SPRING 2003
ear Friends,
Here we are between Christmas and Easter. While I realize ours is not a liturgical tradition, some of the rhythm of the church year from my past will probably always be in my bones. Those educators who think of September as the beginning of the year, even long after they have stopped teaching, will understand what I mean. In mid-winter my thoughts turn to the cross and what it means to me. Over the years it has changed, and it continues to change. It is always helpful for me to put thoughts on paper, so I’ll share some reflections in hope that something may speak to your condition.
On the cross, Jesus was low, so low that his pride and his pain could not stand in the way of Love. He asked God to forgive his murderers. Perhaps he also forgave those followers who had run away out of fear, disappointment, or confusion. There came a time, however, when Love seemed far removed, when it felt as though God had abandoned him, and Jesus cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Part of the wonder and beauty of the cross for me is that Jesus did not stop there. Despite the absurdity of it all, despite what seemed like the total absence of God, Jesus—forsaken, a failure by human standards, a laughing stock, a wrecked prophet—turned everything over to God. “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” In the dark void, where it felt like God had proven unreliable, Jesus took a leap of faith and committed himself to the care of the One who seemed to not care. Jesus knew he could not trust his emotions in this situation. Nor could he entirely trust his felt experience. He “faithed” through the abyss.
It seems to be a fact of human existence that things fall apart. There comes a time in every life, perhaps, when life loses meaning and the floor of our reality is littered with fragments, with broken bits of facts, meaning, relationships, memories, dreams—randomly scattered—and none of it makes any sense. I have found that when I accept this, when I give way and admit that I cannot put the pieces together, that the pieces can, in fact, no longer fit together, I see that all is covered by God’s love. It doesn’t matter that I don’t know what it means. It is okay that this life is sometimes absurd. It is okay that I don’t have the answers. My faith says that when things fall apart, there is still God’s love, whether I feel it at the time or not. I can stand in the wreckage and know, like Julian of Norwich, that “all will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well.”
I do not believe this is pious babble. Nor are these words mere platitudes. This is what I have lived. To this I can testify. This is my reality. Despite my fluctuating emotions and evolving worldviews—which sometimes shut God out—God has been closer than breath. God is for us. God is with us. God works among and within us. God is birthing us into every deeper life. Okay, so life can be absurd. All shall be well. Do I dare to keep believing? Do I dare to keep on loving? Yes, I do and I must, for when things fall apart I need to know that there will be Love. Always. And God has never let me down.
In all my brokenness I find myself complete—confused, troubled, despairing at times, but centered, assured, graced. This tangle of states, this contradiction, is who I am in this body of blood and bone. Flesh, matter, space, time, a myriad random and created connections: This is the world of my small self. I embrace life and offer my contradictions as gifts. I dare to look eternity in the eye full-faced, unblinking, sure. Here would I know as I am known: vulnerable, tentative, foolish, yet generously Spirit-blessed. I hold before God’s blue hot flame my tattered rags of doubt and fear, and know all manner of things are well, or some day surely shall be. I would embrace and be embraced by One who discloses me to myself, and teaches me my name. Here, in this life, even in the midst of absurdity, I work with all my sisters and brothers of good will to heaven a frantic earth, and grace hell smartly out of business.
Here, O God
Blessings
Strip search my verities;
Lay bare the threads (so vital, queer)
Of my knotted dense identity.
Here let my soul, unraveled, weave
With sisters and brothers
A new design—
A cosmic web, perhaps:
Dew-pearled, trembling, light.
—MichaelRETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
Last modified:
Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:19 AM
