All shall be well,
and all shall be well,
and all manner of thing
shall be well. — Julian of Norwich
I had a migraine last night. The pain chased me and I hid. I buried myself in darkness, wishing for unconsciousness or death. But my love was waiting by my bedside, and in a single moment, I awoke from the nightmare to the light of his face. He gazed at me in perfect love– perfect love casts out fear—and the whole world was made new. It was a new age, and there existed nothing but love, and this love would never fail. The weight of every doubt, fear, and worry vanished. The strife of the past was forever banished, the future unquestionably bright. Who could have known that I had been so plagued by darkness before? Who could have imagined the weight of sin before it was removed?
In the perfection of peace, I cried. In the morning, I still cry: Oh Heaven, return to earth.
You could think of sunlight
Glancing off the minarets,
You could think of guavas and figs
And the whole marketplace filled
With the sumptuous din of haggling,
But you could not think of Alexandria
Without the sea, or the sea,
Turquoise and shimmering, without
The white city rising before it.
Even on the back streets
You could feel it on your skin,
You could smell it in the aroma
Of dark coffee, spiced meat.
You looked at the sea and you heard
The wail of an Arab woman singing or praying.
If, as I can now, you could point
To the North Atlantic, swollen
And dark as it often is, you might say,
“Here lies Wrath,” or “Truly God is great.”
You could season a Puritan soul by it.
But you could fall into the Mediterranean
As though you were falling into a blue dream,
Gauzy, half unreal for its loveliness.
It was deceptively calm and luxurious.
At Stanley Bay, you could float
On your back and watch the evening sun
Color the city a faint rose.
You could drown, it was said,
Almost without knowing it.
“Alexandria, 1953″ by Gregory Djanikian, from Falling Deeply into America.
The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor, Nov. 17, 2009
“I awoke this morning to glory reaching in my window and holding my eyes fast. It was caught thick in the trees like a glittering fog, and all the gold made the sky blush a royal purple. It was all I knew for the first few moments of the day. I sat silently in deep gaze for an eternity before I realized the vision had faded.”
I wrote this freshman year, in the midst of much doubt and discontent, and of questioning my identity. It seems in times of deepest confusion, the sun shows itself as a strange symbol of hope. Sophomore year, I was lonely and unsatisfied, but I woke up each morning to the sun rising above the mountains. That sunrise carried me through the semester. And once, it brought me back to faith in God.
Today that sun revealed itself again. Through my first floor window I could see the whole world turned gold. I pushed back the blinds and admired the vibrancy of the sky. I went back to my work. I pushed back the blinds again. I threw on my hoodie and shoes and hurried into the cold air for a better view. In the sky, purple fought orange and pushed back the blue; a whole crowd had gathered to watch. And, as if there weren’t enough extravagant colors already, a crisp rainbow arched opposite the sun.
As the brilliance began to fade, I walked back to my room feeling joyful about being a sucker for such beauty. It’s good to admit I enjoy something, and it’s good to join with others in its awe. Somehow, glory reaches into my troubled heart, and in the eternity of its beauty, gives me rest.
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. – Ecclesiastes 3:1
My great-grandmother died last week. I had not known her well; what I knew of her made me uncomfortable. Her death was unexpected, but not untimely.
My mom had called to pass the time on a long trip home from Georgia; she mentioned grandma’s hip in passing. “The doctor can’t perform surgery. Her heart is too weak,” she said. “He says sixty percent of the elderly die shortly after breaking a hip.” She paused. “So it could be a week; it could be a year.” But I thought little of it, either too optimistic, or in denial that anyone I know could die.
When I was in elementary school, her husband, my great-grandfather, died of Alzheimer’s. His yelling had terrified me. And my neighbors died within months of one another. They used to give me candy out of a crystal dish; we would talk on their pink velveteen settee. Two distant cousins committed suicide within the span of a year: Michael in a drunken game of Russian roulette initiated by the father, Luke by a dive from a rooftop. I remember the wailing. I remember inventing stories for myself: Luke made a robot to look like himself and sent it off the edge; it was all a funny joke. Luke wasn’t really in that casket. He’d show at the wake. Everyone would be happy. It wasn’t real, it wasn’t real. And I had never met him.
