He pens to his pal

I have been kicking around the idea for a story like this ever since reading Nick Bantock’s beautiful book Griffin & Sabine. I’ve actually got an outline in place and am several chapters ahead. What’s been fun is fleshing out the characters and there story more with each subsequent addition. Plus, you really don’t know for awhile whether these are both men, childhood friends, or lovers. All in good time. I’m not getting too hung up on the editing at this point as I find I am going back to change things as I go. I’ll wait until the end for that. I did go to the bookstore tonight for some additional research and updated it a bit. Will it go anywhere? Will I finish? Who knows at this point? I hope to. In the end we write for ourselves anyhow. Here’s a trifle…

 

 

Dear B –

 

I am writing to you tonight from a chair at my local bookstore. I’m sitting with my left leg crossed over my right, balancing my Starbucks on the armrest in my right hand while writing to you with my left. These words are going into the journal I just purchased for us, the one which I intend to fill with my thoughts and words that you told me you enjoy so much. I selected the brown leather cover instead of the black despite my mood being of the same color this evening. I’m sure it will improve. More on the journal later.

 

Anyhow, I am here because I am not there. Nor am I at home. Home? Is it home anymore? It’s a house, that’s true. Tonight there’s member of the family missing at the supper table because I had to get out. After yet another argument I thought it best. And so I am here. Seeking solace amongst my friends. Amongst these silent pages and my coffee beans.

 

Have you noticed that books are more and more of a slim variety of genres? There’s the ever-present memoir. Some poor soul spilling their angst all over the pages. I swear that the book is sopping wet with tears and blood when you pick one up. There’s the historical conspiracy thriller. You know…of the DaVinci Code / National Treasure variety. Everyone’s a conspiracy theorist these days. I swear I read one intro that promised a view into the “cutthroat world of high-stakes publishing.” This made me chuckle. I saw a new entry into that genre tonight called Jesus, Interrupted. Yeah, some overeducated tenured professor sitting in his office “decoded” the New Testament and is going to disprove over 2,000 years of theology and philosophy? No thanks. I’ll stick with Matthew, Mark, Luke & John, as well as Ignatius, Irenaeus, Augustine and Aquinas. Two books of this genre did catch my eye though. It seems our Charles is making a comeback. I saw two new hardbacks, both having to do with his death and the famous unfinished final novel he was working on. Both Drood and The Last Dickens looked wonderful, but at $26 a pop I figured I’d wait for the softcovers.

 

Then there’s all that Harry wrought. Potter, that is. Dragons, witches, warlocks, vampires. As you know I’m a huge fan of Tolkien and Rowling, but it sure has spread. Not an original idea in the lot. Well…maybe the Twilight series. I’ve heard good things about them but I’ll never read ‘em. There’s more, of course, but I’ll just digress. Suffice to say everything I stumbled across tonight seemed so damned sad. So I bought this journal and scored an open chair to write.

 

I did try to find our mutual friend but was unable to locate it on the shelves. This got me to thinking. Do you know that the only time I ever found our book on these shelves was the copy I bought for you all those years ago? I’ve never seen it since. I wish it had been there tonight.

 

As you can see from the photo I did find some of our favorites though. What was that line from The Pickwick Papers?

 

“Drink with me, my dear,” said Mr. Weller. “Put your lips to this here tumbler, and then I can kiss you by deputy.”

 

Yes…that was it. In every one of Charles’s books that I’ve read there have been lines like that. He was nothing if not a romantic to be sure. I think that’s where you and I find our common bond with him. The subtle ache of romance within. As I just began reading A Tale of Two Cities this week I doubt I’ll purchase anything tonight. I’m just sipping my coffee, watching the always interesting store patrons, and writing to you.

 

This brings me to the purpose of the journal. As you and I are unable to talk on the phone due to our busy schedules or email with any regularity at all, I decided to take up the pen again and write to you there. Letters, quotes, song lyrics, snippets…a photo or funny postcard or two. Things of that nature. I will fill its 192 lined pages, place it in a large yellow envelope, and mail it off to you. This will be yours. Ours. You’ve always “got” my writing more than anyone and I thought this would be fun. We get to share so little, so I thought “Why not revisit the ancient and forgotten art of being a pen pal?” Wow…remember them? Remember when you would join a club to get on a list (or something like that) and scan the list of names of other students in states or countries around the world to write to? Do they even do that anymore? I doubt it, as email and the internet has rendered that all but obsolete. Now we have hundreds of pen pals around the world simultaneously. But we lose something in this. We lose the intimacy. The closeness. That special bond of friendship that comes more than with a casual status update on a Facebook page or a few quickly typed lines in an email or discussion thread.

