My friend, June, just wrote about a new friend she met in church.

“A young woman came into our church yesterday. I greeted her and she said it was her first time here so I invited her to sit with me.I generally do that when women come in alone for their first time. It is a big church and can be kind of intimidating. Anyway, she sat near me for awhile and then rolled up her coat, lay down and went to sleep and slept through the service. Someone asked me if she was ok. And, she was. She just needed a quiet and safe space to rest. I don’t think it matters that she missed the readings or the sermon. I think it matters that she found a safe space and could rest. I told her that I hoped to see her next week and she smiled and said that she will be coming back.”

Who knows why she needed to have a nap there and then. Maybe she was exhausted after returning from the front lines of life. Was it, borrowing the words of Frederick Buechner, that she collapsed from the too-muchness or too-littleness of her existence? Was she in search of sanctuary, a quiet and safe space to rest, as my friend June put it? Was it a return to something vaguely familiar from childhood, something lost in the intervening years? Did it take her back to the innocence of childhood, sitting peacefully beside parents as carols drifted over her?

I remember hearing Anne Lamott tell about a time in her life when she was struggling, a single mom wrestling with her demons. A black church was nearby her apartment in the city, and she could hear the Gospel music wafting out onto the streets. She crept inside, arriving late, leaving early, sitting near the exits. She somehow stepped inside a holy zone, though she couldn’t really explain how it worked. The sisters welcomed her, took her in. It was only later, much later, that she put together what she had experienced with what was being talked about.

It’s not that theology is unimportant, because it’s not. It matters what kind of God or Jesus or way of life or church you’re describing. They’re not the same thing, these notions of God, and one version can attract and build up and another repel and tear down. But these theological principles are most likely not the first term. The first term may not be rational at all. The first term has something to do with the woman sleeping in that pew, how she found a resting place, surrounded by a community going through the ordinary paces of its tradition. That’s the seen part. The unseen part is everything that guided her feet to this place in the first place, the simple kindness that welcomed her, and what the spirit is up to way back behind the curtain.

Preachers have always been consoled by the idea that people actually learn in their sleep; meticulously worked out sermons are occasionally delivered among quiet snoring. But it’s not really about the learning, though learning is important. It is mostly about grace, belonging, and peace. Can I be at home here, take off my shoes like I would in the home of a friend, and trust that everything will be okay? If so, then I can roll up my coat as a pillow and ascend a ladder that reaches a place so far beyond what I compehend that I am filled with childlike wonder. And if that happens, well, it is a very good service indeed

If you want a true read on the Christmas spirit, don’t listen to what people have to say about it. Watch how they treat and interact with retail staff in stores and restaurants during the season of peace and joy. That tells the tale. If you observe harshness and cruelty, then you know. If you witness kindness and understanding, then you know.

Come to think of it, that’s the true measure year-round, because kindness is the currency of love. Again, don’t listen to what people say about love. Watch where they slide on the kindness scale. Watch where we slide on the kindness scale.

Some time ago I was on a road trip and stopped at a restaurant. In the same area of the dining room a large, noisy group of maybe a dozen people were eating. They were constantly calling and cat calling the server, demanding this and that, complaining about every little thing. She could barely keep up. And at the end they didn’t even leave a tip.

My wife and I noticed, grimaced, and suffered for this person who was trying to earn a paycheck. I’m sure she would have liked to have been anywhere else than there. But sometimes you don’t get to choose. As we prepared to leave, we both approached her as she tried to keep up with the abusive table. In front of them, we thanked our server, went on and on about how fine her service was, and wished her the best evening. We also put money in her hand – in front of them – and said we left a tip on the table, but she deserved more. Then we turned and left. She was stunned, probably by the contrast with the customers at the other table. And they were stunned, too.

I repeat, don’t pay any attention to whatever cute little signs these people might have on their porches or on their car bumpers. Watch how they treat people who are in a one-down position, who are required to serve them, who, for a little while, have less power than they do.

Years ago, I was in a church and the CEO of a business invited me to tour his company operation and then go to lunch. It’s a kind of ritual that happens with clergy. As we walked out on to the floor, the executive stopped at a workstation, called an employee out on the carpet in front of me, berating and humiliating him. It was no accident that I was conspicuously present. One can only guess his motives, what this church guy was trying to prove. Perhaps to demonstrate his station and power in life, that one should take note. For whatever reason, he sadistically castigated another human being who had less power. But I tell you,  he was in his pew singing about Jesus the next Sunday.

