Caleb Unplugged: The Truth in the Railroad Tracks
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:
“What will they call you?” Ms. Banks asked, penning my name on a 8 and a half by 11 blue piece of construction paper.
I was perplexed. Call me? Who is me? Can’t get too existential yet though, too soon in the blog.
Regardless, I was more taken aback than most would be.
“Umm, Mr. Caleb,” there was another teacher, Rachel, who went by her first name. I liked that. Mostly probably because it was different and I found a dozen ways and one to be unique. Ms. Rachel seemed cool too.
“Alright,” Ms. Banks, the tall, slender, blonde, semi-shallow, mostly nice teacher I had spent a few months working with, gave me a sideways look.
Thus began the first of at least four to five anthologies, created by the ingenious maestros of six, seven, years of age, to add to my collage of memories. Relics of an era of my life where Mr. Keller sounded not only like my dad but definitely also nothing like me.
In the early 20s when you make 2 dollars an hour, are single AF, and the hijinks of classic sitcoms featuring 20 and 30somethings seem like an enviable existence, being called by your last name feels almost disrespectful to proper Mr. Smiths or Johnsons or Clarks or Kings. Then again, maybe I could be an infamous Cher or Sting and just go by Caleb. That could work right?
I’m getting married in three months.
Like… what? WHAT? Anyone that’s even read two of these blogs, pre March 2021, could feel my aching and longing for love and connection. Shakespeare may not be my style, but he sure wrote about unrequited love in an exaggerated, dramatic, ridiculous way I respect deeply. Millennials might be paving a new way for love, waiting until after the horny and naive infatuation of the late teens and early 20s fades, surviving lonely mid 20s nights with fellow cursed single-(ites) over PBR and cheap pizza (unless they are rich, and if so, screw them), and the late 20s sympathetic-but-usually-trite cliches and platitudes from former single-(ites) and all Gen Xers and older about… well… how hard it is out there to meet somebody.
The irony is I’ll be in these ranks soon. Crazy. Regardless, I’m right on cue. Hit 30 and now, alas, the one has come.
Things are on the up. Smoking hot work resume with a sexy internship to boot. Great fiancé in working condition, not many miles, and just freshly changed oil along with general maintenance and repair. My car Gandalf majoring in “dependability,” with, to be honest, an ok grade in fuel economy, but an A+++ in outdoor adventures.
All kidding aside, it’s all there. The things I wanted. I’m “arriving” fam. The meandering 20s are well behind me.
The depression though? Maybe that’s sticking around for a bit.
Good-ole O-dub. It’s a dead game with its sequel almost released in spite of the shit-show that is Activision Blizzard.
I love Overwatch and I’ve written about it before. I’ve been playing it for 3x the time that I’ve known Alexis. It’s almost like another friend. And I’ve met many friends to play with on there. Lost them too.
The team atmosphere, the hopeful almost MCU style vibes the characters have. And now I’m just too damn old to pick up a new game to be any good at (save Rocket League).
Even though it’s common for certain characters and certain players to “carry” games, where their individual effort swings the tide of a match, 8 times out of 10 it’s a whole team effort that gets a sweet dub or big fat L. For now the game operates where single players have a skill rating, but I’ve discussed with my OW BFF Adam that a team based rating would be better. A clan rating where it’s less about individual skill point gain or loss and more about the team win or loss.
Simply put, often players play well and lose “less” of their skill rating because they performed well statistically EVEN if they did not switch characters which would have helped the team actually win.
But for the non gamers, how does this have to do with depression?
Well, everything.
Drawing closer to the finish line of marriage, long distance, even now, is hard. Texting often causes miscommunication, normal life patterns might be known by the two of us at a distance but are yet to be experienced, and the low sum total of time together is no bueno.
Yet, something struck me recently. Something that the wise and hot sage soon to be wife told me.
I can’t expect her to solve “the ache.” I wrote just earlier about how, through all of my 20s, the ache was placed almost 100%, on the lack of a sweet, beautiful lass. Reading between the lines, that sincere but sloppy Caleb assumed that with a gorgeous beaut comes the solving of all the things.
The coping habits, substance dependence, the depression and anxiety. The defeat of existential dread, the beheading of youthful angst, the slaying of the dragon of hyper sensitivity, insecure attachment, and repeated spiritual misunderstandings from just about everyone.
She can’t “carry” me in my stuff in the same way I can’t “carry” matches in Overwatch (ok, maybe on rare occasions I do).
