To the ones that have squeezed the universe into a ball

“Why don’t you ever come see me anymore?”

or

“Baby, why haven’t you called me yet?”

or 

“Where were you?”

Days go by so fast. It’s easy to get lost in the rushing and busyness. It’s even easy to get lost in the times of rest. Taking a day off makes that day go by faster than any other day. I’m not saying anything new here. This is old news. We all make lists and forget lists and make other lists to remember our previous lists and on and on and on.

But then there are the times when it doesn’t matter what list we make or re-make. It doesn’t matter anymore. Failure sets in. We read the obituaries or check our voicemail the next day or see the betrayed in the grocery store line. 

And there we are. We can’t find any words, because words would mean excuses and excuses would be admitting that we don’t care in the way we said we would. Or we can’t find the words because telling the truth is hard. Because telling a hurting human being that something was more important than their world feels like stealing the last breath from a dying man.  And to admit that would be to admit that we failed. 

***

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

“Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man keep this man from dying?”

And he is moved and he weeps. 

Maybe he wept because he felt deeply for Mary and Martha. Probably.

Maybe he wept because he truly loved Lazarus and it’s hard to find a friend. Likely.

Maybe he wept because, as Frederick Buechner suggests, he felt deeply sad that we live in a world were people die, when that’s not what they intended when they made it. Perhaps.

Maybe he wept because he knew that he could have kept this man from dying. I hope so.

***

These days, I’m more likely to keep a running list of the things I didn’t do. 

The scarf I’ve yet to finish.
The dinner with my family I missed.
Every day that I do not write to or go visit my sister in jail.
The funeral that I missed.
And the other funeral I missed. 
The cock that crowed for the third time.

And it pulls at me. 

I hope Jesus weeps for me.

***

I’m don’t think I’m suggesting that Jesus failed here. But what I am suggesting is that as we mourn our failures, we are in solidarity with a man who some 2000 years ago wept at his friends grave because he was simply too late. 

And I’m saying that Peter, the believed founder of the Church, set the tone for thousands of  years of failure and heartache when that cock crowed for the third time.

But the stories don’t end there. Because Lazarus is called out of his grave by a man with bloodshot eyes from his weeping. Because Peter did so much more.

***

The Old Guitarist is one of Picasso’s oldest paintings. At the age of 22, moved by the plight of the downtrodden, he paints a portrait of an old blind guitarist. He painted this during his Blue Period. Picasso painted his Blue Period paintings after the suicide of one of his dear friends. This was a period marked by depression and pain for Picasso. I stared at this blind, haggard man for a long while today. He was in the Kimbell Art Museum. He was one of the last of the beautiful things I saw. He was sitting, waiting, around a corner in the last room I walked in. In the midst of a time that has been weighed down by failure and regret, the blind guitarist was waiting for me, waiting for me to join him. And I wept.

I wept for the guitarist and for Picasso and his friend. I wept for the whisky priest in Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory. I wept for Peter, Lazarus, and Mary. I wept for all the things I have left undone and for all the things I will leave undone. I wept for all the things that 23 years of avoiding will lead to.

It’s difficult to walk away from that kind of solidarity.

***

The tricky thing about failure is seeing hope in failure. Humanity is marked by failure, but mostly it’s a community that is marked by failure. A community in solidarity.

Jesus wept and we fail and we weep and we paint.

And then we knit.

 

How Christians are taking Christ out of Christmas

Every year it’s the same thing. In my attempts to be all inclusive, I’ll wish people in passing to have a “Happy Holidays,” but every year, 7 out of 10 times, the greeting I receive back will be a “Merry CHRISTmas” through gritted teeth. 

Cool.

And every year, I hear of countless campaigns of people wishing to “take back Christmas” as if it were some territory that Christians need in their Holiday imperialism. 

Cool.

The holidays are spent debating about which group of people are going to hell the fastest this year based on how they celebrate the holidays. 