Don’t pay any attention to what people say about faith and love. Watch how they treat other people with less power, those who are under their thumb. That’s the true story.

In fact, watch for this power differential anywhere. Watch for how people with some modicum of power treat others with less power. Listen for it in the language of politicians. Watch for it in organizations. Notice it in the supermarket aisle.

The ironic thing is that every Christmas narrative in New Testament Gospels is about this. Each and every story is some kind of commentary on power – who has it, wants it, doesn’t have it, and will kill to have it. If we read those first century stories through this lens – the lens of power and how it is wielded and used – a clear picture emerges, not only of the most common pitfalls of humanity, but the paradoxical way that sacred power overturns, undermines, and capsizes all this human clamoring for that which will collapse anyway.

Roman legions march, and babies are born in no count places. Swords slash and angels sing. Kings fight off all rivals, and the most important things of life are born among the lower classes. A radical reversal, an alternative narrative, has the power to change everything. Even when the story is covered over by the glitter of commercialism.

I’m a real proponent of the date of Orthodox Christmas – January 6. That’s because it’s not happening at the same time that cultural Christmas is. I like the idea of creeping off to some quiet, out-of-the-way grotto, where no one is presenting an extravaganza, flexing their social power, and trying to impress us. One candle will do. A story. A song about little things that make a big difference. A prayer of the heart. Less is more. Simple.

Amidst the noisy broadcasts of the world don’t listen to what they are saying. Pay attention to what they are doing. Watch for miracles of love that get born among those so enthralled with power that they very often don’t even notice.

In one of the seminar classes I teach at the University of Missouri, we are reading The Plague by Albert Camus. This book periodically makes the rounds, just as actual plagues and pandemics make the rounds. As of late it has been extremely popular and for obvious reasons. A theological and philosophical debate is embedded in the narratives of the main characters, and nothing is out of bounds: The cause of suffering, the disputed divine role in such things, and the role of courage and agency in the face of pure absurdity. All the things that cause existentialists to salivate.

I would like to say that most people are beyond blaming a deity for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but that is not entirely true. Though Camus and most of those who have read him eventually move beyond that thinking, it is not true of all people, not by a longshot. Some people and especially some religions communities still operate with a reward-punishment system. Extended essays like the Book of Job withstanding, they remain captive to this idea, an idea roundly discounted by Jesus who knew that rainstorms pour on the heads of all people, irrespective of virtue or vice.

There was a day when people struggled over these ideas. Rabbi Harold Kushner made the rounds with his Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People? on the heels of his own personal tragedy. Through the years, I have listened to scores of people trying to untie that Gordian Knot. It most often remained tied, snugly, resisting all efforts to unweave it.

Such a dialogue usually isn’t taking place in American culture today. Mostly, I think, because people have discarded the God of classical theism. Therefore, they have no theological conundrum to unravel. Instead, as a great reverse negative, they often default to nihilism. That’s a hard place to be. Especially when bad things really do happen to good people, and they do.

But you don’t have to choose between classical theism or nihilism. There are more ways forward than those two. But what?

Just this week I heard sad news of a tragedy which befell good people in a church I know far from where I live. It shattered the family and everyone around them. Today, another tragedy, equally terrible, befell good folk in the church I presently attend. They sat there today, stunned. At the same time, a man from our community decided this world was simply too painful to stay in it one more day, and so he left. We won’t even mention slaughters in Israel, doomsday in Gaza, and devastation in Ukraine.

As a young person, my mother died around Thanksgiving. She was a fine person, too. But that, as I have already said, is beside the point. The point is that loss comes regardless and is no respecter of persons. It strikes without warning, and we very often are left without answers that make any sense. For example, I’m driving a dear one to more testing and treatment tomorrow. We know when and why her immune system was tattered those many years ago, but we don’t know what the future holds. Never the future.

In the end, we are left with faith, hope, and love. These three. Even when we wonder if they can possibly be enough, we also know, deep down, that they must be.

The season we have just entered – winter holiday and the great American capitalistic orgy – do not help us traverse the beauty and terror of life. That requires more. And it is often found in the quiet cracks and crevices of life, sacred islands where hope and courage are available.

I’m not above foxhole religion; I, too, will beg for mercy when only mercy will do. But this is more than a ritual of the last resort. On the most basic level it comes down to knowing what’s worth living for and what’s not. Getting quiet. Following ancient wisdom when it speaks. Listening to whispers of the heart. And standing in a circle with those who long for the same.

