The Crack Between the Worlds

There is a very thin crack between the worlds, and I always seem to find myself stuck at the bottom of it, wedged between its narrow walls, stuck between a rock and the proverbial hard place. Once again, the world has chewed me up and spit me out. Once again, its system has allowed me to somehow slip through the gaps and fall through the cracks, forgotten, unnoticed; The Crack Between the Worlds, my forever home.

Maybe we all live here, or have at least visited it a couple of times. Maybe we don’t like to talk about it. Maybe we’re all too uncomfortable with the idea to even admit it to ourselves, even in the privacy of our own souls.

Or maybe I’m just different. Unique.

...Broken.

But from my vantage point in this chasm so often accompanied by loneliness and despair and the shadow of death, I can see the outlines of two very distinct cities on the clifftops above me.

To one side is the world we’re all familiar with, full of jobs and cell phones and money and Netflix and Presidential candidates. All the things we’re supposed to do as adults; all the stuff they told us was important, that the advertisements and computer screens said we should care about; all the distractions that fill our days and make us feel happy and important inside but mask our true emptiness.

On the other slope I see another familiar world: the Kingdom that Jesus speaks about. In this city are all of the things that are actually important and lasting and valuable and have substance in this life: love, hope, faith, joy, community, beauty, family, relationships, honor, integrity, morality, service, and others.

From here in the valley it seems so clear that no one can live in both cities at once. No one can serve two masters, for either he will love the one and hate the other, or he will despise the one and adore the other...And these cities have two very separate masters. To pursue a successful career in the eyes of the first world, for example, you will have to forsake most of the qualities found in the second. Likewise, if you want to grow in any area of the second kingdom, you’re going to have to sacrifice some of those distractions found in the first. It’s hard to have a solid career climbing the corporate ladder putting in long hours while also maintaining a strong family presence and holding onto your morals without compromise. In the same way, it’s hard to develop deep and meaningful relationships with other people when we’re all buried in our cell phones; it’s hard to prioritize any sort of spiritual discipline when we’re binge-watching mindless TV shows.

These worlds are two sides of the same coin, and only one of them is going to land face-up in the end; we can't have both.

Whenever I find myself in this pit--which is more often than I’d like to admit, and seems to happen in cycles of no more than 12 months--I struggle to find a way out of it. I yearn for the kingdom of heaven; that’s what forms the entire basis of my beliefs and values, those things that allow me to move through the world with integrity and find fulfillment. Yet I often landed here because I got kicked out of the first city, and I feel I must return there to prove myself to them, to show them that I was right, that there is a way to live that transcends the distance between worlds--but inevitably I wind up back here in the same dark place with a few more bruises, a few more scars, a few more broken bones.

And a little less hope.

Oh, how I long for the imagination and creativity to find a way to bridge that gap! How I long to show all those souls in the first city that there is another Way out there, another Kingdom just beyond the borders of our own!

But I don’t have the strength. Perhaps I lack the courage. Or maybe there simply just isn’t a way. Maybe it’s all distraction and illusion, and maybe the point of it all is to leave the old city behind and live forever in the new.

Yet I have been so programmed by this old world--so conditioned to its patterns of thinking--that I have no idea how that works in practicality. What does real human life in the United States look like if you only focus on Kingdom things? On growing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control? Can you even get a paycheck for that shit? How do you afford rent or food or loans or debt or insurance?

Undoubtedly this world would be a whole lot better of a place if people were focused on cultivating relationships, on viewing other people as better than ourselves, on serving others and meeting the needs of those around us, and basically doing all the other stuff that Jesus taught us to do. But you can’t get paid for that. You can’t be successful or powerful or rich (or any of those other things they told us were important). The very nature of the old world system is designed to favor the selfish and individualistic, and such things as love--not merely romantic love or brotherly love, but the agape love that Jesus commands--have no place here.

Sometimes I think it’s better to stay in this crack than to go back into such a toxic and dangerous environment. Because when I’m in it, when I’m breathing that air and drinking the Kool-Aid, it sure sounds reasonable and logical and desirable and good. I get caught up in the pleasures and the prestige and the privilege as much as anyone would. It’s only when I have been kicked out of the Matrix, when I can see beyond the skin of our world, that I begin to understand the folly of it. And being the temperamental, reckless, somewhat self-destructive person that I am, when I reach these moments of clarity I usually toss myself immediately out the nearest window (so to speak) until I have tumbled back down to this place, the Crack Between the Worlds.

Because no matter what I do, I can never seem to make it to the other side. All I can do is gaze longingly at it from my helpless position, doomed to forever ache for it with every fiber of my being, but too trapped, too consumed by this old world to ever let go fully.

Maybe I’m not alone. Maybe here in the darkness I am surrounded by others who have tried to stand in the gap, who see the goodness of the other Kingdom and who long to start living that Way now, before too much of our lives are wasted chasing distractions and abandoning our dreams, until we wake up one day when we’re 65 and we wonder how we got here and what became of those things we thought were important when we were young and written off as “idealistic,” but by then it’s too late to change, so we cling to our investments and our retirement funds and we take pictures of our grandchildren and we convince ourselves that surely this is what it means to live a full life, but all the while we ignore that voice inside of us that reminds us of what we know to be true, the one that keeps us awake at night as we struggle to find sleep: that this world is not our home and that there is a better way to be human.

Maybe I’m not alone.

But right now it feels pretty fucking empty down here in the void, the Crack Between the Worlds.

These are the things that keep me up until 3am on a Saturday night.

If anyone else is stuck down here in the pit, can you come give me a hug? And if anyone knows the way out, can you walk it with me? Because I’m feeling pretty freaking lost right now, and I’m about 9 seconds away from losing my shit.

Thanks,
--JD