More often than not, these debates are arguments that shut people up, out, and off.

Because Santa is probably Satan and Christmas trees are phallic symbols that probably allude to some pagan ritual in the good ol’ days. And when people say Merry X-Mas, they’re just getting rid of Christ (too bad we all don’t know Greek). And every time someone says “Happy Holidays”- well, they probably worship the devil. 

But let’s really think about that for a second.

Every time we glare at the checkout person who says “Happy Holidays” or even when we smile back, yet glare in our hearts, aren’t we denying Christ? 

We’re quick to forget, first, that this world is beautiful and created by a Creator who declared it very good. And that this time of year, we mark the beginning of something different, something new. We look, with hopeful eyes. for the coming of the Christ, whose Incarnation reminded us what it means to be human, to be good, and to be in communion with God and others. 

The Incarnation should remind us that in this time, we can say “Happy Holidays” and truly mean it. It should remind us that we can join in with the world and sing stupid Christmas carols about reindeer and elves, and yet somehow magically maintain our faith. 

Because, it is a beautiful world and it’s good to be together, and being together in this beautiful world shouldn’t only affirm out faith, but I kind of think it should deepen it. Because if there’s anything that Christmas does, it shows us the importance of being together.

Isn’t that what the Church does too?

Quiet Saturday

“Even if I come back, even if I died, is there some idea to replace my life?”

Before the light of Easter, and after the dark of the Crucifixion, there was the quiet Saturday. The day that the followers of Christ mourned and the day that proclaimed the failure of the cross and the triumph of death.

I try to imagine what I would have done on this day. I would like to think that I would try to encourage my brothers and sisters, telling them to trust Jesus, that surely this wasn’t the end, but in reality, I would have despaired. And rightly so. Why should I not despair when the man who I had dedicated my life to follow was dead? Why should I not mourn when He was in the tomb? Why should I not curse my life when I had spent the past few years as the poorest of the poor and hungriest of the hungry? The truth is, the disciples probably thought that it was the end. Some may have been thinking about what action to take next, what teachings to try to remember and teach, which disciple would be the most adequate leader.

And there would be those of us who would wring their wrists. Those of us who would experience denial, or anger, or bargaining.

This suspicion is not without reason. When Christ did rise and appear to his disciples, they were not expecting him in the least bit. Thomas had to put his hands in the holes, and some realized who he was when he broke the bread. The conversations of the two on the Road to Emmaus probably did not consist of a quiet discussion of his promised return. They, instead, tell Jesus that they thought the one who the leaders crucified would be the one to redeem Israel. Would there be exhaustion in their voices and tears in their eyes? Would they sigh and shake their head? Then, they tell him that the tomb is empty, but that they did not see Jesus. The irony is that they are actually saying this to Jesus!

But that was not on Saturday.

So as we anticipate the return of love, let the hollow sink in for just a while. Let the despair and the thirst quiet your soul, so that when the light of morning comes and Christ is beside you on the road, you may rejoice and rejoice fully.

On January 29, 2013

Tomorrow is Lucy’s birthday, as well as the anniversary of her death. So many things have changed and happened in this one year. We’ve been sad a lot. We’ve been happy a lot. We’ve been tired a lot. We’ve been busy a lot. We’ve been quiet a lot. But we HAVE been. We have been and we are and we will be. 

Driving home late one night from a celebration with our friends, Lucy’s mother told us, “At least we’re alive. That’s something to be thankful for.” 

Yes, that is something to be thankful for. Because, when it comes down to it, it is what it is, and God stays the same.  

Grieving is strange and hard. We all grieve differently. Some of us weep. Some of us stare at the wall. Some fight and scream. Some try to grasp any understanding available. And some of us are quiet. And we all grieve for different things. The loss of the hope of a new life. The absence of something we anticipated so anxiously. The broken heart of a dearest friend and sister. The helplessness of the loss of control, or maybe the realization that control mostly never existed. But grieving is an incredible and undeniable mark of our existence. We are incredibly human and we know the weight and wanting of our humanity when we grieve. Our minds and hearts and spirits and bodies groan and heave and ache for things lost or never found. And we grieve. 

