Part 10: Theologian Turned Timothy

Tim Jurgensen

29 Oct 2024 — 8 min read

I crawled out the window and ran into the woods. I had to make up all the words myself. The way they taste, the way they sound in the air. I passed through the narrow gate, stumbled in, stumbled around for awhile, and stumbled back out. I made this place for you. A place for you to love me. If this isn’t a kingdom then I don’t know what is.
— Richard Silken

A man knows he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.
― Thomas Merton

I wiped off the beer foam that was tickling the tip of my nose and upper lip as I settled into my unforgiving wooden chair in the low-lighted, noisy, yet nevertheless “gezellig” Dutch pub.

Across from me, on the other side of the table, sat my thesis supervisor.

This was not the first (nor the last) time we had shared a drink. In the months prior we had on occasion spoken at great lengths over a beer (or two) about not only my thesis topic but also life at large, with its many strange and mysterious and wonderful dimensions.

But this occasion was special.

With the joyful clink of our glasses still sounding in my ears, he gave me a very warm “congratulations” and a heartfelt smile.

A few days prior I had successfully defended my thesis before the examination board and had officially been bestowed with the title of “Master of Theology and Religious Studies.”

I was finally done.

And yet, truthfully, I didn’t care that much — about the actual degree, that is.

It was strange - I remember when I was confronted with the bureaucratic logistics of “diploma conferral” and the coordination of a graduation ceremony - it was like I had forgotten that these things existed at all or that these were very normal and common motivators for students.

As the beer in the glasses of our second round gradually neared its end, the topic of “what next?” inevitably surfaced.

He suggested that I explore a possible PhD — to continue my research and my writing and find myself a career in academia.

While I appreciated this evident vote of confidence, in the aftermath of my thesis and its defense, I could hardly stomach the idea of doing, even for a second, more writing, research, or studying.

I told him I’d think about it, but at the very least, I would need to take a break from academia for a while.

It was then that he asked me it.

The question I have mulled over time and again since our celebratory drinks.

In the context of the prospect of me continuing my studies in theology, he said:

“I guess the real question you have to answer for yourself now is: did Henri free you from theology or to it?”

I took a sip of my beer, and it hit me that the answer to this unassuming question would determine the course of my future.

It represented a whole new frontier, a whole new set of life possibilities—possibilities never before conceived of or considered.

See, theology had never really been just a "casual curiosity" for me; rather, it had always been much more a matter of life or death (and this I mean quite literally).

When you believe in a literal heaven and hell, and you believe that your salvation exclusively hinges on rightly confessing the right beliefs and rightly following the right creeds and moral codes - you realize that obsessing about theology is much more a matter of survival than it is anything else.

As a result, I see now that I spent the entirety of my life seeking some kind of theological justification and explanation for everything in my life: from my education, to my career, to my relationships, to my finances, to literally everything in between.

Most of all (and most significantly), I had employed theology as a means of deliberating, debating, and determining whether or not I was worthy of love and belonging, whether or not my queer human condition could even be deigned the label of “human.”

In hindsight, it’s almost like all those years of frantic and frenetic searching for answers concerning my sexuality were more or less motivated by a singular question, namely:

Do I have permission to exist?

In other words: Is my way of being allowed in the world? Is my human condition acceptable?

Unfortunately, due to a moralized perspective of sexuality as inherited by my theological tradition, for a long time, I was convinced it wasn’t.

This was the motivation for my two baptisms, the years of zealous religious observation and participation, and a decade's worth of violent effort to “fix” my human condition to meet some kind of internalized and inherited criteria for love and belonging.

My supervisor’s question, however, confronted me with how profoundly different this moment was.

If my life until my master’s program could be characterized by searching for the answer to the singular question, “Do I have permission to exist?” then my thesis and my master’s program signified the ultimate answering of that question.

I wrote in my journal the morning I first submitted my thesis to the examination board:

I think this moment marks a very pivotal moment for me. I’ve reached a point at age 25 that I think Nouwen was only able to reach in his 60s… Rather than asking, ‘Do I have permission to exist?’ it feels like I can finally ask a new question of my life: ‘What opportunity does my unique way of being in the world present me with?’ I no longer have to try and justify my existence, defend my validity, argue my acceptability, prove my belovedness - these were the things which characterized my life until now. No - now I feel free to exist - liberated from questions of my lovability, acceptability, and eternal safety.

Like Barbie in the Barbie movie, I stood before my creator and said:

"So being human is not something I need to want or even ask for? It’s just something I discover I am?"

I sipped my beer.

It became apparent to me then that my thesis at age 25 was the official ceasefire to my 13-year-old’s official declaration of war.

And so, this beer I was drinking then was, in fact, celebrating something much more than a completed graduate program—it was celebrating the end of a vicious war.

What I can say now is that you do not realize how much emotional and psychological energy is consumed by constantly questioning whether or not you have permission to exist until you no longer feel the compulsion to question it.

You exhale in a way that your shoulders really relax, the sun shines a bit brighter, you feel lighter as if whoever controls gravity seems to have installed a dimmer switch, and there is this strange feeling in you that is as obscure as it is warm as it is luminous — and it feels a lot like hope.

Tara Brach wrote: "When we put down ideas of what life should be like, we are free to wholeheartedly say yes to our life as it is."

I could finally say yes to my life.

I had resisted it for so long —but now it was time to yield to it, to say yes, and to trust that in so doing, I might just discover the meaning of my mysterious little life and the fulfillment of my vocation in the world.

And in yielding to yes, my life suddenly had a newfound creative potential, one with seemingly endless possibilities.

For the first time in as long as I could remember, my future was imbued with a profound sense of hope and optimism. Like maybe my future wasn’t something I had to fear or dread or hate or despise or beg for - but perhaps something I could own, create, build, contribute to and, most of all, participate in.

See, part of the tragedy of chronically questioning whether or not you are permitted to exist is that you end up spending the majority of your time pondering the legitimacy of your life rather than legitimately participating in it. Theology had been a means for me to deeply ponder the validity of my own life, but this was always at the price of actually showing up and participating in it.

William Lewis captured the sentiment perfectly when he said, "The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it."

I sipped my beer.

I couldn’t make up for lost time, but I could begin where I was.

And with that, the answer to my supervisor’s question became clear: Henri had freed me from theology to my life.