Recently, my therapist — who has journeyed with me closely through these last 4 years, walking by my side through the valley of the shadow of death into the first glimmers of resurrection — said to me that she didn’t think that she could ever write up my case as a clinical study because no one would believe it.
What she was referring to was the way in which my journey from death to new life has happened. It is an example, she said, of a coming together of things in such a way that you just have to “wonder what is happening in the Universe.”
The heart of my unbelievable story is, oddly enough, my journey from unemployment to reemployment.
When my journey as a parish priest ended and I no longer had a job or a career, I obviously needed to begin making income. The world was in the midst of the pandemic, and the Bay Area was awash with blue Amazon vans delivering all manner of things to people at a time when going out shopping was no longer an option. All of the Amazon delivery contractors who operate those vans — a vast array of small companies — were looking for drivers. It was well-paying for hourly work, and seemed like a fast-track into having an income. There were so many ads for different contractors — which one to choose? In the end, there was one ad that had a short video of the owner talking about his company. His talk, and the way the company presented itself, created in me a “gut feeling” that this was the place to apply. And so I did, and was quickly hired. Interestingly, the owner never asked me why I was “changing industries”, as he put it.
Six months into my job as a delivery driver, the owner called me and asked if I would consider becoming his hiring manager — the company was growing, and he and his partners had realized that they could not do everything themselves. I readily agreed, and also decided that I needed to tell him the story of why, exactly, I had changed industries. It was a big step, telling that story for the first time to someone outside the circle of family and close friends. And he received it more generously, gracefully, and non-judgmentally than I could have imagined.
And so I began doing the hiring for his company and, over the next couple of years, my role grew into the position I now have, of general manager of that company and another that he subsequently started. All along, I have been the recipient of an extraordinary generosity that has (and I am not overstating it here) saved my life in multiple ways (in the Poetry section of this site, the poem B/R/A/D is about the impact this person has had on my life).
When I step back, as I have done together with my therapist, and look at the arc of events and the extraordinary humanity of the owner of our company, it is astounding. And, as my therapist recently observed, unbelievable.
The word I have used to describe this is grace. A word that has a particular meaning in the Christian tradition, of course. And finding myself to be the recipient of such, well, amazing grace, I have done a good deal of thinking about it.
My conception of God is not exactly traditional. While I use the language of the Christian tradition because it is the language that comes most easily to me, I generally don’t understand that language in a traditional way. We have become a culture for whom the language of metaphor no longer comes easily, and our tendency to take religious language literally has led us to very silly conclusions about some kingly God up there in the sky somewhere who calls the shots with respect to human life. My experience is that this image of God is simply not true.
My experience has also shown me, however, that there is something More to life than meets the eye. Life is more than the sum of its parts. This perception of the More is hard to describe — it’s like seeing something out of the corner of your eye that disappears the moment you look at it. But I am convinced that the More is a genuine. I think that when we speak of the more general and amorphous “spirituality”, we are talking about this human sense that life is more than it appears to be, and that is deeply connected with how we make life meaningful. Religion is an attempt to access the More, to relate to this subtle something that permeates life. The word religion means “connection”, and so religion is the way human beings have traditionally tried to connect with that mystery that we glimpse out of the corner of our eye.
Unfortunately, religion has devolved from being a vehicle into deeper meaning and relationship with the More into being the end itself. We have deluded ourselves into thinking that if we can master our religion, than we have arrived. When, in fact, we have only just started.
The amazing grace in my unbelievable story is, I think, the way the field of the More can manifest itself our lives. Rather than having some kingly God who controls our lives, we have, I think, something more like a field of energy that seeks to influence us. We are either attuned to that field of energy or we are not. Honestly, we all find ourselves on a scale of more or less attuned. And when we are attuned, we can have the sense that moving in a particular direction is the right thing to do.
And sometimes, the moments in which we are most attuned are the moments of our deepest crises.
My feeling that this particular company out of so many choices was the right move for me was, I believe, a moment in which I was attuned to that sacred energy. And the unbelievable story that unfolded from that decision — connecting me to an incredible human being whose compassion and generosity saved me in almost every way a person can be saved — is all the proof I need that I was led by that subtle energy of the More into the path that I needed to be on if I was to find new life again.
There is more to this story — and there have been a number of examples of amazing grace in my life over the past 4 years. This particular part of the story is the one that has been most decisive in my coming back to life again.
I am deeply aware that there are other ways to describe the series of events that unfolded for me. One need not attribute it to a subtle divine energy. Which is why spiritual matters always involve faith. I am also deeply aware that lots of people have stories of deep crisis that did not lead to the sort of new life that I found. My understanding of a kind of field of energy that is always seeking to nudge us, and to which we are more or less attuned, is a way of avoiding the problem that arises when one attributes the positive developments in one’s life to a blessing from God. That interpretation implies that there is a God who favors certain people over others. But this field of energy, this More, is available equally to all. It is about our perception of it, and our ability to attune ourselves to it that is a key variable.
All of the language we use in religion is really language that is intended to point beyond itself to this More, this energy, this subtle something that weaves its way through all life and, ultimately, gives most people the sense that life is more than it seems. It would be an amazing thing if we could look up from arguing about the language and the symbols used to point toward that More and appreciate the deeper meaning and mystery of it all.
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