Why Do I Write? (Part 3: Spiritual Formation)
"The only reason we have external conflict in the world is because people are living with internal conflict"
Author's note: some folks aren't familiar with the term 'spiritual formation.' I use it to mean, simply: cultivating a deeper relationship with the divine.
Author’s second note: I apologize for sending this post out on Saturday rather than on the usual Thursday.
It was the summer of 2019, and I was 28 years old. I was in a meeting with my men's group, and we were getting ready to wrap up.
And I broke down sobbing. I had spent most of that summer wanting to kill myself. But I had just started taking some medications that made me more impulsive, and suddenly the veil between life and death looked very thin. My men's group was due to meet again in two weeks; and I was terrified that if I didn't get some kind of help, I wouldn't be there to meet them.
That summer was the worst bout of suicidal ideation I've ever experienced, but far from the only one. My brain chemistry, my addiction to pornography, and the abuse I dealt with made a toxic cocktail that made me hate a lot of my 20s. I spent long stretches wanting to die. I spent cumulative years miserable in my own skin and looking for any kind of way out.
Fast forward five years, and my life has utterly transformed. It's not just that my external circumstances changed (although I'm blessed to be happily married and in an amazing career). Far more importantly, my internal landscape also changed. Where before there was pain and suffering, impotent rage and cowering fear; now there is peace. There is joy, and connection, and a calm but deep certainty that I am loved.
What changed? I think it was that I started to cultivate a connection to God.
This connection started slowly. My spiritual mentor taught me to meditate in order to help me get some distance from my emotions. In my meditations, I observed my emotions; and I realized that they were not me (if they were, how could I have observed them?). I went from I'm afraid to I have fear; and as any psychologist will tell you, that is not a trivial distinction. I started to feel less reactive and more grounded.
But the true growth came when I went deeper. I prayed one night in 2020—hopelessly, desperately—and my prayer was answered with such force that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God existed. After that I started praying more seriously. I reoriented my meditations, not only inward—towards observing my thoughts and emotions—but outward—towards trying to feel the presence of the divine. I read books about spiritual formation, and I put into practice what I learned. And my life was remade.
Based on my own experience, it is my belief that God is the ultimate source of joy, love, peace, and connection in the universe. When we feel those things, we are really, whether we know it or not, feeling God. As I cultivated a deeper connection to God, I started to feel more of those emotions. They started to crowd out my fear. Nowadays they crowd out my anger too.
I spent most of my 20s racked with depression; but I haven't experienced anything like a depressive episode (that is: depression most days for a period of 2 weeks) in over 3 years.
My relationships also transformed. The peace and joy that I was feeling started to bubble out of me, and my friendships deepened. They became more harmonious, less discordant. I met my beautiful wife and we started to click. But none of that would have been possible if my internal landscape had not improved first.
This is not just my own experience. In The Adventure, psychologist and spiritual teacher Steve Taylor describes how people who become Awakened (Taylor's term for finding God) begin to change.
"In all your dealings with other people, you will become less judgmental and more tolerant and compassionate. You’ll be much less likely to fall out with neighbors, to have arguments with colleagues, or to get irritated with other drivers or passengers. Harmony will pervade all your relationships, from the intimate to the casual."
So why do I write about spiritual formation? One reason is because I realized that I had been given a gift: a pearl of priceless value. This gift had saved me from depression and terror. It may have even saved my life. It took my pain and gave me joy in its place.
And once I realized how amazing this gift was, I knew I had to share it.
But the gift goes beyond what I've described above. In addition to healing, a connection to God also gave me direction.
When I quit my corporate job, I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. I had just begun my work of spiritual formation, and I had a strong sense that God didn't want me there anymore; but after I quit, I didn't know what to do. I bounced around, doing marketing and SEO (my old specialty) for nonprofits and a few businesses whose mission I really admired. But little of it felt right. It didn't make my soul sing.
Through a series of circumstances, I started doing marketing for a libertarian think-tank, and they wanted me to write. I initially wrote about all kinds of things: Critical Race Theory, cancel culture, inflation, hate speech. I enjoyed it, and it seemed like as good a way as any to pay the bills. Some of the pieces were starting to scratch an itch inside of me. But others weren't.
Then in early 2022 I discovered Jamie Winship and the concept of a True Identity. I learned, for the first time, that God isn't a distant being who sometimes intervenes only in the very biggest moments of our lives; He is always talking to us, all the time, if we are just willing to listen.
I asked God who I was, and the answer came back: "A healer." I asked Him what my purpose was, and again the answer came back "to heal the West."
After that, my career started to click. I had direction and clarity. I prayed each day over what to write about, and I wrote what came out. I started writing for bigger outlets: Quillette, Queer Majority, Areo (back when it existed). I started doing radio and podcast interviews. Whatever it was that God wanted me to say, it seemed those words were resonating with at least some people.
I still have that direction. It's why I founded Heal the West. My sense of my purpose and my true identity—which is still nascent, but gets deeper as I go deeper in my relationship with God—animates every article I write and every book I read.
This has offered three profound benefits.
The first is that I don't feel the need to flail around looking for topics to write about. I don't wonder what to write each day, because generally God lights up the next few steps for me to take each day. Nor do I worry over what to read next, or second-guess my choices. I've felt God calling me to write—and read— about topics from Critical Race Theory to the breakdown of community to the power of spiritual formation to how and why Cluster B personality disorders are formed. It doesn't always make sense to my conscious mind. But through it all I can sense an underlying thread. It is as though I'm assembling a jigsaw puzzle; and if I don't yet know how all the pieces fit together, I feel confident in following the one who does.
