When We're All Finally Home

Author: John Lucas Kovasckitz

My wife and I have been back in the States for a little over a month, after seven months traveling overseas and a year and a half of not having a home address. In the past year, we’ve sold two vans (our little “home” before we left, and our even smaller home while in New Zealand), we’ve trekked through the Himalayas, we’ve braved a lot of wild roads on scooters, we’ve played with baby elephants in Thailand, we’ve snorkeled with manta rays in Bali, we’ve walked through the Notre-Dame and the Coliseum, and we’ve eaten the best pizza ever made at a little shop in Naples.

The past seven months were were new and romantic and tiring and sweaty and breathtaking and stressful and glorious and monotonous and I was homesick but also wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to go back.

These days we’re figuring out how to be American citizens again...we bought a couch after three days of looking, we bought a car after two weeks of looking, and shopping alone I picked out an upright piano in about 30 minutes (although I’m sure that’s just a coincidence). Our books are unpacked and sorted, pictures are hung...but there’s a pesky frame that’s poorly made and I straighten it at least three times a day before giving up. We have a kitchen again, our own bed, car insurance, a recycling bin, and we’ve filed our late taxes. We’ve reconnected with people we love, hiked our favorite local spots, and gone back to our favorite restaurants.

Danielle signed up for classes while in India and has hit the ground running going back to school. I’ve been writing music and straightening that damn frame for the last time and I started working at a small woodshop a few days a week with my best friend. I’m honestly not super handy but I think I’m slowly learning. My first day on the job I nicked my hand with a power sander and last week I was lifting a table and completely threw out my back. Once I got home it took five minutes to get from the car to the living room floor where I struggled out of my dirty clothes and iced my back, and then I crawled up the stairs to have a small breakdown trying to reach the shampoo in the shower.

After a trip to the chiropractor, a lot of time on our three-day-search couch and a lot of ice, my back is still sore but it seems to be healing OK, and I just finished my first week in the shop without added injury. Mentally the past couple of weeks have been pretty difficult...I think I had grander ideas of what coming home would be like when I was gone. I’ve been restless; I thought that I would feel more purpose, a greater pull of creativity, maybe a greater sense of arrival. I guess I at least figured I would be able to reach the shampoo without issue.

I think I’ve been homesick coming home.

I know that sentence might not make much sense...but I’ve felt it. I think we all feel an ache we can’t quite explain, and a lot of us figure that maybe once we can travel the world or go home or retire or make our first million or meet our dream partner or have children the ache will go away once and for all. That last one on the list strikes true for me...on one of our flights I started crying at the ad (literally just a picture, mind you) in front of me showing a woman on a rollercoaster with her kids. I ache to be a father, but I know that my Deep ache will probably only multiply in the best way when the time comes.

To ache is to suffer, and I think true love requires the ache of suffering. I think we were all made to love, and thus (for a time) to ache and to suffer.

For those of you who quite vocally disagree with some of my beliefs, it will come as no surprise that I attended a week-long silent meditation retreat at a Buddhist center in Thailand. It was probably the most powerful spiritual experience of my life, and was shared with my wife and some of our best friends (Ben, Lydia, and Emily) and about thirty people from around the world.

For six days, we rose from our wooden “beds” at 4:30 each morning to a ringing bell (as an aside, the bell was a repurposed bomb left unused from the Vietnam War...and if that’s not the greatest story of redemption I’m not sure what is). During our stay, we locked up our phones, didn’t kill the mosquitos sucking our blood, observed strict silence, didn’t look in a mirror, skipped dinner, and practiced several sessions of walking, sitting, and standing meditations throughout the day. We got there a little late, so all of the cush contemplative chores like sweeping the meditation areas were already taken, so every afternoon Ben and I would strip to our shirts and underwear and silently scrub the men’s toilets together.

Before that week, I had never practiced sitting meditation in my life. I think growing up in the Christian church I’ve historically felt a bit of aversion to the practice, but now I think it’s really just prayer - perhaps in one of its truest forms. To meditate is to be Still...to empty oneself, to listen and observe - to be Aware.

