There are seasons where conversation feels like wading. Not swimming. Not being carried by a current, just wading, knee-deep in the warm, shallow pools of small talk, of notifications, and of words which splash but do not satisfy.
I confess; my patience wanes there. I feel the frustration rise, not from anger at people, but from a hunger for depth. The soul was not made to live in puddles.
The ancients knew this ache. In the Nag Hammadi library, in those jars hidden near the cliffs of Egypt, we hear the same cry across seventeen hundred years.
In the Gospel of Thomas, Logion 8, Yehoshua (Jesus) says:
"The man is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of small fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a fine large fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea and chose the large fish without difficulty."
That is what this frustration is. It is the soul of the fisherman who has sorted through too many small fish. We have answered the texts, we have smiled through the shallow pleasantries, we have thrown back a thousand tiny conversations that cannot feed us, and we are waiting, we are aching for the Large Fish. For the one conversation that is true.
We call that impatience a shadow. We are told we should be more tolerant, more easy-going, and more content to wade. So we hide our frustration. We spiritualize it. But the shadow does not heal by being hidden. It heals by being drawn into light.
The Gospel of Philip teaches us this alchemy: "Light and darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers of one another. They are inseparable. This is because of this neither are is one good nor the evil evil." What we call our shadow, this holy impatience, this divine frustration, is not our enemy. It is our brother. It is not sin to yearn for depth. It is a compass.
So, I must ask: What if my waning patience is not a failure of love, but a defense of it? What if my soul is refusing to counterfeit depth any longer?
In The Thunder, Perfect Mind, the Divine Feminine speaks from the Codices in a voice that holds all contradictions:
"I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one."
She does not ask us to choose one voice and silence the other. She reveals that wholeness contains both. I can be a pastor who loves people deeply, and a man who is tired, bone-tired, of shallow pools. Both are true. And when I bring both into the light, I am no longer divided.
We live in a culture which has mastered communication and lost communion. We have more words than ever, and use less of the Word. We have more contact, and less touch. The shallow pool is crowded because it is safe. You cannot drown in six inches of water. But you cannot be baptized there either.
The Gospel of Truth says, "He became a guide, quiet and in leisure. In the middle of a school he came and spoke the Word as a teacher." The deep is not loud. It does not clamor for attention. It waits, in leisure, in quiet, for those willing to leave the shallows and come to school.
So I am learning to honor the shadow. When I feel that sigh inside me, that inner rolling of the eyes at yet another empty exchange , I no longer condemn it. I bring it to the light and I say, "Ah, there you are. You are my yearning for the Deep calling."
And I hear Yehoshua (Jesus) answering from Thomas, Logion 2: "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All."
Yes. The seeking troubles us. The yearning disturbs our peace in the shallows. That is supposed to happen. That holy trouble is the beginning of astonishment.
So I will no longer apologize for wanting depth. I will draw my shadow into the light, and I will call it by its true name: a prayer. A prayer for conversation that remembers we are souls, not profiles. A prayer for words that have weight, which have roots, that draw from the well and not just the puddle.
Come, let us wade out. The deep is calling to deep, travel this journey of kindred spirits with us,
Pastor Mark