Revelations from the Kiddie Pool

Many have likened the vastness and complexity of the inner man to the sea. Literature, music, philosophy, art—all have turned to the ocean in an attempt to allegorize the mind.

Further, many of us feel more lost on that ocean than found: adrift in a chaotic thought world that often feels more real than the dry land of our external lives.

For once I don't think I'm merely extrapolating such observations from my own experience. Given the sheer number of resources I've been coming across in recent months (books, podcasts, articles, Scripture), I'm not the only one treading water.

Of late though—well, of late, I've come up for air gasping only to realize that I've not been in the sea at all.

"Somewhere in the vast

Waters of my mind

A memory resurfaced

I'm looking in your eyes

You are trying to tell me

A better way to see

Into the soul of things

Into the soul of things."

~ Sara Groves, Soul of Things

For years, I've not been swimming the "vast waters of my mind" so much as drowning. Drowning in the kiddie pool. Thinking I'd found something of value in its drop in the bucket. Thinking it bounded the ocean itself.

The analogy sounds ridiculous, but that's kind of the point. The "kiddie" designation alone reinforces the inanity of plumbing the "depths" of something so shallow for meaning. Of thinking that truth can be found within when it's only to be found without—in the depths of the Ocean on which my flimsy rubber speck floats so vulnerably. Just as the "don't" signs at the pool warn that diving headfirst into the shallows could mean death, so seeking answers to existential questions within is a spiritual suicide mission.

The actual Ocean of truth—God Himself—is far more vast than my mind. Of any human mind He's created since the beginning of time. Infinitely so. And the finite can't comprehend the infinite. Perhaps the most obvious thing I've ever said here. So why do we live like it's possible? And, worse, live like it's possible with our own faculties alone? Whether it's an attempt to fashion a cherry-picked philosophy of life that feels right, an outright claim to "my truth," or a more subtle mixture, the result is the same: face-down in the dirty waters of rumination and dread.

Though I've yet to finish the book—I might have more than a few of those—one of the themes that stood out to me about J. I. Packer's Knowing God was that attempting to fabricate a worship-worthy picture of Him apart from His own revelation of Himself is no more than idolatry. A god of my own mind, of my own "revelation," isn't God at all. And yet, how often have I splashed around in the kiddie pool when the Ocean itself was calling?

Even as I penned these reflections, I could feel the raking of my heart against what I know to be true about my own finitude. Because in many ways, I like to seek solace in my mind. In my imagination and my perceptions. I like to believe that what I think has value. In writing, I'll often springboard from a fleck of truth, agonizing over the right way to communicate my musings about it, in the end concluding that I've somehow understood when in reality I've valued my own insight over the truth itself. And the former is empty when unmoored from the latter.

"If Christianity could tell me no more of the far-off land [or anything pertaining to the God of it] than my own temperament led me to surmise already," says C. S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory, "then Christianity would be no higher than 'my own stuff.'" The mind cannot but be used. To survive. To understand the world around us. To get to know—in however small a measure—the God who gave the faculty. Everyone must spend time in thought and reflection but the mind can just as soon become a bay of torment as a haven of rest. A pillow fort and a padded cell: double-edged asylum. A pool where we think we're free.

Which is why it can't be trusted as source material. Truth is found only amidst the Ocean's depths. And for perhaps the first time in my life, I want to dive in. To leave this battered excuse for a dingy. But the Sea is not tame. And the faux "life-preservers" of doubt and anger and fear and comfort are keeping me at the surface: "Why would a 'good' God would let some people die in their sins without the ability to turn to Him?" "I can't serve a God I don't fully trust." "I'm afraid I won't be able to hold on." "It was easier when I didn't care so much."

But though the Sea is not tame, He's not trying to destroy me. He's asking me to let go of my excuses and jump in with both feet—the irony being that it's the only way to avoid drowning.

This is rescue. Why's that so hard to believe?

...

A few months ago, I read a book per the recommendation of a friend about the intersection of art and faith [a relationship that doesn't get enough attention, imo]. While retention is not my strongest asset when it comes to reading, particularly with non-fiction, narrative helps. And shock value.

