Holy Envy: Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

Back around Passover, Rabbi Dnya Ruttenberg taught me a lesson I didn't know I needed. She talked about how a necessary part of reaching the promised land is going through the desert. That's one of the lessons she's learned from observing Passover.

That had a profound impact on me. One of those moments where you think, "This is exactly what I needed to hear. I don't know what I'm about to go through, or why I need this. But this is going to stick with me because it's where I'm headed in life."

And sure enough, it didn't take long. The need to find a new place to live because we can't stay where we are has arrived. The uncertain future. The changes in circumstances. The preparations to leave when you have no idea where you're going or how to get there. That's where I am in the temporal realities of my life right now. But I'm also realizing that it's a good representation of where my spirituality is too. I am in the desert, the in-between of where I was and where I'll eventually end up.

The way I lived before, the person I was when I trusted in the institutional church wholly and without thought, is gone. I've left that place in my religious life and there is no going back. Part of this is because of hurtful experiences I've had with other members who didn't treat me with the respect I deserved. Part of it is because of questions and frustrations I have that I can't resolve, and no one else can resolve for me. Well, no one except God. And God is choosing not to answer those questions for me. At least not here and now.

There are answers I want that I may never get. Like many who perished in the desert during the forty year Exodus, there are deserts I may never return from.

Because I'm Mormon and our whole premise is "Ask, Seek, Knock," we don't really have a paradigm in place for questions with no answers, for deserts without end. For promised lands we never see. To find those insights, I had to look outside my own tradition.

There are problems I want resolved in my life that will never be resolved. It's not because I failed. It's not because I did anything wrong. I'm human, having a human experience. Nothing about being religious will ever change that. So why bother believing or observing?

The answer I've arrived at may not satisfy anyone else. But it satisfies me.

I genuinely believe in the reality of the experiences I've had with what I understand God to be: a sentient, benevolent presence outside of myself who talks to me, especially when I'm in need. I turn to that naturally and instinctively. I always have. I probably always will.

Mormonism doesn't have a monopoly on that, nor do I think it's the place where all people will have their needs met or their prayers answered. But somehow, it is for me. Their process of seeking out continual revelation from a living God who speaks and listens serves me best. That doesn't mean my life will be perfect or free from deserts. It doesn't mean I have the promise of certainty in anything. I'm accepting more every day that I have no such promise. Clarity and certainty of the Church are not mine anymore, and they may never be again.

I don't claim to "know" the Church is true anymore, that its leaders are inspired, that their choices are correct, that the relationships we have here will continue beyond the grave. I don't know any of that. I felt I did once, but I don't anymore. I don't "know" these things are true, like we're accustomed to saying in testimony meetings. I thought I could settle into saying I "believe" they're true, but even that feels distant from where I am right now.

But this is where my hope lives. I hope we have a living prophet who is what he claims to be. I hope that continual revelation is real, that its processes will overturn so much of the injustice that exists in the institutional church. I still hope many things about the Church are true. I'm okay with that.

The only things I truly believe anymore, even though I can't prove them with anything tangible, is that I have Heavenly Parents who love me. I believe I have a Savior in Jesus Christ. I believe in the power of prayer and that God answers some prayers, sometimes.

I used to think the erosion of my certainty about the restored gospel was a problem to be solved. With enough time and patience, surely someone (God, prophets, apostles, presidencies, etc.) with more power than I had would take them from me. Today, I'm embracing faith: the believing without evidence in things which are hoped for, but not seen. That may be where I spend the rest of my life, an exodus into the desert I never emerge from.

But I'm okay with that because it's changing the way I live. I see the world and people in it differently. I am less certain I have the solutions to everyone else's problems, which makes it easier to listen and admit when I don't know something. I have a compassion and awareness of people outside of myself I never had before. I may have lost the sense of security I find in certainty, opening me to new fear. But with that greater capacity for fear has come a more profound love for everyone and everything around me.

If being unsure if anything lasts forever means I appreciate and savor here and now that much better, I'm okay if I never recover that certainty. I see the wisdom from the God I believe in that this may have been the better way to live all along. I was just too busy being certain I knew everything to see it.