The Thing the Words Were Pointing At

I was a pastor for eleven years. Left in 2021. The reasons are complicated and some of them reflect badly on me and some on the institution and I've made peace with not sorting that out publicly. What I'll say is that by the time I left, I didn't know what I believed. Not a crisis exactly. More like I had been using the language of faith so constantly and so professionally that the words had stopped meaning anything. God. Grace. Presence. Just sounds I made. I moved to Minneapolis, got a job in logistics, and for about a year I didn't pray or go to church or read anything religious. I want to be honest: it was a relief. The silence was a relief. I didn't miss it. What I'm about to describe happened on a Tuesday morning. Making coffee. Radio on. Nothing spiritual about the moment at all. And I became aware, that's the word I keep landing on, not saw or heard or felt but aware, of something I can only describe as the thing the words were pointing at. All those years of language, all that pointing, and here it suddenly was. Not the sermon. The thing itself. It lasted about as long as it takes to pour a cup of coffee. It didn't resolve anything. I'm still in logistics. Still don't go to church. But something that had gone very quiet in me is not as quiet as it was. I've been wanting to write that down for months. What I most want to say, to whoever on this site used to have the words and lost them: what the words were pointing at doesn't seem to care whether you have them or not.