A bag full of garbage and the holy

Moving, divorce, grab bags, and compost

Some of you know that I have been through a lot of life changes recently. In the past 365 days, I have moved from Indianapolis to Des Moines and now home to Chicago. In the spring, sadly, my husband and I realized that our marriage was no longer working. This summer, I have stopped working as a freelancer and gone back to full-time employment.  

Life is rarely what you expect or plan for. There is death and new life. There is loss and gain. Your heart gets broken open but in the breaking, there may be more room for light and air, compassion and wisdom. Maybe.

As a result of my separation, I am more of a full-time hermit than I was as a married person. I have complicated feelings about that. But there is a spaciousness in the solitude of being single again. I like that.

Thomas Merton said, “For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.” In other words, we shouldn’t try to emulate some ideal “over there” of what a good or holy person is. Being a saint doesn’t mean being an impersonator. It means being yourself, deeply, warts and all.

All those people who were hermits in the deserts of the ancient world weren’t holier than you or me - they were just people. Complicated people. They didn’t go into the desert because they were religious exemplars or pure as the driven snow. Let’s be real: they went for many reasons. Probably many were extreme introverts or miserly curmudgeons! Some were probably trying to live with mental illness, alcoholism, or autism. Some would have been religiously ambitious, wanting to earn fame for feats of extreme holiness. We know that some were running away to the desert to escape crimes or crises back home. Yes, many were contemplatives, longing to taste the depth and mystery of God’s presence. But almost all chose to follow the path of hermitude for reasons that were a mixed bag of the holy and the broken, with a little sin mixed in. Merton would have been the first to admit that about himself and his call to religious life.

There are all kinds of reasons that we follow a certain vocation; some are true and honorable, some are private and emotional, some may be questionable or twisted, and yet the reasons anyone does anything is not really as important as how that work, vocation, or service bears fruit for other beings in the world we live in. We are human and so we are a bundle of contradictions, pain, coping mechanisms, and stories that we tell ourselves about what it all means. But our inner garbage can serve a purpose if we can mix it up with some stouter stuff and help it turn into a compost to grow new things.  

The reasons I am a part-time hermit are not purely beatific. They are a jumble of the spiritual, the neurological, the emotional, and even the selfish. But spending time alone with God is when I feel most like myself, and gives me fuel to write, to listen, to love my family and friends, and to keep on keeping on in this mortal life. I believe every person requires some version of this: a kind of life or way of being we need to be their best selves. Now: life, God, and the world aren’t able to always give us what we need or want! But honoring who we are is part of our life’s work as humans, individually and together. Knowing what you need instead of trying to convince yourself you should be more like someone else is at least half that task.

What Jesus was calling people to do was not religious purity or accomplishment, but integrity and compassion. Letting go and trying to love anyway. That’s how I’ve been reading the gospel lately, anyway. I want to accept the grab bag I find myself with and see what I can make with what’s inside, not to wish I had a different bag, with less ugly or prickly stuff in it.

As I adjust to life in my new hermitage – a small, city apartment – I think of the ancient hermits who lived in caves and who were, like me, ordinary, broken people, looking to live and serve the gospel in the way that seemed best to them. I think of how calling can’t help but be a mix of our best gifts and most questionable tendencies. How vocation is partly who we are and partly what happens to us. Life is a mixed bag, a messy compost of all kinds of stuff. It’s no good wishing you had a different bag (or pile of moving boxes!); it’s better to look through the bag you’ve got and try to make a blessed thing - fruitful, useful, beautiful - from what you find in there.

Heidi

“Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” (Howard Thurman, 1899-1981)

THINGS I’M READING

This Other Eden, by Paul Harding. A novel based on a true story of a racially integrated community of people living on a small, meager island off the coast of Maine. They were eventually evicted by their disgusted white neighbors, who said it was for health reasons but really it was because they wanted the land for themselves. A strange, other-worldly, poignant little book.

Falling Upward, by Richard Rohr. Rohr proposes that there are particular ways your mind, perspective, and beliefs tend shift as you enter the second half of life. When I first read tried to read this book, maybe ten years ago, I thought it was all crap. Now that I’m almost fifty, every word makes sense. So.

Florida, by Lauren Groff. I visited a friend who lives in north central Florida in May as part of a “divorce endurance tour,” and she had this book on her shelf and hadn’t read it yet, a gift from her mother after she moved. I found it riveting and gorgeously written, if also gruesome and brutal, sort of like Florida. Gators, swamps, snakes, hot sun, lost kids, angry women, poverty and wealth, sand and ocean.

The Vaster Wilds, by Lauren Groff. I got hooked on Groff’s sentences so I picked up a couple other of her books. This is her newest, about a young woman in the 17th century who runs away from a settlement resembling Jamestown and tried to make it on her own. It was a slow start and a bit too dreamy, but eventually I was riveted by this girl’s fight for survival. A novel about how women’s lives tend to be devoured by men, I’d say, whether inside or outside the societies they live in.

SOME OF MY BOOKS

Everyday Connections: Reflections and Practices for Year B - Sermon prep! Personal reflection! Small groups! I put lots of wondering, poetry, humor, and serious meaty bits into this book, because that’s what I love in a book myself. Available from your favorite bookseller or Amazon. A recent note from a reader:

“Thanks for including Amy Carmichael's three sieves (is it true, is it kind, is it necessary) in your Everyday Connections Year B! I read it this week and was grateful for the reminder, shared it with the church and have received lots of gratitude from them, too.”

Advent in Narnia. A book I wrote for adults and older kids, back in 2015. I hope you love it as much as I do. Advent starts December 1, 2024.

Free bookplate! I will mail two signed bookplates to you to stick inside any of my books if you fill out a form on my website. No strings attached and I don’t keep your address.

New here? Want to know more? For more about me and my other books and writings, check out my website.