Man of Sorrows
But it didn’t satiate me. I wanted the personal God of my childhood. The God who heard my prayers and had a greater plan. But I’m still not sure what that means. Do I want to not suffer?
Man of Sorrows
I don’t know wtf is going on. Do you?
I started writing this article in April 2023 and that is how I began. I even posted a draft of it. Some of you might remember. I was not sure where it would lead, but I was just happy to be writing again. Then I became very ill. My knees swelled. I could not lift my arms above my shoulders. My fingers seized and it was difficult to type. Imagine driving in fog and that was how I felt trying to reach my thoughts. Something was very wrong. With immediate sinking surrender, I knew had rheumatoid arthritis, but it was going to take three opinions and one very smart doctor to make me accept it. It would take another year and a half for me to accept the reality of lifelong infusions every other month. But first, I spent late 2023 and most of 2024 on methotrexate, which obliterated my immune system, so I was chronically infected with something on top of not being able to walk while developing gastritis. I had pneumonia and Covid twice, four sinus infections, and some weird throat thing I still don’t understand. A simple trip to the movie with my sisters ended with a severe case of norovirus that sent me to the ER. (I’m not watching the second Wicked movie. Traumatic memories.) The only thing that helped was prednisone and I put on forty pounds. Eventually, my insurance gave in and approved a biologic, and I am beginning to feel a little better and learning to navigate some of the damage done.
So that was great. One day I was fine, and the next day, I was chronically ill, and I could not change it. But it gave me a lot of time to think and read. I withdrew from the world out of necessity. It was a dark, challenging two years. I am not sure how I worked because some days I could barely walk.
But it took me somewhere interesting. It answered the questions I began to ask. So, if you’re willing, I’d like to begin again with you.
I’ve never known why I’m alive. I just know it’s treacherous. There are so many things on planet earth that can eat you alive. (Including your own immune system, as it turns out.) For years, I yearned for meaning and God. I longed for so long to understand I pursued three degrees in religion and philosophy while continuing to work in highly responsible jobs in life sciences. It was such a bifurcation of my personality no one, including me, understood it. In 2010 my boss asked me, “Wouldn’t an MBA make more sense?” Probably would have, but who wants to study revenue? I only tolerate capitalism because I like feeding my dogs expensive food and a need a house for them to live in.
But who even is God? What is God? If you’re Christian, you probably imagine he looks likes us. God is a tinkering guy in his garage, and we are his creation, made in his image. A science project, perhaps. An act of love? Divine progeny? The spark of creation that urges us to create is God, at work in his world. Jewish, Christian, and Islam all share the same God. The Torah came first, then the New Testament, then the Quran. (Shout out to Abraham.)
If you’re Hindu, it’s Atman, which I would translate as the animating life force of every living thing. Atman is metaphysically identical to Brahman, which is the Absolute. Depending on the sect or thread of Hindu beliefs, there are a few Gods, or many Gods, and space for all beliefs, as everything is Brahman. So even the separate Gods are manifestations of one, unifying supreme divine God.
The echoes of that God are Atman, in you, in me, in everything.
Consider this gorgeous passage from the Upanishad’s.
He is the sun dwelling in the bright heaven; He is the air dwelling in space; He is the fire burning on the altar; He is the guest dwelling in the house. He dwells in man. He dwells in those greater than man. He dwells in sacrifice. He dwells in the ether. He is (all that is) born in water, (all that) is born in earth, (all that) is born in sacrifice, (all that) is born on mountains. He is the true and the great.[1]
Think about waves in the ocean, rising and falling, distinct for a moment, then returned to the source.
Buddhism is a bit more complicated. Depending on the school of thought, there is a God or there isn’t a God, or it doesn’t really matter because you’re suffering anyway and the only way to stop is to jump off the wheel of Samsara. Detach from the conditioned states of existence. God is either everywhere, or nowhere, and who really knows at all. Buddhism, as I’ve learned it, is more about a mode of being than believing. There is a concept of Buddha nature, or the thus-ness of things that have echoes of Brahman and Atman. Since the Buddha was Hindu, that makes sense to me. But it’s not so much that the divine is inhabiting everything as everything is-as it is. We can only find peace when we understand our sense of self is as transitory as our other senses, rising and falling in response to external stimuli.