My mom left a voicemail while I was in class. As I walked to lunch, I heard her voice say, “I need you to find out your school’s bereavement policy.” I stopped walking, felt my stomach tie up. Was I ready for this?
Later that day, I lamented my indifference to my boyfriend. “I’m too young to grieve,” I said, feeling vaguely philosophical. “Life is still ahead of me. I don’t understand what it is like to lose a loved one; I am still looking forward to gaining loved ones. My grandparents are no longer holding onto this life as tightly as I. How can I understand their loss when we are in such different seasons of life?” Seasons of life, yes. “A time to weep, and a time to laugh,” said Solomon, “a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” There it is, I thought, Solomon knows. It is not my time to cry.
I was set to leave for the funeral, a four day weekend eight hours north. As the news travelled around campus, I began receiving sympathy and hugs. I never knew how to respond. Once I started rambling about my great-grandmother’s schizophrenia and tendency to call restraining orders on her loved ones. “I wasn’t very fond of her,” I said. Everyone stared. A friend offered his love and I lashed out, “Why is everyone so sorry for me?” Did they not know that it is not my time to grieve?
The next day, I stood with my heels stuck in the grass, passing out pink and white carnations to a small group of relatives I hadn’t seen in years. My mom gave the eulogy. She told a story of a strong and committed woman who grew up in the Great Depression without knowing the great historical event was even occurring. “We just worked the farm and made do with what we had,” she said. She remained faithful to her husband for fifty-six years of marriage after only two months of dating, a challenge for anyone, and especially me, as I look toward marriage in the hazy future. I learned about her addiction to Coca-Cola when it still contained traces of cocaine, her pen pal from across the pond before facebook or the internet were even conceived, and her continuous scolding of her little boy, my grandfather, even up to her last days. And about the last words she spoke: I love you. Unprecedented words from a heart I had only known as hard. I recognized her humanity for the first time; she gained my respect. This woman, my great-grandmother, lived her life. And I cried.
Maybe funerals are not only about the wailing and the loss. My vague philosophical drivel betrayed as much denial as my childhood robot story did years ago. But honoring the dead, I learned, is also about the affirmation of life. As in celebrating birth or marriage, we affirm the value of life. Maybe a funeral is about both the mourning and the dancing. And I do not need to be afraid of the mourning. Thank you, Yahweh, for life.
When I returned home, I was still receiving hugs and condolences. But now I was content to give a nod and a quiet word of thanks. Perhaps these people had understood what I had not all along: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven… a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.”
Suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin!’ In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner returns to God [Luke 15:8-10]
I have been missing my check card for about a month. No, it wasn’t stolen; it is somewhere in the house. Lost. I have searched many times to no avail. This morning, I am preparing for camp: cleaning, packing, getting myself in the right mindset, trying to take on an attitude of rest and openness to God. My lost check card has by now acquired some friends, so I sat down to make a list of all the items I am missing. I was anticipating the relief that would come with checking each item off the list, and I was about to make a focused effort to find them. I was feeling like the woman with the lost coin. The list is as follows:
- check card
- driver license
- peace earrings (which I had recently recieved for my birthday)
- earbuds
And then something prompted me to write:
- eddy
Odd, yes. It struck me, suddenly: How much more would I delight to be united with him again? This real human being whom I love deeply: How could anything compare? Yes, I get it God. I mean a lot to you. Oh, you want me back?
This new insight resonating inside my chest, I got up to resume my search. First place I looked, I found the check card. No guarantees on the rest of the list (especially the latter entry), but I got the point. Thanks, God.
…but while she was still a long way off, her father saw her and was filled with compassion for her; he ran to his daughter, threw his arms around her and kissed her… [Luke 15:20]
Last semester I churned out over three hundred lines of poetry. It amazes me these days. No, not because it was some impossible feat (though it nearly felt so), or because those poems stand as fine architecture of the English language (they do not); it amazes me because I have created nothing this summer. My drive to create lost itself somewhere in the mechanism of minimum wage. I am not feeling so well.
