Varieties of Religious Experience

I like to insult New York a lot because it's very different from where I grew up, and because it had so much to live up to in terms of my expectations. So for the past 3 years, I've spent all my time comparing the place to Texas, from whence I came, and noting all the ways in which the City falls short. This is in direct opposition to the quotation I love from Jim Elliot, "Wherever you are, be all there." I haven't invested myself in New York, and consequently a lot of the things that come from truly investing in a place haven't materialized for me. I lack close friends (at least outside the medical community), a stable church home, and because of these things I haven't engaged in the types of activities or discussions that grow from the fruit of contemplation and, in the end, provide a genuine livelihood. To put it another way, I talk about nothing but medicine, or if I step outside of medicine I talk about nothing but pop culture. VANITY! ALL IS VANITY!

So that's the setting for the beginning of 2012, wherein I endeavored to increase the varieties of my experience in New York, to really invest heavily in the lives of others and in the arts, and attempt to expose myself to a variety of experiences which would inspire a revelation of the numinous, that quality of awe/fear/romanticism that accompanies the metaphorical encapsulation of the Supernatural for those of us living in the Natural world. To put it another way, I was trying to open myself up to the experience of God in a place where I'd been feeling my soul going numb.

This experiment has been successful in a variety of ways, but was ultimately hindered by a few things. First of all, mind-altering substances don't seem to be a substitute for exposure to the Numinous in any lasting way. Mostly what I mean by this is alcohol. So since alcohol for me ends up being somewhat of a crutch in the gateway to "feeling my feelings", I was almost required to give that up to approach a healthy and more lasting vision of my future in relation to God. The second thing was a bit harder to give up.

The second thing was my expressed desire to return to Texas at the end of my residency. As time has gone on in New York, I've been feeling the tugging of conviction on my heart about why I was called to New York in the first place. When I came here, I really did feel like it was a calling, and perhaps I've been unfaithful in that. Looking back on it, I wasn't particularly pulling a Jonah and running away, but I was maybe running farther afield of where I should be. And all that running was done with a back-turned eye, making sure to keep Texas in the rear-view mirror as a place to which I would eventually return and start building community. And therein lies my greater conviction. I have failed to build community here, either because I haven't been looking in the right place, or because I didn't prioritize it, or because I didn't have time given the demands of residency. So to sum up, I was feeling deeply convicted about this, in the religious sense, and as I was drawing closer to God and experiencing Him in greater intimacy, I realized that I needed to try and stay here.

When I thought about that decision from outside my own experience, it was something I did not expect to have a great deal of peace about. I've been talking about going back "home" for 3 years now, extolling the virtues of wide-open spaces and gentlemanly behavior, negating all comments about the weather with comparisons to Texas heat, fantasizing about a lake-house in the Hill Country and a daily diet of flour tortillas drenched in queso. However, once the sentence came out of my mouth, I realized that it was the right one, and I felt a great deal of peace about it. I feel trepidation, sure, about the job market, and the spectre of loan repayment, and what the lasting damage might be to my psyche. But those things really seem insignificant when compared to the more permanent joy that you get when you're living right with God. Seriously. I know that sounds ridiculous but it's true.

So while I reserve the right to reverse course and claim that I was just "not hearing God right" later on, for now I'm going to continue to pursue those numinous experiences here in New York, lifting my eyes past the man-made constructions around me to find myself still in the world God created. I'm going to put down roots and open my heart to new people, and subsequently harass them until they're my good deep friends. I'm going to live in community with some God-fearing folk and not isolate myself off in the wilderness of a Midtown Studio. I'm going to close my eyes and listen to music, dance in the minuscule area around me, and watch the sun slink down behind the Hudson, the first stop on its journey across the country.