In. . .

In all of my inadequacy

I stand,

Eyes cast down,

chin quavering,

salt trails glistening

In all of my paucity

of soul I come,

Weak-willed,

straining to have what I want

and to do what You want

In all of my scarcity

of mind

that streaks my days

with fear and grasping,

I hide from the world

In all of my insufficiency

I kneel,

with downcast eyes

and open hands,

letting go my weak will

Lift up your heads

ye mighty gates!

Be opened,

ye ancient doors!

The King of Glory enters in!

In all of His sufficiency

He stands;

In all of His humility 

He comes,

Emmanuel, God enfleshed

In the fullness of time

He brings love,

filling empty hands

and hearts and minds—

including mine

In my empty

He enters, a seed in the

dark womb, burgeoning 

life, growing light—

the Eternal Dayspring

In the first light of day

He is the spark

divine, disgorging the rich,

feeding goodness to the

starving, my soul included

In Him my soul, too,

rejoices—

In my lonely places,

In the unbearable waiting,

He enters in. . .

Do Not be Afraid

"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid."¹

—Frederick Buechner

These were the words that marked a house fire and the death of a beloved dog for some folks that I met earlier this year. They are the words I wrote under a dark sky and a full moon, a picture I painted for my friend whose dear mom died on Easter morning. They are the words embodied in the juxtaposition of nature’s beauty and nature’s brutality when I was out hiking and found a freshly killed bird on my quiet trail. They are the words I am still clinging to, in hopes of making sense of a friend’s surreal situation. They are the words attempting to hold back my own fears of losing my family. They are the words seeking to reconcile a disappointed hope of healing—a wife and child, parents and a sister, all bereft of a man who was only thirty-four.

But they are only so many words. They don’t stop the darkness from coming. They don’t staunch the wound that death rips through so many whom I know—the wound that I feel, too. That I fear, too. At some point I have to face the reality of death and the loneliness—the isolation—it brings. And words do not fill the hollowed out people we become when death invades our lives. Those true words lie flat on the page, not shedding a bit of light or colour into our greyness. They lie flat, unable to lend us a hand, to pull us out of the mire of the Fall and its effects.

Words can kill and words can heal; but sometimes words are superfluous—flat-lined rather than life-lines. Brokenness doesn’t fit in neat packages or true-but-trite sayings. Brokenness doesn’t fit well anywhere with all its jagged edges lacerating those who get too close. When I can, I hug my friend who lost her mom this year. I try to just listen. I paint or sing to let the pain out. I cry with my friends—and for them, too. I pray the Kyrie often: Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

But how do I face my family’s mortality—or my own—when I am reminded of the brevity of life? I need to learn to take a page from Wendell Berry’s book:

When despair grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my [parents’] lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief.2

“Who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.” I can grieve alongside. I can grieve during. I can grieve after. And being a human rather than an animal, I can have a forethought of grief. I can “pre-grieve,” as I’ve taken to calling it—but should I? Or can I really even pre-grieve? I don’t know what certain losses will be like until they arrive. I won’t know what I miss until I miss it. Why try to grieve now, when I am called to live now? Why let grieving spoil being with my family and my friends, or the beauty all around me? And let me remind you, you who are in the darkness and that infernal greyness of numbed emotions—there are still candles and stars and beacons of beauty. How do I know? I have seen them. Beauty does not stop the ache, nor does it flip a switch, turning on one’s ability to feel. Yet, beauty creeps in—like a flame along a paper-edge, like ever-rising waters, like the grey light of dawn about to to turn golden and crimson—and somehow it lights a beacon of hope. Hope that one day this topsy-turvy brokenness will be made right.

How do I know? Well, Buechner said it better than I could: “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you.” That part tends to get left off the quotation, but how are we not to be afraid—in reverent fear of the beauty and in fear of the terror of the world? We do not fear, because the One who made all things good, who made us, who loves us, walks with us. Why would we fear the darkness if the Light of the World is present with us? It isn’t that we aren’t walking in the darkness, its very fingers clawing at us—but, it cannot overpower us or leave us forever in grey-life. The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot comprehend it—cannot understand the Light, nor overcome it.

When words won’t stem the gushing wounds death opens in the heart, I go for a long hike. It doesn’t fix things or bring people back. It doesn’t change the realities that my family and friends experience due to loss. Yet, sometimes along the way, I am changed by the Maker of the wild things. He is the ever-present Healer. He is with us in the darkness, in the flat grey feeling, in the hollow emptiness, in the moments of meaninglessness. Though we may not feel His presence—and though we may forget, “we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him.”3

Sometimes the Word is wordlessly present. Always He walks alongside us—He is with us—even when we can’t feel His presence. “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you.”

________

1. Buechner, Frederick; Beyond Words (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. 2004) 139

2. Berry, Wendell; "The Peace of Wild Things" retrieved from Poem Hunter

3. Lewis, C. S., Letters to Malcolm (London: Geoffrey Bles Ltd. 1964) 100-101

Resounding Joy

New Year's Day flames out in peach, pink, and periwinkle. The evening air is full of the scent of snow, woodsmoke, and savoury dinner as I step onto my porch to watch the repose of the day. Inside, candles and fresh tulips nod their cheer as the five o'clock greyness rolls over the foothills.