 

Hell, if it’s pretty good maybe we’ll turn it into a memoir! See? My mood’s improved.

 

I’ll write again soon my friend. Tousle the children’s hair for me as you’re tucking them in. Tell them it’s from their long-lost hillbilly uncle from the other side of the country. Giggle with them at this joke. If I do no good tonight at least let it be to provide a giggle (f)or three. 

 

 

©2009 Jeff Walker. All rights reserved.

 

She said yes

A poor, ordinary betrothed Jewish girl. A child herself.

 

Unordinary in every way.

 

Gabriel approaches.

 

“Do not be afraid.”

 

(Yeah right.)

 

She was alone. Unprepared.

 

Another woman, alone in the Garden, had been approached by an angel of this world. Her interview had gone badly. Would this one?

 

No.

 

She was not afraid. She trusted. She said yes.

 

“Let it be done to me according to your word.”

 

The Word.

 

She had a choice. We all have a choice because she made a choice.

 

There would be trouble ahead for her betrothed, for her unborn Son, and for her soul that was to be pierced “by a sword.”

 

But she said yes. Yes to a plan for her life much different than what she had daydreamed about.

 

Would a modern Mary say yes today? 

 

Fortunately, a hypothetical.

 

But do I?

 

She said yes. Magníficat ánima mea Dóminum.

 

My soul magnifies the Lord.

 

Does mine?

 

©2009 Jeff Walker. All rights reserved.

 

Painting: Annunciation by John Collier.

 

4th Sunday of Lent: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Here is the cry of dereliction, the cry of abandonment, from the derelict, the abandoned one. The cry is reported in both Mark and Matthew. The Greek word used suggests that he screamed with a loud cry, “My God, my God, for what reason have you forsaken me?” Why? Why this? It is though something had gone horribly wrong. It was not supposed to be this way.

In Luke’s account, the starkness of the horror is tempered. “And having cried out with a loud cry, Jesus said, ‘Father, into your hands I place my spirit.’ Having said this, he expired.” Luke does not tell us what he cried with a loud cry, but we may assume it was the cry of dereliction reported by Matthew and Mark. In John’s account, the ending strikes a different note. It is almost tranquil, a going to sleep after accomplishing the great work he had been sent to do. “Jesus said, ‘It is finished’; and having bowed his head, he gave over the spirit.” As we have already seen, in John’s Gospel the glory of resurrection victory is already present on the cross. We must hold all four Gospels together, however, to capture the many dimensions of the death by which the world is born again. John’s Gospel does not deny the horror; it anticipates the glory that is on the far side of dereliction.

“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” This is the opening line of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” The Hebrew differs slightly between Matthew and Mark. Perhaps Jesus cried out in Aramaic, the language of his everyday world. But, whether in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek, the English word “dereliction” catches the desperateness of the scene. Like a derelict boat cast upon the shore, like a dog carcass lying by the roadside, here is something no longer of any account; it is forsaken, abandoned, thrown aside. Roadkill.

All the while they mocked him. “You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself by coming down from the cross!” “He saved others, but he cannot save himself.” “Let God deliver him if he cares for him for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” With slight variations, all four Gospels report a threefold mockery. In this story, things happen in threes. In Gethsemane Jesus prays three times and three times comes back to find the disciples sleeping. Peter denies him three times. The three mockeries at the end of Jesus’ life match the three temptations by Satan at the beginning of his ministry. Satan prefaced his temptations with, “If you are the Son of God…” And so the echo at the cross: “if you are the Son of God.” Satan is there at the cross.

The past is returning with a vengeance. Mary had whispered to the baby, “You will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and of our kingdom there will be no end.” Now in his death struggle the words of Mary and the angel, almost word for word, are thrown back at him, spittle-sprayed with derision. In Matthew’s account, the connection between the three temptations and the three mockeries are especially clear. Back then in the wilderness he could have met Satan’s challenges. He could have changed the stones into bread; he could have jumped safely from the pinnacle of the temple; he could have held political sway over the world. And so now he could have met the challenge of those who mocked; he could come down from the cross and silence those who are ridiculing his claim to be the Son of God. But had he done so in the wilderness, and if he does so now on Golgotha, he would not be who he claims to be; he would not be the Son living out in perfect obedience the Father’s will. Only as he remains on the cross to the death does Jesus prove that he is indeed the Son of God.