As the culmination of much dreaming and planning The Liminality Press has launched! The house will focus on publishing titles specific to liminal themes, including academic, popular culture, and reference non-fiction. The first title will be published in late 2023 and potential authors are invited to visit the website to access submission guidelines.

The press is co-founded and directed by Lisa Withrow and Timothy Carson. You are invited to visit the website and explore the vision and scope of the project by clicking here.

Gina Ochsner teaches at Corban University.  She is the author of two short-story collections and two novels, the most recent being The Hidden Letters of Velta B. Her work has received the Flannery O’Connor Award, the William Faulkner Award, and the Kurt Vonnegut  Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in The North American Review, The New Yorker,  Ploughshares and Image:  A Journal of Art, Faith, and Mystery.  To find out more about Gina, please visit   www.ginaochsner.com

“What is the meaning of life? What is the answer? Tell me!” A man demanded at a recent reading. I stammered, looked longingly at the exit. Two elderly women in fold out chairs leaned forward slightly. I was trapped. “Well, it’s the pursuit of truth,” I said. In another context I might have added, divine incarnational Truth, with a capital T.  “Well, have you found it?” His tone was combative and, again, in a different venue, I might have laid all my cards out on the table, recited the Nicene Creed, told him the reason why I even breathe or want to keep breathing is because of Jesus. But his tone put me off. I’ve learned to be cautious at public libraries. I arranged my mouth into a smile. “Tell me!” he insisted. 

“In the research and travels I’ve done I’ve been asking people that very same question. I think it’s at the heart of being human. We are designed with a desire to have purpose and find meaning.” I said, my gaze again locking in on the exit door. “Stories are a powerful way of organizing the chaos of our world. I’m searching for stories that work like maps guiding us toward something worth finding.” Oh, the slippery slope of the vague.

A few minutes later he cornered me at the cheese and cracker table. 

“It seems to me that you have spent a fair number of years and energy searching and questing for something. I just hope you find it.” He said, grasping his briefcase and storming out of the library. What I wished I had said, “I have found it. But in finding it, I must keep up the search.”  This is not to say that God has hidden himself from me. Seek and you shall find. I have sought. I have found. But this is a continual, continuing journey. I am searching for intersection, convergence, that collision. The search has compelled (even propelled?) me to travel to odd places.

***

Medjugorye, the town where I’m headed, appears as a small dot on the map of eastern Bosnia-Herzogovina. I struggle to pronounce the name. Medju in Croatian and Serbian means between. Gorye means mountains. To get there I travel by train from Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, through the Neretva Valley. The dark river cuts through the jagged limestone mountains, like wire through cheese, hewing a path through massive stone outcroppings, some of which hang precariously over the water. Others protrude from the mountainside looking as if enormous stone fists had tried to punch through.

Fog hovers in the dark valleys, hangs over the water, rises and falls as if it were breathing. I’m entering a world of tremendous beauty and tremendous heartache. A haunted world that bears wounds. The crumbled remains of bombed houses and barns dot the hillsides, a grim reminder of the war in 1992 in which so many lost their lives. But atrocity, I read in my travel guide, is nothing new in this part of the country. In 1941, the Ustashe, a Croatian ultranationalist military group, rounded up Serbian monks from a nearby village and threw them into pits not far from Medjugorye. A few months later, thirteen hundred Serbian civilians were, like the monks, thrown into pits and left to die. Forty years later, against this backdrop of violence, six teenagers living in Medjugorye began seeing Mary and receiving messages from her. These sightings would no doubt have been dismissed as a hoax, or the collective hallucination of suggestible teenagers, had not Mary continued to visit these mystics—and others as well, over a period of many years.

Since the first sightings over thirty million people have journeyed to this small village, about one million each year. My reason for travelling three thousand miles to this remote pilgrimage site, is by my own estimation, ambiguous. I could say that I am a pilgrim by proxy. A good friend of mine had for many years wanted to come. For a variety of reasons, she couldn’t, and I could. But I know, as I walk from the tiny bus stations toward the catholic church where throngs of pilgrims cluster beside the outdoor stalls, I don’t belong here.

