I want to say so many things to
This man who does not really see
“This little girl”
But I know You
See her, see me, see them
All the little ones who
Need a God like You
Take my sins away, heal my wounds, stay until I am well, bring justice in your wings, never blame the victim, never stop searching for treasure
You
who were, who are, who always will be
Just You,
and “this little girl”
About a month ago I spent a day dragging my family through a crash course in coronavirus. It was appalling.
We put too much emphasis on testing. Testing would be great only if there were limitless tests and the tests were far more reliable than they are. If that were the case then we should all follow a protocol of weekly prophylactic testing.
Not feasible right now.
A few years ago my family started to play a modified version of a very complicated fictional tennis game from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. His version was very apocalyptic (fitting); ours was as well but with a fraction of the complexity.
In our version two teams of as many people as you have (evenly divided, of course) face each other on either side of the net. We divided as many balls as we could muster and started hitting them across the net relentlessly. The opposing team did the same. At a predetermined point (like music chairs), we would pause the game. The team with fewer balls on their side won that round and then we would continue.
Great cardio workout. Quickly exhausting.
That is coronavirus. We will all face an onslaught of a relentlessly moving, mutating virus which can spread quickly, if not effortlessly, through contact and fomite transmission.
Eschaton is a fun game.
This is not. But if I know one thing about how to “win” at eschaton, it is organize your team and don’t stop lobbing the balls back across the net.
We don’t play eschaton right now. Our tennis court is closed. That is a good thing. The best way to “win” at this is to assume we are all spreaders and keep us all
Six feet apart.
Pray. Pray because our lives depend on it. Imagine what a simple game of eschaton would look like if
God were clearly on
The winning side.
Matthew 17:20-21 KJV
[20] And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. [21] Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.
In the stories of Jesus’ public ministry there are accounts of people who have been healed of skin diseases which would have set them apart from their communities due to infection prevention measures codified by the Mosaic law.
In some of these stories, Jesus heals them and gives them permission to not tell people they were ever infected with these diseases.
I think this injunction was made (at least in part) to allow them to have a new life, unencumbered by prejudice.
When my family moved to a new place a few years after we found out that our adopted son had sexually assaulted some of our children, I realized that this was our chance to “start anew.”
We had pushed for legal consequences for Charles. We had a good counselor in the aftermath. We moved to protect the children. We were open with everyone in our previous community.
But we chose to continue
To tell our story.
The result has been fascinating and lonely.
There is a lot of prejudice about victims of sexual abuse and their families, maybe especially in churches.
We could be contagious?
Maybe
Or maybe it is our openness that scares them.
Either way, we call it “the island.” We live on an island
An island made of truth and pain and loneliness
With a single, unwavering resident
The one who heals us.
The one who knows this quiet place.
The one who tells us the truth will set us free.
My family is healthy, happy, and stable because we have never tried to hide
The story of our grief
But it can be quiet
On the island.
First of all, let me reiterate that I do not expect you two to go the distance–not that prophetic considering where you are today and the inauspicious nature of this ceremony of disaster.
Most weddings are full of shi…..ps, little paper boats people fold along seams, scribble on, and push out onto whatever river they believe in. They write platitudes for the pain, use costly words all wrong.
Then the little boats float off
Leaving you there at the altar, no more substantial than cake topper avatars
Not ready for this:
Loves fierce resolve
To begin and end/end and begin
Together.
I have sometimes heard
The voice of God
remarkably salty
And full of fire
He is both
Placable and implacable in His anger
The first with sullen men
Then unsparing with his only Son
No siblings without the unendurable
No blind and lame set free
Without his blood for me
1 Corinthians 13:1 NIV
[1] If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
She dots the house with sticky notes scrawled with litany reminders–cupped in His hands, asleep in the boat, keep your eyes on Jesus, you are my “Wonderwall,”
As the preacher men go silent, as they are oft to do, in their complacency and fear
As though any of us can escape the
Light-blast of the Divine.
Ecclesiastes 4:1-2 KJV
[1] So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. [2] Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive.
I generally chafe at the wisdom of Solomon. I want to measure my “wise guys” by their lives–faithfulness, sobriety, compassion. S-man seems to fall abysmally short on all categories.
When I read this verse from Ecclesiastes it resonates with my own sense of the fragility and tenuousness of life, but then I cannot help that Solomon had so many powers the ordinary dude did not have to:
Stop oppression
Comfort the bereaved
And use his power as a monarch to generally improve his culture
He had the power to live a different life, to show a different way. I am no king, but I will be judged by how much better or worse I use my power
To change things.
I once knew a man who said it should be the parable of the prodigal father, which, of course, is true. We are not very prodigal with much but our father’s treasure.
I have been the younger son. I have been the older son. Jesus knows that we are all really not great sons–judge-y or profligate or both, so he gives a story where the two great characters are an old man and a fatted calf.
The man who saves the world makes himself the main course at a feast thrown for a loser.
I am that loser. The shining moment of clarity in any human life is when we realize we are all the prodigal child.
And so we should know the rules for prodigals–
I have done nothing to deserve this inheritance I have squandered
I have made little account for the days my Father has grieved on my behalf
But he never stops hoping I will come home.
What pride, what fear, what foolishness can withstand the power of love?
Luke 15:17-20 KJV
[17] And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! [18] I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, [19] And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. [20] And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.
Recently I have started “meditating” on the good friend. I put meditation in quotes because it can seem monastic and old fashioned, could just say thinking about.
But I say meditation because the particular focus for me is the life-long friendship God calls us to pursue.
God calls us to pursue.
What is a good friend?
Who qualifies as a good friend?
How does one be a good friend?
What do good friends do together?
How much time does good friendship require?
Is there a schlepping requirement?
All these things are on the big stone table of this miraculous friendship God has called me to through the doorway of Jesus.
Very Christiany, I know.
But then I also know I could not draw close to the Holy Divine if I did not have
A friend like Jesus.
Once upon a time the Treasure of the world entire told a story about treasure in a field, treasure within treasure, a kingdom in a kingdom in a seemingly arbitrary object, a field of the whole world
I remember when these angry men were children, lovable children, and now they behave as though they still don’t know
You are the treasure
The King and his Kingdom is the treasure.
And if that were not enough, what will a man do if he (gains the whole world)
And loses his own soul?
Carrying Light 