But not without hope. Never without hope. Hope is a tricky word. We see hope as far off, as an abstract thought, as an impracticality, as a theory. But when Paul says we do not grieve without hope, he has a very concrete thing in mind. He is telling us that we do not grieve without certainty. We are sure when we hope. 

And a year later, this is finally believable. Because we’re alive. Because after the mornings of not wanting to get out of bed, after the desires to tear the ground apart, after realizing we have no control, we’re alive. It is what it is and God stays the same. 

And we’ll go right on living. 

To the families of Brownwood, Texas (and everyone else) on Thanksgiving Day

To the families of Brownwood, Texas on Thanksgiving Day–

“I’m tired of his shit, so I’m not going back.” My second oldest sister said, as she shoved her suitcase in the trunk of my yellow mustang. “I think this is for the best. He won’t let me see the kids, but I’ll get on my feet and get custody.”

This is not what we are told Thanksgiving is supposed to look like. This is not what we are told thanksgiving is supposed to look like. We are left at tables with empty chairs and broken pieces and painful words, spoken either in spite or honesty.

To the families of Brownwood, Texas on Thanksgiving Day–

Holidays can be so hard. We wonder what there is to be thankful for when our nephews are in other states, or our sisters are in jail, or our friends live without knowing what peace feels like and the mothers we love live without knowing why they pray anymore. We wonder what there is to be thankful for when we don’t know how to feed our families when so many are feasting, or when we don’t even know where our families are. We wonder what there is to be thankful for when we don’t even have families to wonder about.

In Greek, eucharist, simply means “thanksgiving” and in Hebrew, the word for thankfulness is derived from the word yada, which means “to know.” To know.  I think about that as I kiss my housemates’ sons goodbye before they leave for Thanksgiving dinner, the first Thanksgiving since their sister died. There wasn’t a single one of us that didn’t want to claw the dirt eleven months ago and pry open that case and cry out to God to make some miracle, to ask Lazarus to pray for us, to ask the son of the widow to come comfort us. To know. I think about that as my seven-year-old niece tells me that she forgives her mom for being in jail this year, and she grabs my hand and tells me that everybody makes mistakes, and that it’s better to just forgive. To know. I think about that as my oma tells stories about how wonderful my father treated my step-mom when they were dating, how wonderful he treats her now, fifteen years later. To know. I think about that as my brother-in-law shakes his head and says he is giving up.

Yada, yada, yada. 

To know, to acknowledge, to lift with reverence. I am thankful that I can lift my hands with reverence, right after wringing my wrists in anxiety and pain.

As I cleared the table and put the pies in the fridge, I could hear my father muttering under his breath, “Yada, yada, yada.” I know that God is here, and for that I am thankful.

To the families of Brownwood, Texas on Thanksgiving Day–

I am with you.
To the sisters and brothers in (the sanctuary of) the prison system, I am with you.
To the mothers and fathers, praying and working (ora et labora) away from their families, I am with you.
To the ones that are sleeping all day, to work all night or to just simply do something other than drinking (sabbath rest to you) I am with you.

Know that my door is open. Know that the table is set.

Come to the table
you who are tired
you who are hurting
you who are done
you who are hungry
you who are thirsty
you who are full
and you who are unable.

Come to the table, we’ll take a eucharist of stories and tears. We’ll have a Lord’s supper of pies and bourbon or honey bread and chamomile tea. Maybe someone will say the wrong thing, or someone will show up late, but we won’t mind, because we forgive much when we are forgiven much. And we will listen to the stories, and we’ll cry, and we’ll laugh and we’ll be two or more gathered. And we’ll eat, and we’ll drink. And we’ll pray.

And we’ll yada, yada, yada.