Raised a Presbyterian, I learned to love the quiet, somber God of the Presbyterians. That God crept silently form one stained glass pane to another, casting long swaths of color over the pews, the clean floor, our shoulders. After ten years at that church, our family left and joined a Pentecostal assembly. I loved and feared the God of the Pentecostals. This God rushed like wind, alighted as fire, visited people in dreams and delivered prophetic messages. This was a God of miracles. Some years later, I put the Pentecostal assembly behind me and went to graduate writing school. But as I passed the Catholic church on my way to classes each day, I thought of my friend. I remembered her ardent intellectual and spiritual enquiry and how it led her to Catholicism. I remembered her devotion and how for her, the church was a sanctuary and a refuge. At that point in my life, I needed a sanctuary and refuge. I was in an abusive relationship and as close to flunking out of grad school that a person could be. Rather than buckle down and prove to the program director how serious I was about writing, I took a job at a cheese and puppet shop, enrolled in Russian and Polish language classes, attended a martial arts club. And joined the Roman Catholic Initiation classes for adults at St. Thomas Aquinas.

The little parish of St Thomas Aquinas became the oasis in my spiritual desert, a burning coal in the deep mid-winter of my heart. I loved old white-haired Father Dismus and how he skipped down the aisle for the altar. I loved the other communicants and their pursuit of the holy amidst the profane and ordinary. I loved their deep generosity. And then as I so often did, I left.

Special tour buses convey pilgrims to Medjugorye from all parts of Europe and beyond. No pilgrim, it seems, journeys for precisely the same reason. Some are here to see a sign. Some are in desperate need of healing; their afflictions are obvious, their crutches and wheelchairs are obediently parked nearby. Some are veteran pilgrims; they have spent and will spend the rest of their lives visiting holy sites. Some are seeking a spiritual cleansing and are willing to stand in long lines outside the row of confessionals for their turn in a stall. I skirt the confessionals. Four are designated for those wishing to confess to a Croatian priest, four for those wanting a Serbian priest. None are set aside for English speakers. I sigh in relief and head for the stations of the cross trail. A placard at the trail head depicts an ice cream cone, a camera, a phone, a book and pencil. A thick white slash cuts through each image. No eating. No photography, no talking, no reading and writing. No problem, I mutter as an elderly couple with alpine walking sticks breeze past me.  I pant hello and they point to the picture of the phone and shush me.

Tall and wide and set on end like enormous coins, the stations are made of grey limestone. Each station has a scene carved in bas relief and each is placed about three hundred yards from each other, connected by a path of steep switchbacks and treacherous inclines. My many years of treadmilling has in no way prepared me for this. A Swedish couple with upscale hiking boots notice my flimsy shoes. My camera hanging from my neck. My notepad clutched in one hand. They don’t know about the power bar melting in my pocket and which I fully intend to eat anyway. Amateur, their gazes imply. Or worse, imposter.

The sharp rocks puncture the thin soles of my shoes. I’m questioning this hike. I’m questioning my motives. Why did I come here? As I reach station seven near the top of the trail, I am arrested mid-step. A man, wearing what looks to be a very expensive suit, has flung himself against the station. He hugs the stone, kisses the carved image of a suffering Christ. His shoulders shake and I can’t tell if he’s sobbing from sorrow or ecstasy, but it’s a moment of such spiritual ardor, such naked devotion, I can’t look away. I tiptoe past him, my eyes on his clasped hands, my cheeks burning.

His passion shames me. I realize as I slide on my butt down a steep wash of rock that at some point along my spiritual journey I had settled for comfortable Christianity. Now I am very uncomfortable and not just because of the razor-sharp rocks slicing my backside. The gospel is wildly disruptive, extravagantly revolutionary. How had I forgotten that? When and why did I become a spiritual surfer, sampling Christianity as if it were a large buffet from which I could pick and choose what pleased me, piling high my plate with what I liked, turning my nose up at what I didn’t? How did I become a voyeur, pleased to observe other people in transformation, applauding their growth and discovery, unwilling to ask why it wasn’t happening to me?

How had I so thoroughly abandoned any pursuit of holiness?

