Advent Journal: Edenic, Heavenly, Utopian, You Name It

I’m up early as usual. There is no moonlight in the kitchen making coffee. Nor can I pray exactly. Last night I wrote for almost four hours, coming away with seven scrawny paragraphs. Nothing sits well; I feel rough and difficult. “What’s wrong?” he asks gently, there in the darkness.

I can’t lie to him. That’s one way you know it’s Jesus you’re talking to. I tell him I don’t want to write about A Course in Miracles anymore but I’m scared to stop. “Okay,” he says. “But why?”

I go into it. Its emphasis on mind / body dualism, especially its hierarchical ordering of mind over body, is not only incorrect but the error isn’t harmless. A Course in Miracles reinforces the very separation it intends to undo. It hides this error behind a quasi-new age / self help facade that’s fundamentally racist and misogynistic. And when the cracks and seams do show, they’re written off as evidence that we’re wrong. It’s incoherent and dysfunctional. I’m embarrassed I bought into it as long as I did. Years went to waste.

He listens. He knows these arguments better than I do – he’s the one who taught them to me. But then he interrupts.

“No,” he says. “what I meant was, why does stopping writing about the course scare you? Write about it or don’t, I don’t care. But the fear . . . “

Morning opens into a swale, the bottom of which I’ve never found. I step outside to get away, ground myself, whatever. The sky is low and full of heavy clouds. The blind horse whinnies down by the run-in. Feed me. I know the feeling.

Listen, I say. I’ll do whatever you want. You want me to write about ACIM? Say the word. You want me to write about something else? Say that word.

He laughs, amused as always at my propensity for spiritual drama, my stubborn insistence on playing a role. “I have already said the word,” he says.

And then he is gone.

The kitchen brightens when I come inside. Snow outside the east-facing window looks blue in the dim light. I get lost a little in the loveliness of it. Distracted by the loveliness? Sawicki teaches you how to see Jesus but Jesus teaches you how to love the other as your own self, which is otherwise (so far as I can tell) impossible. He imagined (with others – never forget this) a world – a way of being together – that was utterly antithetical to the fear-based, survival-based, scarcity-based, suffering-based world in which we are still – still – fatally dithering.

Advent deepens, becomes wintry.

Over the past year I have seen The Skull. Do you know it? The skull is death but death is just a symbol of not knowing. The skull represents the uncertainty inherent in our experience. It does not speak. It has no argument. Its silence is its message.

The skull appeared when I realized that A Course in Miracles was not only not my path but was an intentional avoidance of that path. I had fallen into a dream of following Jesus because I was too scared to actually follow Jesus.

It is an old story.

Marianne Sawicki pulled me back from that abyss, and showed me how to avoid falling into it going forward. But that was all. We can be taught how to see Jesus, but once we do see him, we’re on our own. It makes sense though, right? It’s a relationship. It’s a dialogue. You talk, he talks. Questions are asked, questions are answered. What else is there?

Day begins before I finish writing. I carry kitchen scraps to the outside compost, wading through snow. My daughters’ voices from the barn float through cold air like bird song or garlands strung by angels. I can’t quite make out the words but it doesn’t matter. It’s not me they’re talking to. A little snow begins to fall. I remind myself not to forget to bring Christmas decorations down from the attic for later.

When you stop being scared of the skull, the cross on which Jesus was crucified looks different. You can walk away from it; you can let him die on it. That was his calling, not yours. Yours is here, in this world, with these people. The skull teaches you to forget about time and its effects and instead focus on what you can do in this moment to be helpful to others. Often that means clarifying some interior confusion, forgiving an old grievance, or practicing a new way of responding to this or that condition. But it has to sugar out in service; it has to sugar out in the familiar (the family-like) radical vision of peace and joy. Jesus was taught to do a work, he did it and taught others how to do it, and here we are. What are you doing? How can I help|?

Chores finished, I come upstairs to write by the bedroom window. Snow has changed to sleet; voices in the kitchen float through the floorboards. I’m happy, against long odds. I was supposed to die alone a long time ago. Nor am I finished trying to get it all right. I still believe in him, in his claim that a world premised on love rather than fear is possible. I fucked up but I’m still here. As Leonard Cohen said, “I’m broke but I’m still holding up this little wild bouquet.”

But a few sentences into the writing – I’m riffing off Gerd Theissen’s comment in The Historical Jesus that, for Jesus, “the rule of God . . . was already a hidden reality in the present” (175). I think I can make it clear to you how that sugars out in application, in a radical way of knowing and loving one another that’s Edenic, Heavenly, Utopian, you name it. I think we are very close, I think –

– “Sean?” he says.

Yes, Jesus? I ask, a little annoyed that he’s interrupting. I’m in the flow now; I’ve found the words. I’m doing the work.

“Do you owe her an apology?” he asks. He asks it gently but it stops me. He’s not judging me, nor is he angry or even disappointed. It’s an old story and he’s been at it a long time. He’s a teacher, not a cop or a lawyer. He’s a healer, not an executioner.

Morning opens into a swale I have never found the bottom of. I do, I say. I do.

And begin.