And yeah… the adage that the wife, or soon-to-be wife in this case, is always right, is right.
To be honest, a lot of things are better by proxy of having a cute girl looking at you saying sweet stuff, holding your hand, and cuddling with you a lot. I instantly leveled up in my ongoing daily battles because I have a sexy companion now in my squad.
But she, just like all the other gifts of connection God has provided me, is not the connection. The source, if you will. Heck, the church isn’t either, and neither is my thoughts about the connection and feelings about the source.
The connection is the connection is the connection. It is God that heals, roots, protects, holds, understands. No one else, not even the best person I have ever known in my whole life, comes close.
I got the freaking ticket. Damn you streetlight camera, damn you. At least it wasn’t a cop that pulled me over. I put my two weeks in for my other job two weeks ago and now am working with my old ABA client a lot less. Tis a peculiar but strategic move on my part.
I got hired to deliver groceries. To be a blue collar guy. To now Google how to hide one’s thespian-ness so as to not be teased incessantly or be viewed suspiciously.
But the damn ticket threatened to pull me from the job. And I had already put in my two weeks at the other one.
Now, this is common adverse circumstances for most. But compiled with prepping to take care of your two human, one canine family with a couple dollars and couple cents? Sure, I am broke AF, but I gotta chip in something. And this ticket, in my stressed the ‘f’ out mind, was seriously thinking I wouldn’t be able to do just that.
Out near where my client lives is a railroad. His whole area is boonie-ville; domestic and wild animals galore, winding hills, bad cell reception, the whole nine. I had just learned more from the ticket, had a strained supervision with my internship, and was future tripping about my future courses, future programs, future overwhelming stress of counseling grad school.
“What the hell,” I thought. “I’ll just pull over.”
I walked along the tracks. The sun had pulled a fast one; it was spring which in PDX, means… stuff. You just can never tell if a monsoon will be a bursting sunbeam will be a windstorm will be a warm, warm day. It’s all over the place. Like my erratic moods.
Pray for Alexis.
Anyway, I walked along there and put the rectangle away. I had turned off the audio in my car previously because I was overloaded.
I’m a stimulus guy. And you probably are too, unless you’re a lady, in which case, you’re a stimulus lady. We constantly are plugged in; to the news cycle, Will Smith’s slap, everyone’s opinion about Will Smith’s slap, Tok Tiks, IG, whatever your Google algorithm is.
We are “in” and sometimes it’s damn near impossible to be “out.”
But there I was, a quarter mile or more outside of cell reception, the phone in the pocket, the sounds only of lightly rushing water on my left and right ear, the feeling only of the sun beaming down and the breeze massaging my neck. There it was. I started praying, because I’m a good Christian boy.
But not a good Christian prayer.
“God, what the Hell. I thought this was the right call. Why would you bring this ticket right when I’m gonna be supporting my family… etc etc etc”
That’s the only eavesdropping you get, but I think you get the point after the snippet.
No “dear Heavenly Father.” No “I love you God.” No, “I praise you because you’re amazing and I’'ll quote the OT because I’m spiritual.”
Just airing my dirty laundry, entitled like too, bitching and moaning and complaining and griping.
Nothing wonderful to report. Being a full-fledged prima donna to the Lord of Hosts. He could definitely find better time with a more pious guy or gal. Hell, I didn’t even pray like the tax collector and say that “Im a sinner and the worst yada yada yada.”
I was expectant. I was entitled, even. I was frustrated.
But dammit, I was there. I was unplugged.
The thing I think I’m proudest of in my whole life is I come exactly as I am to God. I don’t bullshit the Almighty. Even logically, it never made sense to do that.
I’ve pumped my fists, I’ve yelled on long drives, I’ve screamed obscenities.
I’ve busted into tears over breakups and what seemed like a clear indication from him of the green light. I’ve come to the front of the church a couple dozen times and maybe at least half of the time I was the first one to do so for prayer about my crazy ass self.
I want God and nothing else will do. I don’t even say that from a place of pride. I say that from a place of no other mystery, no other truth, no other reality comes close to the divine, the mystical, the I-have-no-way-to-even-explain this moments with God. I want relief from Him because it’s just so very sweet.
Knowing about God is almost akin to sin, to missing the mark, when compared to knowing God. The Book of Privy Counseling puts it like this:
I pray you seek more to embody God than to merely have knowledge of God. For knowledge can deceive us with pride, but a meek, loving awareness will not deceive. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up (I Corinthians 8:1). Knowledge leads to travail, whereas awareness leads to rest.