It took several sessions to begin to learn how to physically sit still for an extended period of time, and to begin to train my mind to do the same. The second day, I pressed into my practice and was given a mystical experience - I felt the sensation of floating outside of my body and entered into a vision. For those of you that I’ve lost here, that’s OK...as Michael Scott would say, I’ll catch you on the flippity-flip.

Within this experience, I was in my body, aware of my breath, but also simultaneously outside of it. I rose to the tall treetops within a scene of alpine beauty: snow-capped rugged peaks, a clear blue lake, dark green trees. I felt an overwhelming peace and joy...an overwhelming Oneness. As I breathed I felt that I was breathing with the mountains, the trees. I was one with them and I understood them. I'm not sure how long I stayed in this state before coming fully back to my body, elated with the beauty and mystery of what I had experienced.

For those of you who quite vocally disagree with some of my beliefs, it will also come as no surprise that I have had a lot of difficulty over the last several years with Christianity, and whether or not I still have enough of its roots left to be covered by its branches. I think the easy thing to do sometimes is to cut and run when there’s conflict...as an Enneagram 9, I perhaps feel this more deeply than most. To stay with humility and tenderness despite differences and conflict is often a difficult arena. After my powerful spiritual experience within a Buddhist center, when I hadn’t experienced something at that level within the walls of a church, I thought for a bit that maybe it was my path to find God under a new tree.

Within Buddhism it is believed that the root of suffering is attachment - through the desire to have or to not have (craving or aversion). Buddhist monks are taught to picture a rotting corpse when thinking of sex, and if food is found to be especially delicious - creating attachments - you are taught to spit the mouthful into your hand, observe it, and then to swallow it again. Mmm boy.

Over the next couple of days, I tried not to create an attachment to again achieve an out of body experience, but nevertheless I suffered through the subsequent sessions. I was wiggly and couldn’t focus, slowly growing more and more frustrated. I struggled to wake up in the morning, and I struggled to go to sleep on the wooden bed at night without Danielle. I struggled with the mosquitoes. I struggled with the story of the Buddha...that to find enlightenment he had to leave his wife and child behind. I struggled with parts of Buddhist philosophy and especially the belief in reincarnation - what I believe to be an underlying excuse for tolerating and further turning the wheel of injustice. I think we learn the most through struggle...and over those several days I learned a lot about my marriage, my own selfishness, and I further solidified many of my beliefs.

I think I especially struggled with the idea of striving for non-attachment to avoid suffering. I believe that to avoid attachment is to avoid true love, and that to avoid love is the worst suffering of all. I want to love deeply...thus I want to fully take suffering head on, come what may. I want to enjoy sex with my wife without thinking of a rotting corpse, I want to enjoy good food without feeling the need to spit it into my hand, I want to father children and to call them my own, I want a comfortable bed unless I’m camping under the stars, and I want to kill a few mosquitoes every once in awhile.

I think God is the ache and God is the roots and God is the branches, and God can be found wherever we look because God is everywhere and in everything. Yet I think we all have our own stories, our own parents. As the days progressed, I learned more and more that I was no Buddhist; I was no monk. Despite the conflict and despite the differences and despite my unbelief, I believe Christianity to be my father, my mother...my roots, my story.

Particularly frustrated during a sitting meditation session, I looked around the room and to the banner at the front - one of the resolutions reading, that all people strive to realize the heart of their own religions. In that moment, I closed my eyes and prayed: Jesus, show me your heart. Immediately I was again lifted out of my body. No vision...just the same overwhelming feelings of peace and joy.

I think I’ve come to the peaceful realization that we’re all One, different parts of the Whole...and that God is within us all, but that Christians are my blood relatives. We share the crazy family reunions and the rituals and favorite stories that bind us together.

One of the most beautiful things about the week was that our teacher, a woman who gave up attending her own doctoral ceremony to be with our class, reminded me deeply of my Grandma K...one of my favorite people in the world. I didn’t catch my teacher’s name until the end of the week, so in my head she was my Buddhist Grandma K.

My Grandma K has Parkinson’s disease, and she trembles and shakes a lot these days. It was extremely special to learn how to sit still and to move and to walk with intention from someone who had her presence, her Spirit.

