• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
  • My Books
    • True You
    • Katharina and Martin Luther
    • 50 Women Every Christian Should Know
    • Spiritual Misfit
  • Blog
  • On My Bookshelves
  • Contact
  • Privacy & Disclosure Policy

Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

authenticity

How to Find the Real You Amid All the Noise

January 20, 2016 By Michelle

hammock in the snow

I’ve been re-reading a book this past week that I first read last year. I do this a lot. I’ll read a book the first time through and think, meh, that was okay. But then for some reason I’ll come back to it, months or even years later, and the second time through it rocks my world. Such is the case with Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation, by Ruth Haley Barton.

In the first chapter, even before she gets into the spiritual disciplines, Barton talks about longing, about the process of uncovering and defining our deepest desires. She writes about a moment in her life in which she experienced a sense of wholeness and completeness so overpowering, it prompted a prayer to spring up from the depths of her heart:

“O God, give me more moments like this — moments when I am fully present to you and to others in love,” she prayed. “Moments when I am connected with what is purest and most authentic within me and able to respond to your presence in that place.”

I sat with Barton’s epiphany and prayer for a good long time. What are your moments like this? I wrote in my journal. Can you think of times when you’ve been fully present to God and others, when you’ve felt whole and truly connected to your purest and most authentic self? 

Edgie paintings

DSC_0086

journal

cabin2

bird2

Josie on walk2

I thought about those questions for a while. Truth be told, I panicked at first, because for a long time, I couldn’t think of a single moment in recent months that seemed to encompass what Barton had experienced.

Slowly though, memories of such moments surfaced. I made a list of them in my journal:

Gathering with my book club friends to take a painting class, laughing uproariously, creating and enjoying good food.

Reading and journaling in the early morning quiet at the cabin. 

Having coffee and a muffin with Noah on the deck of a coffee shop in Florence, Oregon. 

Cross country skiing and repeating the breath prayer in the Minnesota woods.

Walking Josie and following the call of a great horned owl. 

Thinking about Barton’s questions and making my own list of moments was illuminating. I realized that most of these moments, when they did happen, occurred during times of quiet intimacy — intimacy with a small group of close friends, intimacy with my natural surroundings, intimacy with my loved ones. These were the moments I felt most alive, most exhilarated, but also most content and at peace. These were the moments when I felt all was right with the world.

My sparse list also told me that these moments were far and few between – a mere handful that had taken place mostly on vacation last summer and over the holidays. Yet at the same time, the moments on my list were accessible. It’s not like I had experienced presence and authenticity while dog-sledding in the Arctic or spelunking in a remote Mexican cave.

In fact, my experiences couldn’t have been more ordinary: reading, writing, connecting in person with friends and loved ones, walking my dog in my own neighborhood, spending time outdoors. These were experiences I could sink into in my everyday, ordinary life.

But here’s the truth; here’s what I learned when I made my list: I rarely take the time to engage with my people and my place this way. I rarely stop long enough to connect with my closest friends, my environment or even myself in a meaningful way.

I think it’s easy to lose the essence of ourselves in this day and age. We fill every small moment, every bit of margin, with noise, distraction and technology. We rush from task to task, place to place, errand to errand. We forget to breathe. We don’t allow ourselves to sit. We don’t allow time for quiet. We skate by on bits of shallow connection – an email, a Facebook comment, a string of texts, a Voxer message. We don’t linger with our people. We don’t soak in the details of our places. We don’t allow our deepest selves the space to surface.

And then, we wonder why we feel fragmented, empty, restless. We wonder why we find ourselves thinking, What’s the point? Where’s the meaning? Is this all there is?

As Ruth Haley Barton observes: “Constant noise, interruption and drivenness to be more productive cut us off or at least interrupt the direct experience of God and other human beings, and this is more isolating than we realize. Because we are experiencing less meaningful human and divine connection, we are emptier relationally, and we try harder and harder to fill that loneliness with even more noise and stimulation.”

Reading the opening chapter of Sacred Rhythms, asking those questions and making my list has helped me see, in a new, clearer way, that I’ve been doing exactly what Barton describes: feeding my isolation and sense of meaninglessness with that which, in the end, only isolates and fragments me further.

I don’t know where you might find your most authentic self, where you are most fully present with God and others. Your list might look completely different from mine. Frankly, it will probably look a lot more exciting or interesting. Regardless, I would encourage you to try this exercise yourself. Think about the moments you have felt a sense of wholeness and peace, an intimacy with God, with others, or with your surroundings. Make your own list, and then think about how you can find the space and opportunity to experience more of these moments in your everyday life.

