Deep Gladness Meets Deep Hunger
The call toward authenticity is sacred and holy and for the greater good.
Those words grace the dedication page of my memoir. They are also the last words I wrote for my 2017 TED Talk that has had over 7 million views. I chose the words carefully. No one is authentic. We are called toward authenticity and it is quite a journey. We are always in pursuit of it. We never arrive. All manner of distractions get in the way.
I try to live wholeheartedly, but I have tended to struggle with dysthymia (low grade depression) throughout my life, which can make wholehearted living difficult. I always strive toward authenticity, regardless of my mood. The desire for authenticity has brought me to this place in the year of our Lord 2024. I do not pretend to know where that call will take me next. It has not been made clear. It rarely is. You catch a glimpse of something in the mist and move in that direction. That’s all you can hope for.
Self-knowledge is holy, and the search for it is sacred. Throughout my life I have sought self-knowledge through various means, conventional and unconventional. Traditional depth therapy, with Jungian and Freudian flavors; writing, whether it be the journal I kept for 18 months after going through a difficult time, or these posts, or my memoir, or any of the other books I have authored.
Music has always been a part of the search. For someone who makes a living with words, it is ironic that I pay little attention to the words of songs. With a few exceptions, like Handel’s Messiah, or Hy Zarat’s Unchained Melody, or most of Billy Joel’s ballads, I don’t pay much attention to the words. For me it is all about the melody and especially the harmonies. I believe the most compelling argument for the Trinity is the existence of three-part harmony. God dwells there, in all of God’s parts.
Whether it is what Maslow called “peak experience” or the church fathers called “mystical experience,” we are all called beneath the ego and its incessant demands for power and safety. We are called to the realm of the soul where the deepest self-knowledge lies and we are most alive. We usually have to get there through a side door. The ego guards the front and back doors. You have to sneak past the ego to get to the soul.
For children, the soul comes forth through play. When I was a kid I loved building blocks and could play with them for hours. I would build castles and forts and then I would tear them down. Tearing my creations down was a part of the play. It prepared me for all the tearing down that accompanies even the most ordinary life.
For some a calling is birthed through a recurring dream. For others, it is a conversation you randomly hear on an airplane that feels as if it was meant for you. I still remember the time in the 80s when I was on a flight from Pittsburgh to Syracuse and the woman behind me, a pastor, said to her seatmate, “God is nothing if not subtle.”
Sometimes the soul comes forth through song lyrics I cannot get out of my head. As I already said, I don’t remember the words to songs, so when a phrase or snippet of a lyric comes to mind, I pay attention.
One of the most effective ways for the soul to speak to my consciousness is through the poems I have memorized. I haven’t quoted David Wagoner’s poem Lost in a couple of years. Lately I cannot get it out of my mind. I think I know the reason, though I am still pondering.
Sometimes instructions arise from the silence of meditation. Initially you take them as interruptions, and then you blessedly realize they are actually instructions. At least that is what people tell me. I have never been able to sustain any kind of meditation. I once took a doctoral course on the spiritual disciplines and told the two professors teaching the course that I was spectacularly bad at them. They assured me I was not. At the end of the week one of the professors, a very kind-hearted soul, said, “Maybe this isn’t the path for you.”
Sometimes a movie or television show awakens me to what the spirit is trying to say. As I wrote in my memoir, the television show LOST was hugely important in my life. Halfway through the final season there was an episode in which the protagonist realizes he has been called by God to die. I wept uncontrollably because I knew I had been called to transition genders. I think often about that night.
Throughout my adult life I have asked two questions. “What is right for me?” and “Where am I willing to be led.” They are the right questions. The problem is that I sometimes refuse to listen. I like to move fast, acting as if speed itself is holy. Speed is not holy. It is just speed. If I take the time to listen, the spirit emerges.
I am not artistically inclined, but I remember the cold winter day in Akron, Ohio when I noticed that a big chunk of ice had formed beneath a dripping outdoor faucet. I got a hammer and chisel and started shaping the block of ice. I sat there for hours carefully chipping away sections of the block. I had no idea what I was making until I saw what appeared to be a nose emerge. Following that clue, I sculpted two eyes, lips, and a square jaw. When I finished, the block of ice looked a little like Frankenstein, but I was proud as a 12-year-old can be. I had found a face in a block of ice.
Sometimes a call emerges when you chisel away at the detritus. If a face was in a block of ice then maybe a call might be embedded in the frozen sea that develops within me. I must find a hammer and chisel so I can get to work.
I’ve given a lot of speeches over the years, and on hundreds of occasions I have quoted Frederick Buechner’s words from his book Wishful Thinking: “God calls you to the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” On scores of occasions people have thanked me for giving them that framework to understanding calling.
If you answer the kind of call Buechner identified, you will also be answering the call toward authenticity, and all of that is sacred and holy and for the greater good.