My Grandma has been one of my greatest teachers of love and of God, and how to fill a home with the joy of family. She lives in the little town of Hope Mills, and the Kovasckitz home on Main Street has been one of the great refuges of my life. However, these days even that home leaves me a little achy, a little homesick. My Grandpa isn’t there anymore in his den watching football, or playing Spider Solitaire on his computer being the grand gatekeeper of the sliding glass door. The pool feels smaller, the kitchen table underneath Grandma’s wind-up toys can’t fit as many of us these days. My cousins are all grown up, life is more complicated...and some of them have even had children of their own. This young generation has brought new life and perspective to meeting at my Grandma’s, but the ache still remains.

I think we’re all aching for God in our own ways. Wholeness. Togetherness. Peace. Family. I think we can get tastes on this earth, but it's never the full glass...there's always a piece or two missing.

I don’t exactly know what I believe about the afterlife anymore. I think like reincarnation within Buddhism, talks of heaven and hell and the afterlife within Christianity have allowed us to look past injustice as we meet it here and now.

But nobody knows for sure what happens after we die. Maybe we just fall asleep forever. Maybe we’re reincarnated. Maybe we’re all in a simulation and I’ve already died hundreds of times. I hope not. Personally, I believe in a loving Creator, and with the presence of temporary suffering I have to believe that it’s all leading somewhere, that somehow there is a purpose for it all. If there is an afterlife or a heaven, I believe that it will be a continuation...it will be familiar. It will be the earth as it should be, with pure peace and joy, because all of the reasons for those things to be absent will be gone. I believe that there will be an overwhelming sense of Oneness, wholeness, of family - because we will all be there, no matter what we said or did or believed before...for if we weren’t all there, it wouldn’t truly be complete. And I think we’ve all experienced enough hell on earth to know a good thing when we see it.

I don’t know if I saw and experienced a glimpse of the afterlife in my vision, but I wouldn’t mind if it was. I don’t know how we’ll reach life after death...if we go to another dimension immediately when we die or if we’ll all wake up together. If it’s all the same, I think I’d like to ride there through the night in the back of my family’s 1992 two-toned Chevrolet Suburban with burgundy interior. My dad will be driving because he knows the way, and my mom will have her headphones in and she’ll be singing. Danielle will fall asleep with her head in my lap soon after we start moving, and I’ll nod off and wake up just as we’re pulling into the driveway.

It will be Grandma’s white house, but instead of the pool in the back it’ll be right up against the alpine lake with a large garden to the side leading into the expansive forest. The house will already be full, but quiet, still, and asleep. Maybe Danielle and I will build a little neighboring cabin, but for now we enter. We’ll go in as quietly as we can, but the sliding glass door will make a noise and Mugsy will give a sleepy bark. We’ll steal upstairs to put our things away, and Grandma will be at the top of the stairs in her cotton nightgown. Her hair will still be white, but her eyes and limbs are young. My mom will tell her that we tried not to wake her, but she won’t answer - just smile and whisper, “hey, kids”. She’ll hug us and scratch our backs with fingers that don’t shake anymore. She’ll tell us that sugar cookies are in the jar, and we’ll silently eat cookies and drink milk, and my dad will eat a cold roast beef sandwich.

We’ll go make beds out of big pillows on the living room floor because all of the rooms are full, but we won’t mind. We’ll wake up late and pad our way out - Grandpa will be reading the paper with Mugsy in his lap, and Grandma will be watching the birds with Uncle John. She’ll have a cup of coffee in her hands, and outside the window Aunt Carol will be walking the garden with a cat or a chicken at her heels, and my dad will be pulling weeds. Steph will be outside running after Riven and Flapjack, and Grandma will giggle. When they see me come in, they’ll say, “morning, Luke”.

And that’s how I’ll know I’m finally home.

//

Six years old, but still holding true. I’ve gotten better at singin’ and recording and the boys have gotten better at videos, but I think this one is still special.

An interview with Dominic Laing

Author: John Lucas Kovasckitz with Dominic Laing

I've never met Dom in person...I don't know how he takes his coffee, whether or not he has a dog, or what kind of car he drives. However, there are few people in my life that have personally pushed me forward, encouraged, and inspired me in the manner that he has.

