An Agnostic Who Prays
I had a thought over the weekend that has stuck with me.
I think maybe it’s useful but overly simplistic to say “I lost my faith,” because in a genuine sense I’m still what I’ve always been: a skeptic in search of the transcendent.
An agnostic who prays.
I think people would be surprised how often I attempt communication in the direction of the place where God used to live in my metaphysical awareness. They aren’t exactly hopeful prayers, because I’m so used to being disappointed. But nevertheless, I haven’t gone no-contact.
In general, I’m not a materialist, and though my present circumstances incline me towards a kind of practical nihilism, nihilism writ large scares the crap out of me when I zoom out. It has no answers for anything. And answers are what I want most of all.
I think in a very real sense, I’m still a man of faith, I just stopped being satisfied with the shape of the thing that was given to me. It wasn’t just a container, it was a prison. It was “believe this or else.” And when it stopped having meaningful answers to lived situations, I was pushed to the point where “or else” felt like the only possible alternative to “lie to yourself and everyone by pretending you continue to believe in things you no longer find believable because that’s what you’ve been conditioned to do since you were old enough to understand language.”
I don’t know what to do with this yet, but it seems like it’s probably pretty significant.
And it makes me think of something else.
I never wrote about my last visit to Fr. Joseph Krupp at the end of my Postcards from Exile series for a few reasons.
One was because I was just dealing with a lot. He was my last stop before coming back to Raleigh and facing my post-marriage life in more permanent terms.
Another was because we didn’t really do that much worth talking about. I was there to nurse my wounds, and the Krupp family (and their friends) welcomed me in and made me feel like I had a home outside my home. Unless you count looking for a new tractor to take care of the parish grounds, or the occasional gloom tourism through the devastated ruins of Flint, Michigan, we just co-existed. We ate meals together. I sat in the studio for every one of Father Joe’s podcasts. We ran errands. We watched movies and sports. We smoked cigars. We hung out while the engine on Papa Krupp’s truck was getting rebuilt.
I had a place to belong and co-regulate when the only place I’d ever belonged was taken and I was interiorly freaking the hell out.
I prayed a lot during the weeks I was there, too. Desperation will do that to a man. The interesting thing about staying with a Catholic priest in a big rectory is the opportunity to just walk down the hall and pop into the private chapel whenever you need. Most mornings, I’d go have coffee with Jesus, like I did on my first stopover to the Kingdom of Krupp. I’d pop into Sunday Mass, far in the back, feeling like an outsider the whole time. It was somehow both familiar and alien.
I found myself, for a couple of days near the end of my stay, trying to force a return, thinking maybe I just needed to make a leap of “faith” I couldn’t feel. I pondered making my first confession in five years. I knew if there was any way for me to do this, it was probably the way Fr. Joe was showing me the faith could be lived.
But as I sat there in the chapel one day, working my way through it, I found that there was still a chasm I just couldn’t cross. If I made the move now just because I had the opportunity and a willing priest friend, I didn’t believe I’d stick with it. And if I do a thing that matters, I want to do it right. I don’t want to screw it up.
Father and I had talked about the possibility of me taking a stab at it. When I reached my conclusion, he was out performing his many pastoral duties, so I texted him:
I've been really struggling with the faith thing. You've brought me closer to it than I've been in years, but it's more like I'm teetering on Mere Christianity than full-on Catholicism. Some part of me wants to just bite the bullet, try confession, see what happens. Especially because I'd be more comfortable going to you than to anyone. But I keep feeling that I'm not ready yet. Not ready to believe all the stuff, not ready to profess the creed, not ready to live the obligations. I feel so disconnected from the Church in so many ways...I have a lot still to work out. But I need you to know, you live your faith and your life in a way that makes it all more real than anyone I've known. Don't ever underestimate the power of just being a normal dude who loves God and loves people but still keeps a sense of perspective and humor. It's huge. It's lifechanging. You've planted a seed.
Still, if you would, please talk to the boss about it and tell me what you think. My problem is that I don't feel any conviction. I've had no Damascus moment. Even my dad says he came back because of some miracle change in his heart. I go to the chapel every day and I ask him for SOMETHING. Give me the push, Lord. But for whatever reason, it hasn't come yet. I'm afraid to force it and then screw it up because my heart's not in it…You haven't pushed, and I'm grateful.
He understood. He never gave me a hard time, not even for a second.
See, I know that faith isn’t just having some tingly feeling about God. It requires intellectual assent, it has to be lived, and it requires obligation, duty, and a reasonable degree of certainty.
For me, stepping into a Catholic Church these days is weirdly analogous to going to visit my kids in the house I used to live in. It’s all so familiar, and yet it’s been made totally clear I no longer belong there, and that makes the familiarity off-putting. The feeling that “maybe it could change if a miracle happened” doesn’t move you any closer to that being a reality.
People tell me with some regularity that they’re sure God is doing something big in my life. That he has some plan for me, and the present horribleness is all to some greater purpose.
I neither believe this nor disbelieve it. Either choice has ramifications that are hard to grapple with. Here too, I lack the information necessary for conviction.
But I also know that if I don’t live my life as though everything happens for a reason, then this is all just a random kick in the crotch. I can’t fathom a good enough reason to torture a man who always tried to keep his feet on the right path, even with the winds that kept trying to blow him this way or that. I can’t imagine a good that could come from a shattered family that could ever outweigh the evil of that destruction.
But I know that if I see this as a furnace instead of a forge, soon enough, it’ll all just turn to ash. A furnace destroys. A forge purifies and forms.
More on the forge theme soon. Stay tuned.
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