David Robert Anderson - Losing Your Faith, Finding Your Soul: The Passage to New Life When Old Beliefs Die

David Andersons profound and personal reflections upon lifes perennial pattern of loss and discovery provide insight and encouragement to seekers and believers alike. Wisdom drawn from Andersons experience and that of many others who have become his companions along the way, make this a rich resource to which the reader will want to return again and again.

F RANK T. G RISWOLD , former Presiding Bishop, the Episcopal Church

In Losing Your Faith, Finding Your Soul, David Anderson leads the spiritually hungry yet suspicious pilgrim right into the heart of the transformational path. Forcefully, eloquently, and with real pastoral genius, David opens our understanding to a richer life with God beyond conventional faitha life that, paradoxically, starts at the moment old beliefs fail. He shows that finding your soul means awakening to a life of faith that is large enough to embrace the dynamism of human growth in all its pain and ambiguity. This superb and encouraging book meets a huge need. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

C YNTHIA B OURGEAULT , PhD, Episcopal priest, teacher, conference leader; author of The Wisdom of Jesus

Theres a bracing toughness about this Pilgrims Progress for our time. We live in a culture where the predominant belief is that everything in principle is fixable. (No wonder many of us live lives of puzzling disappointment.) David Anderson confronts us with the great unfixables of love, death, and time. All these themes are forcefully yet gently faced in this remarkable book.

A LAN J ONES , Dean Emeritus of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco; honorary Canon of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres; author of Soul-Making

In Losing Your Faith, Finding Your Soul, David Anderson says what every thoughtful Christian has realizedfaith was meant to be built upon, not enshrined. This book is a tribute to doubters, those seeking honesty, and those in search of a faith forged in failure. There are no flowers here, and no rosy promises, but truth abundant and light for the journey.

P HILIP G ULLEY , author of Living the Quaker Way

L OSING Y OUR F AITH , F INDING Y OUR S OUL

P UBLISHED BY C ONVERGENT B OOKS

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked ( KJV ) are taken from the King James Version. Scripture quotations marked ( MSG ) are taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson. Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked ( NIV ) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. Scripture quotations marked ( NKJV ) are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked (P HILLIPS ) are taken from The New Testament in Modern English, Revised Edition 1972 by J. B. Phillips. Copyright renewed 1986, 1988 by Vera M. Phillips.

Details in some anecdotes and stories have been changed to protect the identities of the persons involved.

The Robert Bly translation of the Prologue epigraph by Antonio Machado is reprinted from Times Alone: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado with permission of Robert Bly and Wesleyan University Press. The excerpt in from A Man Watching by Rainer Maria Rilke is reprinted with permission of Robert Bly.

eISBN: 978-0-307-73121-0

Copyright 2013 by David Anderson

Cover design and photo by Mark D. Ford

Published in association with the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency, 59 West 71st St., Suite 9B, New York, NY 10023.

C ONVERGENT B OOKS and its open book colophon are trademarks of Random House Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Anderson, David, 1956

Losing Your Faith, Finding Your Soul : A Guide to Rebirth When Old Beliefs Die / David

Robert Anderson.

pages cm

1. Faith. 2. Spirituality. 3. God (Christianity) 4. Expectation (Psychology)Religious aspectsChristianity. I. Title.

BV4637.A53 2013

234dc23

2013014289

v3.1

O lady, you in whom my hope gains strength, in all the things that I have seen, I recognize the grace and benefit that I, depending upon your power and goodness, have received.

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Canto XXXI

I often want to say to people, You have neat, tight expectations of what life ought to give you, but you wont get it. That isnt what life does. Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you. It is meant to, and it couldnt do it better. Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition.

Florida Scott-Maxwell, The Measure of My Days

Last night, as I was sleeping,

I dreamtmarvelous error!

that I had a beehive

here inside my heart.

And that the golden bees

were making white combs

and sweet honey

from my old failures.

Antonio Machado, translated by Robert Bly

Let me tell you a secret. There is a beehive there in your heart, and the golden bees are dying to make white combs and the sweet honey of ecstasy and fulfillment for you. But those bees need nectar to make their soul honey. They need your old failures, something to work with. They need tears and regret, grief and bitter loss. Anger is great for this honey. So is the special shame and humiliation that comes when our failures go public. Depression, for these golden bees, is the finest nectar.

You dont have to do anything exactly for these white combs to form in your heart. You just have to leave it alone. Remember watching chicks hatch? The teacher had to practically tie your hands behind your back. You wanted to help each chick break the shell and emerge into life.

It takes wisdom to understand this paradox: you must be present to your own rebirth and consent to its happening in every moment, but the work of the soul is to stand down in the presence of God, to trust what is happening even though you are worried about the outcome and want nothing more than to jump in and control everything. Just so, the redeeming bees will do their slow and quiet work with your old failures, making in the darkness of their bodies your own sweet salvation. As long as you can leave them alone, trust them, let it happen.

But that is nearly impossible, especially in the early stages of life. Then, unless we have experienced some early lossan accident that alters our lives, a sickness that robs us of the assumed immortality of youth, or some mistake with awful consequenceswe cannot admit to any failures. Frightening emotions like anger and resentment are quickly stuffed in the dark caves tunneling off from the heart. Failures are merely the things we have not yet fixed (and we