Our cruise ship slowly glided beneath Golden Gate Bridge on approach to San Francisco. I stood on our cabin balcony taking in magnificence of it. The massive size. The soaring architecture. The marvel of engineering.
Then I saw them. Wide nets ran the length of the bridge on both sides. I was confused for a moment before it hit me—they were to catch people attempting to jump from the bridge and end their lives.
The juxtaposition was jarring. A stirring monument boasting a concession to grim reality. An intersection of beauty and despair.
The nets on the Golden Gate Bridge serve as an apt symbol of life. How often in my own experience have beauty and despair met? The passing of my mother. My grown kids leaving home. Ending a much-loved career. Saying goodbye to a dear friend. Some of my most poignant moments were a melding of the bitter and the sweet.
I tend to avoid those intersections when I can. The starkness of the contrast makes me uncomfortable. But when they inevitably come, I’ve learned to lean in. Embrace the contradiction. The intensity. The whirl of emotions. Because it’s in this crucible that personal growth flourishes. The false fronts I’ve fashioned around my True Self are stripped away. The process is like its catalyst, both healing and painful.
When you come to the intersection of beauty and despair in your life, stand fast. Meet the moment with head high and heart open. Hold the opposing forces close. Embrace the lessons these liminal spaces have to give. If you do, you’ll know a deeper life, and you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.
The howling wind whipped the Pacific into a roiling mass of white-capped waves, sending our cruise ship lurching. Despite the warm temperature, I sat on our balcony wrapped in a coat to shield myself from the ocean spray and took in Nature’s powerful display.
The water’s ever-shifting surface seemed an apt analogy for the world today. Crashing financial markets. Natural disasters fueled by climate change. Political division. Social unrest. It feels like the world itself is moving beneath our feet.
It’s normal for humans to crave a certain level of security. Where do we look for stability, for solid ground, for a steady place to plant our feet? There are many options—our careers, our physical health, our social status, our relationships, our wealth, our hobbies. But if the current state of the world shows us anything, it’s that all of those things are changeable. Jobs are lost to downsizing or retirement. Finances decline. Societal tastes change. Loved ones leave us. Unexpected illnesses strike.
One of the unique aspects of faith is that it attempts to provide a more stable option for security in life, one that is not at the mercy of the winds of fate. Does that make the claims of faith true? Not at all. Is it possible to prove a Higher Power exists? No. While there are rational arguments for the existence of God (like the existence of the universe, the fine-tuning of the universe, the existence of moral law, along with their counter arguments), none of them are conclusive.
Yet I believe. I’m a person of faith based on a combination of intellectual arguments that I find compelling and a lifetime of subjective personal experiences. My personal beliefs have evolved far beyond my evangelical Christian upbringing to embrace the validity of other religions, people from every creed, orientation, and gender identity, and to reject the existence of hell. I believe we all were born of God’s love, live in God’s love, and will return to God’s love at death, belief not required.
Are there problems with my faith system? Absolutely. Are there short-comings with every other worldview? Yes. In a sea of imperfect choices, my faith is where I find my ultimate security, my stable foundation in an unstable world. Is everything I believe true? I don’t know. I could be wrong. But it gives me a level of hope, peace, love, meaning and security that I haven’t found anywhere else. That gives me comfort in stormy seas.
Where do you find your security? I’m in no way saying it needs to resemble mine. Consider your options. Find something that works for you. Choose well. Place your trust in something worthy of the incredible person you are. If you do, you’ll find stability in turbulent times, and you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.
The thousand of us in the hotel ballroom hung on every word coming from this short, middle-aged woman with tousled dreadlocks. Nearly twenty years have passed, but I can still picture her on that stage, remember her warmth and wit, and marvel at her wonderfully blunt honesty.
The woman was writer Anne Lamott, speaking at an emerging church conference to a roomful of young leaders who were trying to become more effective at helping people with their spiritual lives. I’ve been a fan of hers ever since, especially her books Traveling Mercies and Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.
When a recent email from the Center for Action and Contemplation featured her ragged conversion experience and thoughts on prayer, I decided to share it with you. Regardless of where you’re at on the spiritual spectrum, I hope you’ll find her candor refreshing and her insight valuable as you take another step toward Becoming Yourself.
Writer Anne Lamott chronicles her surprising conversion to Christianity while addicted to drugs and alcohol:
When I went back to church, I was so hungover that I couldn’t stand up for the songs…. The last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape. It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling—and it washed over me.
I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and … walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, “[Forget] it: I quit.” I took a long deep breath and said out loud, “All right. You can come in.”
So this was my beautiful moment of conversion.
And here in dust and dirt, O here The lilies of his love appear. [1]
Lamott reflects on praying from the place of desperation and surrender:
Prayer … begins with stopping in our tracks, or with our backs against the wall, or when we are going under the waves, or when we are just so sick and tired of being physically sick and tired that we surrender, or at least we finally stop running away and at long last walk or lurch or crawl toward something. Or maybe, miraculously, we just release our grip slightly.
Prayer is talking to something or anything with which we seek union, even if we are bitter or insane or broken. (In fact, these are probably the best possible conditions under which to pray.) Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up. The opposite may be true: We may not be able to get it together until after we show up in such miserable shape….
My belief is that when you’re telling the truth, you’re close to God. If you say to God, “I am exhausted and depressed beyond words, and I don’t like You at all right now, and I recoil from most people who believe in You,” that might be the most honest thing you’ve ever said. If you told me you had said to God, “It is all hopeless, and I don’t have a clue if You exist, but I could use a hand,” it would almost bring tears to my eyes, tears of pride in you, for the courage it takes to get real—really real. It would make me want to sit next to you at the dinner table.
So prayer is our sometimes real selves trying to communicate with the Real, with Truth, with the Light. [2]
From the March 29, 2023 Daily Meditation from The Center for Action and Contemplation.This post originally published April 15, 2023.
[1] Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), 50–51. The closing line is from Henry Vaughan’s poem “The Revival.”
[2] Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers (New York: Riverhead Books, 2012), 5–6, 6–7.