I couldn't afford to record my last album Promised Land out-of-pocket, and needed to raise the money through Kickstarter. The campaign started off strong, but hit a lull mid-point. There were a couple of $10 and $20 days, and I started to seriously doubt myself...to question why I had put myself out there in the first place, and to doubt the songs I had written. 

It was during this point that I received a very substantial contribution from a guy named Dominic Laing from Philadelphia (he's now putting down roots in Portland, OR). I thought it must have been a mistake, but a few minutes later he sent me a message containing these lines: "...much of what you hope to see, much of what you believe exists in the heart of every person -- I believe and walk with you. I'm too broken to be cynical, too hurt to be angry. I'm just gonna believe every word you say and do what I can to support the howl in your heart."

I collapsed weeping in my wife's arms, repeating I don't understand, I don't understand. And I still don't...strangers don't give like Dom. But I knew in that moment that the album was going to be funded...and it was. Over two hundred people gave to make it come together in the end, and I'm incredibly grateful for every person that poured so much into the process. But it's Dom's gift that I will always remember. I later connected with one of Dom's friends through a project, and when I told him the story of Dom's gift he said that he wasn't surprised at all...and that Dom was "one hell of a guy".  

As it turns out, Dom is also one hell of a poet.

Dom's poetry is rich, and it leaves an ache...often it's simultaneously holy and profane (perhaps as are we all), simultaneously "Now and Not Yet". From the interview below, which is poetry itself: "This form of communion isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. If anything that’s more confirmation that I need to keep doing it. Poetry pulls me close to God and into his appalling strangeness. Poetry is my whistling in the dark, my undignified dance and my sackcloth and ash."

From the correspondence we've had, and from his poetry, I've come to know Dom as both fiery and gentle...gracious, kind, and full of humility. One hell of a guy to be sure.

I've posted a handful of my favorites from his book of poetry, "Smoke by Day, Fire by Night" below...which he is offering to send to you (yes, you) for free. No catches, no gimmicks, simply a gift - instructions for how to get your hands on one found at the very end of this post, along with his information. Dom also does incredible video work..."When the Saints" - a powerful short film which he wrote and directed - is posted below.

Dom's interview will truly make you a better human being. As my boy Pete Holmes says: get into it.

be here with me,
be now with me — 
presence for present's sake.
not for the sake of "later," 
not for the false promise of
"greater,"
not for pearly gates,
harps, halos,
mansions or yellow-brick roads.
be here with me
and behold with me;
stay awhile with me
and pray wild with me;
dance like amber waves.
church and praise like ocean waves.
burn and blaze, bonfire bright.
smoke by day, fire by night. 

//

do I prefer old ghosts
to new flesh?
am I more comfortable
being haunted,
as opposed to being seen anew?
do I sing old songs and old tunes;
do I wear old clothes
and dig out old wounds?
do I settle for holdable,
malleable, passive memory —
can I turn memories into marionettes?
do I wind back the clock
and seek to reset sun, moon and stars?
teach my hands to be brave,
shepherd.
teach my heart how to be brave, son. 

//

how precious and how glorious —
to confess lack.
to profess wound.
to express gap.
          "here, brother; I fall short."
          "here, sister; I don't know."
          "here, my love; I fear — I tremble."
how rare, how melodious;
how comet-fall, how northern-lights,
how broken, how ashen,
how many-splendored,
how tear-stained and levitating,
how fishes and loaves and po' boys,
how prayer and second-line beads,
how grace and grace
how amazing and amazing.
          to be gathered.
          to be warmed.
          to be known in full.
          to be loved in full.

//

yes, darkness —
but still, light.
yes fear;
but still, fight.
yes, mud — and yes, mire;
but still, blood.
but still, fire.
bare knuckles.
bare souls.
bare hurt.
be whole.

//

shake dust
and be shaken.
raise hell
and be risen.

Can you give a basic timeline of your life up to this point? This doesn’t have to be super in-depth, but I’d love to hear of some of the stages that have helped to shape who you are today.

