I recently returned from a two-week stay at Holy Wisdom Monastery near Madison, Wisconsin. I was living with some of the sisters while working and praying there. After a morning spent weeding the garden, these thoughts about faith sprouted. They are inspired by the earth, and also by Soren Kierkegaard, whose book Fear and Trembling was the topic of my most recent paper.

Life may be short. It is still holy.

Life may be painful. It is still holy.

Life may never make sense. It is still holy.

Life may drone on in drudgery. It is still holy.

Life may be brutal. It is still holy.

The mystery of Christianity is how one man — whose life was cut short, who knew pain searing through his entire being, who lived and moved by ways that didn’t make sense to others, whose followers were often dull to catch on and whose desert days droned on through emptiness and temptation, who bore the brutality of all who condemned him throughout his life and the brutality of a most gruesome death — lived the holiest life of all.

Even yet, he says, “See, I am near. Behold, I make all things new.”

The mystery of Christianity is how God, in becoming finite human, releases us out of a finite sense of Spirit.

To mistake our short and painful, dull and confusing, tiring and brutal lives for a lack of God is a lack of faith. But faith is not something we push through until our days are beautiful and whole and healthy. Those days come, either here or later.

Faith is a gift of God that we receive in giving to God our fear of time passing too fast, our boredom, our hurt, our anger, our despair. He is near to us in them. He makes all things new, even our unquenchable exhaustion, even our rage, even our deepest apathy.

When we limit faith into what we can see and feel and experience right now, we limit the God who walked on water and endured the cross.

We do not of our own power overcome our trials in this life. It is in surrendering our finite grip that we allow the infinite Spirit to fill and carry us.

Faith was never meant to be easy, and we must give up our impatience and anger that it does not always happen right away or in ways we can taste.

It is always a paradox. It is where our souls have been hidden in God forever, and where he leads us through years of suffering. It is years of waiting, and seconds of overflow. It happens in community, and in the most intimate whisper of you and God. When we choose an or rather than allowing the and, we stop short of the resurrection that could be. Walking on water, rising from the tomb – these are not ors, they do not make sense.

You are not the leader of this. You need not fear. Holiness is not an impossible ladder — though steps on the path there are — but also it is now.

Life is holy. Don’t be afraid, for behold, these are tidings of the greatest joy.