Cassidy Hall Art, contemplation, Creativity, reminders, Writing

Recent Publications: Blessings & Reflections

This beautiful compilation of blessings from enflshed was a powerful project to be a part of. You can order this incredible book of blessings, “HELD: blessings for the depths” here. (Note: The first run of the book sold out and this is a pre-order for the second run). You can read the blessing I contributed below:

The Reminder Blessing, by Cassidy Hall

This blessing crossed the rivers of certitude, the seas of tension, the storms of life, and dropped at your feet in-between all that is known and unknown.

This blessing is here to swaddle you in care.

This blessing made space for your feelings, heard your worries, saw your emotions, and gently said: “nothing about you is too much.”

This blessing is proud to be with you.

This blessing has been waiting its whole life to be with you.

This blessing woke up next to you saying, “good morning,” to the most marvelous person it has ever met. 

This blessing is a lover in disguise.

This blessing is the reminder of your oceanic oneness with the world, the beloved, yourself, your neighbor, and the stranger. 

This blessing keeps showing up.

This blessing is hearty and vigorous, tender and sensitive.

This blessing is your permission to let go 

and your encouragement to hold on.

This blessing is the reminder of that softened inner stance which offers the least resistance to the gift of you.

This is the blessing you’ve been waiting for, and also never needed.

I was also asked by a friend earlier this year to add a homily or reflection to a forthcoming book from Clear Faith Publishing. True to form, I wrote about the power of doubt for the 3rd Sunday of Easter and somehow found myself published alongside some brilliant voices. You can find “Thirsty, and You Gave Me Drink: Homilies and Reflections for Cycle C” from Clear Faith Publishing or on Amazon. You can read my piece below:

The Doubt of Jesus, by Cassidy Hall

I’ve been a skeptic about God for as long as I can remember. Around the age of 8, I began having reoccurring dreams about death. Dreams of floating in a sea of nothingness: alone, lost, stagnant in limitless space and eternal time. Even years before these dreams began, I was already asking questions of the divine. But throughout my life, these questions weren’t always welcomed.

In middle school, I became really interested with spirituality and the possibilities it beheld. I had friends in various youth groups and from time to time I’d attend those groups with them. At that age, the events were more about feeling a sense of belonging. The gatherings were often deeply entangled with the emotional manipulation of the minds and hormones of young teens.

Once, while I was at an evangelical conference with the local youth group, I continued my skepticism and questioning, but this time was different. During one evening’s session, I was moved to participate in an altar call and was immediately flooded with questions of what I had just done. As we gathered in our small groups after the session, my youth leader told me, “Your questions are of the devil.” My insides stirred with a surprised, “huh?” But, baffled and confused, I went along with the adult in the room and regretfully shut my mouth.

Over twenty years later, I find myself in seminary and pursuing ordination more full of questions about the divine than I’ve ever held. Only now, I remember to show them off like treasures, reminding others and myself that questions innately connect us to the divine by the very fact that they belong to mystery. Now, I claim my questions and doubts with pride. I remember to bask in the questions, because they mean growth, change, and movement. But, perhaps most importantly, I remember questions take me to the place of infinite possibility, the place where God resides.

It seems to me faith and doubt are not mutually exclusive. Faith makes room for doubt’s entrance as doubt demands faith for its existence. One cannot host doubt unless there is some knowledge of that which is being doubted. Therefore to doubt, is to both have and demonstrate faith.

When I look at John 21, I sometimes wonder if Jesus asked Peter three times not because of his three denials but because he actually doubted him. Perhaps the humanness of Jesus needed a sense of affirmation and clarity, like the times I need to hear a truth on repeat from a loved one. And, what if Jesus was also instilling his faith in Peter by revealing his doubt? What if doubt belongs to faith more than knowing or even thinking I know?

In my experience, humans have ruined my doubts and questions. God, on the other hand, has valued, honored, and even respected them. I often find the more I question and am honest about my doubt, the more God shows up –– in the mystery, in the uncertainty, in the unknowing. And, so I wonder, what if Jesus asking questions is a model for our own questioning? What if Jesus was living and loving the questions?

“Be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves…” wrote Rainer Maria Rilke to young aspiring poet, Franz Xaver Kappus. “Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.”

What if Jesus, in his humanness, was openly living and loving the questions amid his uncertainty of what the church might become? What if Jesus, in all his divinity, was modeling a way to hold uncertainty, unknowing, and the infinite possibilities within the unknowing?

For me, doubts and questions are fruits of a life of faith. Doubt reminds us to engage our questions, to search the books, to ask the neighbor, to grow and learn and engage. Doubt belongs to faith in the same way that mystery belongs to God. And my teenage questions were not of the devil and neither are my 37-year-old doubts.

