Preface: The Storm

Hair tight back in coiffure fit only for the office, she balanced her luggage against herself with one hand, fumbling with keys to unlock the door with the other. With a glance at the sky, which was threatening, and a slightly exasperated sigh as one folder slipped from her grasp, scattering paper, she opened the door and tossed what she could into the far passenger seat. Sliding into the car, she hurriedly reached down to retrieve her lost papers before tossing them, pel-mel, beside the open briefcase, closing the door just as the wind started to pick up, and letting her hair down with a sigh. One moment of silence, tired head against the headrest, eyes closed; a rub of a weary face; and then, resolute, she reached for the keys and pulled away from the office.

I should have kicked off my shoes. Too late --

--as she pulled into the street and entered traffic, too absorbed with lane-changing for a moment to think of anything else. Only a slight throb of a headache persisted for the moment to remind her of the weight of stress and -- something else, what was it? --but she was too busy.

Interstate -- get over into the right lane, pull back to the left after a violent honk and a near-collision; u-turn, another u-turn. Get back into that lane, resolute this time; merge onto the interstate. Cruise control, and a deep breath. Now she could think.

About what? That was always the problem; a weight pressing down, unidentified; thinking was only staring at a blank wall and hoping to see a pattern. It was there, but she couldn't make it out except out of the corner of her mind's eye. So, turn on the radio....skip until the stations start over...nothing on. Back to silence.

It was the same thing that drove her to watch the news until bedtime or catch up on her latest BBC series episode, or else look for something new to keep her occupied: anything to avoid the silence and solitude where one is simply ans starkly alone with one's thoughts, feelings, prayers, mind --trying somehow to fill ... what? The emptiness, maybe.

You make it sound so melodramatic, like you're just--depressed and miserable. What is it, though? It isn't nothing. It's not like I'm totally happy, either. Just that gnawing, pestering something.

But if you can't make sense of something, you ignore it; what's the use of sitting there and letting an indeterminate discontent, unrest -- whatever it is -- torture you with no point and no progress as a result? Solitude sometimes feels like an enemy.

And finally the threats of the lowering sky and buffeting wind were fulfilled. The floodgates of heaven were opened, in increments, and drop, drop-drop, patter, thrum, roar --clap of thunder. She jumped, started her wipers waving furiously, headlights on. Something about that storm brought relief, or maybe a kind of catharsis that could not be put in words or even thoughts. Here was something that was more eloquent for its wordlessness. Like deep crying out to deep, or like a mother rocking a whimpering child. Both, somehow, wrapped into one, the terrifying and majestic fury of a storm with all the comfort of a mother's embrace.

When she pulled into the driveway, she turned off the engine but did not get out. Silent, she closed her eyes and felt the pounding, whooshing, thundering. She took off her shoes and let her head fall back against the headrest. No answer in the storm, but the message was clear: be still and know that I am. Not a lucid phrase, but it stuck deep, almost achingly so: and for a moment, she waited, still.

Bearer of Burdens

The newly-laden branches of spring,
Outside my window: you are laden with more than leaves.
How many of my musings have you borne,
As I, gazing at your shape and movement,
Have wondered at my life and pondered my work?

How many of my questions, and fears,
How many doubts, griefs, reliefs
Have you taken upon yourself?
So full are you with my musings;
And surely unaware of the weight you bear.

How my thoughts have taken on your shape!
It is as if they found a dwelling in you,
A place in which they could unfold
And untangle from within me, not unburdening,
But always finding in your pattern a path to follow,
A shape to take,
Like water poured into a vessel.

You have not resolved my problems,
But always you have been there,
And their meaning found expression in your curves,
Winding their way, constricting my mind,
Or releasing with the onset of peace.
You, silent, said nothing, took nothing, gave nothing,
But patiently bore the weight.

Thus, I am ever bid to bear my burden
To the only one that can relieve it.
You can only observe, remain patiently
As a backdrop perhaps, or, poetically speaking,
A listener. But never more:
Only one can take the shape of my burdens
And redeem them.
There my road finds its destination.

With My Song

This work of yours I cannot explain;
I cannot fathom its beauty, nor its pain.
In the depths of my heart you have wrought songs
Songs I never knew how to sing; in tears you taught me song.

