He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

by Trish Ryan

  “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls,” I read in Matthew. “When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” I felt like I’d been that merchant, collecting a wide assortment of spiritual paths. Was Jesus the big-kahuna pearl? I wondered. This parable suggested that while my accumulation of spiritual insights might contain bits of truth, Jesus was more valuable than all of them put together; the only path to God that was entirely true. And the merchant in the parable didn’t just add the new pearl to his collection, I noticed. Rather, he sold everything he had in exchange for that one pearl. Almost like choosing a spouse. Omigosh, I thought, does this mean I’ve been unfaithful to God?

  I thought back to a story that had caught my attention when I read the book of Acts, about a bunch of spiritual seekers who decided to follow Jesus. They confirmed their new allegiance by gathering all the paraphernalia from their previous practices—statues of other gods, books of spells and ways to manipulate the universe, sources claiming to give knowledge of the future—and burning them. The Bible didn’t say these other paths weren’t “spiritual”—just that they weren’t God’s best. They were counterfeits—good enough to convince people they might be the real thing, but of far less power and value. When you see the real thing, the story implied, you’ll be more than willing to give up the others.

  I asked Amy about these passages. “It’s true,” she said. “Getting rid of other spiritual alliances loosens Satan’s holds on us, and gives Jesus authority to force the devil to leave us alone,” she explained. “That’s why Jesus says, ‘No one sows a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse,’ You can’t just add Jesus into whatever else you’re already doing.”

  This was my problem—I was using the Bible like a patch, trying to cover up the gaping holes in my ripped-up life with a little Jesus iron-on, hoping the frayed edges wouldn’t show and that the adhesive would hold.

  When I got home that night I scanned my bookshelves, which were crammed full of different recommendations for negotiating the spiritual world: everything from existential philosophy to mystic poetry to meditations designed to awaken my inner truth. I remembered the Bible’s warnings about false teachers—how they promise light but deliver us to darkness, how they lead us in circles, saying what we want to hear, leaving us always studying but never acknowledging the truth. That sounded a lot like me. I was a fanatical customer at the local spirituality store, dashing in like a strung-out junkie whenever another mood swing hit, searching for a new author, a new path, a new spiritual perspective to make my life worthwhile. I read voraciously. I was always studying, but never came to the truth; none of my spiritual hits ever lasted for longer than the time it took me to read the most recent opinion on what would fix my life.

  God doesn’t want me to add a few Jesus books and tchotchkes to my shelf, I realized, He wants me to start over. I decided that I, too, would burn some books.

  I wasn’t sure of the logistics: our house was not exactly flame-retardant, and I wasn’t convinced God wanted me to take down the entire neighborhood to purify my reading habit. I couldn’t bring myself to call the Cambridge fire department to request a burn permit to facilitate spiritual cleansing (I flirted with throwing the word “exorcism” in for a little flair, but decided against it). I wasn’t sure how to proceed.

  I looked at the painting of Isis hanging over my bed, a souvenir from my pilgrimage to Greece (I’d never understood why the tour company had chosen to commemorate our time in Greece with a symbol of Egyptian mythology). This is as good a place to start as any, I thought, taking it down from the wall. I threw away my gold pendant of Athena and my school ring with the picture of Pan. I gave Mark back his lucky Buddha statue and tossed the pile of rose quartz crystals from my romance corner into the backyard. My room looked pretty bare.