God is present in his apparent absence. God’s absence is embodied in the body of Israel and in the extension of that body, the New Israel, which is the Church. God is present in the forsaken so that nobody—nobody ever, nobody anywhere at any time under any circumstance—is forsaken.

If, as St. Paul says, Christ who knew no sin was made sin for us, can there be any sin he did not bear there on the cross? If the answer is no, then even the utterly forsaken are not bereft of the company of the utterly forsaken one, the Son of God, and therefore not bereft of hope. Thus even the will to damnation is damned and thereby defeated by the One for whom and in whom damnation is not allowed the last word.

Excerpts from Death On A Friday Afternoon by Richard John Neuhaus.

Diaper Disciples

Short but true story.

Recently before leaving for the men’s rosary group meeting that I attend I had to pause to change a particularly foul offering from my daughter Sophia. This is the reason God invented clothespins. Not for hanging laundry, but for diapers of this malodorous manner…pinning our nostrils shut while engaging in battle with these toxic spills. So with mission accomplished I darted for the door to breathe the free air again and drive over to the church.

For those of you unfamiliar with the rosary, it is usually prayed in a session of five “decades”, with ten “Hail Mary’s” per decade. These five decades are commonly referred to as “mysteries.” There are the five Joyful Mysteries, the five Sorrowful Mysteries, five Glorious Mysteries, and five Luminous Mysteries. All of them based in Scripture and centered around the life of Jesus which we meditate upon in prayer. On this night we were going to be praying the five Sorrowful Mysteries. After a particularly intense general discussion on a variety of tragic subjects we began. I led the beginning of the rosary, the prayer intentions, and then began the first decade.

Now sometimes we will use bits of Scripture related to each mystery in order to help focus our prayer. And so in a strong, clear and somber tone I began the first decade for The Agony in the Garden:

“…His sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground. When He rose from prayer and returned to His disciples, He found them sleeping from grief.” (Luke 22:44-45)

As I prepared to begin with the Our Father followed by the Hail Marys I heard snickers. I looked up to see smiles and hands over mouths. What in the world was wrong with these guys? I’ve been praying with them for over eight years and yes we are familiar with each other, but come on. “These are the Sorrowful Mysteries for pity’s sake. A somber tone has been struck. What is the problem here?” were the words flashing in my head.

This is where, in perfect comedic timing, Larry came over, put his arm on my shoulder and asked me to read it again. I looked at him with a puzzled look. He said, “Read it again. But this time say disciples instead of diapers.”

And then I knew. I had broken the tense air unwittingly by saying that Jesus rose from prayer and had returned to his diapers.

Sophie had struck again. So we all laughed, and I began once more.

Scenes from Downtown

Noon Mass at St. Mary’s begins each day at 12:10 and lasts until approximately 12:45. It’s short as those attending are often business professionals who work downtown. I work on the third floor of a building a little over five blocks away. I choose today to walk to St. Mary’s by walking through the skywalks for three of the blocks. I am limping slightly from the deep cut about an inch or two below the third toe on the bottom of my left foot. It’s not going to be an easy walk, but I decide to offer my suffering up to God on this the day of the Feast of St. Patrick for all those souls who are already in the pubs, completely ignorant of the man who’s work in the 5^th century helped shape our world today. He has been reduced to a cartoon character in funny hats. Sad.

 

St. Mary’s is a large church a few blocks from the state capital. It used to be the seat of the bishop of the Diocese of Lincoln and is a cathedral. I arrive too late for confession. It is offered every day for 30 minutes prior to Mass and for another 20-30 afterwards. There are four confessionals, two on each side, and every day there is a line of penitents. I arrive today just as the opening hymn is being sung. I find a pew on the far left side near the back having arrived late and find myself behind a pillar. At Mass I see the usual eclectic noontime grouping of the poor and the affluent. I recognize a state senator, a prominent and devout Catholic man, who has not given up his Daily Communion since being elected a few years ago. I see business men and women in suits. College students. The elderly. The very poor. Many a time I have sat near those who have not bathed in weeks and smell of their own urine. Yet they are here and I rejoice in that. All of us on our knees with heads bowed in prayer and worship. We are the Church Militant on earth.