There are others. Indigenous American beliefs about the Great Mystery and Great Spirit. Taoism, the world’s first mysticism. The resurgent paganism of the ancient world. New age mixes of all the above plus a healthy dose of modern, entitled narcissism, with over emphasis on identity and acquisition that leads you to believe that parking spot was kept open just for you because you found the secret and manifest it.
***
For years, I was most comfortable with Hindu and Buddhist metaphysical beliefs, but I tended to filter it through the mind of someone who had a lot of therapy. It’s easy to overlay the modern psychoanalytic with Buddhism, as cognitive behavioral therapy is like the practice of meditation and mindfulness in Buddhism. Surrender. Acceptance. Letting go. Presence. These are my catchphrases, terms I use to anchor myself in the rapids of everyday life. I don’t eat animals because I see divinity in all living things (Atman) and know all things are suffering (Buddhism).
But it didn’t satiate me. I wanted the personal God of my childhood. The God who heard my prayers and had a greater plan. But I’m still not sure what that means. Do I want to not suffer? Or do I want my suffering to make sense? There is no way that God can exist and there be so much suffering in the world but the only way I can console myself of that suffering is with faith in God, because otherwise, what is there?
In philosophy, this is called the problem of evil. Think about it like this: If God exists, and God is benevolent, omnipresent, omnipotent, and immutable, how does evil exist? How are children raped? How are humans trafficked for sex? How does war happen? How do atrocities unfold? How do billions of sentient mammals suffer in factory farms for our food? I could cite vital statistics, point to a UN report that one woman or girl is killed by their intimate partner every ten minutes. I could keep going and tell you about the 300,000 children died who died of malnutrition in any given year. It’s dark.
In the summer of 2022, 4,000 beagles were rescued from an Envigo farm in Virginia. Their condition was so abhorrent, the Department of Agriculture actually did something. 4,000 were saved, but who knows how many suffered and died before. The worst part of this story is that they were being bred for use in laboratories, to test our cosmetics, cleaners, and drugs. There are other beagle farms out there now, and thousands of beagles being prodded and poked in labs.
When I read this story, I told everyone around me I didn’t want to live on this planet anymore. I’m done. I check-out. Fuck this place. If there is a God, I have feedback. They’ve failed. Their system is too flawed to be fixed, and it needs a hard re-boot and factory re-install. Forget the promise about the flood and the rainbow. Just end it all. Now is a good time to come back. If this is defiant and Luciferian, then send me to hell because I don’t want to be around someone who has the power to stop this and allows it to happen.
My reaction is not unlike the reaction of Ivan in Dostoevsky's The Brother’s Karamazov who offers to give God back his ticket to Earth in response to the suffering of innocents. Because there is no suffering of innocents that can be justified. Simone Weil wrote, “To explain suffering is to console it; therefore, it must not be explained.”[2]
There can be no consolation for suffering. It makes it too easy for us to remain comfortable. It doesn’t stop us from trying though. Has anyone ever said anything like this to you?
“God has a plan.”
“What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.”
“Insert quote that devalues your suffering here.”
(Side note: If I am having a hard time and someone says anything other than, “I’m so sorry. Life is hard. Can I bring you a McDonald’s Diet Coke?” I’ve got nothing for them.)
Any argument that doubles down on the existence of God and tries to explain the problem of evil is called a Theodicy.
My dear friend Dr. Bertha Alvarez-Manninen teaches the Philosophy of Religion at Arizona State University. I asked her if she believed in God, and she said, “Mostly I’m a theist, but on problem of evil days I’m agnostic. The only way you can be an honest theist is to acknowledge that your belief in God is incompatible with the problem of evil and believe anyway.” I asked her to share some theodicies for inclusion here, but I disliked them so much I stopped her and decided not to spend my time with them. None of them account for the suffering of innocents in a way to justifies it to me. She said that my ultimate issue is that identify with the sufferer, and she thinks that is what God would want.
