castaways on a sandbar

sandbar: a ridge of sand formed in a river or along a shore by the action of waves or currents.

Looking back, I see that the whole emerging church thing was a sandbar for me - a temporary slice of land where a group of castaways found ourselves for a moment or two, smack-dab between the sleepy shallows of traditional religion and the wild waters of existential wonder we hungered for. 

Back when the emerging church movement crested on my horizon, its vision felt like a soothing balm - a new way to explore faith and what seemed like radical questions. A makeshift community of castaways came together from youth ministry, evangelical worlds, and mainline worlds. Mainly guys, of course, though honestly, it is the women's wisdom that has stuck with me the most decades later.  I don't mean castaways like outcasts, reprobates, or guys who were discarded, morally lost, or ruined. At least at that point, most of us were not any of those definitions of a castaway. When I look back now, my older self has compassion for the feeling of fear that went along with being adrift, on a shore we had feared our boats might find.

We’d stumble smiling into hotel ballrooms or cluttered living rooms, enchanted by blog posts preaching all things reimagined with images of sunsets. Didn’t matter who was funding the gathering or what they were hawking; we were just thrilled to dive into the mystery without "those people" cutting off the oxygen. In those early days, we rode high as sugar-fueled kids set loose in a candy emporium, drunk on freedom and the revelation that still awaited somewhere below all those suffocating surfaces.

But a sandbar, I came to find, is a temporary thing - vulnerable to the ebb and flow of unseen tides. The tide is certain, sandbars are not. Even as we were dancing under that fluorescent light that felt like moonlight, it turns out the damn tides had their own plans, slowly but surely reshaping the landscape, eroding promise back into uncertainty. Before long, a riptide of infighting and pride was swirling around, dousing the glow of the community like water on the embers of a beach bonfire. I could only watch heartsick as true believers got picked off one by one ‘til just a few sad poles were poking up from all the muck and shadows - testifying to the dream that almost shaped itself from the sand.

That riptide knocked the legs clean out from the rickety faith bridge I'd been clinging to.  I found myself adrift in open waters with nothing left to grab before the waves of doubt pulled me under for good. Time and again, I’d plunge desperate back into the good old tradition I was raised on, hoping it would keep me afloat - but I’d just resurface with a mouth full of saltwater. It took me a long, long time to discover that I just had to quit wrestling the currents and let that sea of mystery close right over my head - stop fighting and let it lay me down within the dark deep itself, uncertain but held.

It took me years to learn to work with those waves instead of cursing at them or trying to stand above it all - years of swimming in circles. Every once in a while, I’ll run into another sandbar survivor, mainly online - it turns out most of us ended up finding solid ground in some plot of land that we were never prepared for when we were on that sandbar. These days, I show proper respect to the ocean and her ways; there’s a quiet knowing - how the tides that swamp you one day can just as easily set you sailing the next...if you let them guide instead of fight.

 

Comments

[Paul]

This is great. Thanks, Bob. I’d love to hear you name and describe the solid ground and the lands surrounding it — what is it, and how did it help that which you were on the sandbar in the first place? Glad you’re blogging again, friend.