 

Today is the Feast of St. Patrick. The opening and closing prayers reflect this, as does the short homily given by the young priest. We are called, as Patrick was called. Today’s responsorial psalm is “Remember your mercies, O Lord.” I ask humbly of this favor of God for myself as well while on my knees.

 

Mass over, I begin the walk back. It is a gorgeous March day in Lincoln. Nearly 80 degrees and sunny with a slight breeze. I notice my foot has gotten worse while at Mass and decide to walk slower. Before Mass I had sent a text message to Sally, a former co-worker asking her if she had plans for the day.  She had replied while I was in church: “Luv this weather-i m runnin a 5k 2nite in Omaha-pizza & beer afterwards.” I laugh at her message while I cross the street at because this is vintage Sally. As I’m calling to leave her a voicemail I hear my name shouted out. “Jay Dub!” I look to see Dick, a member of my men’s rosary group and an architect with an office downtown go flying by on his bicycle. He was just leaving St. Mary’s as well, but we had missed each other. I smile and wave as I begin my message for Sally. “Woman, you are nuts! Running a 5K and then off for beer and pizza. I am in awe. I’m five years younger than you and you continue to make me look bad. (laughing) Tell me about it tomorrow. God bless.”

 

While continuing my walk north I notice that N Street is closed off from 15^th to 16^th for a block party. I begin to see signs that the “celebration” has begun. Once on O Street I pass by bars and restaurants whose windows swell with people in green with beads around their necks and silly hats on their heads. I’m not against it. I just am wincing due to this stupid cut in my foot. And I limp by.

 

I pass three young shabbily dressed men on a bench, one of them holding a cardboard sign containing writing about needing money. They are all laughing and I overhear him say that at 2pm the manager at Subway is giving him a bunch of sandwiches. I bristle as I think of the poor I’ve just encountered at Mass who sustain themselves on Manna from Heaven in the Holy Eucharist. I recall the two older homeless people I saw huddled against the building last week when the temperature was sixteen with a subzero windchill and contrast them with these three. And I limp by.

 

I enter Subway to grab a sandwich to take back to my desk. Behind the counter is a man with a long black ponytail, golden small hoop earring and crooked smile. His nametag says Bob. I call him Bobby. His accent is as thick as dirty water as he greets me. I am not wearing any green and he chastises me. He’s 25% Irish. It’s always St. Patrick’s Day for him, he says. We talk about our Red Sox. He tells me as he does every day “you need to get to the cathedral on Landsdowne.” Fenway Park.

 

“I just came from the Cathedral,” I reply. He smiles. Bobby knows.

 

Finally I turn west and cross 13^th street. I enter the Union Bank building and return to my third floor desk. My foot throbs. I take off my shoe to see that my foot has bled through both bandaid and sock. I put my shoe back on gently and turn to eat my sub.

 

I’m just fine. It’s a beautiful day. And I will limp by.

3rd Sunday of Lent: “Woman, behold, your son! Son, behold, your mother!”

Jesus emptied himself. Mary emptied herself. St. Paul writes, “Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” The Greek word for this self-emptying is kenosis, it is the surrender of all that we hold most dear and, for Mary, it was the surrender of her dearest. Long before they looked at one another on Golgotha’s place of strangest glory, they had been prepared by many little surrenders for this surrender by which all was restored. It was once put thus: “Once his public ministry had begun, Jesus had nowhere to rest his head, and Mary had nowhere to rest her heart.” And now it had come to this, she pondered in her broken heart, in her heart that by its breaking was made whole. That is the way it is with discipleship. The way of the cross is the way of broken hearts.

In all this, Mary was following her son, step by inexorable step. Her kenosis mirrored his kenosis, her life’s song was entirely attuned to his, a letting go into the vastness of whatever will be, trusting that at the end will be glory. Now his hour had come, and his hour was completely hers. At Cana, with a different idea of his glory in mind, she had tried to rush his hour. No more. Here, here at the cross, this is how it had to be.

Today and, for that matter, at all time, people find this truth off-putting. It is more than off-putting; it is a scandal. “We preach Christ crucified,” St. Paul wrote, “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Some women say that for them Mary can be no model. They want empowerment, fulfillment, control. There is little that is new in this. Men and women—I expect men more than women—have always been scandalized by the cross. The way of the power and wisdom of God is not the way of our power and our wisdom.

