A confession

In the spirit of the season of Lent, I have a confession to make.

I have never really had a sense of God's abiding presence in my life.

Sure, I get flashes of insight from time to time; I've heard a "still, small voice" within that has guided me when I've prayed for discernment in my life; and there are moments when I truly feel a sense of God's presence: when I'm singing with a group of people and we finally hit that note at just the right pitch and in just the right tempo and chillbumps run down my spine; when I'm walking through the woods and I feel the wind at my back or my eyes are opened to new life sprouting forth from the earth; when a moment of deep pain turns into a moment of solidarity between fellow human beings on this planet. But I don't walk around on a daily basis feeling like God is right there with me, that God is my closest friend.

In college, I had a roommate named Susan who had a sense of God's abiding presence in her life. I could tell this just by looking at her and observing her on a daily basis. Each morning, she would wake up and read her Bible, and just the way she opened the book and fingered the pages exuded such love and devotion that I could tell that she was enraptured in a conversation with her Lord. Whenever something was really troubling me, I could go to her and ask her to pray for me, and in the deep sincerity in her voice I could hear her connection with God. When I asked her to pray for me, I knew she would do it. She was a true intercessor.

During my college years at Furman University, I was a part of some on-campus religious groups that I would characterize as "Evangelical." There were many people in these groups who had that same aura about them that Susan did. In fact, it was precisely that that drew me to them. I knew they had something I didn't, and I wanted it.

But I never got it. In fact, my feelings that I was lacking something in the spiritual department were a big part of why I had never even considered that I could be called to ordained ministry until others started to suggest it to me during my time at Harvard Divinity School (I'd gone there not to pursue ordained ministry, but with thoughts of being a religion reporter for a newspaper or a documentary filmmaker, or a high school teacher of religious studies). Compared with these people who seemed to be so in touch with God, I felt I wasn't a "good enough Christian." Certainly I could never be a leader in the faith!

Eventually I drifted away from the Evangelical communities, largely because I felt some of their views, both theologically and politically, did not jive with my understanding of who God is from the Scriptures. (Isn't that the age-old story of schism in the church??) To use the words of Diana L. Eck, who became my professor at Harvard Divinity School and my boss at The Pluralism Project at Harvard University, I did not feel I could live with "intellectual and personal honesty" within those communities.

Although I drifted away from many of the friends I'd made during those years, Susan and I remained close. Many years later, I asked her about this sense of God's abiding presence that she had. She responded that when she was growing up, she was the "odd one out" in school since she was a Charismatic and not a "normal" (for her hometown) Methodist or Baptist. Many of her friends did not understand or approve of some of her church's practices, like speaking in tongues. So Susan couldn't rely on a sense of "normalcy" or "givenness" in terms of her understanding of God. She had to turn to God as a personal presence. She talked to God and sat with God and was comforted by God. God became her friend, an "ever-present help in trouble."

Yesterday, I had a meeting with my spiritual director in which I explained to her the struggles I have had over the years with maintaining any kind of regular prayer life, and with my sense of a lack of God's abiding presence in my life. My spiritual director responded by telling me I should talk to God more as if God was my friend. "You develop a relationship with another person by spending time with them," she said. "You have to do the same with God."

As I listened to her, I was struck by how similar this advice was to what I had heard in the Evangelical communities, and realized how, despite some of our political and theological differences, we are really not so different as Christians. The bottom line is the same -- to get to know God, spend time with God. Spend time reading Scripture. Spend time in prayer.

In some ways, this similarity made me a bit uncomfortable. Here again, I was confronted with my lack of a real, deep, two-way relationship with God. I can hide this better in the Episcopal Church than I could in the non-denominational, Evangelical communities, because most Episcopalians don't walk around talking about the time they spent talking with Jesus this morning, but here it was, all the same.

To cover up for my lack of a sense of God's abiding presence, I had begun to scoff at people who said they had one -- especially if they used the "friendship" language. "Jesus is not your FRIEND," I would think. "He's GOD -- transcendent, majestic, etc." I laughed condescendingly at the lyrics to one of my favorite songwriter's takes on the Lord's Prayer -- "lead us not into temptation / and deliver us from those who think they're You," she sings. One of the verses pleads to God to "deliver us from the politicians / who drop your name in every speech / as if they're your best friend from high school / as if they practice what they preach!" The song is indeed very clever, and I think makes a good point -- but a lot of the reason I identified with that verse was the bit about "as if they're your best friend from high school." "Hummph. Please! Right!" I'd say condescendingly, thinking about "those people" who say God is their "best friend" and how "silly" that is.

But then I found myself in an Episcopal priest's office, confessing my lack of sense of God's presence, and she was telling me to think of God as my friend.

Um.... whoops. As usual, God was serving me up a nice dose of humble pie. Why does God have to be so good at that???

When I explained my background, a lot of what I have just shared here, my spiritual director backed away from the "friend" word. "If that bring up bad memories for you, don't think in terms of that language. Find an image or a metaphor that works for you."

So this is my task this Lent. How can I develop a deeper sense of God's abiding presence? How can I spend more time with God? How can I just "be" with God, have a conversation with God? I'm exploring ways that this might work for me. I hope to be able to share some positive results. Your prayers would be appreciated.