Catching Your Breath

by Steve Austin

  What Now?

  After being released from the psych ward, Lindsey drove the two hours, picked me up, and drove us home. I leaned my seat back and watched the green overpass signs on the interstate fly by. My life had fallen apart just one short week before. All I could wonder was, “What will tomorrow be like?” And “will I ever be able to go back to a church again?”

  Up to this point, church had consumed my waking hours. I was steeped in the ways of Southern Evangelicalism all my life, then went to Bible college, and eventually served in some form of paid ministry for nearly 10 years. I knew the rules: when to stand, sit, kneel, and raise my hands. Still, all the external doing of orthodox Christianity wasn’t enough to save me. I could read church people like a book, and I knew how to play the game. But I was dying inside. I nearly died on the outside, too.

  I knew that if I was going to move forward and get my life back, everything would have to change. This included the ways I connected with the Divine. These days, I’m not so sure about all the rules and expectations. And that is the biggest part of my faith struggle. My walking-away-from-everything-I-was-raised-on-into-the-vast-unknown struggle. For the past few years, my biggest frustration when it comes to Christianity has been this: I live in the in-between. I am the Lego piece that doesn’t fit.

  Christian Agnostic

  “Agnostic” is a word that freaks out a lot of fundamental Christians. People don’t like “agnostic” for many of the same reasons no one ever votes for an Independent—we don’t know what to do with people who choose to no longer toe the party line. But I love this definition: a person who holds neither of two opposing positions on a topic.8

  In the opening of Agnostic, Lesley Hazleton says this:

  To be agnostic is to love this kind of paradox. Not to skirt it, nor merely to tolerate it, but to actively revel in it. The agnostic stance defies artificial straight lines such as that drawn between belief and unbelief. It is free-spirited, thoughtful, and independent—not at all the wishy-washy I-don’t-knowness that atheists often accuse it of being.

  Hazelton continues:

  What’s been missing is a strong, sophisticated agnosticism that does not simply avoid thinking about the issues, nor sit back with a helpless shrug, but actively explores the paradoxes and possibilities inherent in the vast and varied universe of faith-belief-meaning-mystery-existence. That’s my purpose here.

  I want to explore unanswerable questions with an open mind instead of approaching them with dismissive derision or with the solemn piety of timid steps and bowed head—to get beyond old, worn-out categories and establish an agnostic stance of intellectual and emotional integrity, fully engaged with this strange yet absorbing business of existence in the world.9

  Me too, Lesley. Yes, I still hold the example of the Jesus of the Bible at the center of my life, but I am finally admitting I have more questions than certainty, more doubt that belief, more possibilities than answers. I’m not sure folks like me are welcome any longer in the most fundamental corners of the Evangelical church. When it comes to dualistic thinking, my but always gets in the way. I don’t buy the message that you are either good or bad, black or white, right or wrong, sacred or profane. Religion sees life through the lens of duality: this or that.

  Things of orthodoxy and Christian theology just don’t always make sense or line up exactly right for me. So these days, I’m wearing the label of “Christian Agnostic,” as a badge of honor. I supplement my spiritual journey with principles from countless other traditions, and I’m perfectly comfortable with the following three words: I don’t know.

  Giving Up My Thrift Shop Faith

  My wife and I love to shop at garage sales and thrift stores. We both grew up going to them, so giving new purpose to old pieces of furniture is a fun challenge for two Millennials with more student loan debt than a show dog could jump over.

  Our kitchen table is a wooden corner booth that originated either in a camper or a houseboat. I’m guessing it’s from the 60’s. It’s small and has little water marks and pencil indentations on the top—proof that it once belonged to someone else, but we love it. “It’s got character,” Lindsey tells me.

  Recycling and repurposing is one of the things we do best. The only thing I don’t really like to buy from our thrift shop is clothing. There’s no dressing room, and it’s a real inconvenience to have to take it home, see if it fits, and if it doesn’t, return the item for an exchange.

  And the only thing worse than recycled clothes is secondhand, thrift shop faith.

  When it comes to Evangelical Christianity, I’ve pretty much done it all. I was basically born in the baptismal. Sang my first solo at 5. Children’s camp. Youth leader. Ministry school. Youth pastor. Worship pastor. Church, church, church. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. And I believed it all.

  Still, for all those years, I was only repurposing the faith of my parents and grandparents. I brought home a thrift shop faith assembled from bits and pieces I acquired over time. I guess that’s true for most of us. But for too long, it seemed like too much trouble to return what didn’t fit and find something better. So I held on to traditions and expectations that weren’t mine for thirty years. They weren’t necessarily wrong ideas, they just didn’t fit me because they belonged to someone else. I was terrified to stop recycling those things and trying to squeeze myself into them. But when something just doesn’t fit, no amount of dressing it up will do.

  I wish I could just accept things with “faith” and “because the Bible says so.” But that just doesn’t cut it for me anymore. I’m not even talking about some of the crazier ideas, like “speaking in tongues” or being “slain in the Spirit.” I have big questions and doubts, questions like:

  Did the resurrection of Jesus actually happen?

