the Depths and the Shallows
JENNIFER J. CAMP
4 min read ⭑
I delayed writing this because I feared my writing would masquerade as action. And action, not talk, is what is required of me now.
“Do not stay in the shallows,” He says, and I wonder if processing his words will help me do so: leave the shallows and go to the deeper place where my heart is one with his.
I am sitting at a window near the front of the house where I can see the giant rose bush through the glass. Up at the top, one rose opens to the December sun. Beneath its peach petals are thick flowerless branches armored with thorns. I study them, remembering the feeling of falling in a nest of rose bushes as a child — and the precarious dance I do as an adult in the spring and summer, deadheading stalks so more flowers can bloom.
What exists in the depths of our hearts? Why are we beckoned to go to these depths to truly live? The call to the deep within us — you have heard it, I know — might be more easily heard in the darkest of the night — when it is still, and we are lost or hurting. How much more difficult it is, though, to eat when we are not hungry, drink when we are not thirsty and accept help when we feel we are not needy and depleted.
How do we embrace the exhausting reality of being human — that we are strong in our weakness and exquisitely, beautifully made? How do we surrender to our imperfect existence? How do we love our lives and not fight the essence of who we are?
I look out further. The oak tree’s leaves cover the garden — a carpet of crispy brown blanketing the gray stone.
Practice knowing me — like you know me. Do not stay in the shallows. It is especially dangerous there. Go deeper, deeper with me to be held, grounded and restored. You know this. You know me. Do not forget me.
This morning, I gathered with women worldwide through my computer screen. Women in South Africa and India. Women in the United Kingdom and the United States. Women who are the leaders of Loop Collective, a place for women who want to experience community and encounter God together. And because their lives, like ours, are not easy — yet they offer their wide-open hearts to the hurting — they teach me. Through their action, not just talk, they model how this mess of being human is one of honor and beauty. Even while our minds and bodies betray us, we are glory-filled and holy: we are perfectly human, and being human is something beautiful, not something I should condemn.
Develop your heart to hold more of me — to remain with me at all times. You are on solid ground then. You are okay then. Do not be tossed about on the waves. Be on — and in — the water with me (your new place of being grounded), but not from a place of overwhelm.
I think of Jesus standing in the streets of Jerusalem during the feast of the Tabernacles and shouting, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (John 7: 37,38). Then I think of the shallows, this place where I could so easily live my whole life and drown. I realize I am aware of my thirst, yet I do not drink so that I am satisfied, filled and no longer thirsty for anything else.
“To leave the shallows — this world of striving and noise — feels impossible as a human. For I am part of this world, ascribing so much to its pace and rhythms. And I so often decline to drink, and I am not sustained.”
Let your heart be still as the water moves you, and you move with it. Let it move you — the water and the wind. No control is necessary — but holding onto me is. Let yourself be moved as I move in you and through you.
To leave the shallows — this world of striving and noise — feels impossible as a human. For I am part of this world, ascribing so much to its pace and rhythms. And I so often decline to drink, and I am not sustained.
Let us be one — not separate, not distinct. Let it be that you don’t know where, in you, I begin and end, for I am everywhere in you, filling you completely as I move and flow.
This is the next step in holding beauty, in soaking it in. You let it pass through you, and you welcome its passing through.
How do I rejoice in who I am and how I am made and not continually feel like I am crucially missing something? How do I want God yet live fully confident that I am not fundamentally wanting?
And to the beginning, I return:
Practice knowing me — like you know me. Do not stay in the shallows. It is especially dangerous there. Go deeper, deeper with me to be held, grounded and restored. You know this. You know me. Do not forget me.
Dear God.
The Place of In-Between
Over this bridge the traveling
days are long. I stand at
the rail, look over the
side at the water below,
at the blankness of home
in the night. I feel my
breathing slow, smooth like
the current, the water’s rhythm
(you are soft and gentle,
you tell me—not dangerous,
not death)
lulling me so my heart quiets
and my mind, which knows nothing,
and my hands, which feel nothing.
Wake up, wake up,
dear one, you are at risk of
drowning. What will we believe
is real, and who will explain such
a preposterous claim?—
All the world, gathered up in
a single dream, bidding us
wait, wait here on the precipice
of longing!
Nevermind all the confusion:
I do not understand.
Jennifer Camp is a poet and listener who delights in investigating the deeper places of the heart. She founded Gather Ministries with her husband, Justin; is Editor-at-Large of Rapt, a multi-award-winning digital magazine; and manages Loop Collective, a community for women who pursue deeper connection with God. She also wrote Breathing Eden and The Uncovering, a collection of her poems.
