The calling of Saint Schizophrenia

Hey, Sean here.

Hearing God can be a murky affair.
First, there's the wading through your own desires, proclivities and
(let's just be honest here) personal bullshit.
You want what you want, and if you're anything
like me, you're not beyond a little self-deception to get it.
But once you get through all of that
you've still not cleared all the hurdles
because, simply put,
God often likes to whisper.

I had followed these whispers from the verdant land
and flannel grey skies of Washington State
to the parched earth and gauzy grey skies of
the San Joaquin Valley of California.
These whispers unwound before me like a path
from my familiar and comfortable job in a screenprint shop
to the uncharted territories of full-time artist.
Even a whisper during my wife Sandi's dreaming
showed us which house we would soon occupy.

But then, there are those moments
as if the channel upon which we hear his voice gets
dialed into more sharply and the static dies away
and you hear it.
A word or a phrase
undeniably Him
and pregnant with meaning.

One of the most definitive of these moments came for me
six years ago just after Mardi Gras.
We had just moved into our new house and I was
already pursuing the whispered path of full-time artist,
but all was not well in my world.
My wife and kids were thrilled at the new adventure,
but certain others close to us had already begun
voicing some vehement opposition to my distinctly
un-9 to 5 trajectory.
It was arrogant
It was irresponsible.
It was immoral.
It was perhaps insane.
In fact, a non-liturgical Christian in this camp
(who had already expressed that he had lost

all respect for me as a Father and a Christian)

had begun fasting for Lent in hopes that I would come to my senses.

Now, I grew up in the land of manners
and good Southern gentility
amidst a group of people to whom
the opinions of others meant a great deal.
They gladly (or obligately)
passed this co-dependency onto me.

"What will the neighbors think?"
"What would your grandmother say?"

So, to have so many disgruntled people
not just questioning my decisions
but actually casting aspersions upon
my faith and character
was truly beginning to break me,
especially since I felt that I was acting
with more faith and integrity
than I ever had in all my life.

I had no training for this.
Not from my family.
Certainly not from the church.
(They always told me that if I was in God's will
my opposition would be the atheists, liberals and satanists. Ha.)
I didn't know what to do.
So, I went for a walk.

It was on that walk, barely a block from my house
that the voice in the wind
stopped being a whisper.

"I want you in freefall."

I can't attest to whether this message came as sound
through the air to vibrate my tympanic membrane or not.
All I can tell you is that I heard it.
Crystal clear and full of meaning, far beyond
its six syllables.

With that sentence I had a picture.
I was standing at the edge of a cliff,
one of those protruding precipices that Wile. E. Coyote
often found himself on,
and I was hemmed in by people.
People I knew. Family. Friends. And even foes.
They were all pleading with me to step away
from the edge.
But not one of them, not even the well- meaning ones,
was without an agenda or some stipulation.
All I had to do was trade what I knew I had heard
and I could walk away with them in perfect safety.

But the word "freefall" hung in the air like a mist
and I looked behind me.
My only open path free of the obligations
to the opinions of others
was just past the precipice.
"Freefall" echoed through the jagged canyons below.
My only option was to be obedient.
And for the first time ever,
I looked back at those pleading for my attention
smiled warmly at them
and I fell.

Free.


(More to come.)