On Being a Door Opener
I’ve always loved hidden doors. I don’t know why, or if I’ve ever even seen a real one. One day, I want one in my house. Growing up, there was a mini door in my bedroom that led to the attic above the garage. That door was both curiously inviting and terrifying. What if there was a hider in my house? That is exactly where they would secretly live. Waiting for me to leave my room before they came outside for their other life. Waiting for me to go to sleep, possibly watching in wonder over how fragile breath and life is, watching me lying there dreaming unaware. It was the door that you dare your friends to open and walk through as a token of courage. The mystery is there, maybe stronger than our fears today.
Today. Right now. That’s what a door represents. Invitation. Or prohibition.
Maybe that is why I am so enamored by speakeasies. They offer a door—a hidden door. If you know the code, you get in! To another hidden world.
In my work in The Hope in Our Scars, I came across one of the scariest verses in Scripture. It’s Jesus talking.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you don’t go in, and you don’t allow those entering to go in” (Matt. 23:13).
One could be the official readers, writers, and interpreters of the law and miss the door to the juice. You can believe in the resurrection and value the sacredness of the Temple but refuse to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Worse, you shut the door in the faces of others. This is terrifying! Can you imagine finding out that all this time, the door to heaven is right in front of your face and the faces of those around you and you’ve been distracting yourself from it with piousness while also slamming it like a two-year old, repetitively gaining security with that click of the latch? Do any of us really set out to be door closers? I don’t think so.
How does one find this door, though? How do we see it, how do we enter in, and how to we hold it open for others?
Isn’t this what we want from our pastors? We are constantly missing the door! And they may be the very ones slamming it in our faces! Eugene Peterson writes about the great need for pastors to have active imaginations:
“Imagination is the capacity to make connections between the visible and the invisible, between heaven and earth, between present and past, between present and future. For Christians, whose largest investment is in the invisible, the imagination is indispensable, for it is only by means of the imagination that we can see reality whole, in context.”
We think of imagination as non-objective, non-reality. But “Nobody lives in the ‘objective’ world, only in a world filtered through the imagination.” Peterson believes that this is an essential ministry that needs recovery, as many of our leaders have an underdeveloped imagination. “It is by means of imagination that we pack in the glory.”
This got me thinking about my history in the church and what I’ve been looking for in this whole pursuit of the Christian life. I’ve been looking for spiritual direction. I mistook it for teaching. Teaching is important, and I am thankful for it. But for different reasons now. Maybe this is why I never became an academic even as I’ve drank deeply from the work of others. We need academia. And my favorite academics are the creative imaginers. I’ve always wanted to carry that work into the vocations of the laypeople.
It's all so vague, though. The listening and looking for God at work. Looking for that open door of the kingdom of heaven and stepping in—or is it more of a letting what’s inside the door come out and overflow into our ordinary spaces? Yes, I think it’s more like that. It’s more of a beholding, a sensing, encountering.
I think spiritual direction is door opening. It’s a “Look! There it is!” Peterson calls it a getting out of the way. To not be important or influential, but to embrace the hiddenness of prayer, and the hiddenness of Christ in metaphor, poetry, parable, and in one another’s faces. To see beauty as a recognition of the kingdom of heaven, an invitation. “The task of direction is not to get a person marching in lockstep with a flock of pious geese but to cultivate the deep places of the spirit where the Spirit creates the ‘new thing.’”
We need imagination to “enter into the reality that is already God in and around [us.]” I want to be this person for others. Not in a project kind of way. But as a true soul-friend, which I learned from Peterson is the Celtic translation for spiritual director. Yes, that’s it. A soul-friend. That’s going to require a lot more curiosity. Watching God work. Getting out of the way. Surprise by all the hidden doors. Having a courage and longing for the mystery that is greater than my fear.
Love this, Aimee! In my time in Christian academia I found studying seemed to create more space for imagination and less certainty. I grew up in the PCA, and I recall that tribe having a lock on “certainty.” The tradition I’m in now places a lot more emphasis on spiritual practices. It creates room for discovering the activity of God.
I preached on the call of Levi on Sunday, where Jesus feasts with tax collectors and “notorious sinners.” It made me ponder this morning: As a pastor, am I willing to feast with tax collectors and “notorious sinners”? Am I likely to get invited to those feasts? I pray it would be so, because all of us need Jesus at our table. And we need to remember our tendency to be notorious sinners as well.
God invites us through the door and into deeper relationship with him. We dare not limit God with our “certainty.” I recall attending a general assembly as a child (my dad was an elder) and my mom made a comment after hearing a speaker like: “I wonder if these men are a little too certain they know the mind of God. There’s a danger in that.” I’ve never forgotten her comment, though it scandalized me at the time.
Hidden doors are so intriguing, but it takes courage to go through them! I suspect this is why I love the Narnia stories so much. Jesus's "I AM the Door" is an invitation to a new and mysterious world, but it's a place where everything will finally make sense.
When I was in seminary for my MFT degree, we were required to take a class in Spiritual Development. My intellectual formation in reformed theology helped me get advanced standing in all the required theology classes, but this class was part of our training, so I had to take it. I'm so glad I did! It was the door to a new world of spiritual formation, experiential Christianity that reminded me that ALL of me belongs to God and that I have a relationship with Him based on so much more than just knowing the right theology.
Since then, I have found a spiritual director who helps me bring my attention back to my connection to God. I am learning to slow down and be with Him rather than seeing Him as something on my to-do list. I am learning to truly rest in Him. I am learning to appreciate His love and beauty as well as His holiness. I am learning to stop viewing everything in black and white categories but to find resolution in His mysterious three-in-one unity.
I'm starting a two-year program later this summer on group spiritual formation, and I'm so excited about this door opening up new possibilities for my work and ministry. Further up and further in!