Doing battle with myself

Yesterday I descended the steps to my basement office to do battle with demons. I did not know when I entered into undistracted solitude that I would be coming to grips with the darkness within me, though I knew no such endeavor is ever safe. The time since my experience has been avoiding solitude and silence, unwilling to engage the unfinished business I left in the basement of my heart.

I love solitude. Often it is a place for me to embrace and be embraced by Mystery. I touch eternity in those moments. This time, however, the Spirit of Christ was content to prod me, and poke at some uncomfortable places. In fact, I would call it a wrestling between us.

Nouwen explores the right and privilege of each of God’s children to intimacy, fecundity and ecstasy. In solitude it is Nouwen’s discussion of fecundity, fruitfulness that haunts and harasses me. God and I have this push and pull about what is my responsibility in bearing fruit and what is God’s.

The unspoken question burns within me, “If I have this right and privilege to bear fruit then where is it?” We have just completed our sixth missions convention as pastors at Sebewaing Assembly, setting a near record low for attendance this Sunday. Don’t people get that Elaine and I care deeply about missions? We have had a monthly emphasis and an annual convention for six years? I am frustrated and angry that they don’t seem to care. My mind rushes around in the solitude of my sacred space to other frustrations, they come boiling to the surface. “Why don’t they care about reaching the lost? Or about their own intimacy with Christ?”

The anger rises up with in me, and Nouwen’s words return, “He is not asking us to produce a lot so we can feel good about ourselves. He is asking us to be fruitful. And we don't make fruit. We receive fruit as a gift and say, ‘That is very beautiful.’ We don't say, ‘I always thought it would look exactly like this.’ What we don't make, we cannot predict or define.”

Restless I climb the stairs and pace the sanctuary.

“Ok then God, if you bring the fruit what is my job?”

Do what you know to do, be obedient.

My soul breaks in to angry tears. I think about the mess in my life. I am afraid to push the relationship and make the visits I know I ought to do. I am fearful, and afraid that my fear will end all the good things I resolved to do. I think of the mess in our house and how it keeps us from offering hospitality, cramps us and stresses me. I pound my fist on the piano lid in anger.

“God help me obey!”

Today I heard Henri’s words and they hit hard,

Anger in particular seems close to a professional vice in the contemporary ministry. Pastors are angry at their leaders for not leading and at their followers for not following. They are angry at those who do not come to church and angry at those who come for coming without enthusiasm. They are angry at their families, who make them feel guilty and angry at themselves for not being who they want to be. This is not an open blatant, roaring anger, but a hidden behind the smooth word, the smiling face and the polite handshake. It is a frozen anger, an anger which settles into a bitter resentment and slowly paralyzes a generous heart. If there is anything that makes the ministry look grim and dull, it is this dark, insidious anger in the servants of Christ (The Way of the Heart 23,24).

Solitude, he says, is the place that will eventually cure our hearts of this anger and greed, freeing us to be whole and holy. For my part I know I have unfinished business with God in my place apart. I left praying a Taizé song,

Stay with us O Lord Jesus Christ,
Night will soon fall.
Then stay with us O Lord Jesus Christ,
Light in our darkness.