Life is Not a Balance

I am not a naturally optimistic person. I wouldn’t call myself a pessimist either; I spend almost no time anymore imagining what the future will be like—good or bad. But I am highly sensitive, particularly to times of trouble, they build up in me layer by layer. First triggering tension in my body, then anxiety, then overwhelming sadness. If let outside their boundaries, the dark waves of our world can overwhelm me.

I spent the first 40 years of my life trying to build up a resistance to this vulnerability. I believed, in part from my religious origins, that my job was to buck up and be strong, to carry the weights others couldn’t or wouldn’t. To take the punishment from the punishers of the world. Maybe it's because I was regularly bullied as a teen, perhaps because I was an only child, or maybe (baby) I was born this way. These are questions I’ve stopped trying to answer. They demand knowledge that I’ll never have and spin up theories that only leave me staring into the abyss.

With all of this in mind, I should have known it was coming. The extreme dislocation of normality caused by COVID-19, the cancellation or closing of my most favorite self-care strategies (the gym, the coffee shop, the cafe at Whole Foods), the massive uptick in stress brought out by my clients; it was all building. When I wrote the last post about my desperation for Easter and the presence of Jesus, it was a warning (and a promise). The pain and uncertainty of these days had caught up with me, and more than just a still upper lip and pulled-up bootstraps were going to do the trick.

It took some time, and some outright rebellion against my own best interests to get this essay, but we’re here. And since I have a funny feeling you all are managing chaos in your ways, some gentle, some less so, this one’s for you.

Creation Happens at the Beach

If you read Genesis 1 with your visual imagination awake, you can see it. The brooding face of the ocean deep, shrouded in darkness. Over the stewing waters is the ebb and flow of a Wind, the face of the Spirit of God holding the seas at bay. With a word, the waters part, and land presses against them, forming a beachhead boundary where land, sea, and air collide.

It’s no accident that the breath of God holds the Red Sea to the side in Exodus, making room for dry land, in between. The crossing is a retelling of Genesis 1. The 3D intersection of sunlit coast, swirling seas, and Spirited winds is the creative nexus, a recurring image in Scripture over and over. Seeing it in its mythic original state, the metaphor tells us what creation is. Creation is less about making something out of nothing and more about how the meeting of chaos, boundaries, and inspiration brings purpose and freedom to the human experience.

Maybe you were trained by religion to believe God makes all the bad stuff go away. And life trained you otherwise. I'm sorry they lied to you. God has more at stake than conquering the darkness. God has all the power to destroy the chaotic deep from the beginning of time. But instead of destroying it, he gives it a job.

Jesus and the Sea

Have you ever wondered why so much of Jesus’ teaching happens on or near the sea? Maybe its because he recruited a bunch of fishermen and their boats became the primary means of transport. But I doubt it. Jesus’ ever act is dripping with creative purpose, and the choice to use the beachhead and the wild sea as the backdrop for His vision of humanity is no accident.

Jesus calmed the sea.

Jesus slept through its storms.

Jesus walked on its wild waves.

Jesus fished from it when no fish could be found.

Jesus’ whole ministry lives at the creative nexus:

• Dry Ground: the constant but vulnerable place we stand
• Chaotic Sea: the uncertainty embedded in the world
• Spirited Wind: the stirring of God to create, to speak, to act, to imagine in the face of vulnerability and uncertainty.

Jesus’ life is not a daily balance—1/3, 1/3, 1/3—of these forces. Sometimes he's deeply grounded: His Lenten time in the desert, His solitude. Others that He is encased in chaos, surrounded by the wanting crowds or the unforgiving storm. And there are moments, like the Transfiguration or the Resurrection of Lazurus, where Jesus is so lifted by Spirit power that He seems unbound by the rules of physics itself.

Jesus shows us that life is not a balance. It is a convergence. It is a meeting of uncertainty, familiarity, and inspiration which mix themselves up into a nexus of creation. Everyday moments where we find our feet on solid ground, take the risk of vulnerability and make the world that keeps the chaos at bay.

Creativity is a Rebellion

I wrote last year at this time that Lent is a Rebellion, and this is true. But more specifically, creation itself—in all its forms—is a form of resistance to uncertainty. When we tell stories, make crafts, plant gardens, read books, build Legos, design architecture, bake bread, we are saying that the chaos of the world can be contained. We are saying we will not be over-run by the tides. We are saying that—in fact—the wildness of yeast is the beauty of the bread, the inexplicable churn of the soil is the power of the garden, the tense unknown is the engine of the novel.

We are saying that every act we take to build the world—the spreadsheets we design, the workouts we video, the deserts we bake, the ditches we dig—are sacred. We are recapturing the torrent that cut the Red Sea in two. We are standing on top of the raging seas.

Maybe like me, the seas are getting the best of you these days. I get it. TRUST ME, I do. Maybe you need the firmness of some dry ground time. A slow walk in the open space. Twenty minutes in a chair with your feet firmly on the ground, breathing deep.

Maybe you need to act. You need to put some seeds in your garden box or weed out the mulch. Maybe you need to purge the closet that hasn’t been touched since you moved in. Maybe you need to make a video of you singing or try an Instagram story or write a short story for the first time.

The act you choose matters little. What matters is that we lean into the creative nexus. We abandon the illusion of balance. Stand here, with your feet on solid ground. Smell the sea swirling just past your reach. Feel the wind lifting up.

We are here. The world is being remade. Let’s go.

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