Through a Glass, Darkly
I just read a stunning essay by Lauren Bently, a writer and editor whom I had never heard of till I read her piece. I strongly recommend reading her essay at least once before you proceed with this post.
After I finished reading “Prying Open Our Eyelids,” I immediately began to unpack my reactions. I couldn’t make sense of them.
Reading her thoughts felt like wading into water of unknown depth until my toes were barely scraping the bottom. Part of me knew the essay was deeper than I could comprehend, and that pushing into it risked losing my footing altogether and being swept up in the current.
The post was filled with questions. Questions that probably cannot be answered. Some that probably should not be, because trying to answer them might suggest that something of infinite weight can be measured on a bathroom scale.
One image in particular struck me. Bently invoked the idea of faith as a solid monolith upon which we stand to see all there is to see, but only if we can climb to its zenith. But this monolith is subject to erosion, and our crises of faith wear away at it.
However, she juxtaposed that image with times when faith feels like a gossamer veil that only allows some light in, obscuring other things from view.
I cannot claim that my crises of faith happen as regularly as those Bently describes, but I can say that 2021 was, in many ways, the hardest year of my life. That difficulty brought with it a long lasting crisis of faith with lingering effects that still crop up frequently.
I relate so well to the feeling of not knowing and beginning to wonder what I even can know; of searching desperately, with eyes peeled, hoping I’ll catch a glimpse—even a fleeting one—of some pattern that will imbue my frustrations and confusion with meaning.
I’m not nearly so skilled at embracing the uncertainty, and for that reason I’m not sure I could wade deeper into Bently’s words. Or that I want to.
But still the monolith and the veil stick with me. I think about the erosion of faith and I wonder.
Accidental erosion isn’t the only thing that gradually wears away material from something weighty and important.
So does sharpening.
So does polishing.
The earliest mirrors were metal discs, highly polished. These metal mirrors could be plagued by tarnish and were often made with bronze, which couldn’t reflect the full spectrum of the world’s color.
I think of the Apostle Paul’s metaphor for faith: a dingy mirror.
I think that those who know me a little believe me to be fairly patient. Whether or not that is true, I am certain those who know me intimately know I’m not patient at all. I seethe at red lights. I fret when feedback isn’t immediate. I despair when prayers go unanswered for more than a day, or an hour, or a moment.
I hate puzzles, because I don’t have the patience for them. I don’t want to fit together seemingly disparate flashes of color into a completed picture. I just want to see.
I don’t believe faith is blind, but I suspect it may be legally so. I am learning (slowly and painfully and begrudgingly) that usually faith can’t see very far or very well. There is so much we cannot see, and so much of the deepest realities of God we just can’t comprehend. It makes me thankful for the little peeks He sometimes provides.
Magically mundane moments like last month, when our on-the-go breakfast order had one extra sausage-egg-and-cheese biscuit, which the employee knew about, informed us about, and told us to keep. Or like the moment I finished Bently’s essay and knew I needed to re-read it—that I was still flat-footedly standing in her words and I could press a little further, onto my toes.
I may not be ready to swim in the depths of uncertainty, so I dig my toes into the sandy bottom; the comfort I find by choosing to believe that my faith isn’t being eroded, it’s being polished. The bits of me that I don’t need are being ground away by a wet-sanding, micro-mesh so that I can reflect more clearly the Craftsman who has been working on me for so long.
