Punching Holes in the Dark: Living in the Light of the World

by Robert Benson

Overview

We do not, and cannot, by definition, know much about the kingdom to come. But the “One Who Came Among Us” not only came to reassure us of the gift of the kingdom that is yet unseen but to proclaim the presence of the kingdom is already among us—even when we cannot see it and we cannot hear it.

Sometimes we cannot see much evidence of the kingdom that is already here. How do we find it, not lose sight of it, and even share its message of hope with others in the darkness?

In Punching Holes in the Dark, author Robert Benson helps us discover strength in the gifts of the Spirit and encourages us all to start punching holes—as hard as we can, as often as we can—to let the Light of the world sneak i

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501822599
Publisher:	Abingdon Press
Publication date:	09/06/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	615 KB

About the Author

Robert Benson is a critically acclaimed writer who has published nine works on the contemplative life, including Venite, Punching Holes in the Dark, Moving Miss Peggy, Living Prayer, and A Good Life. He is a graduate of the Academy for Spiritual Formation and a member of the Friends of Silence and of the Poor, an international ecumenical prayer community. He leads retreats and workshops on prayer, writing, and the contemplative life around the country. He lives in Jackson, Mississippi.

Read an Excerpt

Punching Holes in the Dark

Living in the Light of the World

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By Robert Benson

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2016 Robert Benson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5018-2259-9

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CHAPTER 1

A First Thing

In the beginning was the Word.

The Gospel

Our Father who art in heaven, may your kingdom come upon us and cleanse us.

The Prayers of the People

Shout the gospel from the rooftops. If necessary, use words.

Attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi

You're religious, aren't you?" she said.

Evidently I proclaimed the gospel once, for about twenty minutes, without saying any of the words I had been taught in Sunday school.

* * *

I have lived as a churchman all my life.

One might even say I started out as a church boy. My father was a preacher. The first bunk beds I remember my brother and I sharing were in the back of the church my father pastored when I was young. He and my mother slept in the room next door.

Years of performing in a Christian rock-and-roll band in churches, years of working in a Christian music company whose audience was the crowd of people who already believed in the things we were saying, years of making books largely aimed at the people who base their lives on the same theological pillars I do hardly count as going forth into all the world. It was not so much spreading the gospel as securing the gospel, not so much spreading seeds as it was saving the gospel from harm from those folks out there who did not hold the Story dear in the way we did.

There is some possibility that when I was a schoolboy, the most overtly evangelistic thing I did was have one of those silver and red One Way stickers on the rear window of my Volkswagen. Looking back, I have come to understand I pasted it there not so those who did not believe might see it but so others like me would know I belonged to the correct tribe. When the kingdom finally came, I wanted to be certain I was in that number even if I was double-parked.

I never proclaimed the gospel much at all to those who did not already believe it. I generally made sure to proclaim the gospel safely within the confines of the church walls where everybody in the room already held the belief that Jesus was the Messiah and their personal Savior to boot. We had a good time, but we were hardly carrying the gospel to the ends of the earth.

* * *

I think a lot lately about the sense many of us have that we cannot see much evidence of the kingdom that is already here.

We do not, and cannot, by definition, know much about the kingdom to come. But the One Who Came Among Us not only came to reassure us of the gift of the kingdom that is yet unseen but to proclaim the presence of the kingdom already among us, even when we cannot see it and we cannot hear it.

"It is within you and it is without you," He said, "and you do not even see it," which suggests the One Who Made Us reigned over all of us even before He came to live among us.

Even for those of us who believe in it, long for it, and keep ourselves busy proclaiming it to each other, the kingdom that is already here is evidently easy to miss.

* * *

I read the papers each day.

I read the reports of wars both great and small. I read where again today there were bombings of the fathers and mothers and sons and daughters of someone somewhere, and I long for peace. I would settle for truce most days, or even an informal cessation of hostilities.

I read the stories of random and not-really-random violence and am stunned by what we are capable of doing to each other, what we do to each other in the name of everything from greed to God.

I listen to the world around me each day. I listen as the general tone of discourse about anything of value and anyone who matters — and who is different and therefore does not matter — grows less and less civil, less and less reasonable, less and less hopeful.

I listen as the ones who would lead us discount and mislead and disregard us, all of us, once we have voted them into their places of authority. I listen to their bickering and blustering as the societies we inhabit become more and more dysfunctional, and as the very planet we live on comes apart at its very seams.

Every day I wonder if today there will be a single thoughtful conversation about the things that matter in the halls of power and media and religion.

I look around me each day. I look with dismay, knowing that we who have much might not do much at all on this day for those who only have a little. I watch as we do not feed those who are hungry, protect those who are vulnerable, insure those who are at risk, provide for those who are sick, and care for those who are desperate.