  When I woke up the next day, it was raining. Not a light drizzle or a springtime shower, but sheets of rain coming sideways through the air. I wondered if I shouldn’t revisit that section in Genesis about Noah and get the specifics for building an ark. Then I realized: I could put the books out in the rain; that would destroy them almost as well as fire. I boxed them up: The Psychic Pathway, The Celestine Prophecy, The Spiral Path, Conversations with God (volumes 1, 2 and 3), The Tenth Insight, Your Guide to Casting Runes, Feng Shui for Business, Feng Shui for Romance, A Beginner’s Guide to Feng Shui, The Guide to Intuitive Healing, Everything You Need to Know About Astrology, The Invitation, The Dance, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Your Heart’s Desire, True Balance, Finding True Love, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, The Path to Love, Anatomy of the Soul, The Four Agreements, Goddesses in Everywoman, Women Who Run with the Wolves. (Why, I wondered, did I ever want to run with the wolves?) I piled them in on top of each other, hauled them out to the alley beside our house, and set the boxes in a giant puddle. Leaving nothing to chance, I left the boxes open, ensuring the contents would be drenched beyond repair. The last thing I needed on my conscience was to have someone wander by and pull one of these useless books out of the box. If someone was desperate enough to pillage my garbage in search of life direction, I certainly didn’t want to lead the person down the same dead ends I’d traveled.

  Walking back into the kitchen, I stopped cold at the sight of the giant framed poster on the back wall. The five-foot Toulouse-Lautrec print—left behind by one of our house’s former inhabitants—had hung on that same wall since the day I moved in, but somehow I had never noticed its subject matter: a woman wrapped head to toe by a snake poised to strike her in the face. That can’t be good, I thought. I wrestled it down from the wall and out to the alley next to my boxes.

  I thought of this day three years later, when I read two books in the same week that each contemplated this provocative observation by French philosopher Simone Weil: “One has only the choice between God and idolatry. If one denies God . . . one is worshiping some things of this world in the belief that one sees them only as such, but in fact, though unknown to oneself imagining the attributes of Divinity in them.” I wasn’t quite so oblivious to my idolatry; I’d imagined divinity in all manner of inanimate objects, believing what people told me—that my manipulation of these objects could control the way my little part of the planet rotated. It was an enticing lie, but that didn’t make it any less untrue. It was unsettling, though—then, and even now—how quickly I could turn a nothing into my something and inadvertently deny God. That seemed like a habit I should kick.

  AS I PURGED my life of idolatrous un-Jesus-ey items, I was still leading my weekly classes and lectures at metaphysical establishments around greater Boston. It was my only source of income, and I liked having this chance to talk to people outside of church about spirituality. But now, in a growing and undeniable way, the haphazard beliefs of the people I taught started to drive me up the wall. Things that had always vaguely irked me—the lack of masculinity in the men; the abject refusal of people to take personal responsibility for their choices; the slavish insistence that various authors were paragons of spiritual virtue, despite glaring character flaws that came out with each new book—now drove me bananas. It seemed ridiculous, all of a sudden, all this gazing at crystals and trying to suck in the energy of the moon.

  One Sunday I was the featured speaker at a Unity Church in New Hampshire. After my talk the female minister flew down from the choir loft wrapped in—I’m not kidding—gossamer. She led the congregation in acting out a closing song of prayer she was sure the universe had channeled through her. We formed a circle and they sang:

  “I open my heart to the warmth of the sun” (the congregants flung their arms high above their heads like enthusiastic preschoolers taking their first class in creative movement) “and abandon my desires to the waves of the sea” (frantic, flailing hand motions mimicking waves fluttered all around me as I struggled to keep up, wondering what we were doing). “I yield my heart to the lu-u-
uv of all humaniteeee,” we affirmed, smiling benevolently around the circle. Some people took this opportunity to hug one another. “Thank you, Universe, for surrounding us with angelic light” (now we hugged ourselves). “I promise to love my brothers” (“and sisters,” two women added pointedly) “with all my miiight!” Everyone around me jumped into the air with what appeared to be an attempt at glee.

  All of a sudden my Christian friends seemed like the most normal people I knew.

  The Unity Dance of Angelic Light was a bit of a turning point for me. I rewrote my lectures, replacing all the quotes from the Course with words from the Bible, and giving them jaunty New Testament–inspired titles such as “Get Out of the Boat! It’s Time to Walk on Water!” I was certain that if I introduced it gently enough, my audiences would soon realize, as I had, that the Bible was the perfect addition to every spiritual search.

