Ritz Crackers, Franzia & Communion

It’s 6:15 P.M. on a Sunday evening and I’m in the last place I’d like to be. The once-familiar fabric chair feels foreign against my thighs as the distant melody of a hymn I’ve known my whole life resounds alien against my eardrums. 

My mouth knows the words but my heart no longer seems to know what they mean. After the service ends, as I finish my now cold coffee, I am approached by someone I haven’t seen in a long time. 

They ask me the oft asked question in Christian circles- “what do you feel Christ teaching you in this season of your life?” 

I pause; now wishing I hadn’t finished my coffee so I could buy myself a few extra seconds with a long swig from the cup. 

No verse sticks out in my mind; I have no profound insight from the Divine to share. 

An awkward silence fills the air before I share the encapsulation of my faith the last year. “I think” I stutter, “I think I’m learning sometimes the bravest thing one can do is be courageous enough to stay.” 

As much as I would like to be Paul - this strong man who had a singular radical experience with the luminous Nazarene and never once looked back - I find myself resonating more deeply with the character of Peter. 

I don’t have a life verse - and I feel like the embodiment of Christian cliche to use Biblical metaphor in a blog post - yet I hope you’ll indulge me for a moment. 

There’s a passage in John where the Christ is seated amongst His disciples and He says in order to make themselves like Him, they must eat of His flesh and drink of His blood. If you’ll bear with my brief hermeneutic - contextually, in Jewish culture, this would have been offensive. Not only because of the implied cannibalism, but to eat the flesh and drink the blood of an animal was to make oneself like God. This was, in fact, why the Jews ritualistically offered animals to God Himself - for only He was fit to consume it. 

Today, this context makes the passage all the more beautiful because the crux of the Gospel is we become “like” God through the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ. 

Yet, at the time, these words were baffling - offensive even - to the crowded table for they knew not the full depth, breadth and intention of Christ’s coming to Earth. 

This is my layman speculation - somewhere between John 6:67 and 6:68 I envision Peter standing up from the table where he had just broken bread with the Divine. In my mind’s eye I seem him rise and place a calloused right hand on the doorknob of the dusty room where they dined. 

A large part of him - perhaps even most of him - wanted to write off his time with this carpenter from Bethlehem as a misguided adventure. 

Yet - something in him - perhaps Spirit, power or breath of God - compelled him to stay. It wasn’t because he wanted to stay - in fact, everything inside him wished to leave. And yet, anyway he stayed. Not because he understood, but because he knew this man in sandals had “the words of eternal life.” 

What I love most about that story - and what I cling to in this season - is that, through this miraculous, mysterious, cosmic grace - simply staying is enough. 

And so I’m learning to show up. Not because I feel like it, or I want to… in spite of the fact the wooden cross behind the pulpit that once defined so much of my existence now appears to be nothing more than Home Depot 2 x 4’s nailed together and bolted to a wall… in a season where communion feels like nothing more than a Ritz cracker swimming in cheap boxed wine. 

East London; November 2016; Sony A6000 35 MM Prime 

If life is a camera, wipe the residue of judgment from the lens of your life and stop judging yourself for feeling less than outstanding or adrift from your own Divinity. 

I’ve heard it said that sometimes getting off track is essential to our growth. Maybe getting off track means you’ve already left the room. That’s fine too. Peter left the room at least three times. 

Even if you believe Scripture is nothing more than metaphor or poetic writing from history, I think there is a profound lesson to be found in the life of Peter the Disciple. Peter - in his doubt, his insecurity, his inability to see the future - represents humanity; he represents me, and I think, regardless of your faith background, he represents you. 

I guess, what I’m trying to stay, is it’s brave to stay. It’s courageous; especially when you don’t understand and aren’t sure if - or what - you believe. It’s strong to lean into things you don’t fully understand and sit in your longing instead of attempting to fill it up. 

In seasons where it seems like it’s taking too long for what you want, for what you believe, to arrive; better to lean into the ache than abandon the desire. 

