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Tea Experience (Parenthetical Attempts at Being Honest)
BY: Daniel M. Doriani |
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What has just happened here?
An unidentifiable thought... catharsis... moment... hearing... awakening... drama.
What just happened here?
This question was the one I was asking after my “moment” happened. To put it plainly: I had a “God moment.” A moment where I felt God. The kind of moment that someone will bring up at church or in my small group and I’ll secretly think “yeah right, who is this wacko, can’t they see that some weird synapse has just fired in their tiny little brain, and they are blaming it on a divine source, saying that they ‘felt’ God. Pshh. Those mystics… they are ruining the reputation of Christianity.”
A strange cosmic coincidence, involving a TV nature show, tea, and some sort of odd presence had just struck me like sock full of quarters.
I could blame this “God experience” on the tea, Scrooge it all up and blame it on the tea as he did on his morsels of food (Merry Christmas by the way), but YEAH, I mean… this could very well be blamed on the tea. This, uhhhhhhh, this… extraordinary hyper-awareness of all that is good—if anything is—could be blamed on the tea I was drinking.
The tea: This ridiculously strong stuff called “Gunpowder” that I bought from a store I stumbled upon in San Francisco’s Chinatown, which I believe I was overly excited to find—the sheer amount of expensive tea was baffling, and the American anomaly that is San Francisco’s Chinatown is a spiritual catharsis in and of itself. So perhaps I got a batch of this “Gunpowder” that was overly exposed to some herb that got mixed in—yeah that’s it—mixed in some barrel that previously contained concentrated super-terrific-ginseng root from a region of the Yangtze River that is impossible to get to, and BAM!, anyone that drinks it has mental clarity. Could happen. One can only hope. And to be honest, one only buys a beverage called “Gunpowder” in the hopes that it will launch them into a state resembling the dream sequence from Dumbo or something.
So yes… I suppose I could blame it on the tea. Attribute my spiritual experience in a sort of Screwtape Letters way that only tosses excitement to the wind and puts my faith in a quarter-pound bag of Chinese leaves because sometimes—and yes, this is true—I have more faith in it (tea, that is) than in my Creator. I also frequently have more faith in people, computers, lust, television, football, beer, the Apple store, others’ misfortunes, luck, movies, compliments, criticisms, and myself.
But this time, wow… this was kind of different. A silence… an awareness that was totally unexpected. I sat in disbelief for about a millisecond until I knew what was going on. God’s presence, His love for me was as pervasive as I have ever experienced. This happened as I was watching “Man vs. Wild” on the Discovery Channel, drinking the aforementioned cocaine-tea, sitting on the couch in my pajamas. The most ordinary of moments. Mundanity in its truest form. And God was there.
What? I mean, really: WHAT?!?! How the hell does that work, if God just pops up while I’m farting around the living room, what does that mean about who I am not? How can I explain this intense combination of spiritual awareness and the sense of protection and freedom I felt sitting on the couch (as I often do) juxtaposed with absolute banality and begin to understand it?
But really, it happened like this (and I know I’ve already said all this but it’s important so therefore it bears repeating): I sat there. Doing nothing. All of a sudden a bleak yet palpable consciousness filled the room. (I would have said “filled my soul” instead of “filled the room” right there but that is a little too cliché and writing about an experience with God is sadly cliché enough, so as to maintain my own public appearance of sanity I will use the “…filled the room”.) I sat in silence, trying to explain it all away. (Pause.) Then I just let it be. I realized I was loved. And to counteract this sappiness: I realized the love that I know and experience with people is dwarfed by this love that God has for me. All this while I drank the cocaine-tea, watched a guy eat bugs, and so on.
So this time, I chose to blame it on God. Tea doesn’t win this one. My own understanding doesn’t win this one. My egocentrism doesn’t win this one. “One small step for man” and all that… as I pat myself on the spiritual back while Jesus holds my ankles encouraging me to do a keg-stand from His barrel of unexpired grace.
I then realized that I had to write. Not just write, but try, REALLY TRY, to be honest and do it by switching tenses from past to present quicker than the Sundance Kid from the hip and then, feeling the need to comment on my inconsistencies like a neurotic middle-schooler in a Woody Allen film, justify my waywardness with feigned intelligence. “I don’t know enough to be incompetent.”
So I wrote. Thank God for this motivation.
Copyright © 2007 Brian Watkins
Questions:
1. As accurately and objectively as possible, summarize Watkins’ experience, and his conclusions about it.
2. Have you ever had a similar experience? What did you conclude about it?
3. Are you comfortable with the term “God moment”? Why or why not? What term do you usually use for such experiences?
4. It’s possible that a secularist, an atheist would object to characterizing this experience as a “God moment” by saying there is no objective evidence for bringing in a divine being. The whole thing can be adequately explained as an internalized emotional experience that was triggered by tea, a TV program, and all sorts of other fragments of life that happened to coincide at that moment. Bringing in God simply isn’t necessary to account for it, and requires too great a leap of faith. How would you respond?
5. Are there biblical narratives that come to mind in light of Watkins’ experience? In what ways in Scripture are we told that God manifests his presence to his people?
6. In what ways have you experienced God’s presence in your like? How do you know it is God’s presence? Is it possible for a true believer to go through life without having such experiences? What should they conclude about their spirituality?
7. Much of Watkins’ piece involves his reflections on what had just happened. Have you ever gone through similar mental/spiritual musing?
8. In the end, Watkins’ “God moment” was not something he merely relished, and mused on, but something which motivated him to action. How does your notion(s) or experience(s) of spiritual experience motivate you? To what actions?
9. Why does Watkins emphasize honesty? How does truth-telling (to ourselves and to others) relate to God’s presence in our lives?
10. Is it possible that different generations of believers may tend towards differing responses to Watkins’ piece? Why might this be? How might greater understanding between the generations be developed?
11. How did you develop your ideas and convictions concerning the possibility of experiencing God’s presence in your life? How certain are you that your ideas and convictions about this are biblically orthodox? How much do you know in this area and how much do you merely assume? How do you know? What are the dangers of being mistaken?
12. Are you content in your spirituality? Why or why not?
Questions written by Denis Haack
Source:
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A Serious Man (Coen Brothers, 2009)
There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2008)
Reign Over Me (Mike Binder, 2007)
Heavy Metal In Baghdad (VBS.TV, 2007)
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Doubt (John Patrick Shanley, 2008)
Milk (Gus Van Sant, 2008)
Lumière v. Méliès: Cinematic Dichotomy
Valkyrie (Bryan Singer, 2008)
Stranger Than Fiction (Mark Forster, 2006)
Nanking (Bill Guttentag & Dan Sturman, 2007)
Into the Wild (Sean Penn, 2007)
Atonement (Joe Wright, 2008)
Incredibles, The (Brad Bird, 2004)
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On my desk is a little vase of flowers cut from our yard, a little reminder of the beauty that is all around if we only have eyes to see. I've needed that reminder after reading the latest news of the horrific oil spill in the Gulf. Such glory in this world, such brokenness. Such hope, such deep need for redemption. These are the realities of life and death we seek to explore on this web site. Thank you for visiting.
Denis & Margie
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