In her book, Survivor, Christina Crawford writes: "Lost is a place, too."
That’s a deep truth that's often lost in a world within which accumulation, achievement, and appearance define meaning and value.
What can that phrase teach us? It teaches us that sometimes it's good to be torn away from success, from great health, from achievements. Being down-and- out, alone, lost, struggling for meaning, and looking bad, is also a valid place to be.
The Spanish Catholic mystic, John of the Cross, would agree with that. If he was your mentor and you explained to him that you were going through a dark, painful patch in life and you feel lost and asked him: "What's wrong with me?" He would likely answer:
"There's nothing wrong with you; indeed, there's a lot right with you. You're where you should be right now: in the desert, letting the merciless sun do its work; in a dark night, undergoing an alchemy of soul; in exile, lamenting on a foreign shore so that you can better understand your homeland; in the garden, sweating the blood that needs to be sweated to live out your commitments; being pruned, undergoing spiritual chemotherapy, to shrink the tumours of emotional and spiritual dead-wood that have built up from wrong-turns taken; in the upper room, unsure of yourself, waiting for Pentecost before you can set out again with any confidence; undergoing positive disintegration, having your life ripped apart so that you can rearrange it in a more life-giving way; sitting in the ashes, like Cinderella, because only a certain kind of humiliation will ready your soul for celebration; and undergoing purgatory, right here on earth, so your heart, soul, and body can, through this painful purging, learn to embrace what you love without unhealthily wanting it for yourself." (Dark Night Of The Soul, Riverhead Books, 2002)
He'd also tell you that this can be a good place to be, a biblical and mystical place. That doesn't make it less painful or humiliating, it just gives you the consolation of knowing that you're in a valid place, a necessary one, and that everyone before you, Jesus included, spent some time there and everyone, including all those people who seem to be forever on top of the world, will spend some time there too. The desert spares nobody. Dark nights eventually find us all.
Knowing this, of course, doesn't make it easier to accept feeling lost and on the outside, especially in a world in which being successful is everything. That's why it's hard to ever admit, even to our closest friends, that we're struggling, tasting more ashes than glory.
The need to name being lost as a valid place is important for us. We have our good seasons, but we have seasons too where we lose relationships, lose health, lose friends, lose jobs, lose prestige, lose our grip, lose our dreams, lose our meaning, and end up humbled, alone, and lonely. But that's a place too, a valid and an important one. Inside that place, our souls are being shaped in ways we cannot understand but in ways that will stretch and widen them for a deeper love and happiness in the future.
Jonah was in that place. Lost because he chose to run from God. Lost because he didn’t like being told what to do. Lost because he didn’t like good happening to the people he disliked. In the belly of the fish; in the valley with his angry fist, Jonah was lost. It was not pleasant, but that was a place too.
We are beginning a new series, LOST, this Sunday at church. It is about the Jonah in all of us. You shouldn’t miss it!