When I arrived back home after that trip with my youth group I remember the shock and surprise my young teenage self felt. Being that I was the only “nonbeliever” on that trip I was a kind of project for people to huddle around and convert. And amid all of that misinformation

Amid all of the lies and good intentions with false pretenses, God was with and within me.

Honoring my unbelief.

Respecting my doubt.

Reminding me to love and live the questions.

Opening me into the infinite possibility where God is.

Prayer: God of all questions, Teach me to hold the doubt and love the questions.  Lead me to the infinite possibilities in them, the very same possibility found in your tomb. Help me to bask in the awe of mystery, give me a sense of safety and comfort there. Grant me the courage to hold uncertainty, the resilience to carry unknowing, and the endurance to bask in all of life’s mysteries. Remind me, O God, that basking in mystery is basking in you.

Amen.

To view my other published materials, including interviews and sermons, go here.

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Loving the Questions

“Your questions are of the devil,” I was told at an evangelical youth conference in high school. My insides responded confused, “huh? What the hell just happened?!” But, instead of speaking up, I went along with the adult in the room and regretfully shut my mouth.

Over twenty years later, I find myself in seminary, pursuing ordination, and more full of questions than I’ve ever held. Only now, I remember to show them off like treasures, reminding others and myself that questions innately connect us to the divine by the very fact that they belong to mystery. Now, I claim my curiosities and doubts as boldly as my sexuality–with pride. I remember to bask in the questions––because they mean growth, change, my continual becoming, and perhaps most importantly––unknowing.

But, loving the questions in all their infinitely unanswerable ways seems impossible most days. It’s an easier task when I have something to hang on to. When I have a tangible or tactile sliver of evidence or hope. But when there’s nothing? Living alone in the midst of a pandemic when I find myself craving a sense of safety and knowing, I often wonder is it too much to ask to just be able to know or trust something, or someone?

While reading Alice Walker’s “Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems, 1965-90,” I came across a poem citing Rilke’s suggestion to live and love the questions. This unlikely duo struck me: Alice Walker and Rainer Maria Rilke?

In his seminal work, Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke writes with aspiring poet, 19 year-old Franz Xaver Kappus. Within their many exchanges Rilke wrote to Franz on July 16, 1903:

“Be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.”

Walker, on the other hand, expands even more on these notions:

I must love the questions

themselves

as Rilke said

like locked rooms

full of treasure

to which my blind

and groping key

does not yet fit.

and await the answers

as unsealed

letters

mailed with dubious intent

and written in a very foreign

tongue.

and in the hourly making

of myself

no thought of Time

to force, to squeeze

the space

I grow into.

Unlike Rilke, Walker moves me into my body ––she offers me a tangible means of what it means to love and live the questions, she expands upon the metaphors of unknown language, unsealed letters, and an inaccessible door –– she enlivens and awakens my questions.

Why does it matter? For me, questions are the fruit of a life fully engaged. My doubt reminds me to take on my questions, to search the books, ask the neighbor, to grow, learn, and expand. Doubt belongs to faith in the same way that mystery belongs to God. 

My teenage questions were not of the devil and neither are my 37-year-old doubts.

When I arrived back home after that trip with my youth group I remember the shock and surprise my young teenage self felt. Being that I was the only “nonbeliever” (evangelical lingo) on that trip I was a kind of project for people to huddle around and convert. And amid all of that misinformation and emotional manipulation, amid all of the lies and false certitudes, the divine accompanied me in all my questions, doubts, and uncertainty. The divine was — and is, my questions and doubts.

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Cassidy Hall Art, busy, Creativity, Heart, Intention, listening, monastery, pilgrim, reminders, Uncategorized, Writing

Faith and Doubt in the Labyrinth

I am easily led to anxiety in unfamiliar situations. I don’t like to do things with other people, and though I recognize the necessity in community, I’d almost always prefer to go about my day on my own, for comfort’s sake. Like most of us, I like certainty. Like most of us, I realize life isn’t very certain.

While walking a labyrinth with a group of friends last week, I was brought to a place of holding this uncertainty in a new way. In our preparation to walk, we reminded one another that the walk is not a maze, and no matter how lost we may feel at any time, we aren’t lost at all — as long as we keep our eyes on the path under us. We read aloud, “there’s no wrong way to walk the labyrinth.”

My anxiety led me to jumping in the labyrinth as soon as I possibly could, keeping only a few things in mind from our previous discussion. I chose to walk in with my hands down, symbolically releasing all that was hindering and holding me back — the heaviness that has been insistently upon my mind and heart in recent times. And as I sauntered into the center I recalled the only other thing I retained from our discussion — that the 6th petal in the center represents the unknown, and I was darting for it because that’s all I did know.

“Fear of the unexplainable has not only impoverished our inner lives, but also diminished relations between people; these have been dragged, so to speak, from the river of infinite possibilities and stuck on the dry bank where nothing happens.”
–Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

…Read the rest of my guest post at The Sick Pilgrim Blog.