The book that became my friend... HOW TO SURVIVE A SHIPWRECK by Jonathan Martin

"What if God doesn’t choose to save us in spite of our failures, losses, and embarrassments, but precisely through them? What if it is not avoiding falling that strengthens our faith, but the falling itself? Before the shipwreck, we still maintain illusions of our control. So long as we still think we are in charge of our lives, there is no space for God—we are still clinging to life. It is only when our hands are too weak to cling to life anymore—because of sickness, death, addiction, failure—that we can find life. This is what Jesus means when he says we have to lose our lives to find them. That’s not a metaphor for “giving up a lot to follow Jesus.” It’s not a metaphor for anything. It’s a way of saying what it sounds like: The only way to find God is through losing." (JM) 

I took my Mom to a Christmas Eve candlelight service last year and the pastor shared this exert.  He just read this and later commented that it was from Jonathan Martin's book "How to Survive a Shipwreck".  

"Heh!" I thought, "I read that book."  

I opened my Ibooks the next morning (Christmas Day) and found my copy and highlighted this portion in the book.  

I read this book in 2017,  the year my nephew died.  I found out about from a friend's social media site.  It intrigued me, because, I was in the middle of my own shipwreck at the time.  It seemed to be what I needed at the time.  

"Nobody survives a shipwreck on their own. When your ship goes under, there are a handful of people in your life who will stay with you. It’s no time for saving face or maintaining credibility—it’s time to put real weight down on somebody else who can help carry you. Let your ego drown in the watery grave. The only way you have of saving yourself is to let someone outside of you do the saving." (JM) 

Oddly enough, I highlighted that in September of 2017, because I felt very alone in my shipwreck.  I felt tossed in a sea and no one else was with me.  My family were all being tossed in their own sea, how could any of them be there to help me calm my storm.  This book was a friend for me as I rocked back and forth amid the tumultuous waves.  

"When everything else in and around you is dead or dying, the soul will not yet go quietly. Your soul is not dead yet, just because it decided not to be; it claws its way back up through all the grief, without your consent, like some kind of animal." (JM)

The storm in me was more than just the loss of my nephew, his death had catapulted me into a universe that was void of a controlling Creator.  My religion was being stripped away over the years, but his death purged what remained of my faith.  Now it was all head space for me.  All I had left was what made sense to me, and that wasn't much.  

"There are some losses that in their way mark you forever, and some things you never get over. And because you loved this person or this life and career you built, or valued your dignity, when the bow broke, everything in you screamed." (JM) 

I will never get back to what I had before. That ship not only sailed, but it was destroyed in the storm.  I was able to swim away from the wreckage, but not undamaged.  

"The gospel doesn’t fulfill our quest for significance, but exposes its essential folly. It gives us something better than meaning—namely, love. The love of God gives us unfathomable value despite our objective smallness. But it still leaves us blissfully unimportant." (JM)

It was in this space, that Jonathan's book found a home.  As I go back through the highlights, I am remembering just how much of a friend it was.  There was so much wisdom in its pages and so much that I resonated with.  I didn't feel judged, but embraced by such profound thoughts.  

"Oftentimes, we develop an entire religion out of a system of “shoulds” and “oughts.” At our earliest stages of development, this is no big deal. It’s a classic exchange between parents and children—“Why can’t I do that?” “Because I said so!”

But we aren’t built to live in this stage for long. If we do not deal with what lives in our depths, we will live as fragmented, repressed, and often secretly angry people. This is why bad religion often turns out to be more toxic for people than no religion." (JM) 

When I see how many people actually are reading my blog since I started it up again, I feel safe being authentic.  I think it has been swept under the radar and most have forgotten about it.  And now, I find that my desire has changed.  I no longer want to rant at the "church" for its inadequacies, I just want to find others who have been rattled in life's cages and have found the space to be open about it. These people give me courage.  So it is there stories, their books and their wisdom I want to share here

Sometimes being thrown into the ocean is God’s way not of abandoning us but of saving us. (JM) 

I have been somewhat open about the two things that are still alive in my arsenal of spirituality.  Love and Creation.  I stripped down to those two, and since then, it has been a slow climb up, but Love and Creation are still there, in my face, reminding me that I am not forgotten.  

I am going to end off with another segment that I heard during that Christmas Eve service last winter.  It gave me hope that somewhere past my lost religion and search for something authentic, that there is not only a Love and a Creation that makes sense to me, but a God who is real. 

Thank you Jonathan Martin... for a great book... and oh yeah... an amazing podcast to boot

"God is only found in dirt-floor reality. God is only found in the vulnerability of a manger with the stench of manure, teaching us how to be human by relying on other humans. God is only found on the cross, with his insides exposed, leaking out to the world for the sake of its healing."

"When we can’t see life from the underside, we can’t see the people around us for who they really are, nor can we see the world for what it truly is."

"When we’re too proud to be on our backs—in a manger or on a cross—we can be as honest as we know how to be, but the world we see is still founded on lies. When we can’t see life from the underside, we can’t see the people around us for who they really are, nor can we see the world for what it truly is. It is blasphemy to take the posture of the high place from which we look down at everyone else, at the world we see only as below us. It is a posture that the God who made the world is far too humble to take himself."

"No, the truth about God, ourselves, and the world can only be truly seen from the underside. That is where Jesus works his miracles." (JM)