Filed Under: authenticity, quiet Tagged With: Ruth Haley Barton

Whew, That Was Tough

April 14, 2015 By Michelle

bridgeatPioneers

Well hello there, friends…we’re all still standing after last week’s post, yes? Let me just say that I’m glad you are still here, truly.

In the aftermath of last week’s gay marriage post, a couple of people asked me why I felt the need to write on such a controversial topic. Their question wasn’t accusatory; they honestly wanted to know why I, a self-proclaimed controversy-phobe, would take on such a lightning rod issue. So here’s my answer to that question, in case you, too, were wondering.

For quite a long time now I’ve felt an increasing disconnect between how I present myself here and in other spaces online and who I am in “real life,” so to speak. And while I’ve never been intentionally dishonest here on the blog or on social media, I came to feel that some of my thoughts and beliefs, particularly those related to the LGBTQ community, had become something of an elephant in the room, like I was living the “don’t ask, don’t tell” philosophy. It felt disingenuous. Truthfully, I was beginning to feel a bit fractured – almost like I had an online identity and an in-person identity — and I was tired of keeping up appearances. I wanted to come clean here, to set the record straight.

It’s funny, back when I first began to claim my identity as a Christian, I hesitated to broadcast that to my “in real life” community, partially because I was afraid of being judged. The truth is, for non-religious people (which is not to say that my entire “real life” community is non-religious, but many of my friends and family are), the label “Christian” is not necessarily positive. As a person new to the faith, I was more comfortable claiming my Christian identity online, where I could talk about my faith with other Christians and not worry about being labeled in a particular way.  At some point during the last couple of years, though, something shifted as I began to realize that I was less religiously conservative than many of my online Christian peers.  At one point I even felt like I was “too Christian” for many of my in-person peers, and “not Christian enough” for my online community. That was fun.

Long story short, I reached a point in which I didn’t feel that I was being true to myself, and I didn’t feel like I was being true to you. And let’s be brutally honest about this: part of the reason I maintained this split identity for so long was because I didn’t want to lose readers. I know, it’s gross, but it’s the truth. I felt pressure — pressure to keep building my platform, pressure to grow an audience, pressure to present the best possible scenario of potential readers to my publishers. I’m not blaming the publishing industry entirely – my own ego certainly plays into this (i.e. more readers and more subscribers means I am more popular and more successful – yay, me!) — but the need to build a viable platform was definitely a factor.

The harsh reality was that last Thursday’s post about gay marriage was a huge risk for me. I lost 47 blog subscribers in two days, and that hurts – not only because my platform is still small and that loss is big (to put it in perspective, it would typically take around 6 or 7 months or longer to add 47 new subscribers to my email subscription list), but also because, well, it’s hurtful. I took the time to look at some of those readers who unsubscribed – I was curious if I knew any of them personally, or if they’d been long-time readers. And it hurt to know that in many cases, one post was enough to prompt longtime, loyal readers to unsubscribe. These were readers who had, up to this point, ostensibly found spiritual or other sustenance in my writing, in some cases for years, but were willing to or felt compelled to sacrifice that because of one point of disagreement (albeit a substantial point, but still). That was painful.

On a more positive note, however, I also feel relief. You know where I stand now, and even if we don’t agree on this particular issue, I don’t feel like I’m hiding anything important anymore. We can move forward in a more authentic, honest way. And as I said at the start of this blog post, I deeply appreciate those of you who have stuck around, particularly those of you who disagree with me. I really do believe that we can disagree, even on important issues, and still move forward in authentic relationship and in Christian faith, learn from one another and love one another.

So. For the record, I will not be making a habit of writing LGBTQ/Christian/same-sex marriage posts in the future. This is not my new “thing” – frankly, I don’t have the guts for it. I much prefer to delve into other deep issues, like the spiritual discipline of walking my dog.

I am heartened to know, though, that if I do step into a tricky topic every now and again, this is a place where we can engage in conversation, a place where we can come to the table, and a place where something that begins as a chasm might just become a bridgeable gap.

Filed Under: authenticity, gay marriage, writing, writing and faith Tagged With: authenticity, writing

Primary Sidebar

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a Triple Type A, “make it happen” (my dad’s favorite mantra) striver and achiever (I’m a 3 on the Enneagram, which tells you everything you need to know), but these days my striving looks more like sitting in silence on a park bench, my dog at my feet, as I slowly learn to let go of the false selves that have formed my identity for decades and lean toward uncovering who God created me to be.

Read Full Bio

Available Now — My New Book!

Blog Post Archives

Footer

Copyright © 2023 Michelle DeRusha · Site by The Willingham Enterprise· Log in