Falling Apart: The invitations in the midst of chaos

Walls
Chuck Hoffman + Peg Carlson-Hoffman
2009 Acrylic on canvas
101.6cm x 101.6cm (40in x 40in)
© Genesis+Art

Holden Village, Washington
Article For Holden Village Voice, Written While The Executive Directors

Every summer Chuck + I host the Holden Village summer faculty each week in our present home in the Village, Chalet 6. Since the gathering is hosted on the first night of the week, we go around the room and introduce ourselves to each other. We introduce partners if we have them and our passions, and perhaps say a little bit about ourselves.

I particularly remember last year, week three. Our friend and brilliant scholar, Hal Taussig, introduced himself something like this. “My name is Hal Taussig, and I’m a pastor. I retired last year from Union Theological Seminary in New York, and I just love it when things fall apart.” He said nothing about his books or his work with ancient texts, A New New Testament or any of his travels or lectures.

He simply said, “I just love it when things fall apart.”

Remarkably, to me, the faculty, unfazed, continued their introductions around the room. I was still thinking, “Hey, what do you mean you just love it when things fall apart?!” When a guy like Hal says he loves it when things are falling apart you reply, “Say a little more about that!” When my turn came to introduce myself, I said, “I want to go back to Hal. What about this “falling apart thing” makes you love it?”

This is how I remember his reply. “I love it when things fall apart because it always leads the way to something new.”

This is how I remember his reply. “I love it when things fall apart because it always leads the way to something new.” He may or may not have said exactly those words but this is how they fell on my heart and this is how I internalized them. We can never get to the new without the discomfort of the chaos. When we cling, clutch and hold on to the old thoughts, institutions, ideas, relationships, etc., we keep the new at bay. Holding loving space for the crumbling can help us not only deal with the loss but it can help find hope in a new way.

This falling apart process is evident in my personal life. My husband, Chuck, and I are artists. We have the practice of painting on the same canvas, at the same time. It is an exercise of holding two ideas long enough for something new to rise. Something neither of us has thought of before. Living in that tension, where things feel like they are falling apart is not a search for a compromise but working for something new. Nearly every time we paint, I reach a point where I feel like we should stop this ridiculous practice and just do our own thing. But it is only when we reach the end of ourselves that we become open to the numinous, that mystery finds an opening, reconciliation occurs, and the new is born.

Never has the “falling apart” been so evident to me as in the last several years here at Holden. The powerful Wolverine forest fire of 2015 here in the Railroad Creek Valley is now showing all the signs of newness even in the midst of the chaos left by the fire. It will take decades but we were privileged to witness that transition. The remediation of the copper mine incurred five years of “falling apart” in the valley yet Holden re-emerged, poised for the work of the next 50 years. The church, as we have known it in our lifetime, is crumbling, but ministries, wisdom and mystery are rising at the edges and in our midst. We are learning new stories.

Humans have deeply altered the evolutionary processes of the planet and we are living in the Anthropocene, during the sixth great extinction. Larry Rasmussen asks us to consider that literally every choice we make is ethical, from what we eat, to where we live, to how we conduct ourselves daily. A new visitor, cancer, has entered the midst of our family. The elections of 2016 and subsequent events of the last two years have made my hair stand on end. Things are falling apart. And yet, we see the glimmers of the new rising and hope in the midst.

While I have yet to learn to love the “falling apart,” as Hal has, I can breathe more easily when I encounter the chaos. When I live thoughtfully and with awareness in the turmoil, I live with the anticipation that something new is going to emerge. The “new thing” we wait for rarely looks like what we have imagined. It requires our attention. The “new” demands that we be present and open to seeing the “never before” and the unfamiliar.

There are many invitations during “falling apart” times such as these. They are bold and obvious invitations to listen, to engage, to be open, and to remind ourselves that we don’t own the answers. We all hold a piece of the story. When we are attentive to the “falling apart,” we are practicing the possibility of hope and reconciliation in the midst of despair.

See more conversation in EARTH and SPIRIT