Redemptive sadness

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I spent three nights last month at Mercy Center in Burlingame, California. The Mercy Center has several walking paths that were created years ago by Father Thomas Hand, S.J. One of the paths, called the Water Way, leads you down a slope and into an area shadowed by trees, then alongside a dark creek that is criss-crossed with fallen branches and tree trunks.

This depiction of the Tenth Station of the Cross is nailed to a post at one end of the Water Way. At this point in the story, Christ's clothes are taken from him: one last humiliation before death.

I am struck by the sadness in each man's face, and by the way in which Christ is clasping the man's hand. I don't believe that redemptive violence is part of the Christian story.* Instead, I believe that God willingly entered into our suffering to be with us, because of love for us. It is a different story.


* Shout-out to Shawn Anthony at Lo-Fi Tribe.

Handmade

I gaze at the heavens,
searching for you, my God. (Ps. 123:1, ICEL Psalter)

Barefoot in the dirt outside our tent
in the dark, I bend back my head
and open my heart to the sky.

I hope to see heaven unravel,
galaxies take up the thread
then spin, then snap as
larger, more practiced hands
pull spacetime taut
weaving, reweaving
uncountable yards of stuff and nothing,
endless bolts of evidence—

Meanwhile, after billion-year trips,
photons land without fanfare
in my skin
in my eyes
right where I stand;
primordial lights
like jewels, sewn by hand
onto the dress
of a princess.

Ex nihilo

Psalm 18:16-19

But me he caught—reached all the way
from sky to sea; he pulled me out
Of that ocean of hate, that enemy chaos,
the void in which I was drowning.
They hit me when I was down,
but God stuck by me.
He stood me up on a wide-open field;
I stood there saved—surprised to be loved!

In Addiction & Grace, Gerald May writes about how we often substitute one addiction for another. We are compelled to fill our life's emptiness: the void. When people are delivered from addiction, he writes, it's because grace enables them to tolerate spaciousness, at least to some degree. Grace transforms the void in which we were dying, and we find ourselves in a wide-open field.

A void and a wide-open field are both spacious, but in a very different sense. The void that meant loneliness is transformed into space that means freedom. A void lacks air and light and structure—it's a nothing—and in it we're aimless and can't find direction. A wide-open field, on the other hand, is a generative space in which new life and purpose can unfold. It's a riot of fresh air and little wild animals. We stand there saved, surprised to be loved!

For me, the surprise comes from being loved right there in the emptiness, in the place where I have nothing to comfort or distract me. I mean those times when nobody needs me and it's clear that the world would go on without me; those times when I understand that my task in life is not to fix everybody and know everything. It's plainness, mortality, and human limits. It's those times when being with God is like sitting in silence in an empty, lightless room, hearing and saying nothing.

I've spent many hours over the years gazing at the carving in this photo. Today I am struck by the spaces around Mary and Joseph, and the space between them—the dark emptiness into which Love was born. I tried to photograph it in a way that would capture what I mean.

The easiest, hardest thing

Matt. 26:38b

Then he said to them, "....Stay here and keep watch with me."

My friend Sue Ann works as a chaplain with SpiritCare Ministry to Seniors. She conducts lovely, gentle worship services at long-term care centers, plus she does visitation and pastoral counseling. SpiritCare recruits volunteers to do things like play the piano, help with communion, and spend time with residents.

I've helped Sue Ann at three homes now, and helping turned out to be simpler and less scary than I'd feared. I can help just by singing loudly, or just by slowing down to really look at and see the beauty of the person I am speaking to. These things don't cost me much—in fact, they bring me joy. I'm grateful for the structure that Sue Ann's ministry provides, because it makes it easy and possible for me to do what would otherwise be too much for me.

I've been praying through the story of Gethsemene in Matt. 26. In this scene, Jesus tells the disciples that for the moment, their task is to stay where they are:

+ Sit here while I go over there and pray. (v. 36)
+ Stay here and keep watch with me. (v. 38)

During these hours in the garden, Jesus is preparing for his own death. He asks his friends to help him by doing what sounds easy but is often painful and difficult for us to carry out: to stay awake, to stay present to what's really happening, to keep vigil with those who suffer.

SpiritCare's ministry is a taste of just such presence.

Laid aside for you

The Methodist covenant prayer

I am no longer my own
but yours.

Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing, put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you,
exalted for you, or brought low for you;
let me be full, let me be empty,
let me have all things, let me have nothing:

I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

You are mine
and I am yours.

So little depends on me, really. What a relief. If I were nothing, had nothing, produced nothing, God's great dream might be just as well (or better) served as if I were full and productive.

It's a relief to think that it's okay for me to be what I am: Limited.

3. Uniquely

Psalm 63:7

I sing in the shadow of your wings.

Sometimes it's done in a shadow, in obscurity. Not standing on a box in the middle of downtown. Heh - I love that.

2. Sustenance

(My blog has moved to SleepOnTheHearth.com. Please visit!)

Psalm 63:2

I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.

Where? Where do you see God? Where are you when you get those fleeting glimpses of the real thing? Outdoors? Tucking a child into bed? Whispering a prayer of gratitude? Reading a great book? Petting a dog? Singing in church?

Find those symbols and observances and savor them. Call them what they are. We need all the refilling we can get.

Last weekend, probably very early in the morning on Holy Saturday, a doe gave birth to twin fawns outside our livingroom window. Here she is with one of them.

1. Craving

Psalm 63:1

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

When I look down into myself, I see that the bottom of the well is continuously in need of refilling. I'm tired, thirsty, empty—and I need contact with the real thing.

The routines of religion buy me nothing if they don't connect me with the source of relief. God does not need me to do religious things; the need actually goes the other way. I need contact with the living, refilling God (source of all life) or my soul will dry up and die.

Religious observances exist to help me get that contact. As soon as the symbols and practices of faith leave us empty, we have to extend them, reinterpret them, deepen them, even replace them. Otherwise they are flat, like paper dolls that used to be people.

They become nothing more than a means of superstition and magical thinking—by which I mean, "If I do this, God will do that."

A rain poem

The Favor

I said,
"May I pet you? What an honor it would be."
You replied with
some drawn-out "mmm" syllable of complaint as if
it cost you money to arch your back up to meet my hand, as if
you were not free to run back out
into the rain.

The voice received on the outside

I recently viewed some porn online. I wanted to know what's out there.

I'm wise enough to stay away from things that would definitely offend me or injure me emotionally, so I steered in the direction of what doesn't offend me, at least not in the abstract: consensual sex between grown ups.

It didn't take long to learn what I needed to know.

Reflecting on my, um, adventure, I wonder what makes scenes like the ones I saw so hard to forget? Well, that part seems biological; even kind of mechanical. (That word has come up several times during my reflections: mechanical.)

And what was it, exactly, that troubled me about what I saw? What was it that marred the rest of my day, made my sleep fitful, and gave me a sort of spiritual and emotional indigestion?

I found a rich answer in this adapted quote from The Confessions of St. Augustine:

I asked the earth, the sea and the deeps, heaven, the sun, the moon and the stars. My questioning of them was my contemplation, and their answer was their beauty. They do not change their voice, that is their beauty, if one person is there to see and another to see and to question. Beauty appears to all in the same way, but is silent to one and speaks to the other. They understand it who compare the voice received on the outside with the truth that lies within.

Yes! As I reflect on the "voice" of the porn that I looked at and compare it to the truth that lies within, there is a grating and ugly clash. They do not match. The voice received on the outside was not true, and it was not beautiful.

(Click the photo to get a better view of Star Cluster M34.)

What the angel could mean

Luke 1:29

Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean.

This evening I parked in the garage behind the YMCA, walked to the elevator, and pushed the call button. The doors opened and a tall woman stepped out. I only saw her for a few seconds as she passed, but in those few seconds.....

Unlike most others who step out of the elevator in the parking garage behind the YMCA, this woman was looking up, and right at me. Her face was lit with unselfconscious recognition, as if she had been hoping it would be me when those doors opened. She smiled right into my face, beautifully, kindly, as she quickly stepped past me and out into the garage. I moved inside the elevator, the doors closed, and the moment was over. But what I felt in those seconds of anonymous encounter was ... love. Recognition. A peaceful belonging.

Later, in the locker room, an elderly woman gave me a warm, kindly smile. It gave me a point of comparison: Okay, this is what a warm, kindly smile from a stranger feels like. It's a nice feeling, and it made my day a little better. But the smile I received from the stranger in the elevator was something else altogether.

I couldn't stop myself from wondering if I had passed an angel who had been on some errand in the Y.

She was headed for her car in the garage, her beatific task for today complete.