I told her this made me angry at God. Bertha pointed out that I can’t simultaneously be angry at God and not believe in God, and so I said, “Thanks smarty pants. Shut up.”
It was just six months ago that I learned Jesus is called the Man of Sorrows.
But let me back up a bit. There’s more context needed here.
***
I have a reoccurring dream that began in my mid-forties and only just now stopped. It’s important.
I’m in my maternal Grandma’s home. I walk downstairs. The basement is the same as it was when I was young. Down steep stairs, the laundry room, unfinished, a single dangling light bulb, glowing yellow against cement floors and plaster walls. An old wooden wash bin sits in the corner. There’s is a closet somewhere behind us, where grandma stores extra laundry supplies. To the right, a finished apartment with bathroom, kitchen, and fold out couch. But the center hallway doesn’t end. It keeps going into a limitless space where finally I’m outside again in the garden the sun shines. My grandma is there.
This is where I grew up. In Helper, Utah, population not much. It’s in the eastern part of Utah, nestled in the Castle Valley region, where mountains jut straight from the earth, forming sandstone cliffs. The region was coal rich, but now it’s mostly stripped bare. The town formed when miners moved from company owned housing in the mountains to their own homes after the unions came in the early 20th century. My people were all Democrats, when being Democrat meant never crossing to the company side. I have blue blood in my veins but barely recognize the party that gave it to me.
The men chipped away at coal deep in the mountains and the women did everything else. My maternal grandma grew up in Royal, Utah, a coal camp that’s now nothing but rubble. She and her eight siblings shared a one room company house. (There were ten of them, but two didn’t make it beyond infancy.) My paternal grandma grew up on a farm in Emory County, but the men still worked in the mines. (Some time, I’ll tell you the stories she told me about the Great Depression and War. How I loved my grandmas.)
Everything about Helper grew up around the coal mines, even the name and even me. The mountain pass through Soldier’s Summit to Provo and Salt Lake was so steep, at nearly 7,800 feet, the coal laden trains required Helper engines up the steep grade. Those helper engines waited at the rail depot in town. The train tracks still run right through the middle of town. My earliest memory is a summer night, the window of my bedroom open, and the train’s horn piercing the still, cool air, followed by the clank of metal against metal.
Sometimes, when it came early enough, I rode my bike to the tracks to wave at the Amtrak train. I still see the amber light in the windows, the silhouettes of unknown people waving back at me. The Amtrak train always moved so much faster than the Rio Grande. Silver and sleek, I thought it the most majestic sight in the world.
But then the mines dried up, and so did the town.
Go search the internet for Helper, UT and look. It’s a living ghost town. I know because I haunt it in my dreams.
But back to my dream – if I’m not in my grandma’s house, I’m climbing the mountains around Helper and the canyon pass that takes you there from northern Utah. Like all dreams, movement is fluid and non-linear. I’m walking on the hill that overlooks US Highway 6 and then I venture up the road that takes me to Royal, where Grandma lived. Then, I’m back to US Highway 6, heading North. I don’t drive. I walk through endless, open expanses. The dirt is tan, just as I remember from hours spent playing in it as a kid. There is sagebrush, elm, and pine. There are cave markings, hieroglyphics. This isn’t how it is. Those things are found in Nine Mile Canyon and further east and south, not North, but it’s how I dream it.
Eventually, I’m in Salt Lake City and the I’m walking on highways and main roads. Sometimes I get stuck in the airport. For some reason, I’m trying to catch a plane to Phoenix. My dogs have gone on ahead of me or at home waiting for me, but I can’t get to them or remember where they are. I’ve lost my dogs, and I’m trapped in Utah. When I miss my flight, I wake up, frantic and confused. These dreams vary in the anxiety associated with them. Sometimes I don’t walk, but crawl. Sometimes I run.
These dreams only started in my mid-forties. When I wake from them, I replay them for hours. Sometimes, I access Google Earth and try to travel the path I walked. I started reading Jung’s theories on dreams for insight. Jung thought that sometimes, dreams were your mind trying to process something. The more intense the dream, the more intense the issue. Like a fever, dreams try to burn out psychological irritants. I loved my grandma dearly. If this dream is like a fever, it’s because the grief of her loss remains to the day, hidden under the surface of my day to day. I miss her with an ache so deep nothing will ever resolve it. I’d give anything to hear her voice again. Grief is the inverse of love, the same emotion, facing loss rather than reunion.
