Shadowboxing and Both/And Thinking

Very few Christians have been taught how to live both law and freedom at the same time. Our Western dualistic minds do not process paradoxes very well.

Psychological wholeness and spiritual holiness never exclude the problem from the solution. If it is wholeness, then it is always paradoxical, and holds both the dark and light side of things.

Refusing to split and deny reality keeps me in regular touch with my own shadow self, and much more patient with the rather evident shadow of the church. I see the exact same patterns in every other group, so my home base is as good a place to learn shadowboxing as anywhere else…

- Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

Several months ago I decided to take some time away from church. I was just too angry sitting in church, and I could feel that anger driving a wedge between me and God. It was around the time that I wrote this post.

I talked to Tony about it first, asking him what he thought. At the time, Tony wasn’t going to church with us because he, ironically enough, works for our church and was needing to help out on Saturday nights at the time we typically went. He was fine with my decision though. I was fearful my decision might make him lose his job, but he was thankfully very encouraging that I needed to do what I felt God was spurring me to do.

Next I talked to my kids, asking them if they still wanted to go or if they wanted to take a break along with me. They still really wanted to go, so I would drop them off at church every Saturday night and then slip out through the side doors and drive a block or two away to a nearby ice cream shop, where I would sit alone, sipping on a peanut butter milkshake with my pen moving feverishly across journal paper. I think back on those times, and they seem so precious. I felt so close to God in those moments.

A few months went by before I felt ready to return to church, and quite frankly, when I did return, I did so with the understanding that I was taking one week at a time. I felt this internal questioning, a sort of, “God, do you think I am able to go this week and not get angry?” And a sort of internal answering, “Yes, I’ll be with you. Let’s go just this week.”

I would sit and stand sort of numb-like in church, unable to really participate fully in any of the singing, unable to engage fully during the preaching. I remember it being difficult for me to watch the smiles on the faces of the people singing. I felt sure that they must be faking their joy. That they were just going through the motions to put on a pretty show. I would close my eyes while they sang, so as to not be distracted.

I also found it difficult to sing any lyrics that were explicitly Christian. The name Jesus was very difficult to utter. I just had too many questions, and I didn’t want to be swayed by the crowd to sing something my heart wasn’t sure it agreed with. Despite all that, I knew I wanted to be there, in church, even though that seemed so hypocritical to me. I knew I wanted to make my peace with “the Church.” To part with the swirling anger that had caused me to furiously refuse to enter sanctuary because it didn’t feel like the sanctuary I’d been promised by my religion.

Lemony Snicket, in A Series of Unfortunate Events defines sanctuary as ‎”a small safe place in a troubling world.” So why did I feel far more safe in my ice cream shop with my journal then I did within church walls? What was going on? But I trusted that my gut would not lie to me, and my gut (or perhaps God) was telling me, one week at a time, to return to church.

Now, about four or five months after returning to church, things have gotten a little easier for me. I don’t feel numb when I sit in the experiences.

I still don’t sing a song unless the lyrics really resonate with me. I find myself closing my eyes and dancing more, moved by the powerful sounds of music in its purest sense. I try not to become transfixed on the smiles of the worship leaders, contemplating whether they are real or not. I figure, that’s their business.

I find little nuggets of wisdom amongst the preaching that do speak to me, and I write them down. I also jot down what is hard for me, so I can stay honest with myself. I take what I feel applies to me from the experience, what resonates with my soul, and I try to let the rest blow through me and away.

I am not at a place where I feel comfortable inviting others to go to church with me. I am not at a place where I am 100% sure that I will be in a church building for the rest of my life. I am not at a place where I feel comfortable serving within the options the church currently has for me. Perhaps I’m what churches would call an attender, rather than a member. I honestly don’t know how to classify my Christianity at this point, or if I would use that label at all, but that’s really not my concern. I’m just taking one day at a time, and using my art to work through and express the truth of my beliefs.

Yesterday I was lying on a park bench reading the words of Richard Rohr, when I came across the quotes that I posted in the beginning of this blog post. As books often do, I felt as though the author had strung together just the right words to pinpoint my current spiritual prognosis, and I felt a wave of fresh air rush into my lungs. It always feels good to finally have words to something that has been brewing inside you for months.

I think it is dualistic thinking that made me run away from church for awhile. This idea that if church makes me angry, then I must need the opposite of church. I must need to rush to the opposing side, whatever that might be. And I think it is the subtle shift to nondualistic thinking that is allowing me the grace to step back into church.

It is the realization that any organization, any group that I make affinities with will have an element of let-down. Will have shadow moments, dark-sides of the moon, extreme paradoxes that make it appear to be all a hoax. That is what is so bizarre and yet so rich about this life I’m finally opening my eyes to – it is not a life of “either/or,” it is a life of “both/and.”

Yes, I am wildly impressed and amazed with this man Jesus, but there are equally things he said in history that leave me floundering and shaking my head and wondering, did he really mean that? Yes, I am moved by certain passages in the Bible, like 1 Corinthinas 13 that speak about love, but I am equally horrified by some of those spewing-wrath-of-God type moments. Yes, I have found great life-long friendships through our ties to church, but I have also felt moments of embarrassment when the politics and the buy-in and the one-size-fix-all religion has been pushed harder than the mystical unquantifiable mystery of God.

Life is paradoxical, and no matter what “community” I find myself a part of, I am going to find shadows that don’t make sense when compared to the light. But here is where I think my studies of Eastern spirituality are bringing some much needed balance to my Western upbringing. The idea of Yin Yang means that both sides of the paradox are needed and are in fact inclusive of one another. I do not claim to understand that fully, but when I look at my life realistically, and I dare to speak the truth as the artist in me so longs to do, I can’t help but notice the tragedies and the comedies both feed into the richness of life.

“The weight of this sad time we must obey
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”

— Edgar in King Lear

“What [Shakespeare] ought to have said in his play [King Lear] was one or the other of these – despair or hope – but instead what he said was both of them and thus something in a way more than, and different from, either.”

- Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth

“Will you tell of your hopes and your dreams and the goodness you have seen?
Or will you tell them of the darkness youʼve created with your own hands?
If you donʼt tell them both…
If you donʼt tell them the whole and true story.
They will never believe you.”

- Blaine Hogan, Untitled

I am MESSY. I am light and I am dark. I bring both joy and pain to those around me.

I am an anomaly. The church is an anomaly. The gay community is an anomaly. Atheists are an anomaly. Hippies are an anomaly. Humanity is an anomaly. Dare I say it – God Him/Herself seems to be a bit of anomaly.

And we need “both/and,” not “either/or” sort of thinking. “Both/and” thinking is where grace and dialogue and love and even redemption are born. “Both/and” is where our humanity and Divinity collide. “Both/and” is where I can be a church attender and still realize I am working through a lot of spiritual questions and doubts.

As long as I’m at a church that will tolerate my paradoxes (which I seem to be), I can certainly come to some sort of peace about staying “on board” and tolerating theirs as well. As Rohr says, “my home base is as good a place to learn shadowboxing as anywhere else…”

Tagged as: christian, christianity, church, dualistic, eastern, faith, nondualistic, religion, Spirituality, western, yin yang