Around five p.m. I head for Apparition Hill. At the base of the hill, Mary is everywhere: Mary in the shops, Mary on printed prayer cards, small figurines designed to sit on end tables or desk tops. Phalanxes of larger statues meant for hallways or yards, line the sidewalks. Stickers of Mary, serene with her eyes downcast, plaster wine bottles and small vials of rose-scented perfume. I follow a group of Japanese pilgrims who sing and chant the rosary. At the top of the hill, a large group of Italians and another group form Spain have claimed most of the real estate around the enormous marble statue of Mary. It’s 5:50 p.m., Mary, if she’s going to show, is supposed to make her appearance in about twenty minutes. Some, I read in my guide, don’t actually see Mary, but instead observe their rosaries changing color, or the sun spinning or growing smaller and then larger, brighter and then dimmer. At 6:00 pm. A number of people move closer to the statue and kneel. I keep my gaze on the sky. At 6:08 I feel something bubbling inside my chest. I choose to call it hope. I believe in miracles. I have witnessed many, been the recipient of a few. I believe the supernatural and natural overlap seamlessly. I have spoken to an angel, received a miracle, and observed that angel vanish before my eyes. At 6:10 I stare at the sun. Nothing. At 6:11 I squint at the other pilgrims. They are praying, chanting, singing. They are not looking at their watches. I return my gaze to the oily sky. And I wait. And I wait. I can’t look at the sun without seeing spots and feeling the op and buzz at the base of my neck that signals an impending migraine. But I am strangely content. Something in my inner calibration has been gently readjusted. I am absurdly happy sitting on the sharp rocks seeing and doing nothing.

Sitting there I recall a story from Buber’s Tales of the Hassidim. A young devout Jew rushes to a fro, maintaining a blistering pace through his day. But he is profoundly dissatisfied. He meets with his rabbi. “Rabbi,” he says, “I pray, I fast. I do all that the law says; I do this to the best of my ability and with all my heart. Why is God so far away from me?” The rabbi studies the young man carefully, then says, “Stand still and let God catch up to you.” 

That night, as I lay on the little bed in the hostel, darkness folds around me. I think about my own strange journeys, so many of them undertaken without purpose or plans. God, overtake me, I murmur. Overwhelm me. Let it happen in my life, in my work. 

***

“We think your manuscript holds signs of real promise,” an acquisitions editor wrote in response to a novel draft I had sent. At that point, I’d already spent nine years on the novel, the editor had already acquired it, contracts had been signed. I had high hopes that further revisions would be minimal. “We like the boy with enormous ears and the magical powers of his hearing; he can hear the planets carving their silent traceries, he can hear the dreams of eels, he can hear what the dead talk about in their underground warrens. But we have a problem with all that God stuff.” 

“All the God stuff?” I murmured.

“Yes. There’s an awful lot of it. We think you should take it all out. Because isn’t this really a story about political, social and economic divide and then forgiveness and reconciliation?

Well, yes; it is about those things. But also, I wanted to point out, it addressed matters of spiritual divide and reconciliation. 

“I promise you, taking the religious stuff out will make it a better book,” the editor assured. “It will sell more copies.” 

The call ended, I sat at my desk and pondered the suggestion the editor made, the implied promise of commercial success. And I wrestled. Is this a book about the body or the spirit? Isn’t the body so enmeshed to matters of the spirit only death, that implacable crowbar, can separate the two? Jacob wrestled with an Angel (my Russian KJ version says it’s God, not an angel) and it was a physical bodily struggle that bore spiritual implications. His name was altered to announce the fact that this was a man who had seen God. When you see God, I imagined, you can’t un-see God. You will see everything else around you in a new light. As I sat in that chair I wrestled with what it meant to be a writer of faith writing for people who also wrestle, who are also wounded in that act. I thought about how many of the characters I have grown to love in the works I read and some I’ve written bear scars. A scar says once you were divided, and now you are becoming whole. The scar is a map of one’s undoing, it is a map of one’s reconciliation. I thought of the man clinging to the stone station of the cross. He was wounded, scarred. He had been touched by God, and if not by God, then by his longing for God. I wonder if those sobs wracking his body weren’t his soul’s pangs and groans, that acknowledgment that there is so much more waiting for us, something so much more beautiful and better and it is our burden to know it.

 Oh God, I pray, let this conviction fuel my vision, my apprehension of all that is around me. God, put me on a precipice of what I think I know and pure mystery. Let me peer into a widening darkness. Let the light behind my body cast a long shadow. God, be in that shadow hovering and brooding over all I say, do, write. Let me be wounded and blessed by that wounding. 

In 2014, Columbia Faith and Values awarded me first place in their “I Believe” poetry contest. Here it is:

I believe

God is

regardless of what I believe

I believe

what I believe

changes year by year

I believe

God comes

whether I call or not

I believe

but trust more

and that has made the difference