To say that Mary’s way is not our way is to say that Christ’s way is not our way, for Mary was in every respect the disciple of her son. In all our promotion of empowerment, fulfillment, self-esteem and self-actualization, we should know what we are doing. We are rejecting the very heart of what it means to be Christian. “The disciple is not above the master.” “The first shall be last, and the last first.” “He who would find his life must lose his life.” “Take up your cross and follow me.” Jesus was relentless; he is relentless. “Do whatever he tells you,” Mary said. What she said she also did, and in her loss of her son and her loss of herself she knew “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Of course this business about losing our lives in order to find our lives goes very much against the grain. On second thought, maybe not. Maybe we have grown so accustomed to living against the grain of our humanity that we have confused ourselves about which way the grain runs. Maybe, if we follow the true grain of our humanity, it leads to our surrendering our all to the Other. Recall again St. Augustine’s “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Recall those old catechisms, both Protestant and Catholic, that asked the question, “Why did God make me?” Answer: “To know and love and serve him in this life, and to enjoy him forever in the next.” Why did God make me? If we get the answer to that wrong, we get everything else wrong. Mary, following Christ, got that right.

“Woman, behold your son.” “Son, behold your mother.” John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, is standing in for all the disciples, all of whom Jesus loves. At the cross, he represents all of us, the entire Church. He represents also the missing disciples, those who forsook him and fled, just as Jesus said they would. To John and to all of us, Jesus says, “Behold, your mother.” Therefore Mary is called “Mother of the Church.” As we never think of Mary apart from Christ, so we never think of Mary apart from the Church.

St. Augustine also writes: “Holy is Mary, blessed is Mary, but the Church is more important than the Virgin Mary. Why is this so? Because Mary is part of the Church, a holy and excellent member, above all others but, nevertheless, a member of the whole body. And if she is a member of the whole body, doubtlessly the body is more important than a member of the body.” It would be a perverse Marian piety that would pit Mary against Christ; so also we cannot pit Mary against the Church, for the Church is the body of Christ. Her role in the salvation story and her entire being is in devotion to her son. “Do whatever he tells you,” says the one who gave Christ his body, and she says it to all those who are, with her, members of his Body, the Church.

Mary is the model of discipleship in her total availability to the will of God. She had no business of her own. She was always on call. To the angel’s announcement, she says, “Let it be as you say.” She was dependent on others, on Joseph, for example, and now on John. By saying yes to the angel and agreeing to be the mother of the Messiah, she had created a situation beyond her control. Who was to pick up the pieces? God provides by sending an angel to say, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife.” Now at the cross she is once again alone in the world. God provides. “‘Son, behold your mother.’ And from that hour John took her to his own home.” In her total availability to God, Mary is totally independent and totally dependent upon God’s providing. True availability to God overcomes the fear of being dependent on others, for God provides. It is our determination to be independent by being in control that makes us unavailable to God. Little wonder that Mary is also called “Our Lady of Poverty” and is a model for those in the consecrated life who have vowed themselves to holy poverty.

Availability is letting God have his way, even when it brings us to the cross. For those who are available, life is at God’s disposal, kept in readiness for what he may be up to. All time is God’s time, what the Bible calls a “fullness of time,” a kairos.

Exploration into God is exploration into darkness, into the heart of darkness. Yes, to be sure, God is light. He is the light by which all light is light. IN the words of the Psalm, “In your light we see light.” Yet great mystics of the Christian tradition speak of the darkness in which the light is known, a darkness inextricably connected to the cross. At the heart of darkness the hope of the world is dying on a cross, and the longest stride of soul is to see in this a strange glory. In John’s Gospel, the cross is the bridge from the first Passover on the way out of Egypt to the new Passover into glory. In his first chapter he writes, “We have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” The cross is not the eclipse of that glory but its shining forth, its epiphany. In John’s account, the death of Jesus is placed on the afternoon of the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan, precisely the time when the Passover lambs were offered up in the temple in Jerusalem.