As I begin 2017, I’m making the conscious choice to stay, to keep going, to keep believing, to keep fighting and hoping… even on the days when I don’t believe; on the days when my hand is on the doorknob and it feels easier to leave the room. 

This is pure speculation, but I think Peter stayed in part because the other 11 sitting around the table stayed seated. There was a silent accountability - an invitation to come back to the table - which is why, I’d like to invite you to mine. We need one another to remind us who we are, at least, that's what I think. 

Courage dear heart, 

-JohnMark

When you don't feel like "enough"

The wooden plats creak as they slowly rotate over head; the old ceiling fan ignorant to the dust it’s breath stirs about the largely unfurnished room.

It’s 2 P.M. on a Tuesday and I’m laying in bed…. or more accurately, a freshly unboxed mattress on the hard oak floors of a thin-walled, mid-century apartment.

I curse under my breath as I slip out from beneath the single luxury item I’d allowed myself- Egyptian cotton sheets — and think, “how did I get here?”

My eyes glance over at the pile of management and leadership books in piled high in the corner of my room — Jim Collins, Malcom Gladwell, John Maxwell… paper men on paper pages sitting silently.

My phone- with its hundreds of unread text messages, thousands of emails, dozens of voicemails & too many apps vibrates loudly against the scratched wood floors.

Staring up, I wonder when the verbs in my life decided to switch tenses… at what point did:

“I love” become “I loved” or

“I believe” became “I believed” or, finally -

when did “I have a dream” become “I had a dream” ?

I didn’t understand, I’d tried everything. I’d read dozens of books and even more articles. I had subscriptions to “Time”, “Entrepreneur”, “Inc”, and “The Atlantic” — I’ve downloaded hundreds of iPhone applications and podcasts, joined yoga, Crossfit & pilates, tried (legally prescribed) prescription drugs and various coffee blends — GNC supplements and kitschy Pinterest quotes.

I lay still, racking my brain in a futile attempt to think of anything else I could have tried.

I’d done everything I could to turn life into a system in which I controlled every aspect and outcome. I took creativity and turned it into a game to be won and in the process, started to believe human emotion is a linear journey… instead of a complexity of undefinable nature.

Instead of being present — showing up each day in the moment and understanding I am enough — I insisted upon filling life with productivity tools and enough lists to fill a hundred legal pads.

What I failed to understand in those moments, is while I surrender myself to myriad productivity tools and templates… I never surrender to time. We may cognitively understand we can’t manipulate everything, but we certainly don’t live that way. Time is the one thing to which we always forget to surrender.

I’ve heard it said, “things are dark until they’re not” and I believe that sentiment is true. We put our ideas into actions when the timing is right.

Even though I wish Anthony Hopkins could narrate my life, I don’t exist in “Westworld” — I’m no strangely attractive robot. As frustrating as it may be, I can’t summon motivation, inspiration or creativity when they’re simply not there. Sometimes, I’m going through something, life happens, grief happens and sometimes… I have to take the long way. I don’t get to manipulate and control every aspect of my human experience.

I can wake up at 6 A.M. every morning until I’m broken and numb, but if the ideas, inspiration, or creativity don’t want to come to fruition, then they won’t.

It’s true, self-responsibility is indubitably empowering; a concept I won’t dispute. There is absolutely a degree to which we can position ourselves into postures of growth and cultivate healthy habits. However, the broader concept of self-responsibility can lead us to a resentment, bitterness and apathy nobody deserves to hold inside.

Personally, I’ve always dreamed of writing a novel… but maybe it’s not written because I haven’t met my leading man.

Perhaps I’m not falling in love because whatever I need to uncover about myself can only be unearthed in solitude and silence.

Maybe the reason darkness has encircled so much of my story is because one day, my painful experiences will become the opus upon which I build my life and enkindle the hearts of others.

All of that to say; I found myself under the sheets on a sunny summer afternoon not because I needed more inspiration, but because I needed less shame around the idea I wasn’t doing my best. After all, most of our self-loathing and self-hatred is rooted in the idea that we get to control the human experience; that we should be able to change our circumstances. Simply put, we’re depressed because we believe we aren’t doing enough.