Dom: I’m Dominic, and I believe in grace, communion, mystery and tenderness. Or, put another way:

— 1 of 4 —

In junior high, I wrote my first short story. It’s not good. It involves a high schooler — a Donnie Darko, moody, introspective type — who kills his cheating girlfriend and her lover in a fit of rage.

Now, cheating partners and crimes of passion are well-worn literary devices; but when you attend a tiny private Christian school, a story about teenagers, sex and murder raises an eyebrow or two.

Glenda Vanderkam, my English teacher for 6th and 8th grade, as well as my art teacher (small school, remember) met with myself and my parents. She didn’t chastise or reprimand me. She didn’t tell me I was wasting my time and should do something more productive.

Instead, with compassion and kindness, she told me to keep writing.

— 2 of 4 —

Also in junior high, I saw the film Amadeus.

Antonio Salieri, a good-but-never-great composer, meets Mozart and considers him a brat, a divine joke unworthy of God’s bequeathed genius. He hatches a plan to drive Mozart insane.

And now, standing at the foot of Mozart’s deathbed, he’s almost succeeded.

Except now he sees Mozart’s unfinished work — a requiem. He examines the sheet music, and he’s overcome by the beauty. “…Let me help,” says Salieri.

Mozart’s spirit awakens. Salieri, armed with ink and quill, transcribes Mozart’s dictations.

“First, the tenors…” In the soundtrack, the voices float over both Mozart and Salieri. The bass voices follow, linked now with the tenors. Bassoon and trumpet and timpani and strings cascade behind them, instrument building upon instrument. Salieri struggles to keep up —

“You’re going too fast!”

“Do you have me?” Screams Mozart.

Salieri finishes the last notation and flips the pages to Mozart, who lunges for them. His eyes scan the pages, his right arm raises as if he’s conducting the orchestra, and —

— with utter majesty, the requiem rises to life, all parts in unison, more beautiful and terrifying than Salieri or Mozart could have imagined. God’s glory on full display.

— 3 of 4 —

The summer after I graduated college, three years after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, I and six others spent a month in New Orleans, Louisiana, working with various non-profit organizations.

Never before had I encountered such a sweet and aching place. New Orleans bursts at the seams with rage and revelry. Death and dirge to the cemetery, then Life Everlasting and Second Line back to the church.

A city and its citizens, in danger of being forever defined by its trauma, raises song and shout (and Bourbon Street to-go cups) to once more profess belief in healing, to once more unspool a yearning for God’s Electric Shore, once more…When the Saints Go Marching In.

New Orleans is also the birthplace of Jazz. On Sundays, the slaves gathered in Congo Square, just outside the French Quarter. There, they would play their ancestral music, dance, and call on the Name.

“Life hurts like a motherfucker,” they seemed to say, “But we…we shall come forth as gold.”

— 4 of 4 —

When I was 26, I moved to Philadelphia. Eight days later, a kid told me he had a gun and demanded my cash and my phone. He fled around the corner. He was arrested later that day.

We wound up exchanging a few letters, and eventually, I wound up visiting him in prison.

Philadelphia’s a vibrant, precious city. If they love you, they want you at every Christmas dinner. But if they hate you, you’re a leper. In this way, Philadelphia taught me about the necessity of tenderness.

Not about its rewards or benefits, but its necessity.

Hatred risks nothing and rewards nothing. But tenderness risks being broken, battered and blown to smithereens.

It’ll always be easier to tell the world to go fuck itself. Such rejection tosses aside the belief that the world could be something other than what’s seen.

Tenderness, though, demonstrates profound belief in the hearts of others. It acknowledges what is, and hopes for what could be. Such belief does not relent, and is stronger than any weapon.

Tenderness is the clear and consistent declaration of love.

It is the Lord’s current which takes us, cleans us and guides us home.

What is it about storytelling in its various forms that draws you in, and what do you feel is the power of a well-told story within our culture?

Dom: “Once upon a time…” goodness, don’t you love those words?

Good storytelling is a good campfire; something built that seeks out others and calls them to itself. “Come and gather. See and be seen.” Storytelling invites and illumines. It welcomes others to sit and be revealed.