  Is Hell a real, geographical place?

  Is original sin accurate? Or are we divine from birth?

  Is Jesus really the only way to God? And if not, what are we even doing here, in church, week after week?

  For the last year of my long five-year process of deconstruction, I had to re-examine everything that marked my life for the first thirty years. It was more than stressful. It was excruciating. I thought that, because I couldn’t seem to shove my not-so-sure-faith into the tiny box of toxic, fear-based religion, I just couldn’t be a Christian. Surely there was no place for me at God’s table. And if I couldn’t be just like everyone else, shove my faith into that box, shut the hell up and follow the damn rules, then I didn’t belong. So I quit for a while.

  But eventually, I gave myself the grace to start again and find a better way. I began to cultivate genuine faith in the uncertainty. I was surprised to find Jesus still at the center of my faith journey. But I was thrilled to learn everyday spirituality comes with lots of choices.

  Everyday Spirituality

  Everyday spirituality is connecting the head and the heart in a way that works for you. It’s not about doctrine, dogma, or doing the right things. It’s acknowledging that, in order for you to be a healthy, whole person, you need to find what restores your head and heart and then do that every single day.

  It’s about something deeper than Sunday morning Christianity. While that works really well for some people, you may need more. You may need something different. Everyday spirituality is about relating to the Divine in a way that feels comfortable, like holey jeans, flip flops, and your favorite, faded t-shirt. (Unless you feel more comfortable in a three-piece suit and shiny shoes.) Everyday spirituality is about connecting with “Love made tangible” (as my friend Ed Bacon puts it), no matter where you are on the journey.

  Everyday spirituality acknowledges at least these three things:

  Man-made rules aren’t for everyone.

  Whatever has been crushed can be restored.

  Everyone belongs, but not everything fits.

  In being true to myself, I know that if I feel push
ed into a corner theologically, with no flexibility, no choices, and only rigid religion, I will die. Man-made rules don’t work for me. When I had depression so bad I couldn’t find my smile even on sunny days, Divine Love showed up in the midst of the worst shitstorm of my life. And Grace allowed my crushed life to be restored. I never walked away from Jesus, just the rigid brand of religion that does more to exclude than make room. And I have no regrets.

  As I continue to step further away from the religious machine, I am being drawn closer to the story of Jesus. These days, I am finding the grace of God by acknowledging that each person has their own heavy load to carry. And I am showing up to fulfill the call of Christ to help carry those burdens, as I am able. Whether it’s behind the pulpit or in the pew next to me, I am choosing to embrace humanity rather than demonize it and finding that it makes me much better at this thing called Christianity.

  When I feel that God is far away, unreachable, unclear, or hiding, all I need to do is connect with my neighbor. Red and yellow, black and white, straight, trans, Jew, Muslim, atheist, and every other varied color of the rainbow: together, each of you helps my picture of God come into focus.

  Everyday spirituality is an invitation to open rather than close, to bloom rather than wilt, to listen rather than speak, to learn rather than attempt to convert.

  Identifying as a spiritual misfit feels like knowing that everything is going to be all right in the end. It is this confident hope that Love is the Source of everything, even if I can’t intellectually prove, explain, or even fully understand it. The freedom of identifying as a Christian Agnostic means I am finally ok with what I do not know.

  Millennials and the Church

  While being a Christian Agnostic feels lonely, my experiences are pretty typical of members of my generation raised in the Evangelical church. While older church leaders bemoan Millennials leaving the church, they reinforce the exact reasons why so many of us have left the faith traditions of our childhoods.

  While many have walked away entirely in search of a better fit, some of us haven’t completely given up on Christianity. We’re convinced that Jesus was serious when he said, “Love one another.” But much of what we’ve witnessed from institutions that operate in the name of God is pain and abuse. We feel like everyone in the church has a hidden agenda to try to “save” us, but we don’t need to be saved, at least not in the way they think we do. We were once baptized by well-meaning people in fear, shame, and guilt. But we aren’t buying that any more. We are coming up from those muddied waters, looking for new life.

  When I woke up in an ICU room and decided I would keep living, I knew things had to change. And one of the biggest changes was getting rid of the things, theologies, and unrealistic expectations that were killing me. Moving forward meant letting go and choosing to accept myself, just as I am. Accepting myself allowed Perfect Love to do its work of casting out the fear that was entrenched in my heart, mind, and soul.

  This is the new leg of my spiritual journey. I don’t have it all figured out. And it’s okay that you don’t, either. If you disagree and you’re still clinging to the black and white thinking of dualism, that’s okay. You’re safe here, too. I won’t try to convert you and I hope to God you won’t try to change me. (Insert smiley face emoji here.) I hope you find peace for your own journey, wherever you are. I may not have the certainty I once idolized, but I do have this calm knowing in my gut that Love is actually present with me, even when I’m not sure what I believe anymore.