Instead of listening to people with completely different life circumstances tell you you’re not doing enough, surround yourself with people willing to meet you where you’re at… people who see whom you’re becoming. In lieu of seeing closed doors and brick walls, start seeing lessons. Begin to understand what you’re experiencing right now will become inspiration later.

Your “hidden season” isn’t unimportant… it’s just unseen. And, I think, it’s the dark places and empty spaces that ultimately shape us. What we do here matters. These winter seasons and lonely nights should be celebrated, not wasted.

So give yourself a break. Stop beating yourself into oblivion long enough to understand there’s a cosmos beyond us at work in ways we cannot begin to fathom. And it’s something you can’t game or control.

Begin to walk in the freedom to feel what you feel and to be where you are and to know, deep down, that it’s enough.

Out of the Wardrobe

"courage, dear heart" || clive staples lewis

A mild-mannered ten-year-old sits quietly at the end of a grey cafeteria lunch table with his nose inside a battered copy of “The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe.” 

Further down the table the rest of the third-grade-class pick at styrofoam trays of greasy cafeteria food. A freckled-face boy with braces turns to the end of the table and says, “he's so gay it's retarded” - then returns to poking his chocolate milk carton with his plastic fork. The red-headed girl nods in agreement before loudly whispering, "seriously, reading at lunch? what a faggot." 

Confused, the young boy leaves Narnia, wanders over to the teacher’s table and asks, “Mrs. Smith, what does the “gay” mean? After an awkward pause, she responses, “it just means you’re happy, sweetheart.” 

The little boy reading Lewis was me. 

I’ve always known I was a little different. Sensitive and soft-spoken, I would rather play on the swings, read books or color by myself than kick a soccer ball or wrestle my classmates at recess. 

When I was in high-school I would often eat lunch in the library because I felt I had more in common with Hemingway & Tolkien than I did guys and girls my own age. I was “an old soul.” Or at least, that’s what I would tell myself. 

Mostly though, I think I liked the library because dusty paperbacks can’t whisper “fag” behind your back. 

I remember sitting in the library one afternoon reading “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman. In “Song of Myself” he writes, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large… for I contain multitudes.”

I clung to this sentiment for dear life- because I felt trapped in Byron’s “melancholic merriment” - a walking, talking, contradiction. 

I had- and still have- a deep, cerebral faith and spirituality. However, I also battled a near constant depression. I also, as it were, had a crush… on a boy. 

This story- my story- is not an easy one to share. Frankly, it’s also one I don’t feel most of you deserve to hear. Those closest to me have been privy to my struggles with sexuality, faith and mental health for some time. So, I don’t share this for them, nor am I writing seeking praise, stale platitudes or some kind of public sympathy. 

I share this for other enigmas like me. My depressed high-school friends eating lunch alone in quiet libraries - jaded millennials clinging to faith by a thread because they feel the Kingdom has no room for people like “them” - for the college student thinking of taking his own life because an inescapable aspect of himself is seemingly at odds with the grace of Jesus Christ.  

I have lost too many friends to self-harm over this issue to stay silent any longer. 

Which is why, in the coming days and weeks, I’m going to unpack more of my story than I’ve shared before. 

I’m no activist or theologian- but if sharing my own thoughts & experiences with sexuality, mental illness, and faith can help someone struggling to find themselves- then it’s worth the exchange of personal privacy. 

For now though, I leave you with this closing thought: what other people think about you means nothing in comparison to what you believe about yourself. 

We’re never as alone as we feel like we are… your story matters, and so do you; for you contain The multitudes. 

-JohnMark

Kittens & Cardboard

The gravel crunches under my tires as soft, grey dust flies up from the road; rocks periodically shooting out from the unpaved street, rhythmically knocking the underbelly of my Volkswagen.

I pull down the well-trod driveway to a shuttered house surrounded by 25 sweeping acres. Pastures with waist-high alfalfa grass wait to by cut and baled out front. The air somehow feels clearer here- sweetly tinged with the scent of new-cut wood…  sharp & clean. 