I love winter and fresh starts. I love being up in the frosty night to greet the new day and year with fireworks. I love bright sun spilling in my window and waking eyes, church bells tumbling me out of bed, and the brisk walk to worship. I love blank pages waiting to be filled and new years feeling hopeful in the face of the unknown. At any other time of year, the unknown has a way of frightening me a bit; but at the beginning of the year, the unknown is exhilarating. My expectations are much more malleable in January than they are in June. In the crisp air I feel awake and ready for what God is going to bring. By the wilting heat of summer, I feel drowsy and resigned. 

At the beginning of things there is life and energy and optimism, and those are needed to propel us into another year. The New Year opens in the midst of Christmastide, when the Candle keeping the dark at bay has come—He is the hope of Easter redemption. Winter is dear to me with its variegated grey clouds, heaps of snow around dried grasses, chipper little birds piping their carols, bare branches stark and striking against the stars; its sharp, pure air breathed out in little puffs, in warm fuzzy slippers, copious pots of tea, stew simmering on the stove, hot bread all flaky from the oven. . .Winter is joyous.

Winter is both the cosiest and the most invigorating season. No wonder our fresh start comes just days after the winter solstice and the "dawn of redeeming grace" of the Incarnation. There is something comforting about God slipping into flesh, becoming vulnerable and subject to want, need, and humanity. Yet there is something enlivening, exciting about it, too. Dawn has pushed back those grey skies with honey-coloured sunlight and sharp air in our lungs. There is hope that the Light—whether of day or of moon and stars—will illuminate our path. That the Light will guide us into His ways. 

As I scrambled out of bed this morning I felt inspired, awake. The bells beckoned me to tread the icy path to the little white church around the bend. There my eyes were greeted by life-sized shepherds, wise men, and the Holy Family. I smiled, glad to see them back, as they had been vandalised a couple of Christmases ago. I sneaked in on the opening hymn, my three-year-old niece's favourite song: Joy to the World! I was totally unprepared for the garlands of greenery, the woodland pine and branches, the red berries, and a huge live tree covered in poinsettias and lights. The clean plaster walls looked merry, as did the gentleman I joined in the pew. My winded voice sang out, "Repeat the sounding joy!" and we did. In the Eucharist, like the angels told the shepherds, and the shepherds told everyone about the baby in the feeding trough, we repeated the resounding, reverberating joy that God became flesh and tabernacled among us—that our redemption is nigh.

Adventus

Time dawned and chaos was made order,
man came alive within a garden’s border,
within the garden’s border man died
when he disobeyed God and bowed to pride.


Darkness and chaos twined the world ’round,
but with the curse a promise was found,
up would grow a tender young shoot;
A King would rise from Jesse’s root.


A King would rise like light in the dark,
One unbranded by sin’s cruel mark,
to free his people from the grave,
from sin’s tyranny, which made them slaves.


The Light of the world, mighty to save,
was born bloody and frail in a dark cave;
He grew up, a tender shoot as foretold,
the prophet cried: “The Lamb of God, behold!”


The Dayspring from on high came down
to open darkened eyes, to wear a thorn-crown;
He died bloody and broken on a cross,
Unbranded by sin, but smeared by its dross.


Day dawned anew when the Light rose,
sin’s consequence paid—Death in its throes
was undone within a garden’s border;
man, made alive, chaos, made order.

Swallowing Light

i am alive. i am awake. i am aware of what [life] tastes like.¹

It tastes like meteors. Like sunshine spilling warmth over me as I lie on a mound of woodchips. Like black currant tea and dark chocolate. Like thought-full and heart-felt conversations. Like fear from a film—and fear of the unknown. Like crisp autumn air, scented by leaves crunched. Like solitude under the moon. Like sorrow piercing my heart. And it tastes like Hope springing from Truth. 

May I help you taste Hope for a little while? I want to point you toward Hope Himself; to give you Something real to reach for; to write a truer story than fear would project. I want to breathe colour and Beauty and life into you. 

When I first heard the song quoted above, I thought it said, i am aware of what life tastes like. Turns out it says, of what light tastes like. What does light taste like? Does light taste like sorrow, like life can? Maybe. The song goes on to say:

i want to be. 

i want to be at my best. 

it’s bittersweet, it’s poetry. 

a careful pruning of my dead leaves.

Light is bittersweet. Perhaps because light is necessary for seeing, and seeing is wonderful. Yet living in a broken, fallen world means that seeing is also horror-full. I live in the mountains; I think they are the most stunning in brilliant autumn and scintillating winter. But the beauty can be marred by beetle killed forests; by plumes of black smoke, charcoal trees, and ash falling like dead snow. In the same way, human beings can be so intensely interesting or lovely that we can hardly look away from them. But footage of skeletal men being sent to gas chambers, or babies being dismembered—we can hardly look at that inhumane reality. Life under the Curse is exposed by light to be both indescribably beautiful and unspeakably horrific. But the Curse has an expiry date. Light does not. Not the Light of the world Who will make the sun, moon, and stars obsolete. 