  One evening as I prepared for my lecture at Unicorn Books, a strange thought crossed my mind. Most of the places where I spoke worked on a fifty-fifty split with speakers, keeping half the proceeds. I’d never questioned this—I was building an audience, and this arrangement was the industry standard. But it suddenly occurred to me that half of the money I earned went to places that were rather anti-Jesus (and certainly anti-Bible), supporting a whole host of alternative paths I’d never even gotten around to: witchcraft, paganism, Christian Science (I was terrible at science), tarot, dragons, talking to the dead, celebrating womyn and our monthly cycles (not to mention bad singing and awkward interpretive dance). Considering the other lectures at Unicorn Books, and the titles on the store’s spiritually expansive shelves, I wondered how God felt about my working so hard to support this other stuff. I might be talking about Jesus and taking him seriously, and tithing ten percent of my earnings to the collection basket at church, but I contributed five times that amount to new age establishments, some of which hated Jesus. This seemed like a potential problem.

  “God,” I prayed that night, “if this is an issue, show me. I don’t want to use my talents to support things that aren’t about you, but I have a full calendar of appearances booked for the next three months. Show me what you want me to do.”

  That night, for the first time ever, not a single person showed up for my lecture. That weekend’s workshop at Open Circle Spirit Center was empty, as was the following week’s feature event at the Upside Down Yoga Studio. I’d opened the door for God’s input, and just like that, my budding career as a spiritual speaker was over.

  Finally, I got it—I understood what Paul meant that night he suggested that I “just do Jesus.” I renounced the Course, astrology, feng shui, psychic knowledge, and every other spiritual path I’d wandered down. It was a longish list, so this took a while. (I even went on Amazon.com to find the names of all the books whose tenets I’d blindly followed, seeking some sort of psychic or spiritual hope.) I asked God to forgive me for these things, acknowledging that even though it didn’t feel like I was doing anything wrong at the time—I didn’t rebel against Him on purpose—my choices took me off track for His best for my life, and I wanted to accept Jesus’ offer to help me back on. I canceled the rest of my speaking schedule and told God that since this whole thing was His idea, it would be nice if He’d help me pay the rent.

  Three weeks later I was sitting in a cube at a venture capital firm, making photocopies for a small hourly wage, certain that becoming a Christian was the worst thing that could happen to a person.

  THAT’S WHEN MARK moved out.

  “I don’t know who you are anymore,” he complained. “Or what you want from me.”

  “I told you what I want,” I said. “I want to be married.”

  “Then I’m not the man for you,” he said, dragging his duffel out to the car. “I hope you find him there among your Jesus people.” I’m not sure why, but I’d always thought Mark would come around. It would have been so easy for God to do it that way, to transform Mark at the same time He was transforming me—it would be like a fairy-tale ending. Somehow, I thought there would be less heartache once I got on board with Jesus.

  “WHAT IF THIS Jesus stuff is crap?” I asked Amy on the way to church that Sunday. “What if it’s all just a big story and he can’t make things better? What if he doesn’t have any power and it’s just a big hoax?”

  “What are you talking about?” she said.

  “I’m talking about my life! I had an okay life before Jesus—I had a boyfriend, a career, a plan. Now they’re all gone. Where is the abundance stuff he promised? Where is my Impossibly Great Life?” Before she could respond, I added: “And don’t give me that garbage about how the grass always looks greener on the other side, because that’s not the case here. My life was good, and now it sucks, and Jesus hasn’t fixed it.”

  “You’re right,” she conceded. “Your grass is pretty brown.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Total Immersion

  I didn’t know what to think about God’s Only Begotten Son after this, so I declined to think of him at all—until a few weeks later when I wandered into an art installation at church and was won over by a seven-foot Jesus made entirely of chicken wire.