But that doesn’t explain the persistent wandering through Utah, the images of houses and roads I’ve seen only sporadically the past twenty-five years. I find this unsettling. How can I be such a mystery to myself? How can these secrets lurk in me I don’t understand? Nothing I did put them to rest and I remain driven by this insatiable desire to understand.
What I’ve not yet told you, but perhaps what you have inferred, is I was raised Mormon and that was as central to my identity creation as the high desert and blue-collar, working-class culture I’ve described. I have no memory of a time when God wasn’t the fixed point at the center of my life – church on Sundays, Monday family home evening, youth group during the week. We prayed before every meal and on our knees each morning and night. My mom kneeled next to me at my small twin bed to teach me how to do it. I have a memory of a handmade quilt on my bed, patterned red and white, Raggedy Anne, and the soft glow of a lamp light in my bedroom, my mom next me. It was cold and dark, the sun set early in winter. I wanted to get under the blankets but first, we had to pray.
“Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for the food we ate and for keeping us safe. Thank you for the home I live in and the family I have. Please bless Buttercup[3], Leigh, Judy, Dean, Mom, Dad, and my Grandmas, and the rest of my family. Please help me sleep well and keep me safe. Please forgive me for my sins today and help me to do better tomorrow. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.”
Sometimes, when I tear into my Door Dash order, I think, “Heavenly Father, bless this food that it may nourish and strengthen my body and do me the good I need.” It’s just there, waiting to be uttered. Really, all of it is always just there. I’ve also not told you that I grew up gay and gender non-conforming within this backdrop and there’s no place for someone like me in it. In 1995, I came out and was excommunicated. I assumed the trauma of that created this rift in my consciousness I needed to heal, but nothing would. For years, I thought this preoccupation with God would go away with therapy, study, time.
About a year ago, I realized it wasn’t a wound I’d heal because the longing for God was at the core of who I am. I wouldn’t find a tidy resolution for the hyper-fixation, only periods of seeming respite while I focused on work. Otherwise, my preoccupation has been consistent, a constant gnawing inside me.
A few months ago, my childhood friend Angie came into town. She’s the first person I told I’m gay when I was seventeen, but she knew already. She’s still a Mormon and it’s okay. Seeing her dislodged a confession I really needed to say out loud. “If the Mormons came out tomorrow and said, ‘We’re sorry. We want to welcome back all the gay people, and we accept you fully and you can get married, I’d probably go back and feel like I was going home.’” We cried together, neither one of us having any sort of resolution. How is it possible to still want to believe in God and have no resolution to anything?
Surely, there are other things about the church that bother me – the role of women, the history of polygamy, questionable ethics of Joseph Smith. So don’t take me at my literal word, just try to understand my heart. (All of human history and all human institutions are problematic because all humans are problematic – including me. A recent re-read of the Bible made that abundantly clear. It’s something I hope to talk more about here.)
Then I told her what I never thought I’d say, and once again, she was the first person I told. Astonishing providential patterns in our lives. “I’m thinking about becoming a Presbyterian.” Angie messaged me a few weeks ago while on her morning run to tell me she ran by a Presbyterian church, and it made her think about her favorite Presbyterian. It’s a privilege to be loved unconditionally.
But you may be saying, “What? Woah. Hold on. What about the dreams? Presbyterian, what?” I skipped a lot there. I’ll come back to it if you keep coming back here. Hold me to it.
Brief note: I am not a religious zealout. Mystic, maybe. Humble seeker. Animal and dog lover. I wish to do as little harm as possible, but have, from time to time, done a lot. Student of Buddhism. Mormon Apostate. Christian, where Christ is an all loving, encompassing redeemer, God manifest in the world. We should read the Red Words.
[1] 1. Swami Paramananda, trans., The Upanishads, Project Gutenberg, accessed April 23, 2023, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3283, Loc. 623.
[2] 1. Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. Gustave Thibon (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 165.
[3] My dog.