And as you share of yourself, you too are illuminated.  The other person leans in, and through storytelling all ‘other’-ness sheds. By campfire light, we enter a fuller knowledge of our friends.

Again: Invitation. Not proclamation, or defamation. Invitation.

Storytelling plants me in the company of other people. Storytelling allows me to participate in currents of hope and ache with others. We stand in those vibrant waters together.

“The Kingdom of God is like…” Christ healed the sick, made sure no one went hungry, and he told stories. His storytelling always pushed Kingdom, always hummed with love that bent him toward the destitute.

Christ expressed the Now and the Not Yet. Christ could talk about people working in the field, and the audience would understand.

But how are workers in a field like the Kingdom of God? How is something we know and inhabit — Now — like something we’re ignorant of and don’t see — Not Yet?

Storytelling confronts, comforts and places us in loving spaces of tension. The tension of storytelling, that which makes you feel seemingly contradictory emotions — that’s the mystery and romance of God.

There is God, on the cross, bleeding; and there is God, in heaven, silent; and there is God, in our souls, weeping, split wide open and living in perpetual wound.

And yet, in the midst of this angst, we tell stories. We can’t help it. It’s our grasp for the ineffable. The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. My heart is like a throttling trombone on Frenchmen Street.

I take comfort in the fact that words fall short. Words — Now — falling short — Not Yet.

“Once upon a time…once upon a time…yes, and amen…yes, and amen…”

I think what I like most about your poetry is that it blurs the lines between the sacred and the “unholy”, the divine and the destitute. It’s raw, honest, and real...and in many ways it’s what I’m after when I write. I think that a lot of people are tired of the whitewashed and polished ways of describing and relating to God within a world that is full of deep injustice and pain. How have you experienced God in the grit and brokenness of your own life and the lives of others?

Dom: First, thank you. You’re very kind.

Poetry as prayer — as confession — as liturgical orientation. Here I am, and here you are. This is me with a blank canvas — Christ, abide with me.

Think of the poems as emotional coordinates. Along with that, consider the strange truth — sometimes disappointing, sometimes jubilant — that when I’m honest, where I think I am isn’t where my heart tells me I’m located.

Poems allow me to explore my spirit, and I’m not always thrilled with what I find. However, the more I write, the more peace I experience about myself and how I relate to God. I can make peace with the occasional foul language and the repeated use of the word ‘ache’ because that’s where the Maker has me.

So as I am fearfully and wonderfully made, so I make. Again, it’s communion. It’s belief in a song you’ve never sung, but whose words you’ve known from the moment of birth.

This is my story, this is my song.

This form of communion isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. If anything that’s more confirmation that I need to keep doing it. Poetry pulls me close to God and into his appalling strangeness. Poetry is my whistling in the dark, my undignified dance and my sackcloth and ash.

Wendell Berry said it better than I ever could: “It all turns on affection.” The more I write, the more I believe in affection. Even when I want to rage, even when I want to lash out and strike at the world, poetry and communion with God crooks me down to affection, to its slow, peculiar and sonorous work.

Still, I hope. Still, I believe.

I can relate first-hand (without even having met you) that you lead a life of generosity and compassion for others. What is it that you want to pass along to others through your life, and what gives you this fire?

Dom: A hammer can build a home or crack a skull. It’s all in how you use it. I can use whatever funds I have to shore up my walls and my domain and my barricades, or I can open myself, make available time and resource, and invite others into relationship.

I’ve experienced moments of molten grace in my life — kindness so emboldening that it makes me want to fly, and kindness so rich and laden it presses my face into the wet dirt.

Grace, Good Grace — that which pulls me up to Heaven, and draws me down to Earth.

I’m thinking back to times where there’ve been samaritans in my life — back in key moments when my heart was breaking — on account of betrayal, on account of loss, on account of confusion — and someone was there to listen, to lift up, to sit in the brokenness.

I can remember my heart melting like ice cream in the middle of August. I can remember feeling like I was going to weep until I was dehydrated. I can remember feeling like I was going to spontaneously combust.

And in those moments, Christ saw fit that I would not be alone.