There’s a fondness- for the slightly dilapidated fence, it’s well-worn boards smooth from battering winds and rain of a hundred summer storms... for the grouchy mare grazing peacefully in the pasture, her tail flicking left and right in a bereft attempt at preventing flies from getting too close. 

I slip off my shoes in the cluttered mudroom as the grumbling garage door slams shut behind me. I’m barely inside the house when several cats slink in to join me, purring softly, clearly hoping their affections will impel me to refill their vacant food bowl. 

As they glide in-and-out of my legs however, my mind begins to wander from the Georgia countryside. 

I’m younger and beardless; naively wandering through a yet-to-be gentrified section of Brooklyn. Not far from the Utica Avenue station I stumbled across a box of kittens sitting under a dim streetlight near a shabby apartment complex. I paused for a moment; swallowing in the sorrowful sight. However, as I attempted to formulate a plan to smuggle the kittens across the East River and into my midtown hotel room, I noticed something. 

They were happy… or, if not happy, at the very least exceedingly contented; as if the damp, recyclable carton had always been their home. Realizing even Manhattan has its limits- and not feeling like explaining to my Uber driver why I was toting a box of cats into the Marriott Marquis, I decided to keep walking. 

Not far behind me, a stranger- a Brooklyn local judging by the deep v-neck t-shirt and suede argyle vest- stopped at the furrowed cardboard emblazoned “Free Cats” and picked out the runt of the litter. However, crafting artisanal cheese platters at the organic Food Coop in Park Slope hadn’t prepared him for what happened next. As he lifted the tabby from the box, she became erratic- crying and clawing, desperately trying to fight her way back to the place she knew to be home. 

I didn’t realize it at the time- but that’s what an in-between feels like. It’s a disorienting space wherein everything you’ve known gets stripped away. 

Whenever you enter your in-between- whether after college, or later in life- it’s often more than a simple change in scenery… it’s a seismic shift in all you’ve been defined by. 

When you pursue individualization and the truth of who you are- whom you were always meant to be- the extraneous labels and superfluous aspects of self all get removed, peeled away, killed off. 

You’re free for the first time, but also left floating in empty space… like New York at night; there's no stars, no moon, no sense of time or direction.

You're also alone... for when you stop letting other’s projections of you dictate your identity, there’s a chance the people you’ve been surrounded by might reject you. As you move on, the rest of the proverbial kittens in the box don’t understand where you’re going, or why you’ve left. 

But… back to the tabby for a moment. 

The man behind me on the street in Brooklyn looked like a pretty nice guy- he had well-manicured facial hair, a handsome, if unnecessary fedora, and slid into the passenger seat of a Subaru- the crying kitten wrapped in that suede argyle vest. 

What strikes me now, as my own cats wind between my legs, is the simple fact…. in that moment, the kitten had no idea she was going to a better place. 

Shivering beneath the cotton folds she was terrified- everything she had known had been taken away and she hadn’t the faintest idea where she was going next. 

Now…. I don’t know if my in-between ends in a Brooklyn brownstone with a hunter-green Forrester & a nitro cold-brew tap in my kitchen.  I certainly hope that’s the case… but right now, I feel like I have more in common with the kitten wrapped in the vest than I do the beautiful bearded man. There’s a large part of me that’s scared and wants nothing more than to run back to the box- everything I’ve known- the structure and security I found in my cardboard identity. 

The drive between the place and people I called home to my destination seems like a lifetime- yet in the grand scheme is nothing more than a quick hop across boroughs. 

Perhaps these are nothing more than the esoteric ramblings of an enigmatic twenty-something with too many thoughts & feelings. Yet, if growing up has taught me anything it’s that I am not the first, nor the last, to feel this way… and neither are you. 

In this season I’m finding to build is to first destroy, to know truth is to grieve the past, and to let go is to leave room for joy. 

To quote eternal Hunter S. Thompson, "never forget you come from a long line of truth-seekers, lovers and warriors" and you're so brave for leaving your box behind.