I twiddle through the summer months. My adrenals have exhausted. My hormones are getting trippy. My thought life withered weeks ago. I distinctly remember feeling whole. I remember– I am not. What happened? Is it really just the hours of sweeping for five dollars and sixty-five cents, wait, $6.55? What’s happening to my body? My mind? What’s the connexion there?
I never much cared for that silly philosophical problem. Oh mysterious Christ.
Joy was meant for two. Oh Eddy, I miss you.
It has been a few weeks. Let us reassess.
I work at a movie theater, in the concession stand. It’s a very glamorous job. At this particular theater, the popcorn “butter” is self-serve, on either end of the counter. It’s a vat of flavored oil with a pump. So when customers ask me for an extra “butter” on their popcorn, I tell them it’s self serve. You should see the mess at that end of the counter. Grease spilled everywhere and napkins stuck in it. Sometimes I get the bags back for a refill and my hands get covered in the oil all over the outsides of the bag. I’m an expert at greasing up popcorn; this is my second theater job. These people don’t have skills. If Christ is self-serve, I’m making a mess at the counter.
If I want to know Jesus, my religious background tells me, I need to spend time on my own reading the Bible, and praying. It’s as simple as that. Just pump it yourself, and Christ will dispense. It’s a rather simple matter. Well, they are right: Prayer is simple enough. But praying is not. I’m making a mess of it. I think I’m spiritually disabled. Only, I suspect I’m not the only one.
Let me explain. I’ve never been able to focus my attention long enough. My thoughts go everywhere and before I know it, I’m no longer intending myself toward God. Perhaps worse, I pray to an abstract idea. I don’t pray to a person. And most crippling, chances are rare that I actually believe Christ is (1) present with me (2) really cares or (3) delights in me. Put all that together? A very clumsy attempt at intimacy. You wouldn’t believe we’ve been together for 14 years. Something is wrong here. I tell people that I’m frustrated in my relationship with God. They tell me all I need to do is start praying and reading on my own. Well, that’s not working. I think I need help.
Help, yes. Self-serve, individualistic Christianity is not working for me. I’m lower than a novice, I admit. And I’m desperately desiring something more. I’ve been promised unity with Christ. I need it. I need him. It’s not about making myself more like Christ. It’s about actually becoming one with him. That is a huge distinction. Think about it. This relationship with Christ is central. It’s everything. And where do I learn to do that?
Praying in my car before work, I feel like the kid who crams before tests but doesn’t really grasp the discipline. I’ll probably get a few right answers, but in reality, Christ does not move me. I am not filled with Christ; I wear him like makeup. He makes me a little prettier before I wash him off for the night. He doesn’t change or move my insides. Well, I’ve had enough of this half-assed religion. I want Christ. In me. All the time.
So where do I turn? Who will help me tame my wandering mind? Who will show me Jesus the person rather than God the triangle? And how am I going to believe in his presence? I’m just not sure my childhood Christianity has the answers for such rudimentary problems. It’s like we assume everyone has made it this far. Or maybe we aren’t dreaming high enough. Becoming united with Christ is a big deal. I think it takes a lot more than what we can serve up ourselves.
Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like where I come from moral progress is the focus. Relationship with Christ is a private, individual matter, and we assume everyone has that just about well covered. After all, it’s so simple. Church is the place we get together to celebrate our personal relationships with God collectively and get challenged to live a better life. Even communion is a private matter; we let individual couples partake in the body and blood on their wedding day. What is the Church? Does it mean anything to us anymore?
I need the church for more than a sermon. If becoming a better person, even more “Christlike”, is the goal, I don’t want to be here anymore. I’ve been steeped in Christian values since birth. I know my manners. What I want is Christ. Who will show me the way?