Generosity — Affection — Tenderness — Abiding — L-O-V-E —

It’s the miracle of God in which we’re allowed to ride side-saddle. It’s living proof of Now and Not Yet.

I was thinking about “thank you” recently — those words, “thank you.” — Saying “thank you” always seems incomplete, but when I try to say ‘thank you’ again, the words feel even smaller, and the more I try to say ‘thank you’, the less it adds up to.

Sin is new every morning, and Grace is new every morning. I can’t say “thank you” all at once, so I shouldn’t keep trying. Instead, profess grace and gratitude; sown one day at a time, one breath at a time.

In the name of the Father,
thank you
In the name of the Son,
thank you
In the name of the Holy Spirit,
thank you

//

Dom's instructions to request "Smoke By Day, Fire by Night", the free book of poetry:
-Follow me on Instagram (@dominiclaing)
-DM me w/ address and number of books
-Wait :)

Dom's blog and website: www.dominiclaing.com/

[CLICK ON BLOG TITLE TO ACCESS COMMENTING]

The Pursuit of Bravery: This is my religion

Author: John Lucas Kovasckitz

The pursuit of bravery is the pursuit of love, for love is the purpose; love is the beginning. In the beginning there was love, but love has no beginning for love always was. Love caused the stars to be formed, and love caused man to rise from their dust.

I believe that love, the beginning before the beginning (what always was), the great Mystery or Spirit which can be experienced but not explained, are ways to describe God - among countless others. I believe that God is alive...that the fabric of God is within us and that we are within the fabric of God.

From a young age, I was given the language of Christianity to describe and to encounter God. I still speak in this language, for it is my mother-tongue, and I now believe that this is perhaps the best way to describe Christianity or any other religion: as a language by which humanity attempts to speak to each other about God, and as a means to know God.

Languages are imperfect means of communication, limited by the use of words we have created. In fact, much more is communicated without or beyond words. All religions are imperfect means to know God - a God I believe to desire to speak to us all in a language that we can understand. I believe that what, and how, we communicate (read here: how a religion or faith is acted upon, and how it works within) is more important than the language in which the words are contained. From the pen of the Apostle Paul: “If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” (1 Cor. 13:1)

I prayed the simple prayer of salvation when I was seven, and I was baptized weeping as a teenager...I meant it. As a child I read the Beginner’s Bible with colorful pictures several times through before I graduated to the one with no pictures and the passages that are often dark and confusing. It too I read cover to cover. The church is where I learned to sing; I played on music teams and led worship services every Sunday for years, and as a teenager I would often lead on Sunday mornings and then again that Sunday night for my peers in youth group. Friday night worship gatherings, Wednesday night Bible studies. All of this to say, I was deep within the culture and I took my faith seriously. I spoke the language and I spoke it well.

But as I approached my college years, I found that I could not wait to go out on my own, away from the church that held much of my identity. This was not because I believed my church to be evil (I have only the highest respect for the community in which I was raised, and the integrity of the people within), or that I myself wanted to go through a “wild and sinful” stage to perhaps experiment with drugs and sex, but rather I had a growing dissatisfaction with, and aversion to, much of the doctrine and underlying messages of the Christianity with which I was presented.

I wouldn’t have had the words for it then, but I wanted to meet God on my own terms, away from the avenues in which I was raised, and to find my own story. What followed were years of deconstruction to the bare bones of what I believed, and the subsequent reconstruction of my faith. This reconstruction is not over, and I hope that I never consider myself to have arrived at ultimate spiritual truth, refusing to grow deeper or to continue to seek God in more fullness. I have much to learn, and I still have many questions...yet I believe my language and life to be richer on the other side.

Much of my spiritual dissatisfaction grew primarily from exclusionism; I feel that within the culture of Christianity, there is either blatantly professed spirit of exclusion, or a mentality found beneath the surface. We hold the one truth; us against the world, either sinner or a saint, saved by the blood of a savior who has done all of the work and heavy lifting for us.

