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AudioWhether God exists is a legitimate question. That man needs a God is an incontrovertible fact. - Carl Jung
One day at Mepkin Abbey monastery, Father Christian and I were in the breezeway that separates the monastic offices from the refectory. While chatting we were approached by a self-professed atheist who said he was visiting the monastery from “anthropological curiosity.” Right in the middle of a casual conversation that had nothing to do with religion, the atheist, trying to catch Christian off guard, blurted, “Tell me something, do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think that maybe God just doesn’t exist?
Without hesitation Christian replied, “Sure I do, do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think maybe he does?
The man said nothing and walked away. But before he did, the look on his face was all the answer I needed.
* * *
It was a typical first class for a new year. I faced a room full of college students sitting in a circle, infernally fidgeting. So, as I often do, I started around the room asking each student why he or she decided to take a class on spirituality. As the first student shyly told me he was “curious,” I winced. I knew from experience that I was now in for a string of identical replies.
And so it went until I was half way around the room. Then I came to him. He was a big, healthy, ruggedly well-built guy, and he was several years older than the first and second year students who made up the bulk of the class. There was a seriousness, a smoldering intensity about him, and I couldn’t help but notice how calm and at ease he seemed compared to the others. He had remarkable eyes that looked straight into mine without wavering, and it was all I could do to meet his gaze. As soon as he began speaking the atmosphere shifted. He spoke slowly, softly, barely audibly for a kid his size. But this quiet intensity demanded attention and every word conveyed a mood of hushed expectation.
“Up to a couple years ago, I was the maintenance manager for a large plant that made ice cream. I’m from a small town in the country and this plant is the only real business around. I liked the job. For a kid with no college education the money was great, and I had a lot of responsibility. I had a great job, a wonderful girlfriend, and a brand new red Camaro paid for with cash. Life was good. I had it made.”
This last sentence was delivered ironically and was accompanied by a small, self-deprecating smile. He then hesitated. He was in no hurry, and the possibility that the silence might become awkward clearly never entered his mind. He looked away for a moment or two, lost in his own thoughts. Finally recalling our presence he picked up his story.
“Then, late one Friday night, I was going over everything one last time before the weekend. Everyone else had gone home, and I was anxious to leave myself. I went into the freezer to check the stock and the door swung shut behind me and locked. The light went out. Just like that I was trapped in a freezer at forty below zero in jeans and a t-shirt and no one around for miles. I knew I was dead.” He stopped speaking. Seconds slipped away. He no longer was looking at me. His eyes had found a spot on the wall behind me, and I knew he was back there in that freezer — alone.
“I panicked. The door was locked, there was no one around, and even if there had been the noise from the compressors was deafening. No one could hear my screams. I knew this for a fact, but I threw myself at the door screaming and beating anyway. I was so cold and crazy that I broke every bone in both hands and wrists and felt nothing.”
Again he paused. A faint smile came to his lips. “You know, I always thought I was religious. I went to church on Sunday, said my prayers, and tried to live right. I even taught Sunday school and Bible study — you know that sort of thing. But when I was pounding on that door, there was only one thing in my head. A voice just kept screaming, ‘Oh my God! I’m dying I’m dying I’m dying and I don’t know if there’s a God. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me when I die. I don’t know anything.’ This thought was so intense that I don’t remember anything else until I found myself outside the freezer crumpled up on the floor, sobbing. You’d think as maintenance manager I would know that a safety door had been installed just two days previously. But I didn’t. And I don’t know to this day how I found it in the dark or how I opened it — I must’ve just fallen through it I guess — but I did and I’m alive.”
He looked around the room steadily, meeting the gaze of everyone, and, as if to remind himself, repeated very softly yet emphatically, “I’m alive.”
“I was in the hospital for five days with frost bite and broken bones, and in rehab for eight weeks. When I was healed up enough I drove to work. I walked into my boss’s office and quit. I drove over to my girlfriend’s house and broke up with her. Then I went to a used car dealer and traded that stupid Camaro for an old van and some cash. Then I left town.”
“For the last couple years I’ve been wandering around the country — camping out mostly — working odd jobs, reading everything I could get my hands on, and praying like I invented it or something. I’m telling you I’ve prayed so hard I felt like my head would explode and then I just prayed it would. And then I signed up for college because I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
Again he hesitated. He looked down at his lap seemingly fascinated by his slowly clasping and unclasping fingers. I knew he was trying to decide whether to say something or maybe just how to say it. Then, his mind made up, he again looked me straight in the eyes.
“Because you see,” he said with finality, his eyes now filled with tears, “I still don’t know whether there’s a God or not. All I do know is that I’ll spend every minute of the rest of my life finding out.” Leaning over to hide his face he wept.
Then the spirit descended and the mood filled the room so thickly it was almost visible. And for over an hour a minor miracle occurred. Thirty rambunctious and forever fidgeting college students sat in stone silence. They looked like battle fatigue victims staring wide-eyed into the ether. They were like statues carved and custom fit with their own unique version of the thousand-yard stare. No one had the slightest inclination to break the spell. No one moved. And I was one of them.
Then after an hour that felt more like a moment out of time, I reluctantly had to break the mood. I spoke three times before anyone paid the slightest attention. Then, I watched in amazement as those still entranced kids stood up and shuffled out of the room in single file. Not one said a word, and neither did I. I remained seated in that empty room for a long time humbled by the awful nature of God. That awful nature of a God who is both so terrible and yet fills us to bursting with longing and abject awe.
Thomas Merton, the famous author, Trappist monk, and mystic said:
“Dread means that we cannot any longer hope in ourselves, in our wisdom, our virtue, our fidelity. We see too clearly that all that is ‘ours’ is nothing and can completely fail us.”
To be spiritual is to acknowledge that dread is an essential part of the spiritual quest. Aspiration is the heady inspiration that draws us to seek God, but dread is that scary feeling at the pit of our stomach that drives us to seek God. Dread trembles to know that nothing can satisfy but God even if there might not be one. Or even if there is, that he would have anything to do with a flawed creature like you.
St. John of the Cross said the last stage before the Unio Mystico or union with God is dread. It is when we are so utterly cognizant of our flaws, inadequacies, and contingent nature that we are tempted to despair as we imagine that even God cannot help us, or won’t help us. According to St. John it is this ‘dark night’ and the temptation to despair that is transcended through authentic surrender.
Michael Washburn in his book The Ego and the Dynamic Ground put it succinctly. “Dread is a wonderful thing. It is so painful and so unremitting that it is has the magical property of being the only thing that can force the ego to admit to its utter nothingness in the face of God. And with this admission the ego surrenders.”
To be spiritual is to be at home with dread. To be spiritual is to search for God like an entrepreneur with two mortgages, maxed out credit cards, and a bunch of former friends who think he’s nuts. To be spiritual is to take whatever incremental steps you must until you live each moment like the boy dying in that freezer and wanting God with his whole heart and his whole soul. It means arriving at a point where you search for Truth as if your hair were on fire and want it only for its own sake and regardless of the price. T.S Eliot called it a “condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything.”
I never saw that boy again. I knew I wouldn’t. But I will never forget him, and I sometimes pray for him. And yet I don’t really worry about him. Blaise Pascal once said: “You would not seek Me if you had not found Me.” And I know in my heart that a hunger as deep, as awful, as his will not — cannot — be denied. I am continually asked why I do the work that I do. The answer is simple. I do it for him. I do it for that boy in all of us, trapped in this freezer called earth with no time to lose, alone, terrified, and groping for that emergency door. An emergency door custom fit for each of us, installed eternally from the beginning, and that some people call God.
