The Quest for Thin Places: How to Find Spirituality after Deconstruction
By Dana Robert Hicks
A Review by Dwight A. Moody
Deconstruction is a process that has dominated my professional life for 50 years, so this title piqued my interest, as it might have done yours. The word “deconstruction” is a fairly new word in the religious vocabulary of people I know and read, but it references the process of changing our ideas about life, and death, and God, and Jesus. For some, it means the total abandonment of faith; but for me and many others, it means rethinking things and opening our minds and hearts to people and ideas and experiences that come to us during the course of life. In that sense, I have been deconstructing my religion since I was a teenager, a process intensified by a religion major in college, two seminary degrees, and a lifetime of ministry as a pastor, writer, organizer, and dreamer.
Hicks organizes his book, and perhaps his life, into these six stages: deconstruct, clarify, remove, quest, reconstruct, and cultivate. Stages is not really the right word to use here, with the implication that these things happen sequentially; he presents these six movements as happening simultaneously and, ideally, continuously. And that has been my experience and my witness (to use the word he picks from a quote by American author Verlyn Klinkenborg:
“Writing doesn’t prove anything. And it only rarely persuades.
It does something much better.
It attests.
It witnesses.
It shares your interest in what you’ve noticed.
It reports on the nature of your attention.
It suggests the possibilities of the world around you.
The evidence of the world as it presents itself to you.
Proof is for mathematicians.
Logic is for philosophers.
We have testimony.”
Dana Hicks gives his testimony of some of his journey along Deconstruction Drive.
The first jolt came in a series of events during the COVID pandemic: “A new church, for which I had risked and sacrificed way too much, crumbled to pieces as the pandemic shutdowns took hold, and a mainline Christian denomination left me holding the bag on thousands of dollars of debt. Meanwhile, one of my children was going through a potentially life-or-death mental health crisis. The stress from all of this, among other things, brough a very painful end to my relationship with the woman to whom I was married…. I filled up a U-Haul in the alley of our Northend Boise home and slowly loaded half of everything that we owned…. The following day, I left Boise for Phoenix.” (28)
Often, the crises of life trigger the deconstruction of, well, lots of things, including careers, health, and relationships. Hicks is exhibit one. These moves (geographical, relational, and philosophical, among others, no doubt) pushed his deconstruction into high gear; and that led him to meditation, which introduced him to the neuroscience of emotion, wonder, and ecstasy. Which, in turn, led him to understand his Default Mode Network, read a hundred books, watch as many movies, and embrace both the dangers of individualism and the mysteries of Buddhism. Plus, save more arresting quotes than I have ever seen in one book (including this one from Rumi):
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, Language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense” (187).
But mostly, it pulled him into the abyss of “altered states of consciousness” (170). This led him to Dr. Roland Griffiths and his research on psilocybin and its record of producing experiences nearly identical to those reported by prophets, visionaries and mystics through history. (172) All of which led to this disclaimer preceding chapter 18: “As you read this chapter, please keep in mind that despite the potentially beneficial effects of altering consciousness with psychedelics, I do not condone any illegal activity. In most of the world, it is unlawful to possess psychedelics such as mescaline, DMT, LSA, and psilocybin.”
You can imagine what “My Pilgrimages to Mexico” describes.
After that comes industrialization, tribalism, Abraham Maslow, and Phyllis Tickle and her theory of “the Great Emergence.” He ends up advocating the use of a personal creed and gives some examples on page 220. Which is not a bad idea but is a rather weak way to end this tour-de-force of deconstruction. I am left to wonder what, indeed, has he reconstructed, and what he now practices (other than meditation, if he still does), and how he sees the road bending ahead of him.
One thing I like was his suggestion that the revival of religion might come via widespread mystical experiences rather than institutional renewal; and one thing that puzzled me was the almost total absence of Jesus in his six-stage quest for spiritual vitality. But the book is, as he says, a witness, and a powerful one at that. A witness to his own journey, perhaps, and another encouragement to take seriously our own road, twists and turns and all.