For years I wrestled with the concept of a loving God that would create the earth and humanity full of beauty and innocence, but open to be wrecked...for the earth to become for so many a place of literal hell through wars, genocide, extreme poverty, and other unbearable injustices. And then, at the end of it all, if we did not accept loving and forgiving Jesus as our savior - through a simple prayer, and within the murkiness of human consciousness - we would not merely perish, but we would burn forever within the torments of an eternal hell. The privileged who had accepted Christ would receive salvation and live forever within heaven, a place of peace and fullness - communion with God.

I found that I could no longer believe in this narrative of God.

Richard Rohr writes, “Any discovery or recovery of our divine union has been called ‘heaven’ by most traditions. Its loss has been called ‘hell’. The tragic result of our amnesia is that we cannot imagine that these terms are first of all referring to present experiences. When you do not know who you are, you push all enlightenment off into a possible future reward and punishment system, within which hardly anyone wins. Only the True Self knows that heaven is now and that its loss is hell - now … Heaven is the state of union both here and later.” He further concludes, “If your notion of heaven is based on exclusion of anybody else, then it is by definition not heaven. The more you exclude, the more hellish and lonely your existence always is.”

When hell is solely something to come, we ignore the deep injustice happening all around us. When heaven is solely something to come, we ignore the present existence of God.

I still believe in some form of afterlife or reunion after bodily death, void of the suffering and darkness evident today. But I believe that the kingdom of heaven is to be found - and brought about - here, and now...amidst all of our beauty and wreckage.

I believe that we are eternal beings, and that in some form heaven or hell can be eventually fully entered by our own choosing (for love requires a choice); we can either live from the True nature in which we have been created, or we can choose to live fully from the ego - which ultimately tells us that we are god. The ego is not necessarily primarily evil, but has evil capabilities - unlike our True selves. The journey of shedding our false self, or ego, and realizing and reconnecting with our True self (that which is already one with God) I believe to be the way of “salvation”.

I have personally found the life of Jesus to be the ultimate example to humanity of transcending the ego, and further, that what Jesus represents transcends Christianity. I believe God to be bigger than our religions and the names we have ascribed to God, which divide the “believer” and the “infidel”.

I believe that the truth of God can be found in the pages of scripture, that its writers were inspired by God and intimately knew Him, but that the Bible is a part of humanity’s journey to discover and to know God, and not an overarching guidebook to be taken out of cultural and historical context. I believe that the character, heart, and desires of a living and infinite God can not, and should not, be limited to what we read in the Bible or any other text.

I believe that God is love, and that love is the most universal and fundamental language of all. I believe that God is within us all, regardless of our actions or beliefs.

Many people within the Christian community, many whom I respect deeply, would say that my convictions are at best a watering down of the Gospel, and at worst dangerous assertions. I would submit personally that I have found the true watering down of the Gospel to be a faith that costs nothing.

For if our faith costs nothing, it is worth nothing.

This is not to say that we are “saved” by our outward actions, but if my faith does not change the way that I live and love others, if it does not aid in my treatment of the land and my abhorrence to my own selfishness and greed, if it does not bring forth greater yields of the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, and self-control, then my faith is worthless. My prayers are empty and self-centered, my heaven is empty and self-centered.

My words are not an attempt to attack Christianity or the church, and are certainly not meant to separate myself from the foundational teachings of Christ. Rather, my words are an attempt to call forth something greater both personally and collectively.

Jesus did not live a life of comfort or excess. He had little patience for religious dogma. He challenged oppressive authority. He broke down barriers and stereotypes. And he gave up his life for love.

I believe that we’re more alike than we are different. We may not vote the same way politically, hold the same beliefs about God (or even agree on His existence), but we all hold love.  

Love is the master key to it all. Love does not stand for injustice. Love does not count differences, it transcends. Love unites, love heals. Love is not a weakness, but a power beyond measure.

My religion is love. My creed is to love God and to love others, no matter the cost.

In this confusing world, both broken and beautiful, containing the first smiles of newborns, nuclear weapons, sunsets, marriages, divorces, poverty, racial discrimination, sex trafficking, favorite songs, the smell of coffee, the touch of your partner’s hand, murder, species extinction, deforestation, and seeds in good soil, God can be found and made known when we love.

This is my religion.

[Click blog title to enable commenting]