What to Do About Divorce and Will & Grace DVDs
Unequally yoked with gay 90s sitcoms
"Should we get divorced?"
That's what my wife, Ash, asks me after 6 years of marriage.
We're sitting on the edge of our bed, not facing each other. It's hard to face each other right now. We're not fighting. It's quiet. Still. Almost clinical.
The question of divorce is earnest, but also…. awkward. Even absurd. She's not angry. I'm not unfaithful. We still love each other. But something has changed.
My beliefs have changed.
And now everything we built our life on - our shared faith, our vows, our story - is suddenly up for question.
I feel numb and disoriented. Because the map I've always used to make sense of life has cracked. And with it, everything else starts to blur.
Is this what happens next?
In the system we were raised in - the one that gave us our language for love and faith and marriage - when the beliefs break, the bond breaks too. We are now "unequally yoked."
Yoked? Who even says that? WHAT IN THE WORLD is happening right now?
A belief system is like a map. A depiction of Reality to help you navigate your life.
I used to walk through life with a very detailed belief map that my family and religious tradition gave me. It told me how to walk, where the safe places were, where to avoid, the right and wrong turns. It gave me a sense of direction and security, all of which I'm very grateful for. I can't imagine starting life without a map.
But eventually my map didn't mach the terrain beneath my feet. And I had to choose: do I keep following the map… or do I start trusting the ground?
A map is great because it simplifies the terrain. But every map has its limits. Eventually, you have to put the map down and deal directly with the path.
Beliefs are necessary. They are like a map, giving us guidelines to get started on the journey.
But beliefs are always about Reality. They are never Reality itself.
This is true of all language, stories and symbols - ideally, they point us towards what is Real, but eventually they must be put aside for us to be present to the Mystery.
Someone who thinks they know Canada because they've simply memorized the Google Maps of the region doesn't understand the infinite difference between information and direct experience.
When religion gets turned into a set of beliefs, it blocks us from directly knowing Reality, God.
This is why the contemplative Meister Eckhart prayed: "God, rid me of God!" A cry to let go of the idea of God… in order to encounter the direct presence and mystery of God.
The danger with our belief maps is that we can get caught memorizing the map, quoting the map, singing songs and chanting the directions… and totally missing what's actually right in front of us.
When I cling to my belief map, I start seeing the world not as it is… but as I think it should be. I start filtering people through categories - right/wrong, in/out, good/bad - instead of meeting them in presence. I try to explain life to fit my theological map instead of letting it speak for itself.
It's like I hold my map so close to my face that I can't even see the actual ground beneath my feet.
Eventually, I chose to put down my map - with its beliefs about non-Christians, other faith traditions, heaven/hell, the Bible, evolution, sin, atonement theories, roles of women and men, my queer friends - and look directly at the much more messy (and interesting) Reality right in front of me.
It took me years to understand that beliefs can't hold me forever. They were never meant to. They offer some needed training wheels to living in the Mystery. But they eventually have to fall away. Not because they are bad, but because they did their job.
Now it's time to live.
It's time to stop looking at life through my beliefs - and start dealing with life directly. To stop relating to God as a concept, and start relating to God as presence. To live in the Mystery without training wheels. To move from fidelity to my beliefs, to fidelity to what is real, here, now.
Thank you beliefs for getting me this far. I'm ready to meet Life directly now.
Shortly before our wedding day, Ash was packing up her stuff to move into our first apartment together and she came across her Will & Grace DVDs.
You know, the 90s show about the gays.
She loved Will & Grace. Enough to buy the DVDs. But she was about to get married to - and share DVDs with - someone who believed certain things about that kind of show.
So the DVDs went in the trash.
We got married in front of my dad's church on a windy March morning. He was the officiant of our wedding. I was a part-time pastor. Ash and I led worship together.
Our whole life was wrapped up in our faith. We didn't just marry each other. We married a worldview. One that told us what was right and wrong, holy and profane, sacred and sinful.
And Will & Grace happened to be on the wrong side of those beliefs.
I never thought to ask what might happen if I ended up on the wrong side of our beliefs.
I grew up thinking that faith is about what I believe. A set of convictions. A checklist of doctrinal statements. Faith was something I can write down on paper, something that can be agreed with and defended.
The contemplative tradition has always held a different perspective:
Faith is not a statement - it's a stance. Not a set of ideas but a way of relating to Reality.
Faith is more posture than proposition. Not the beliefs you hold, but the way you hold this moment. It's trust - not in theory or ideas or even a person, but a deep trust of Reality itself.
Faith is what comes after beliefs. It’s learning to let go of your concepts and meeting the moment directly. Intimately. Nothing between you and Life. We are learning to be naked before Reality. This is what is meant by presence.
Real faith doesn't require beliefs - it actually requires not knowing.
“True faith involves not knowing and even not needing to know. But we made faith demanding to know and insisting that we do know.” - Richard Rohr
The demand to know/be certain/be right is often the voice of our false self, the ego - the part of us that wants control. The true self can live naked in the moment. It doesn't need to hide or guard itself with beliefs. It knows that Reality is good and whole and trustworthy.
The Bible often models this progression from beliefs to presence. The writings of scripture show a community updating their beliefs and concepts of the divine based on what they are experiencing. This is why the descriptions of God (Reality) change and evolve through the pages. It's why Jesus says, "You're scriptures say one thing, but I'm telling you something new."
The fidelity is not to fixed beliefs. The fidelity is to God - which is always bigger, more mysterious than any concepts can capture.
We are learning to be faithful to Reality (which is the only place God has ever actually lived). The gospel is the good news that the presence of God is right here, within you, among you. You can drop your beliefs and turn towards Reality, trusting that it is good and on your side.
While beliefs can be memorized, this kind of faith must be practiced.
Whether during a 10 minute silent meditation in the morning.
Or sitting on your bed with your wife, who's asking about divorce.
We're sitting on the edge of the bed. Not touching. Not looking at each other. Asking the question our map says is the next question to ask: Divorce?
It's almost impossible for me to see the simplicity of the situation: two people who want to spend the rest of their lives together. How far my beliefs have led me from Reality.
Then Ash turns to me and says, "I don't know what you believe now, or what you're going to believe. But I see how much more alive you are. You're more joyful. More spacious. I see that you're trying to move towards more life and love. That's all I want too. So… I'm in. If you are?"
She isn't just staying. She's seeing. She sees me. Not through doctrine. But through presence.
I reach for her hands and tell her, "I don't know where this is going to lead… but wherever it goes, I want to go with you."
It feels kind of scary, like we're veering off the sacred map. It even feels kind of naughty, like we're breaking all the rules.
Mostly, it feels like actual love. Maybe for the first time.
We don't know what will happen next, where things will go from here. But that's life. We're just deciding to finally face the inherent uncertainty and mystery now. And to try trusting it.
We hug. Then, after a moment of silence that acknowledges the myriad of new things we'll have to figure out together without our old map, I turn to Ash with my first epiphany for our new life:
"I think we can watch Will & Grace now."