be not affeard…

Be not affeard, the Isle is full of noyses,
Sounds, and sweet aires, that give delight and hurt not;
Sometimes a thousand twangling Instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That if I then had wak’d after long sleep
Will make me sleep again, and then in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and shew riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I wak’d
I cried to dream again.
—Caliban, The Tempest
William Shakespeare

“Be not affeard…” says Shakespeare, and yet, sometimes what we fear most shows up to take away the sounds and sweetness that both give delight and make us wonder if we will ever hurt again. The past 15 or so months of my life have been as much a dream from which I feared to awake as anything else. I am speaking vocationally. A year or so ago I took a job with a non-profit organization that gave me the freedom to live in a vocational way much of what I have hoped to live for the past 10 years. It was a job that inhabited my life in ways in which we all long for…our passions and gifts and desires being lived out, not just on the side, peripherally, but centrally as part of our everyday life. For those of you who know these people, imagine Matt Beckler making a full living off his music, which is both his passion and giftedness, or Andy Whitman paying the mortgage and sending both his children to college doing what he loves to do most…which is writing. That is the life I have been living the past year or so, and last week, that life came to an abrupt close when I lost that job and have since been wondering where and how and why it all came crashing down. The wondering has come while shoveling mulch for a nice old eccentric man in Worthington, bending and lifting and dumping, wondering how those verbs are words to me from God about how to bend in ways he wants me to bend and lift up the things I am to lift up and dump the things I need to set aside. The first day, I got through a whole pile of mulch and a bunch of prayers and tears and I thought the mulching was finished. I arrived the next morning only to find another pile of mulch, which to me said there are more prayers to pray and more tears to shed and more bending to be done.
If you’ve missed it up until now…what I have been trying to say is that I am unemployed and am trying to find the voice and hand of God in all of it. The unemployed part of the story is long and difficult to explain, and for those who want to know, I’ll do the explaining sometime, though not yet. As far as the voice of God and finding it in the midst of it all, for those of you who pray, please pray. The voice of God is the hum about my ears and a thousand twangling instruments that will of course make me sleep again. The sleep that comes, it seems to me, at least for me right now, is a sleep that says I’m calm and trusting—-the dreaming comes too, but sleeping and dreaming are not the same. Right now I am restless and sleepless, both spiritually and physically and the lullaby of God, as he calls me to pray, is his faithfulness to his promise of opening up the clouds and shewing his riches, as Shakespeare says, that are of course ready to drop. That’s the dream to embrace and to pray for, but first comes the sleeping. The resting. The quietness before the creator and the kind of peace that surpasses all the understanding of the whys and how comes that wake us up from our sleep, and interrupt our dreams. Right now, I’m crying to dream again.

Sometimes, with the worst having happened, there is no longer the worst to fear. That is what Saint Frederick Buechner says at least, who is a saint to me in ways in which no other author has been. Sounds a lot like another Saint who said something about perfect love casting out all the fear and maybe there is more of that love that I am to see through all this; some of which has come already, and more, I am sure, is on it’s way. I’m sure because I have been this restless and sad and confused before. Eventually, Christ has his way of holding us close and waiting until we can rest again, and sleep again. And then, as quickly as the tears are gone, a new dream begins.