the life we're living

Similarly to many in my Midwestern milieu*, I have a background of faith. Specifically, Christian faith. Specifically, Evangelical Christian faith. The specifics of this background seem less and less important to me as time goes on. Distinctions such as, "we're denomination x vs. denomination y" or "one is allowed to do this but not that" that once seemed meaningful have been revealed in time as unimportant. In the American Christianity in which I grew up, identity is mostly conceived of negatively. That is, it is much easier to describe what one is not than what one is, e.g., not Muslim, not liberal, etc.

I also grew up as what I would still** call a "true believer"--not so much in orthodoxy (right belief), though there was some of that, but in orthopraxy. No, not the good, progressive kind of orthopraxy. The charismatic, "on fire," sort. I was fucking in love with God, man. Here are some of the sweet nothings one might here me whispering to God at night:

• I want to waste my life pursuing you
• I want to give everything for you
• I want to be consumed by you
• Give me more of yourself

Yep.

So the problem is that while I may have left behind the American Christian God, I haven't been able to fill that "God-shaped hole," though I'm pretty convinced that a lot of what my faith taught me was not only to fill the void with God but to make sure to maintain that emptiness in order to keep filling it. Like...one of the goals is to sustain the process of remembering how fucking broken and depraved I am so that I can keep experiencing the sense of God filling the void.

It's not just that faith might be some sort of wish-fulfillment as people often accuse, but that I think it propagates the wishes/needs/desires so that it can supply the fulfillment too.

In time I sought a new Christian home. I thought I could drop the American and keep the Christian. Or at least, I thought that I wanted to do that. I vacillated between "progressive" Christianity and high-church "orthodox" Christianity. I imagined some sort of overlap between those two in which we did all of the "liturgical" stuff (Eucharist from a priest, baptism, incense, old prayers, etc.) I like to think that part of what I was doing was trying to forge an identity that had content rather than the absence of other content.

I haven't really found anything that scratches that charismatic/fill-the-God-bucket itch though. I turned away from the subjective toward belief and structure but didn't find it subjective enough. The structure of rules and beliefs started to seem to me just another wish-fulfillment mechanism. I've listened to New Age-y, (white), meditation-y stuff, but I always seem to ride the same track around and around. Only this time "nothing" becomes the something which I desire to fill the void.

All of that to say: I look around me right now, and I tend to think, "this is it." And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with this being it. If there's nothing after I die that tops the light in my son's face, that's fine with me. That God-ache or drive for more or whatever--the lack--is just part of the deal, and it's beautiful.***

The life we're living is the life we're living.

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*Looking back on this, I hate that I used this word. I didn't want to take it out, though. Just wanted to make sure it was known that I hated myself for using it.

**This is frustrating too, since even though I don't think I conceive of myself in the same old Christian ways, I still have a sense of who are the "true" Christians and who aren't, mostly defined by my own experience.

***This is also my take on Peter Rollins's The Idolatry of God.