I look at what our treasure seems to be after all is said and done each day and where we spent our treasure and who we spent our resources on.

I look around, and I long for us to make any sacrifice at all for someone else, be the sacrifice reasonable or lively or otherwise.

I walk the streets of the city where I live most every day. I walk past the houses of the old, the ones who are alone and afraid and hungry, the ones who hide behind their curtains and their locked doors so no one will know. I go past the ones who have no doors to lock and no roof over their heads either, the ones who sleep in the streets where I walk. I go past young people with blank faces and sullen eyes and angry hearts and I wonder what will become of them.

I long for the streets themselves to be empty of fear of all kinds.

* * *

I have come now to carry a kind of darkness around with me everywhere, within me and without me.

It is not the same darkness the One Who Made Us gave to us each night for the refreshment of our minds and bodies, as it is called in the old prayer book, the darkness given for silence and rest, gifts we now squander with abandon.

Rather, I carry with me some portion of our self-made darkness each day. I can no longer pretend that such darkness is not also all around us and among us and within us.

I read the Ancient Story, and I make my prayers. I walk the aisles of holy spaces. I listen to my own heart, and I look for signs and wonders. I carry my share of our darkness, and I long for the Light.

"Darkness is not dark to You; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to You are both alike," writes the psalmist. The darkness may not be dark to the One Who Made Us, but there are days when it is very dark to me.

Each morning before the sun comes, I sit in the remains of the comforting dark given to us for our rest. And I wait for the world to begin again. I wait for the kingdom, the one that is already here.

* * *

I was in the advertising business at the time I was accused of being religious. Advertising is not exactly a ministry, I confess.

The nature of my work in those days required I maintain working relationships with several of the local media outlets on behalf of my clients. She was the ad rep for a newspaper. Several of my clients were in her pages each month, and I was regularly treated to a free lunch. To those who would suggest there is no free lunch in the world, I would say it depends on your career choice. Advertising will get you free lunches, as will being a writer.

We were talking about the ad buys for an upcoming campaign when she accused me of being religious.

"Well, yes," I said, taken aback. Actually I was taken to whatever three steps past aback is called.

"I knew it," she said. "I could tell by the way you move through the world with joy and hope and humor and kindness." I did not smile to myself then because I had not yet heard his famous words, but there is reason to suspect St. Francis would have smiled in my direction for at least a single moment.

If that moment was the high point of my "go forth and preach the gospel" days, then I will take the applause of St. Francis and be grateful. Who knows, it may happen again some fine day.

* * *

Being around church folks all my life, I know some of us are terribly discouraged because we see few signs of the kingdom that is already here in the days in which we live in the hope of the other kingdom, the one we have been told is to come. We who have been honestly and powerfully and hopefully proclaiming the gospel sometimes see no signs of Light at all. Our discouragement can become deep enough we even stop looking for the kingdom that has already come and spend our days only longing for the kingdom that will come some day to put us out of what we all too often come to see as our misery.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and told us, oh, by the way, the kingdom is already here. How do we who call ourselves by the Holy Name — we, of all people — keep missing the kingdom all around us?

CHAPTER 2

Born Again, Again

To all who believed the good news, He gave the power to become the children of Light.

The Gospel

Grant that we may find you and be found by you.

The Prayers of the People

Keep punching holes in the darkness.

Champ Traylor

It is spring, and I am at home in one of my birthplaces.

Nearly twenty-five years ago I first came to this place, an old Methodist campground in what passes for mountains in northern Alabama — almost forty years old at the time, more broken than I ever expected I might be in my life, and even more broken than I knew at the time. People I did not know took me in here and became my friends.

When I was here the first time, I was led into, stumbled into, wandered into, fell into everything my life as a writer and as a person was to be about for the rest of my days. Over the course of two years, coming and going every ninety days as was the rule of the community, I was born again here in these rooms, on these fields, in these woods.

To say I was born again in those days is an understatement.

This is the place where I learned about the art of the liturgy and the practice of the ancient ways of prayer and wisdom, of drawing on the treasures of the ones who went before us. It is where I learned to make a friend and to keep one through the years and miles and heartaches and changes. It is where I first sat in a circle and learned to tell my truth to another. ("Death by sharing," is the way I first thought of it.)

Now I sit in the circle again. A different circle now, as I am one of those who teaches or speaks or whatever is the proper way to describe what writers do when they are not writing and are asked to come and be what they call a presenter. The best I can ever do is to be present.

Among the people I face when I stand up each day at the appointed time are those who are being born again. It is holy ground, and my hope is that I will not get in the way. "The job's impossible," wrote Clive Barnes about his art and craft, "and one must pray that one will be only moderately incompetent." Amen, so be it.