“In the Cross of Christ I Glory,” declared the nineteenth-century hymn writer John Bowring. It seems a strange, even bizarre, glory. “We have beheld his glory,” St. John wrote, meaning that he was there, with Mary, beholding the final and perfect sacrifice. In the churches of Asia Minor that were founded by John, Easter was celebrated not on Sunday, as with the other churches, but on 14 Nisan, the anniversary of Christ’s death. This was his “hour” of glory. The resurrection ratified and reinforced what was already displayed on the cross. When John, therefore, places Mary at the cross, he is placing her at the very center of salvation. She was there, with him, beholding a glory different from, even the opposite of, everything ordinarily meant by glory. It was God’s glory, which is love.

Excerpts from Death On A Friday Afternoon by Richard John Neuhaus.

Moods

“Hello?”

 

“Walker, what’re you doing?” her voice on the other line asked.

 

“Nothin’ much. Watching YouTube vids. Watched Nights In Rodanthe too late last night. Kicked my ass. You?”

 

“Oh Lord, I’ve seen that. I stopped to get the oil changed in the car. Me and the kids are coming to Lincoln to watch my brother’s team.”

 

“Oh yeah, did they win last night? What time do they play?”

 

“No, lost last night. Playing in the consolation game at noon at Southwest. You still comin’?”

 

“Shoot. It’s 10:30. I’m still in my sweats and drinking coffee. Oh, and eating a breakfast of Girl Scout cookies,” he said laughing.

 

“You still got time to get in the shower and get down there. Bring Max. Rachel wants to see him.”

 

He heard the teenage girl protest in the background. “Mommmmmmmm….what are you doing?”

 

“I don’t think she liked that. Besides, he’s turned thirteen since she saw him last fall. One word: M-O-O-D-Y.”

 

“So he’s his father’s son? Big deal. I’ve known you twenty years. She’s turned fourteen since our last visit. One word: M-O-O-D-I-E-R.”

 

They both laughed.

 

“So are ya comin’ or not?”

 

“Yeah, I told your brother I’d try to get there to see him coach. How’s work? I haven’t heard anything in awhile.”

 

“Good! This is the first week our company hasn’t been in the news in months. The local press has been brutal. Good people are being made examples of.”

 

“Yeah, socialist press is running amok. Want every business owner to make the perp walk now.”

 

“No kidding. But for now I still have a job. Bonus: I’ve lost twenty-five pounds through all this.”

 

He whistled, “Wow…good for you. Less of ya to love though.”

 

“True, true. But I’ve still got it up top where it counts. You know what I mean,” she laughed.

 

“Well then, that’s all that matters,” he grinned, finally starting to loosen up.

 

“I knew you’d like that. It’s why I love you.”

 

“You’re such a dork, woman. That’s why I love you back.”

 

“So are you comin’ or wallowin’?” she pressed.

 

“I’ll be there. I’m going to write later about what I got out of the movie. Just hit me in an area or two that was already taking on water. It’s all good.”

 

“Good. I’ll call you when we are getting close. Bring Maggie, too. But don’t forget Max.”

 

“Mommmmmmm…knock it off!” he heard Rach protesting again.

 

“Ok, ok…I will. Be safe kiddo. Love you.”

 

“Love you, too. Now get your ass in the shower.”

 

“Yes dear.”

 

<click>

 

2nd Sunday of Lent: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Jesus does not reject any who turn to him. At times we turn to him with little faith, at times with a mix of faith and doubt when we are more sure of the doubt than of the faith. Jesus is not fastidious about the quality of faith. He takes what he can get, so to speak, and give immeasurably more than he receives. He takes our faith more seriously than we do and makes of it more than we ever could. His response to our faith is greater than our faith.

 

When our faith is weak, when we are assailed by contradictions and doubts, we are tempted to look at our faith, to worry about our faith, to try to work up more faith. At such times, however, we must not look to our faith but look to him. Look to him, listen to him, and faith will take care of itself. Keep looking. Keep listening.

 

For paradise we long. For perfection we were made. We don’t know what it would look like or feel like, but we must settle for nothing less. This longing is the source of the hunger and dissatisfaction that mark our lives; it drives our ambition. What we long for is touched in our exaltations; in our devastations it is known by its absence. This longing makes our loves and friendships possible, and so very unsatisfactory. The hunger is for nothing less than paradise, nothing less than perfect communion with the Absolute—with the Good, the True, the Beautiful—communion with the perfectly One in whom all the fragments of our scattered existence come together at last and forever. We must not stifle this longing. It is a holy dissatisfaction. Such dissatisfaction is not a sickness to be healed, but the seed of a promise to be fulfilled.

