want to get spiritual? You want to get right with God? You want to be connected to the Creator, the one who made the heavens and breathed life into the world?

You think you might want that? Okay. Why don't you start with something simple? Start by admitting the truth about yourself. Let no creed, tradition, reputation, or religion hold you back. If it is true about you, own up to it and let the chips fall where they may.

Maybe you're a Christian; maybe you're an atheist; maybe you're a lapsed Catholic; maybe you're an unbeliever.

Maybe you're scared and you don't know why; maybe you don't give a shit anymore; maybe you talk to animals; maybe you step on cracks and still whisper, “break your momma's back.”

You stare at the sky; you eat the insides of your cheeks; you sneak spoonfuls of white sugar; you like to fart in the tub; you cuss like a sailor; you'd rather buy a DVD than feed the children; you're deep in debt and panicked about it.

You heard me. Own it, confess it, shout it to the heavens if you need to.

Let this be your new creed: Cause no harm to others with your confessions, but do not be afraid to rock the living hell out of the boat. The truth is worth it. The truth is absolutely worth it.

The best thing that can happen is if you tell the truth, pay the price, and find that you have nothing left to lose.

Spirituality always begins in your lowest places and works its way upwards and outwards from there. If you try to start this journey with external things, like helping others for example, the chickens will eventually come home not only to roost but to kick your ass. Try to sweep this house clean and your demons will return and bring their drinking buddies with them. Trust me on this one. I've tried everything and had my ass kicked so many times that I've lost count.

Me, I'm a quiet man who can suddenly leap to his feet and start talking right in front of everyone. I know how to talk to people, God help me. Sometimes I think that I would like to stay silent and quit talking so much, but that's a lie. I love to talk.

I have thoughtful eyes that are slowly being covered up as my eyebrows sag. My hair is thinning and lines are appearing on my face. I don't think that I'm very handsome, but I used to be. People said I was a good-looking young man. It surprises me that I don't miss that, but I don't. I have other things to think about now.

I crave immediate and intense gratification because I live mainly in the moment. Because of this, I can be rather selfish and undisciplined. I'm selfish with my moments, but not so much with my life.

I am obsessive when it comes to writing and somewhat compulsive about it. Sometimes it feels like an addiction. I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud. I'm afraid that if people know what is inside me, they will have the power to hurt me. When I write I become brave because in that moment, everyone else seems too far away to matter.

I'm very good with words, and that is a dangerous thing. I sense that my soul is in great peril with Real Live Preacher, and yet it is a good thing for me to write. I hope you will pray for me because sometimes I start to think that I'm someone special because of all the attention I've been getting. But that is a terrible lie, and if I ever start believing it, Real Live Preacher will die. That's the truth.

Some people say that I'm a liberal Christian, but I don't think of myself that way. I don't want to be a liberal or a conservative.

I want to be a surprise.

rlp

“If I could only describe the high country, how the car strains and the mind races and the lungs ache, how the body slows and the breathing quickens.”

Journal entry
Creede, Colorado
summer 2003

Some people seem very sure of themselves when they talk about this mountain or that mountain, as if mountains were easily defined and well-differentiated one from another...

Click here to read this essay at The Christian Century online.

Listen, Gordon went out of town for a couple of days to hang out with this bunch of rogue Baptist preachers he knows. Jesus, these guys are all just like him. They think they're barely hanging onto The Church, as if The Church Universal were something anyone could hang onto. They think they're unknown, marginalized, all that shit. He's calling it a retreat. I guess if you call drinking beer, playing pool, and talking late into the night a retreat, he's on one.

Anyway, while he's gone I thought maybe you and I ought to have a little talk about what happened on Sunday when he panicked and pulled his essay offline.

First, let me tell you that no one understands Gordon better than I do. I am the presence he called into being from the depths of his soul in December of 2002. I am Real Live Preacher. He did not know what he was doing back then, but there is no putting this genie back into the bottle.

Let me see if I can explain it to you. It's hard to be the preacher sometimes. It's not as hard as being a single mother raising her children in poverty. It's not as hard as when a tsunami hits your village. It's not as hard as losing your parents when you are young. It's not that kind of hard.

It's hard because he's trying to let everyone matter to him, and that makes his boundaries fuzzy and hard to keep. Right now a lot of people have a little piece of his heart. The people in his church matter, his family matters, and every person behind every email that comes from readers of Real Live Preacher matters. He's determined to hang onto the idea that he lives in a community, and that we all matter to each other.

I tried to tell him once that this is crazy. I told him, “Hell, you ain't Jesus, preacher!” and I think he kind of heard me back then, but he keeps forgetting and trying to be Jesus again. There is a kind of wonderful but sad sickness in the hearts of many ministers. They try to let everyone matter to them. They let people inside their hearts, down on the inside where they feel things. They can't do this, of course. Things have a way of unraveling and falling apart when you try to be all things to all people.

God love him, he keeps trying and having to learn this same lesson over and over again.

On Saturday he wrote some dumb thing about bumping into a woman. It was sort of funny and embarrassing when it happened. Then he turned it over to me, and I put my own spin on it and even said a couple of personal things about him. Hey, I don't give a damn what anyone thinks. That's part of why he needs me.

But he came home Sunday after church and read the comments, and they got to him. You can try to tell him they shouldn't have gotten to him, but really what good is it to say something like that? They DID get to him. And Sunday is the day, by the way, when he is the most vulnerable. Sunday after church. He has nothing left, no protection, no sense of reality, no defenses.

Look, this guy can bear things that most people could never bear, but he is also wounded by things that probably wouldn't bother a lot of folks. His friend Cynthia says he is strong, but not like steel. It's more like...silk. I don't think this is good or bad. It is what it is, you know?

And when he read that stuff on Sunday, something came unraveled inside. It was paranoid, weird, and maybe even childish, but none of that matters. It happened. That's what happens on some Sundays. Worship is a powerful and elemental force. No one engages in it honestly and comes away unscathed. Sundays leave him weak. I know this. I think all he wanted to do was leave town and be with people who are safe and drink a beer and laugh and not worry about anything.

So he pulled the piece, and when he was throwing his bags into his old Honda and about to leave for Austin, he told me it felt so good to do it. It felt good to just make it go away. It made him feel like he had power over this sadness. He felt good and in that moment, feeling good was all he cared about.

He's gonna shit when he gets back in town and sees all these comments. And there's like 200 emails in his inbox too. He'll be embarrassed about the fuss and a little thrilled by the attention. Like I said, no one knows him quite like I do.

Okay, this is important. I have the power to keep him from reading this. Don't ask how; it's just something I can do. I'm going to ask that we just keep this little conversation to ourselves, okay? Gordon will come back in town tomorrow and probably post something. He'll probably say, “What happened Sunday was no big deal,” and “Let's just move on and forget it.” He thinks that if he was a real and professional kind of writer then nothing would ever get to him. I have no idea where he got such a stupid idea.

You just smile and nod and pretend that you believe his bullshit. He is a preacher, so he needs to think that people believe his B.S.

And because you guys love him so much, I want to give you some good news. I want to lay some gospel on you. Hey, I am the Real Live Preacher. That's what I do.

And here it is: You don't need to worry about Gordon. He's going to be fine, of course. Yes, it's hard to be the preacher sometimes, but he's not doing this alone. I'm with him. My voice sustains him, brings his long lost feelings to the surface for him, and gives him what he needs.

Want to know something funny? He still doesn't know who I am.

And he calls himself a preacher! Ain't that a hoot?

rlp

You ain't Jesus Preacher