By Marek Zabriskie
Years ago, Alan Jones, the Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, walked past a church in London, which had a sign out front that read, “We welcome all who worship, all who doubt, and all who want to move from fear to faith,” and he began to wonder, “how do we move from fear to faith?”
Jones says that we might begin by noting what faith is not. “Faith,” he said, “is not believing in fifteen impossible things before breakfast.” Rather, as an English monk once said the opposite of faith isn’t doubt, but rather certainty.
A lot of people confuse certainty with faith. But when you’re absolutely certain, there’s nothing to left learn. Your mind is already made up. You have either dismissed God or you have put God into a container where your understanding of God can no longer expand and where God can no longer surprise you.
Jones noted that we cannot move from fear to faith without knowing who we are. We are fundamentally works of art created by God. The Bible teaches us that God created us in God’s own image. God is essentially a creative force, according to the book of Genesis.
If each of us is a bespoke, one-of-a-kind creation made in the image of the God who created us, then we, too, are artists. We are co-creators with God. We were therefore born to create.
The former Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, Robert Willis, who recently came to Greenwich to serve as our Theologian-in-Residence at Christ Church for a week, reminded us during his visit that “We are never closer to God then when we are being creative.”
Dean Robert composes hymns and is a brilliant orator and preacher. He weaves words, thoughts, and ideas together like a sculptor carving one of the unbroken Celtic knots on a high cross in Ireland.
Think about this the next time that you are doing something creative that you love – arranging flowers, painting with water colors or acrylics, or playing the piano. Do you feel something special in the creative moment? Do you feel close to God? Do you feel like your real self?
Jones notes that when we were younger, we were told, “You’ve got to make something of your life” as if our life were block of wood that we could carve. How are you carving this one precious life that you have been given?
When our creativity is shut down we feel diminished, constrained, and held back. We long to be free to set free to create. The poet Mary Oliver wrote a poem about the end of life. She penned:
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
Or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
So, how do we move from fear to faith? We do so by waking up to life in its fullest dimensions and by taking control of our lives and shaping them in accord with what trust God has designed us to do and not under the constraints of what someone else will let us do. We do so by tapping our own creative energies and putting them to work.
Christ comes to us in a thousand ways to guide us, if we are awake with a desire for God. Hear the words of Derek Wolcott’s wonderful poem, “Love after Love.”
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Take time to look in the mirror today. What do you see? If you are honest you will see someone beautiful and unique. There is no one else like you in the world. You are a bespoke creation by God.
You are one of those special people who hold the world together. You are a source of connection and hope for others, and they are counting on you.
So, be gentle with yourself because it is Advent. Jesus is coming and is closer than you can imagine. He will come when we least expect him at different hours of the day. May He be reborn in you this Christmas as you prepare the creche in your heart for Him to find rest.
The Rev. Marek Zabriskie is Rector of Christ Church Greenwich.