  Everyday spirituality carries a desperation for honesty. There’s a hunger for conversation and celebration of diversity. In this stripped-down connection with our true selves, we can show up with our success, failure, vulnerability, questions, and what’s left of our deconstructed faith.

  We are shifting away from and sifting through the excesses of man-made religious constructs. These little Sunday School kids have grown up and read the Bible for ourselves. And we’ve read other stuff, too. We aren’t afraid to learn from science and other religions. We are catching up with reality and culture while still embracing whatever faith means to us. We refuse to check our brains, political convictions, and common decency at the door.

  Yes, we can respect the faith journey of previous generations, but we’re carving our own path. And for those of us who still claim to be Christians, we are passionate about the overarching theme of the life and lessons of Jesus: love comes with no strings attached.

  This is Good

  I transitioned out of deconstruction and started rebuilding my spirituality at the beginning of 2018. That New Year’s weekend, I sat on the back porch of the beach house we rented, whiskey on the rocks in one hand and a favorite stogie in the other. Every two to three minutes, I took a deep, slow breath and exhaled with a relaxed sort of hum.

  I didn’t notice my own sighs at first because I was so caught up in the moment, but as I did, I felt the stress and tension melt from my shoulders. It was like my whole body exhaled, not just my lungs. I imagine it felt something like the Biblical account of the creation story, where God completes the work and says, “this is good.” Maybe God had whiskey in one hand, too.

  The next morning, the wind blew through the palms while light rain danced on the roof of our beachside bungalow. The plink-a-tink-patter of raindrops against the tin made a wonderfully unpredictable rhythm of rest and repeat. With this heavenly symphony as my soundtrack, I couldn’t help but consider the sound of a sigh.

  Breath itself has no noise; it’s the hum—the vibration of my voice box, the reverberation of my contented soul—that goes up past my heart and out my mouth to say, “This is good.” I guess breath is a lot like wind—it isn’t noticed until it brushes past your lips or tickles the sea oats. I would never have known the breeze was there until it played peek-a-boo around the neighbor’s shutters. It whistled through the shingles, kissing the picnic table and lapping against the rocking chairs on the back porch. This is good.

  I stood barefoot in the cold December sand, two days before New Year’s, watching the waves wash over my feet, playing their tireless melody, inviting my soul to sigh again. And sigh, it did. The water swept in and out, brushing sand over my toes and quickly pulling it back again. The ocean inhaling and exhaling, whispering over creation, this is good.

  It might sound too mystical or New Agey for most Christians. It might sound too Jesus-y for those who don’t connect with Christianity. But that cold weekend, as one year ended and another began, God was doing a work of rest and restoration in my soul, beyond anything I may ever be able to comprehend or explain fully with words. And isn’t that how it is with a deeply transformative experience? We can’t ever seem to fully explain it to someone else, we just know we’ve been forever altered.

  Even in my doubt, God kept impressing on me the universality of rest and repeat, rhythm and rhyme, start and stop. Like my friend Sue (to whom this book is dedicated) often reminds me: the world has an axis and I don’t have to do anything to keep it spinning. “The merry-go-round has a motor,” Sue says. “All you have to do is get on it and ride.”

  This weekend retreat was right after my freefall of deconstruction and I was desperate to find God again. Yes, there were doubts, loads of uncertainty, and the stretching tension of all I couldn’t explain or understand; but in my soul, there remained a longing for something—or Someone—more.

  And something—or Someone—met me. It’s like God just wrapped my entire essence up in my grandma’s quilt and said, “I’m right here. You don’t have to do a damn thing to find me or catch my attention. Be still. Let’s just breathe together. Listen to how I do it.”

  It was like the words of Jesus (Matthew 11:28-30, MSG) became tangible to me that day:

  Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced
rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.

  So I listened, to the in and out of the tides, the up and down of the waves, the inhale and exhale of my breath, the open and shut of the very valves of my heart. I couldn’t get away from the rhythm of everything around me. The waves, the rain on the roof, the wind through the palms, the breath in my lungs, my heartbeat, the rocking chair—literally everything had a rhythm. Stop and go, rest and repeat. At a molecular level, all the energy of the earth was vibrating. It was singing praises to God, reminding me to join in: rest and repeat.

  Just like all the weather and rhythm and creation didn’t entirely make sense to me, I may never find the words to make it make sense to you. I don’t totally understand it in my head. But in the deepest part of me, in the place past reason and logic and the religion of my childhood, something shifted. I was freed from my obsession with certainty. Instead, I was able to start saying, “It just is,” and accept that. And I am accepted by the All that “just is.”

  This is what everyday spirituality is all about for me. This is good news for spiritual misfits. It’s about not having all the answers, but accepting myself as I am. It’s about journeying towards calm and wholeness, knowing God (or the universe, or my own soul) is moving with me, in me, and through me, every step of the way. This is really good.

  Three:

  Nekkid

  I no longer look for the good in people, I search for the real...Because while good is often dressed in fake clothing, real is naked and proud no matter the scars.10

  —Chrishala Lishomwa