In my life, I go wrong when I spend so much time wanting to be right rather than to stay connected to the source of right. This deep pathological obsession with moralizing, an ongoing unhelpful skeleton of the Protestant work ethic, absorbs energy where awareness of God should be.
The matrix we are all in, the Truman show which hide our trauma shame, dangles a carrot of happiness, joy, and contentment on a stick that only gets longer the longer you chase it down.
Even if I am not in a deconstruction stage of faith anymore, I am still deconstructing the idea that the matrix of right thoughts, feelings, and behaviors about God are synonymous with knowing God.
While daily patterns of prayer and Scripture reading give scaffolding for connections with God, if a cold heart spends an eternity praying and reading the Bible they will still die with a cold heart if genuine encounter with God is never at the forefront.
Like Peter said to Jesus, however, where else would I go? I grew up hating the Bible because it was another place to perform on stage. I hated my Christian school for the same reason.
But Jesus, this guy equal parts comfort and conviction, I loved Him. And I still love Him. Living in a way where awareness of Him is present?
Sign me up for the seminar, webinar, semester, whatever else supplementary you’ve got.
But more trying harder, more clenching fists, more screaming inward about “do more, be better, stop sinning.”
I’ve had enough. I’m tired of it. And I think a lot of people my age that have left the church feel the same.
Yet on the railroad tracks, I saw God.
And He smiled at me.
I’ve written about him before but I trust John Mark McMillan’s music. When he sings about God, he borrows my voice and the voice of those who want no fluff, no lip-service, no nonsense.
Sometimes I need to know an artist can yell at God to know I can sing their lyrics of love to God too.
Also, his lyrics are mystical-esque.
I love mysticism. I remember when my fiancé first asked about it, I could maybe smell a hint of concern.
Mystics are woo woo. Read palms. Love tarot. Freaking heathens, pagans, occult like.
Yet, all true mystics of any religion speak truth about God more clearly than any scholar, professor, or learned person of any religion ever could. That might sound elitist, but it’s the way I feel.
I remember when I first read Thomas Merton.
Dang… this guy was like, a Christian? “Believed,” quote unquote, the same as Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Johnathan Edward, etc?
Absurd. Ludicrous.
You can’t be a Christian thinker if you say things that are out there. Just ask Rob Bell.
But my other favorite author, Brennan Manning, quoted him three times more than any other person he quoted combined. Something clicked for Brennan and it also clicked for me.
It all started here.
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
He admits to not knowing himself and that, by that reality alone, he can’t ever fully know whether He is actually following the will of God.
There’s no pretense here. It’s honest and it’s holy. It’s holy because it’s honest.
That’s how I wanted to be, and he gave me permission. He also spent a ton of his life around Buddhist monks. Learning from them, loving them, breaking bread with them. He is a hero of mine. The Dalai Lama called him “the first Christian I have ever met.”
Back to McMillan, he, like Merton, writes honest which is holy. Here’s “Magic Mirror:”
Are you some kind of magic mirror
Come to show to me
God with my own face
The song played on my drive home yesterday and I balled like a school girl, full on ugly cry. Out there on the railroad tracks, as a smile invaded my face, a peace penetrated the anxiety, a weightlessness erased to burden of the daily grind, I was made aware, and the song reminded me of that reminder.
The divine is in me. I am not the divine, but the divine is in me, which means… I am divine. He’s so close, closer than the feelings I feel or the thoughts I think. Before I was, He was, and as I became a life, so was He in me.
This unity, this connection, this source, this is where life is. This is where I am a Christian.
Not my views on abortion, not my stance on Arminianism or Calvinism, not a celebrity pastor or airtight theology or sinlessness or gender role conformity or culturally correct stance on any hot button issue.
I am Christian because Christ is in me.
I am a counselor because Christ is in me.
I found and am in love with Alexis because Christ is in me.
I am a good man, a holy man, a man who loves, because Christ is in me and because I am His Beloved.
The previous three things might not be true of you, but the last surely is.
Christ is in you. And I already feel the itch of people disagreeing with their minds. But there is nothing I am more certain of squarely in my heart.
What Christ accomplished is connection with us. We are His, and He is ours. Forever.
This is the good news; this is the truth I was reminded of, again, in the railroad tracks.