What now, what arises within me?
What is this strange thing, this thing of beauty
This thing of pain, of joy, this thing I cannot understand?
Out of the mouths of babes...out of the hearts of the young,
You have brought perfect praise.

For you have taught me to sing where I might only have seen despair:
There
You have shown me greater beauty than I have ever known.
And with my song I will praise you.

The Suffering Servant

Isaiah 53: "Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the LORD to bruise him; he has put him to grief; when he makes himself an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand; he shall see the fruit of the travail of his soul and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous; and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

In Weakness

Who am I, my savior,
but a tangle of confused desires and fears,
weaknesses and confusion?
Sometimes I feel how little I know myself
with a pain that reaches to my gut.

And the last I want is pity;
The situation warrants none.
Perhaps solidarity,
For I know I am not alone.
But I do not always feel it.

Alone, I want companionship;
With others I fear to lose myself;
In you I have my being.
But it's hard to see sometimes.
I stand still in a tempest.

Buffeted, I am not conquered,
But I wish the storm would cease;
In the calm, the quiet weighs in on me.
Yet sometimes I laugh with the sun --
Sometimes, too, I laugh with the thunder,
Though through tears (or are they raindrops?)

This too, you say, is for my good.
I believe; help my unbelief.
But surely this, too, is to pass?
Surely I will see a victory,
Surely, at least, I will no longer wait alone.
Soon, or later, will I have found my place,
Roots of cedars to stay me in tempests?

For this I pray:
Faith when I doubt,
Humility when I am proud
Repentance for insincerity
Pure love and not self-love
Love of you before all else
And blessings only from your hand.

Surely I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,
And with my song I will praise you.

Amen.

Lenten Meditations, 8: The Shame of Love

I've noticed that there is a certain subculture that takes a particular pleasure out of sacrilegious mock-representations of Christ, particularly him crucified. An while, on one hand, it makes me ill to see such a beautiful thing treated like so much garbage (and worse), on the other hand, a beautiful irony shines through it. The very attempt to defeat the work of the Cross by debasing it is self-defeating: for self-abasement is the glory of the Cross. It is as though these people never think about the fact that Jesus defeated the power of any possible mockery of himself, because he chose the most debasing path possible, voluntarily. It is precisely in this that we, as Christians, glory in: that through the horrendous shame of a Roman crucifixion, the most painful but also the most shameful death possible -- by the very fact of his mockery and crown of thorns, his exposure, the open mockery of the crowds -- precisely by submitting to this, through just this suffering of shame, was Christ elevated to the highest place in existence and his name made the Name above all names. The crucifixion was an event saturated with mockery, with defilement of the holy, with obscene debasement of what was good. And Jesus, for the sake of love, accepted it all. They do no more than echo the original event, the thing that made it what it is.

But the reason it was a glorious act is because it was an act of God himself: the Resurrection proved that. By the Resurrection Jesus made manifest his Divine nature in a way not yet done, and through that his power over not only death, but shame. It cannot touch him; his very glory is to be found in his extreme humility -- the dignity of his extreme and voluntary humility, to the point of death. By this act he proved himself Creator, showed himself to be beyond the power of any evil power because he was in fact Love itself. Love, which is not afraid to descend to the very lowest depths of servitude, which seeks no vainglorious recognition -- sacrificial love. Of this the world knows nothing, and for this reason it foolishly thinks it has won a victory by ridiculing the Crucified Christ.

Ridicule was what characterized his crucifixion; and through this pain and mockery, he won the victory, the greatest victory that ever has been or ever will be won. The image of the Crucified Christ is an image of Christ's acceptance of mockery for the sake of Love: in a certain sense, these recent mockeries only throw it into greater light. They lend applause to the Victory of Love over the defilement shame.

Love glories in self-abasement, because its joy is to be victorious, and its victory is to serve. Its authority and terrible majesty comes just at the point where it has descended below the lowest of all to serve them -- at that point has it shown itself to be far exalted above anything imaginable. Because it is humble, Love puts us on our faces before it and we cry, "Woe is me, for I am undone!"

