SEE IN THE DARK
*Note: If you are here for info about the movie “Ragamuffin” please email: ragamuffinmovie@gmail.com as this blog is no longer being used as an info site for the movie, and the will email an PDF of all the info you need.
Now…back to useless blogging…
SEE IN THE DARK
This is the first thing that comes to mind when I think about both what I want to write about and where I feel I am at. Usually when I think about a project, film, pilot, or book that I want to dream about or to work on I think of the title first. I think we usually do this to each other, not just projects. We have a title for this or that person. Sweet, kind, funny, intelligent, mean, horrible…I’m not sure why we do this, why we dissolve a person to a title, but we do…at least with those that aren’t close to us.
My soul feels a bit beat up these days. I’m tired. I’m a bit lost about what to do with my life. Everything feels like it’s at a strange crossroads. The movie I poured myself into for almost four years is over. The school where I’ve occasionally taken classes at since I’ve moved to LA is over. I’ve fired my rep. In a way I feel like I’m starting over, and just as clueless as I was at 23 deciding what to do with my life, I feel even more confused at 33.
I’ve also had something nice and interesting happen in my fatigue. I’m even more sick of religiosity. Shocking I know. But something almost refreshing happens when you loose your patience for religious facades. You may not be nice, but you may be more kind by calling people to speak plainly versus to a hyper religious lingo. It feels like we’re in love with our vernacular, like this somehow makes us okay, if we talk a certain way.
Do you ever get to that place where you crave a compassion, a grace, and a friendship with someone who will just shut up, who will just love you as you are, and where you are, who is comfortable with just letting you be? Now any true love won’t let you stay in the gutter forever, but I think the kindness that truly leads to a loving change starts with compassion. I fear any other foundation in a friendship just won’t work, even if it brings about an immediate change, the foundation seems like it would be more like quicksand that steel.
I need steel. But first I need compassion. I in someways have made a train wreck of my life through my own insecurities and rebellion, and I regret this, but my greatest regret is all the months, weeks, days, and hours that I haven’t lived. I’ve been alive, but only in theory. I swim often in my depression, and any talk of shoulds, woulds, coulds…feel more like scaling mountains or jumping the grand canyon…especially when you hear anyone rattle on about advice for overcoming depression, even spiritualized solutions. They may even be right, but if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you may not know the taste of hopelessness.
I think what I long for in God these days is friendship. I think what I long for in that friendship is compassion. What I do love about God is that with him you can just be. You don’t have to talk, and neither does he. With him you can just be, and I like that. In that I find hope. In that I can taste something other than hopelessness. In that I can see something other than the dark. My only hope is that he truly is COMPASSION.
Seeing in the dark…barely,
David Leo Schultz
David Leo Schultz 
David, you hit it on the head! Most of these last few years in my life, I have come to some hopelessness with the losses I’ve had between jobs, finances and the man I loved the most had terminal cancer… but God has brought me through to keep on keepin’ on and He thankfully has given me three most honest and real “sister” friends that will always have my back and love me just where I am……and we don’t even live closeby…but that’s okay too…I’ve been in the waiting room many different times and wonder always, what’s next? but He has always comes through, as I believe, trust and stand…..so when the time comes to ‘move on’ to the next season of my life, there will be a flood of delightful peace! being prepared and being stretched … but God. I totally appreciate and love your transparency blog and will surely keep you in my prayers…God love ya, brother and ‘just be’ …
David – powerful stuff. I love the rawness of it…the power of just ‘being you.’ You have the courage to put in words what so many of us think or wish we would say bit are too insecure to do so. Your boldness is your security. I’ve battled depression…that ‘is there light how do I get out without the ultimate escape’ depression. The best advice I got during that time was in Crested Butte, CO at a ski resort lodge from Billy Sprague. He simply said this…’one step at a time.’ We walked to the slopes watching our feet knowing each step
was one step closer. At that moment in my life his simple words were the compassion of Jesus in a language I could hear.
David, I seriously get what you’re saying. I’m at a “who am I” and “what do i do now” point in my life because of a lot of what is familiar and comfortable has ended and a lot of doors that I always thought would be open have closed. But even more than this I’m in a “who is God to me” place since I’m trying to shed the uselessness of religiosity while being surrounded by very religious people. I don’t want an empty relationship with God based on shoulds and “right” thinking but on, well, like you said, friendship. What you said about compassion really hit me hard and is dead on for where I’m at right now because that is want I want, what i need, and what I need to be to my friends as well. I’m bipolar but I’m only recently been getting help for it so I get the loneliness and depression stuff you were talking about too. I am also sick of “advice” from those who don’t really understand, especially religious people, on how to deal with it. I remember hearing Robert Schuler say once “ti’s no fun being sad” which I think is the attitude a lot of church people have and why so many put of fronts to cover their feelings. I’ve often got the impression that some people think God won’t love them and people wont love them if they’re honest about who they are and what they are feeling. But yeah, what I really deeply desire and what I need to give my friends right now is compassion, but I didn’t realize it until I read this.
The best defintion I’ve ever heard of the word compassion was that it meant “to suffer with.” That is what I need from people, and what I want to experience with God, and it is what I know I need to show others.
Thanks for writing this, it really helped me.
God’s first adjective to describe himself is compassionate. Exodus 34:6
Thank you for your work to honor God’s story in Rich.