The art of inadequacy :

I frequent my local Barnes & Noble quite often, especially in the hours of night. On my drive over there tonight, I prayed aloud, telling God that I hoped I was "doing a good enough job", whatever the hell that means.

While I was meandering up and down my much-visited philosophy aisle looking for the writings of Leo Tolstoy, an awkward man in his late twenties approached me. He stood there, hunched a bit, his frizzy long brown hair waving wildly about his face and his wide, bright black eyes met mine with genuine glee. He wore an outdated pale grey sweatsuit and a friendly, expectant smile upon his face and inquired what I was looking for. Before I could reply, he told me that he had originally intended to purchase one book, but looked down, offering me a view of the array of books that sat haphazardly collected in his arms.

"I must have gotten caught up in all of this", he said. "There's just so much I want to know."

He proceeded to tell me his story, that he was once in the military when 9/11 came 'round, and his job was to jump, or skydive, from heights as high as 30,000 feet. He told me that he used to be extremely religious, telling others that they were going to hell, pointing and waving his accusatory finger at them, condemning them to their eternal fate. He said he was always the religious one in school, that he was a missionary kid as his dad was a pastor up and down South America. He couldn't go to dances, he couldn't get girls. They were not only scared of him, but the Bible that he so self-righteously held tight to his chest and had glued into the grips of his hands.

"They say there's never an atheist in a foxhole, but there I was, jumping out of planes at incredible heights, and I was praying for the fear to go away, but it wouldn't, yet when I stopped praying, it would," he nostalgically mused. 

As he pondered the thought, he stood still a moment, blinking. He swayed a bit, then began the hesitant yet quietly confident process of admitting, confessing, explaining, confiding - whatever the verb - his own silent sin to me.

He started, pensively, calculating his words carefully, only to conclude that he realized he doubted. He didn't know all the answers, and he had nothing to say. He was fearful, even though he prayed. He was supposed to be the religious one in his troop - I mean, look at him, he was the guy telling everyone they were going to hell - but yet it was he who was scared, his heart thundering, racing, the night before every jump. He tried to meditate, he tried to breathe, but he could never contain the overwhelming, paralyzing fear that consumed his body before he took the dive into the unknown, the atmosphere that always seemed to bring him back down back to Earth. He was humbled.

"I prayed, but yet I was always scared, still scared. I've tried everything. People say, 'Oh, well, you'll find your faith again' or 'it'll come back to you one day', but I don't know. I don't know if it ever will."

I listened. To every thought, to every pause, to every thing he told me, to the information overload from this stranger I couldn't quite read.

But then I realized: this is a man. He is a human. He is me - now what to say?

I told him that praying, to me, sometimes looks like talking aloud while lying in the darkness of my room or lashing out while I'm driving or thinking inside my head. And sometimes, while I pray for God to help give me rest and peace, I still remain fearful or restless. But while I do not have peace as often as I'd like, I realize that it is okay to have fear, and I find ultimate comfort in the words that relinquish me of responsibility of being religious or legalistic, the simple phrase we know to be:

"I don't know."

He thought for a moment, and said that he had never heard anyone describe faith like that before, and that I gave him words that helped him to better understand where he stood - in the fog of the unknowing. Before I left, I said, "you are not and do not have to be who you were yesterday, but can become who you are and want to be now - remember that".

We exchanged faint goodbyes. We departed. We left.

In the words of Leo Tolstoy,

"We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”

And as I sit here, muddling about my own thoughts, I realize that I don't know anything. I doubt this makes me any wiser, but only confirms that I believe and hope and love and have faith. But despite the fear, the unrest, and the unknowing, I am assured of this: I, like this man of 'little faith', am already and will always be 'good enough' for He who loves us both best.