 

The way to the tree of life was blocked when the Lord placed an angel at the east of Eden after the Fall. There is no returning to that paradise that was. Lost is that innocence so bright with love. Now we need faith, for the truth is not transparent; now we need hope, for we know we are not what we are meant to be. The way to paradise is not the way of return; it is the way restored. It is restored by the one who said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” A new Adam, Jesus Christ. A new Eve, Mary the mother of the faithful. A new tree of life, the tree of the cross. All is restored. “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

 

The tree of death has become the tree of life.

 

- Death On A Friday Afternoon by Richard John Neuhaus.

Hands, feet

I was reminded tonight of something I have long thought about. That being how much our hands and our feet are connected to life and to what makes us human. To what sets us apart as being in the image of God. Today our parish held the funeral for a little girl who was the victim of a miscarriage at twenty-four weeks. Bella Rose the family named her. She is the sister of a boy who has played baseball for me for four summers. Bella was not destined to live as the week prior doctors discovered that her brain cavity was almost completely empty. “When she comes, she comes” was all they could tell the family. And so they began preparations for the funeral of a babe still breathing in the womb. So she came, hours after it was revealed that she had already ceased to live. Twelve inches. One pound, one ounce. Those who attended the rosary the night before the funeral made remarks to me tonight about her perfect little hands and feet as seen from the tiniest of coffins.

 

Hands, feet.

 

Minutes after our miscarriage six July’s ago I held the lifeless body, only inches long, of our baby who was a mere eleven weeks from conception. While sitting on the edge of my bed I wept with a wave of emotion the likes of which I’ve only experienced thrice before, the second being at the funeral of a close friend a mere forty-eight hours earlier. But both before and after that wave I remember marveling at the little hands and feet. I counted ten fingers…ten toes. Perfect hands and feet on a child we named Nathan. Hands that would never clutch my own. Would never toss me a ball. Feet that would never stumble uncertainly towards me while learning to walk. Such loss. Such a black wave. It regathered its strength and washed over me again and again as I brushed my finger against the delicate, still toes and fingers.

 

Hands, feet.

 

On December 7, 1983, we lost Tom to a car accident after school. It is here that I experienced the black wave for the first time. The only images I recall from the rosary the night before the funeral are of my high school algebra teacher kneeling behind me and profusely sobbing. A memory of shuffling by his coffin to say goodbye to my best friend; the friend I shared all but one class with that year, and noticing his hands. I stopped and stared at them. I remember that I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to. I couldn’t stop looking at his hands. These are hands that will forever clutch his beloved rosary in death. Hands forever fifteen. Tom would have turned 41 this March 21st.

 

Hands, feet.

 

The hands of Bella, Nathan and Tom. Hands that will never fold themselves in prayer. Hands that will never pass over their rosary in meditation. Hands that will never shake another in friendship. Hands that won’t be a channel for God in writing a sonnet. A story. A love letter. Or wash the feet of an unworthy servant as Our Lord did on the night of his Last Supper.

 

From the intercessions during Morning Prayer in today’s Divine Office we read:

 

Christ our Lord came among us as the light of the world, that we might walk in his light, and not in the darkness of death.

I could write a small book about the imagery surrounding our hands and our feet and how they signify life. Study iconography. Observe Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son. They are in the sandaled and dusty feet of Jesus as he walked throughout the holy land performing miracles with the touch of his hands. Hands and feet that were to be pierced by nails in the must humiliating and painful of manner. But for now I write simply of observations made during three occasions in which the hands and feet were rendered still.

 

Ours are not. Not yet. Ours are to be put to use. To walk in the light, not in the darkness.

 

And so I ask of you…and of me…how are you using yours?

 

Your Hands. And feet.

1st Sunday of Lent: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

(Note: for this Lenten exercise I am using several sources, as well as my own writing, but primary among them is Death On A Friday Afternoon by Richard John Neuhaus. To be fair little of what follows is my own, as I wanted to keep myself “out of the way”.)

The beginning of wisdom is to come to our senses and know the fearful truth about ourselves, that we have wandered and wasted our days in a distant country far from home. We know ourselves most truly in knowing Christ, for in him is our true self. His cross is the way home to the waiting Father.