  Chicken Wire Jesus was the final stop in a Good Friday exhibit of the Stations of the Cross. He was preceded by paintings and performance art and even a minimalist wood sculpture representing how he bore the Cross alone (or something like that; to be honest, I didn’t quite get it). I wandered through the installations much like I’d wandered through the last year, ignoring the things I didn’t understand, agreeing where I could, and wondering when God would fix my life.

  As I approached this final station—thinking about how my feet hurt, looking forward to meeting Gwen and Amy afterward for a glass of wine—I was struck by the emptiness of the giant figure; He looked unfinished, like the early stages of an enormous papier-mâché. A small plaque explained the display, offering instructions for interaction: Write down something that has been said about you, or something you’ve said about yourself, that you want Jesus to set you free from. Leave it here, and be free. We handed around scraps of recycled paper, and little pencils like the ones you use to keep score in mini golf. Then our curator John, a real-life Jewish carpenter, declared: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” People around me scribbled words on paper, then stuffed them into Chicken Wire Jesus and walked away. Holding my crumpled piece in my palm, I wrote “NO ONE WILL EVER MARRY ME” and crushed it into a ball. Tears welled up in my eyes as the weight of all my hopelessness—my terror of being unwanted, unchosen, alone—pressed down on my chest. I hung back, trying to go last, wanting my paper to be on the top of this Jesus pile, as close to his attention as possible. It felt a little bit like hocus-pocus, this symbolic abandonment of my deepest fear. But if the Bible was true, this act would have real power (not just the power of my positive thinking or unstoppable human potentiality); this act was backed by the word of God, and His promise that giving my fear to Jesus would somehow set me free.

  John’s voice echoed through the room, repeating, over and over again, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

  That’s when I got it: Jesus stood there, willing to take my garbage. But I had to give it to him, and I then had to leave it there and walk away. If I did, some miraculous work of God would follow, and that thing I left behind would be vanquished: it would have no more power, it couldn’t haunt me anymore. I could have a relationship with Jesus, instead of with my worst-case scenario. But to get that, I had to turn it over.

  I stuffed my wadded-up paper ball in at the top of the Jesus heap, then turned and left the room. As I walked the few blocks to join my friends, I said it aloud, trying it on for size: “I am a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come!”

  LATER THAT WEEK, I went to Paul and Pascha’s house to talk about how confusing my life had gotten since I started following Jesus. My mind swam with all this new information, term
s like “spiritual warfare” popping up all over the landscape of my life like so many weeds taking over my mental lawn. I was doing everything “right,” but now that the high of having a new fun group of friends had worn off, I felt myself sinking back into the same pit of depression I’d slid into so many times before—walking down the street longing to be hit by a truck, wondering if anyone would notice if I hopped a train and moved to the West Coast. I was right back in the middle of the insatiable need to get away from myself, to stop piling pointless day upon pointless day, looking with disdain at everyone around me who soldiered on with no tangible hope that life might get any better. At my core, I was done soldiering on.

  I described this to Paul and Pascha, and our friend Will who came to pray with us that day. I braced myself for a rousing pep talk about my unlimited potential and the need to keep my eyes on the prize, or (worse) a reminder of the streets of gold I’d walk in the afterlife as a reward for slugging through my mediocrity in this one; I didn’t give a damn about their streets of gold.

  But instead of pelting me with nuggets of biblical positive thinking to counter my angry soliloquy, Paul simply said, “Why don’t we pray for you?” The phone rang and Pascha went to grab it. It was her parents, calling from California. “Let’s go into the bedroom,” Paul suggested. “Pascha needs to take this call.”

  Will, Paul, and I went into the bedroom, and my stomach began to churn, frustration stirring up inside of me like the early rumblings of a long-ignored volcano. It was too much to take, being there in the middle of their bedroom. The intimacy of their marriage—intimacy I couldn’t seem to get to no matter what I did—surrounded me and I felt trapped by the walls, the giant bed, the love note taped on the wall; it was as if God was taunting me, reminding me of how empty and cold my life felt.