It is evening and our day's work is done. The folks who are the leaders for this week gather up for yet another round of death by sharing. We have said our prayers and taught the classes and managed the logistics and put out the fires that broke out behind the scenes. We are all spent and tired.

One of my first friends from those long-ago days is sitting in the circle. He, too, has been asked to come and speak. In fact, he and I are often asked to come and speak to the next crowd of folks who come to the Academy. He and I laugh about the notion of it. That we might someday be asked to help run the asylum for a few days never entered our minds all those years ago.

When we were first here, we thought we were sitting at the feet of wise and wonderful people. We were stunned by what we heard them say, and our lives were changed forever in a hundred little ways. To be asked to be one of those people now makes us both giggle. Neither of us can believe we are on the program.

The cartoonist Gary Larson once said his life of paper-and-ink drawing and humor seemed so improbable he began to live in constant fear that one day there would be a knock at his door, and he would answer the knock to see two men in black FBI suits. "There has been a terrible mistake," they would say to him. "Here is your shovel."

My friend and I feel the same way whenever we think about our being adjunct faculty for these events.

* * *

"So, Robert, how is your journey these days?" The standard opening question for a round of death by sharing.

I have a split second to make a choice.

On the one hand, I can say the things I know they would like to hear me say. "My life is good, my work is going well. Everyone at my house is generally happy, joyous, and free, generally blessed beyond measure in our art and our home and our spiritual life." Are those not the things an adjunct faculty member should say? After all, according to the promotional literature, the invitation was extended to me because of my rich wisdom and deep piety and balanced life. As a former advertising copywriter, I have some sense about the truth behind the copy that is written on anything.

On the other hand.

* * *

On the other hand, I am discouraged on the evening they ask this question, discouraged enough I can barely breathe.

Some of my discouragement is purely personal.

The recent recognition of yet another chronic disease with which I will have to contend for the rest of my life, the financial struggles attendant to a household choosing a life in the pursuit of art rather than the pursuit of wealth, the being suddenly uninvited to participate in the work and life of the parish I have loved and served for some twenty years, the kindhearted, gently delivered rejection of a manuscript I love as much if not more than any I have written — all these things weigh upon me that evening as the question came round.

Some of my discouragement was based in the life of the world in which we live. The list was, and is still, very long — people organizing up to make sure some do not have access to health care, prospects of more war to try and clean up the mess from the last ill-advised one, patent ignoring of the fact we are ruining the planet for which the One Who Made Us appointed us as stewards, political maneuvers designed to make sure people not like us have no voice, poverty in the gap between the wealthy and the poor in the largest economy in the world, the widespread notion that more guns is the solution to the killing of one hundred of us each day by someone who can buy as many guns as he likes. The fact the charges into the dark are often led by those who call themselves followers of the Christ was almost more than I could bear.

A dark place is the only way to describe the place where I was that evening, emotionally spent, tired of being tired of the same things. A place where the ongoing search for the presence of the Light among us seemed fruitless and useless.

The weight I was feeling in the dark that evening in the mountains of northern Alabama was larger than me and my house and my neighborhood. As ridiculous as I sound when I say it — please note I try to stay ahead of everyone in calling myself ridiculous. After all these years, I have learned it is best to go ahead and acknowledge my ridiculousness, others take note very quickly, and they may not be as gentle with me as I need for them to be — as ridiculous as it might sound, I was feeling the weight of a large portion of what passes for the civilized world and the part of the world for which I pray for something akin to civilized to break out.

For me to say I pray for the Light is absolutely the case. For me to say I see the Light each day is absolutely presumptuous.

On that evening, I found myself thinking, yet again, that if the kingdom has already come, for the life of me, I have not lately caught a glimpse.

My old friend looked at me with the same sweet grin with which he has always held me, and so I opted for the truth. If you cannot tell the truth at home, then where are you going to do so?

I regard myself as a wordsmith, and I generally try never to blurt. But I could not help myself.

* * *

I complained bitterly about what I perceived as the failure of the Church to respond to several important issues of our times.

I ranted about our collective culpability in nonsensical wars, political struggles that hurt people instead of help, and our quickness to divide and exclude rather than welcome and include. I criticized our leaders, from the pulpit to the parish, from the city council to the Congress, from the evangelical to the orthodox.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Punching Holes in the Dark by Robert Benson. Copyright © 2016 Robert Benson. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

"A First Thing",
"Born Again, Again",
"All That Is Alive",
"Setting Up the Gym",
"First, Go and Make Peace",
"Bearing Fruit",
"It Is Our Turn",
"Billy",
"Driving Past Community",
"Friends of Silence and of the Poor",
"Not So Faceless",
"12South Film Festival",
"A Last Thing",
"A Few Notes, if I May",
"References",