In the titular artist's chapter, the author relays the tale of The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, a striking work painted by Rembrandt in 1633. But unlike prior and subsequent chapters, this one was less about the artist and more about the fate of the piece itself.

In True Crime fashion—a genre which you would literally have to kidnap me in True Crime fashion to get me to watch—the painting was stolen in the '90s and never seen again. There's still an empty frame on the wall where it hung in the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, a reminder that it's "not supposed to be this way." I've never felt so outraged and heartbroken over brushstrokes on a canvas.

From the handful of paintings stolen that day, it was surmised that the thieves really didn't know what they were stealing. There didn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to the items taken; more valuable works were close at hand. And yet, it seems almost apropos that they chose to pilfer this seascape considering the event it depicts:

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side."

...And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?"

And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"

~ Mark 4:35, 37-41

Whatever your convictions about Christ-imagery [despite my fascination with Storm on the Sea of Galilee, I'm generally of the opinion that the second commandment isn't in favor] the story this painting tells is as real as its creator.

A la Hitchcock and others, Rembrandt participated in a little role-play and painted himself in as an apostle. Find a photo online and you'll spot him clutching the rigging while gazing through the storm directly at the viewer as if to say, "save me." At least according to Ramsey, author of Rembrandt is in the Wind, he did so less out of ego and more out of desire for his audience to likewise picture themselves in the boat.

I've often found myself staring wild-eyed out of that vessel, seeking a savior where He can't be found. Forgetting that He's already here. In the ship. With me. And better equipped than anyone or anything else—my own mind included—to calm the storms of doubt, anger, fear, sadness, and profound disorientation. I know I'm mixing metaphors here as I speak about diving into the waves and being bailed out, but the Ocean as a picture of God and his power and knowledge stands either way.

...

So how to rightly mind the mind? I'm certainly not here to answer that question; merely in the throes of asking it. Nonetheless, my personal kiddie pool revelation: I've spent far too much time in mine. Listening to myself when I should be straining my ears to hear Him.

Just this week, Sinclair Ferguson in his Things Unseen podcast (which I can't recommend highly enough, especially if, like me, you're struggling to take the time you need to dig in to truth) considered ways in which our souls can be bent out of shape. Big-headedness being Wednesday's episode. Echoing my own train of thought, he observed, "You're exalting your word above God's Word...And unlike your mind, His mind understands the truth of the matter."

Sometimes I wonder whether other writers [if I can deign to call myself one as I ramble on the internet] write less out of conviction and more out of a desire for conviction. Because I certainly do. Writing about things I want to be true in my experience but don't quite believe and rarely feel. Do others similarly question their own sincerity?

And yet, I've realized that everything I've written here is successive return. A returning to what I know to be true not within but without. A returning that happens more than once. That's the nature of the word, after all. In a way, it's a comfort that Jesus asked, "Have you still no faith?" implying that the disciples had lacked faith previously. And, we know from this and other gospel accounts, would lack it yet again. Yet He didn't abandon them in their storms. His love endured despite their mental wavering.

"...The love of God is not something to see once and believe and then move beyond to other truths or strategies for growing in Christ. The love of God is what we feed on our whole lives long, wading ever more deeply into this endless ocean. And that feeding, that wading, is itself what fosters growth. We grow in Christ no further than we enjoy his embrace of us."

~ Dane Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

So though I will lose sight again, as one of the hosts of another excellent podcast episode stated, "I have nothing left to hear me say."

....

Disturb us, Lord, when We are too pleased with ourselves, When our dreams have come true Because we dreamed too little, When we arrived safely Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when With the abundance of things we possess We have lost our thirst For the waters of life; Having fallen in love with life, We have ceased to dream of eternity And in our efforts to build a new earth, We have allowed our vision Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, To venture on wilder seas Where storms will show Your mastery; Where losing sight of land, We shall find the stars. We ask you to push back The horizons of our hopes; And to push back the future In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain, Who is Jesus Christ.

~ The Prayers of Sir Francis Drake, 1577