As The Deer Pants

There was a song in my Christian journey that really typified my heart back in the day that, if I were honest, I kind of miss. Not the song, but the innocence I had and the deep passion for wanting to know God that the first line of the lyrics reminds me of. I was reminded of the song from the Christmas display of a deer underneath my Christmas tree. A symbol to me of nature’s finest beauty and innocence.

I chose this deer over Santa, Frosty, or anything else. I wasn’t sure why. Now maybe I do.

What this reminds me of now is the song “As the Deer Pants” which is loosely based on a combination of scriptures lyrically, but starts off with Psalm 42:1 “As the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs for you!” Wow! I remember singing that many a time, full out with every fiber of my being, either in praise or in prayer. Desperate to know more of God. Reading, walking, praying, listening, and praising music. All of it.

And the thing was, I wasn’t alone. There were others just like me on different journeys, wanting to know God deeply too. Panting as the deer but in the soul. Fortunately, for me, God spoke individually too in mystical ways. Unfortunately, mouths and arms opened wide, churches and various ministries shoveled in horseshit. A mix of truth with a toxic tonic. An Americanized Bible, absent from the culture in which it was written, is often taken out of context to build monuments unto themselves and create a God in their image. As they saw God to be. After all, we cannot know who God is and not know how God works. That’s too scary. So, they made sure they got God all figured out within whatever denomination you found yourself in (and the others were surely wrong!).

The interesting thing about the song “As the Deer Pants” is that as nice and heartfelt as it is, and I do like it, it pretty much does what the Church did with everything else. If you read Psalm 42, this guy is depressed, and mockers are mocking him about a God who hasn’t proven Himself or Herself to them. The Psalmist is at a heart level, and they are all in their heads, wanting signs and proof. However, the Psalmist is recounting what God has done, how he knows God’s love already, and is begging God to not forsake him in light of all the onslaughts he is facing.

It is interesting that in the song, it is changed to total praise, yet is sung with sadness. At least, they got that part right. It also says something unrealistic in it. “You alone are my heart’s my desire.” Well, that is really nice to sing, and I remember singing it very passionately, but truthfully, we have many desires. Unless you are a monk, you aren’t living up to that one. Clearly written by a fundamentalist or evangelical on a dopamine high. Now we could say God is our heart’s main desire or focus, or our source, but God being the one and only desire is something left for the priesthood and monks. It has a nice ring to it, but demands of us to strip away all other desires except religious ones. A focus on God will grant you the desires of your heart; now that is something a Psalmist says and is more believable than that God is only the desire of our hearts. Sad to say, but again, we are human beings, not angels.

And so it is lines like that in which we are hurled into extremes of fundamentalist thought, and then when we don’t live up to all these standards and expectations, we think God has of us, we feel like frauds.

I am reminded, as I look at this deer, to separate out what isn’t true from what is. This has been a long process that I had to face, coming out gay and facing Bible thumpers that said I would go to hell (mainly my own thoughts!). And so I can rediscover God again in a new way. Be thirsty again and wiser for it. I also don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water. I did learn very valuable, transformative things too. Many go to one extreme or the other, but there is the road less taken–a path of openness and balance even with God.

There is a vulnerability with a deer, particularly a doe. I remember going for a walk in the woods this summer and coming face to face with one while it chewed on some leaves. It looked at me with its heavenly eyes. They are beautiful, innocent-looking look and depend on what nature and God provide for their living. And so are our souls. We are born beautiful, innocent, and vulnerable in our souls. We hunger to know and to be seen for who we are (once we know even who we are ourselves). There is this desire to not only survive but to know and be known that much of creation doesn’t share.

I think when we wrestle with this idea of God, it can get too heady. We want proof in a scientific way. That’s realistic. But soul and spirit is more about the heart. So when I go on TikTok and see Atheists with a LIVE session saying “Prove to Me God Exists”. I feel sorry for them. Besides those who are just baiting, those who genuinely might want to know, take it from a largely headspace side. I watch these guys trying to go into quantum physics and various modes of beliefs around argumentation. They are brilliant at it. Great debaters. I don’t think I could beat them. But I don’t believe that is where God’s shows up by proving itself to someone in their way, in that headspace.

The walk of spirit is head, heart, and soul. Heart and soul are mystical and surrounded by mythical concepts that connect us to them in very real ways, though the stories may not be proven out in science. It doesn’t make heart and soul life any less real than if you choose to believe God is tied into that.

For me, the hunger for God has always been there, and the encounters I feel blessed for. I don’t know how to explain them. I’m just grateful for them and my transformations over the years. I’m going the way of the deer. Merry Christmas