This is your life, this is my life. And we have not come to our senses until we sense ourselves in the life, and death, of Christ. This is the axis mundi. The axis, or centerpoint, of the world.

“Father, forgive them.” For whom does he pray forgiveness? For the leaders of his own people, a fragile, frightened establishment that could not abide the threat of the presence of a love so long delayed. For pitiable Pilate, forever wringing his hands forever soiled. For the soldiers who did the deed, who wielded the whip, who drove the nails, who thrust the spear, it all being but a day’s work on foreign assignment, far from home. And for us he asks forgiveness, for we were there.

“Not counting their trespasses.” Accountants reconcile the books, and there is not doubt that the disordered books of our lives need reconciling. But the books are disordered by our disordered lives, and our lostness cannot be remedied by the accountant’s craft. Someone must go to the distant country where we have strayed, as a good shepherd seeks a sheep that is lost. Someone must go, but not just anyone. If we are to be brought home, it has to be one who is, in the words of the Nicene Creed, “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.”

“Atonement.” Think of at-one-ment: What was separated is now at one. But after such a separation there can be no easy reunion. Reconciliation must do justice to what went wrong. It will not do to merely overlook the wrong. We could not bear to live in a world where wrong is taken lightly, where right and wrong finally make no difference. In such a world, we—what we do and who we are—would make no difference. Spare me a gospel of easy love that makes my life a thing without consequence.

He does not count our trespasses against us because something has been done about them. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran pastor and martyr under the tyranny of the Third Reich, wrote against and lived against the “cheap grace” that devalues sin and forgiveness alike. Cheap grace is easy grace. Cheap grace does not reckon what went wrong; it requires no costly love.

Forgiveness costs. If bad things don’t matter, then good things don’t matter, and then nothing matters and the meaning of everything lies shattered.

The First Word from the cross: “Father, forgive them.” Any understanding of what makes at-one-ment possible includes a few simple truths. First, like the child, we know that something very bad has happened. Something has gone very wrong with us and with the world of which we are part. The world is not and we are not what we know was meant to be.

“Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” But now, like the prodigal son, we have come to our senses. Our lives are measured not by the lives of others, not by our own ideals, not by what we think might reasonably be expected of us. Our lives are measured by who we are created and called to be, and the measuring is done by the One who creates and calls. Finally, the judgment that matters is not ours. The judgment that matters is the judgment of God, who alone judges justly. In the cross we see the rendering of the verdict on the gravity of our sin.

We have come to our senses. None of our sins are small or of little account. To belittle our sins is to belittle ourselves, to belittle who it is that God creates and calls us to be. To belittle our sins is to belittle their forgiveness, to belittle the love of the Father who welcomes us home.

These, then, are the truths at the heart of atonement. First, something has gone terribly wrong. We find ourselves in a distant country far from home. Second, whatever the measure of our guilt, we are responsible. Then, third, something must be done about it. Things must be set right. We cannot go on this way. False gospels of positive thinking or stoic exhortations to make the best of it are worse than useless—they are obscene. They are invitations to make our peace with a corruption at the core of everything. The religious marketplace is crowded with the peddlers of peace of mind and peace of soul.

That brings us to the fourth great truth of atonement: Whatever it is that needs to be done, we cannot do it. Each of us individually, the entirety of the human race collectively—what can we do to make up for one innocent child tortured and killed? Never mind making up for Auschwitz, or the killing fields of Cambodia, or the coffin ships of traffickers in human slavery or the slaughter beyond number of innocents in the womb. We chatter on about modernity and progress while King Herod reigns secure.

As much as we are repulsed by it, something must be done. Otherwise, we live in a world without moral meaning. Otherwise, forgiveness is Bonhoeffer’s “cheap grace” that trivializes evil and thereby also trivializes good. Otherwise, the elder brother, the one who resented his young brother’s welcome home, was right in protesting that the reconciliation with the father is cheap and easy and dishonest. Forgiveness costs—it must cost—or else the trespass does not matter.

Atonement. At-one-ment. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” We knew not what we did when we grabbed what we could and went off to a distant country. But today we have come to our senses. Today, here at the cross, our eyes are fixed on the dying derelict who is the Lord of life. We look at the One who is everything that we are and everything that we are not, the One who is true man and true God. In him we, God and man, are perfectly one. Here, through the cross, we have come home, home to the truth about ourselves, home to the truth about what God has done about what we have done.