The second benefit is the sheer joy I feel every day when I wake up and begin my work. I've been a writer through hard times and times of plenty. I've had months where I didn't know where my next paycheck would come from or how I was going to pay rent. I've also had days where I worked until 10pm or 11pm. But through it all, I've never once woken up anything less than thrilled to start the day. There is an undercurrent of excitement to my work—an excitement that persists even when publishers aren't buying or I'm getting yelled at on X (formerly Twitter)—that I think is deeply tied to finding and attempting to live out my purpose.
Finally, I've actually been able to make a living as a writer for these past two and a half years. I chalk this up directly to God's providence, because I'm told this is not an easy industry to make a living at. Elizabeth Gilbert didn't quit her day job until after she published Eat, Pray, Love. When I asked one of my friends who's a very successful writer how to make a living at it, his advice boiled down to "Get lucky."
But while the world says that making a living in this industry is like threading the eye of a needle, I've been able to make it work. I attribute this mostly to the idea that this is where God wants me; and so when I need money in order to keep writing full-time, money appears. I find a new publication that pays well. I get a new gig. My wife finds a new job. I've never had to take on a project that didn't relate directly to my true identity. I've never felt like I had to write a piece just for the money; and yet, all my bills are paid. To me, that's nothing short of a miracle.
The final reason that I write so much about spiritual formation is that I'm captivated by the power of each of us as human beings to do good in the world.
Here's a story that Taylor tells in The Adventure:
"I sometimes tell my students the story about the taxi passenger who made a whole town happy:
"A man arrives at the train station and steps into a taxi for a short drive. He’s friendly to the driver, asking him how long he’s been on duty, if he has a family, and what he does in his free time.
"As he pays his fare, he says to the driver, 'Thanks for that. I enjoyed talking to you. And it was the safest I’ve felt in a car for a long time. You’re a great driver.' This puts the taxi driver in a good mood. He’s then friendly to all his customers, which puts all of them in a good mood too. They’re friendly to all the people they meet, which puts them in a good mood, so that they’re friendly to everyone they meet … and so on, until the whole town is in a good mood."
I think sometimes we underestimate the positive impact that we can have on each other. A single kind word can change someone's day. Their lifted mood can change the days of everyone around them. As Taylor says, we can create "ripples of goodwill that will strengthen as they spread."
The people in my life who create the most positive ripples—who seem to change the day of everyone around them, to untangle the knots in their companions' psyches sometimes without even realizing it—are all steeped in spiritual formation. When they dwell in the present, and they hear from God, they can hear exactly what the people around them need; and then give it to them. They overflow with love and peace and joy, and social science proves that these feelings are contagious.
This has been my own (again nascent) experience. I can't always untangle knots in my friends' psyches or turn around a person's day just by talking to them. But the few times that I have been able to, it has been a direct result of being present and listening for guidance from the still small voice.
I'm also captivated by the inverse of this phenomenon. If all of us have an almost limitless potential to cast "ripples of goodwill" into the world, what does it look like when we don't? Again I turn to Taylor for a powerful story on the matter.
"...here is a story told to me by a person who attempted suicide by jumping off a bridge: He spent about half an hour on the edge of the bridge before jumping. During that time, a number of tourists and joggers went by without stopping or even seeming to notice him. He told me that if just one person had talked to him, he would not have jumped. To his mind, people’s indifference (even if unintentional, since they simply may not have noticed him) confirmed that no one cared and made him determined to attempt suicide. (Fortunately, he survived the jump without serious injury.)"
I think the people who passed this poor man on the bridge must have been stuck in their own heads. They must have been lost in relitigating old hurts and feuds, or in fantasizing about a better future. Very likely, I would have been among them. But one thing seems clear to me: they were not present to the moment. If they had been, they would have felt this man's aching need. Instead, if they saw him at all, it was only with eyes glazed over by their own thoughts.
So: how much harm do we do, if only by omission, every time that we are not present? What good do we leave undone each moment that we elect to retreat into our own heads—into idle reminiscences or nursing old grudges or fantasies of an imagined future—instead of choosing to listen to God?
I think about this a lot when it comes to my own conduct. In my 20s, I tried to be a good person; but I was so often in what one of my mentors calls "the hall of mirrors between my ears." How much good did I left undone because I wasn't fully present to the people before me? Even now: I'm happily married, but there are still times when I'm stuck in loops of my lingering pain and fear instead of being present to my wife. On those days, what potential good for our marriage and the woman I love most dearly am I leaving undone?
My point is not to inspire feelings of guilt or shame over the good left undone. We are all trying our best. But I think the awareness of our fundamental interconnectedness has ignited in me a deep desire to both be the very best man I can be, and to help others to do the same. And I know of no better way to become that highest and best version of ourselves than to commune daily with God.
On our last call, my friend Jamie Winship (who as regular readers of Heal the West will know, is one of the most effective peacemakers of our time) shared a sentiment that floored me. He told me that, "The only reason we have external conflict in the world is because people are living with internal conflict."
If he's right, then genuine spiritual formation—letting God replace the discord in our thoughts with harmony, the discontent in our souls with peace—might be the master key to addressing human suffering.
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