This does nothing to excuse sacrilege; for the Cross is a holy and pure event. It is so because of Who underwent it. And yet we see that we are at a sort of paradox: for, on one hand, it is a terrible offense to deliberately debase something holy. This is most certainly what some are seeking to do, and it is shameful. Yet the shame is entirely imputed to the offenders: what they try to do to the Sacrifice of Love, they merely have done to themselves. They reveal the state of their own soul, because they reveal how far it has stooped and what it has embraced. This sort of self-abasement knows nothing of love, for it glories in the destruction of what is good. And yet the primary good that is thereby destroyed is often the last thing they had in mind: themselves.

Yet Christ was not beneath embracing the shame of his mockers which, unbeknownst to them, was displayed for all to see in the Body of Christ Crucified -- Christ, who took the shame upon himself, along with the sin and the pain of the world. Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

The purity of Christ is untouchable, for he is Love: Love is untouchable, but it can paradoxically be touched and thereby moved to compassion. This is its glory: in being touched by the lowest of the low, in descending beneath even them to bear them up by bearing their shame, Love shows its untouchable purity. Love fears nothing, not the worst shame, for it is far more powerful. The Cross was a shameful event, but the Love that underwent it was never thereby shameful. This is Christ, who was not above undergoing shame for the shameless. This is why the humiliated Christ cried out to his Father on behalf of his mockers, "Father, forgive them -- they know not what they do." For he knew all too well what they did, and how terrible a crime it was. Yet he also knew their small-minded foolishness, and he knew above all that he had accepted abasement at their hands voluntarily. Yes, he knew full well what a terrible crime it was. But he is Love; this was the sacrifice of Love. And this Love was not above serving even his mockers at the hour when their mockery won for the world salvation at His hands. How, how is this thing possible? Certainly not by our sin, but by the work of Christ, who made use of those actions.

This is why it is both a terrible crime and Love's greatest glory to be mocked. Because through this He saved the world; the world merely showed how badly it needed saving by its mockery of Love. And the world had a hand in the Victory of Love in spite of itself. Everything winds up serving Love, because Love serves all.

What can we do but worship Love and beg mercy for ourselves and for those who prefer to spit in his face? For he is not above saving them: he is above loving no one. He is Love; he is thereby undefeatable: bow down and worship, for this is your God.

Lenten Meditations, 7: Incarnation

We will not give a love-starved person the remedy by merely telling them how much they need love. We will give it to them if we give them love.

We will not give a Christ-starved person the remedy merely by telling them how much they need Christ. We will give it to them if we give them Christ.

You might ask -- how on earth are we supposed to do that without telling them about him?

It's not that we shouldn't tell them about him, but human words are not the final remedy, however true they are. The only remedy is the Word of God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

Sometimes we may be tempted to think that if we preach a good enough sermon, people's hunger will be filled, their problem solved. But if we think that our words are enough to give someone life, we are mistaken -- however true they may objectively be. The only thing that gives life is God, and so if we rely instead on ourselves to argue them into life, or talk them into life, we risk leaving them more alone than when they started.

Why? Are we not supposed to preach the Gospel? Certainly, all the time. But words are not always the first way to preach it, especially when words come at the expense of listening. If we reduce the Gospel to only a verbally preached word, we risk taking the humanity out of it, the heart out of it, the love out of it -- Christ out of it. Love is acted out and given, not merely talked about -- though it is worth talking about. People need not merely our words, but the Word; not mere talk about the Love made flesh, but Love Himself made flesh. When you look at someone and think, "What they need is Christ," you are right. But how are they going to be given him? Their heart is starving for love, and Christ himself saw that the only way to finally bring us that love was by becoming flesh. So if we reduce Christ to a mere concept we're trying to convince others of, we are in danger of missing the point and causing more harm than good. Love is Incarnational: Christ has irrevocably shown us that. We need to bring them Christ -- Christ is what they need, and only Christ will fill them. Not just words, but the Word made flesh.

But how are we supposed to do that? We're not Christ--are we? We can't be Christ -- can we? Christ became Incarnate once and for all; but in you he seeks to become incarnate every single day. You are a little Christ: your call is to let Christ live through you. In other words, you are called to let Love become incarnate in you. You give people Christ by being Christ to them; you are Christ to people by being love to them in the name of Christ. But Love gives everything and expects nothing in return. Love gives sacrificially: it does not loan. Paul insists that without love, the most extravagant acts (or words) for the Gospel are worthless -- we must take note. Only what is fueled by Love will remain in the end. The rest will be consumed by fire.

We live for love, because Love died for us. Now we are called to do the same for others.