I’m packing up. I found a scrawled note, undelievered, tucked away in a drawer; it remained from some tragic time. It was full of questions, angst, disappointment, desperation… helplessness. I read halfway down that page, crumpled it in a ball, kissed it goodbye, and tossed it to the garbage. It made me glad. I am a very happy girl.
I wrote a story about Jesus this semester. Actually, I wrote one about the woman he met at the well in Samaria. As I was sketching and drafting the story, I was faced with a choice: write extra dialogue for Jesus, or just stick with what’s written in John 4? But I quickly realized—I just can’t make this guy up. He says the weirdest things. He does the weirdest things. He is such an enigma. I think that sums up how I feel about him. Enigmatic.
We read through Mark this semester. Several times. I’ve spent a lot of time in this book since I’ve been at college. I studied it in New Testament Lit. I translated the whole thing from Greek once. I liked reading it in Greek the best. With Greek you have to slow down, way down. Each individual word begins to bear so much force. You’ve got all this anticipation building up inside you: When are we going to get to that part when… ? When is he going to do…? So we read through Mark this semester, for Worldview Team class. I wasn’t paying attention. I wasn’t skimming, I promise. I was just reading with dry eyes. I’ve forgotten how thrilling it is, and all those scenes and dialogues and parables are making so much less sense than they did two years ago. At the same time, I think I take Jesus much more seriously now, and so I’m starting to get frustrated because he’s such an enigma. Now I want to hear what he says, but on my end, all I’m getting is static.
And yes, that’s frustrating. I mean, Paul was pretty straight to the point. Nice propositional theology there. I can make charts and graphs for that stuff. But Jesus? He speaks with word pictures. That’s what we do for third graders who don’t have any attention span (or ability to think abstractly). Come on Jesus, where’s your highly nuanced theology? Where are your debates with the scholars over penal substitution? Why can’t you just set our doctrine straight? What kind of theologian is this God-man, really? And then I realize his genius. It’s what I’ve been learning in creative writing all semester. Show, don’t tell. Embody ideas in concrete images. Let us experience the philosophy. So Christ is an artist. He’s using his imagination to give image to the abstract, to the invisible God. Perhaps poetry is the best kind of theology, but we are so afraid of art these days. It’s too ambiguous. Not enough logic and propositions for us mechanical folk. Oh God, teach us to see.
Teach me to see. When I was in sixth grade, my youth pastor pulled some dirty trick on the lot of us. He hired some of my peers one Sunday morning; they ran throughout the darkened room before the band began to play their set. They called out, “Jesus is coming! Jesus is coming!” I believed them and I shook in my seat. Jesus… Jesus can’t find me like this. Seven years later I was a freshman at Bryan College, sitting in the back of Intro to Psychology, tired from the early morning, tired from the mistakes I had set in motion thus far in my college career. I was probably translating Mark at the moment my professor called out, “What if Jesus came in this door this morning? What would you do?” I almost cried, because I wanted it so badly. I wanted nothing but to run up to him and embrace him and cry in his arms. Jesus, why are you so far? I wonder what changed. I think I gave up on trying to impress him. I know I’m a pathetic, helpless mess. I just want him to come and tell me he still loves me. Jesus, why are you so far?
Sometimes I imagine that he’ll come to me one day in my bikini-clad, Starbucks drinking body, and say to me, “Go, and stop sinning,” and I’d finally listen, because this time, he’d look me in the eyes and I’d know he was really there, really caring. I just want to touch him, touch the tassels at the edge of his robe. Maybe then I wouldn’t forget all he said and commanded me to do. Maybe I would finally believe. But blessed are those who do not see and still believe.
I don’t know what else to say about him. I just want to know him. And I don’t. He’s just too enigmatic. Maybe I haven’t pulled out my grammatico-historical hermeneutic enough times or spent enough time analyzing his parables, but, I’ve got to believe that he’s more real than what I can read into a text. I’ve got to believe that somehow, so mysteriously, I am becoming one with him. Maybe there is more to this relationship than meets the eye. Maybe not. Jesus, why are you so far?
