The starting point was disillusionment. Five years later, a lot of goodness, joy and deep satisfaction. Barbara Brown Taylor writes this about the disillusionment of John the Baptist and says, “ This is a story of crashing disillusionment--Johns, ours, everyone’s who looks for a Lord who does not come, or who does not come in the way we expected—but I am here to tell you that disillusionment is not a bad thing. Disillusionment is, literally, the loss of an illusion—about ourselves, about the world, about God—and while it is almost always painful, it is never a bad thing, to lose the lies we have mistaken for the truth.
“Disillusioned, we find out that God does not conform to our expectations. We glimpse our own relative size in the universe and see that no human being can say who God should be or how God should act. We review our requirements of God and recognize them as our own fictions, things we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel safe or good or comfortable. Disillusioned, we find out what is not true and we are set free to seek what is—if we dare—to turn away from the God who was supposed to be in order to seek the God who is.” (From BBT God in Pain: Sermons on Suffering)
The shapes and rhythms of the last five years have been a movement from stuckness to freedom, from anger to joy, from agitation to peace, from resentment to forgiveness and grace, to me and others. And I am grateful. A couple of weeks ago I read a line in a book that went something like this, though I cannot find it or the author back, “If you stay in the middle of grief you will never know what it is on the edges.” I know a little of both today.