Notice, though, that light is also a careful pruning of my dead leaves.  If we are like a tree (planted by rivers of living water, as Psalm one says), we need to be pruned to stay healthy. The Morningstar clips sucker shoots, prunes even our healthy branches to keep us growing. He is careful, observant, wise. He does not prune unnecessarily, only what is best—even when it hurts so much it feels like He has cut off far too much for us to keep living.

so i propose a toast: to fists unraveling, to glass unshattering. to breaking all the rules, to breaking bread again. we’re swallowing light, we’re swallowing our pride. we’re raising our glass ’til we’re fixed from the inside. ’til we’re fixed from the inside.

Where does the light get in? Where we are cracked, even shattered. The Light gets in when we raise a toast to the King: through the broken bread on our tongues, the wine burning our throats. We swallow the Light again and again, until we are fixed from the inside. It is a process, like eating daily, it is not a one-time meal that satiates our hunger for only a day. Swallowing the Light is our daily bread (Scripture); it is our weekly feast (the Eucharist); it is our continual sustenance (meditation and contemplative prayer); it is the bitter gall we sometimes taste (weeping over sin); it is the banquet to come tasted a little now (worship and adoration). It is the swallowed Light Who heals us from within, not from shining on us – exposing us – from without. We must be revealed and healed from within. We must be unshattered from the inside.

May I help you taste the Hope that is now, as well as to come? We are a people who are united by our King. We live in His Kingdom now. We build His Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven. We get to participate in the Kingdom's colours and tastes and smells, to build and steward and welcome others into His Kingdom. We do this when we create a meal. When we weep with those who are grieved. When we build homes and roads and grocery stores. When we play music to inspire—breathe life into—the souls around us. When we love on others by loving their children. When we give sacrificially of our possessions or bank account; or harder still, of our time and our emotions. We co-labour to construct the Kingdom of Christ in many ways—seen and unseen, big and small. In this, we are the Body of Christ, joined and knit together with Jesus as our Head. God builds His Kingdom through us upon the Chief Cornerstone: Jesus. This is what Light tastes like.

________

1. "Taste" by Ryan O'Neal {Sleeping at Last}, Atlas: Year Two (Copyright 2016, Asteroid B-612)

Emmanuel...

Christmastide is here. Here. Now. This is Christmas. Though the world is weary and rejoicing to have limped through ‘the holidays’, many traditions have just begun celebrating Christmastide after forty days of darkness and fasting. The season of light has dawned, culminating in a day whose very name means manifest or revelation. Light does that very thing, it shows us what we would have walked right past in the darkness; it reveals the shapes we feared in the night as friendly, familiar things; it makes manifest God’s gift of himself to us.

God gives himself to us…The Incarnation still staggers my mind and heart, sometimes to the point where I give up thinking it through. To be honest, near the end of the year work and friend-gatherings reach a raucous tilt and I hold out hard for the airport. I slide into my window seat with a sigh, watch the night glide past, and take a break. The problem is, I take a break from my habits and routines because I am away from home. I often go to bed late and rise late, skip quiet time and journalling, get easily nettled, and skimp on self-control in just about every area. The last week of Advent and most of Christmastide are often spent in self-inflicted semi-darkness. Sure, there are starlight points in the dark skies of my soul, but it often seems like the sun of revelation is suffering a prolonged eclipse.

Unlocking the front door of my cabin the first week of January seems to coincide with the shadow passing from between me and the Light of the world. I slip back into my own skin, my own home, my own habits. The new year stretches before me like a glorious sunrise—I don’t know what the day will hold, but it opens bright and full of hope.

Amidst my dim Christmastide and my looking forward to a fresh year, someone I love dearly mentioned how bleak the coming year looks from this vantage point. She said it seemed like she was stuck in an unyielding cycle that someone else chose for her. There isn’t an end in sight. Now, I can see only hope that the coming year will be better than the last for this belovèd friend, as this year reeked for her. Perhaps I am young and naive, but in my mind, there is an irresistible hope in new years and seasons.

Mid-conversation, I suddenly wondered about the Children of Israel, those between the Old Covenant and the New, those deafened by nearly four hundred years of silence—did they ever lose hope? Did the Messiah seem impossible to them? Obviously they passed down their long-held prophecies and expectations. Mary readily received her role from God, knowing there was to be a Messiah. All of Israel seemed to be peering about for their Saviour throughout the gospels, uncertain if the Man from Galilee could really be the One foretold. They all knew the history, but did they ever get furious that the prophecy sat there, unfulfilled? Did they consistently beg God to defend his name and bring forth the Saviour for these promised people? How many generations were snuffed out in darkness, never seeing the coming Light?

What if my friend never sees the dawn of change, of salvation from this rotten situation in her lifetime? Does God not care? Is God not powerful and kind enough to bring redemption and resolution into a very fractured situation? We talk theology often on this site, but do we believe God intervenes for the unjustly accused, the abandoned, the orphans and the widows? Do we live like God is with us? For the in-the-quiet-darkness Israelites, the Incarnation was hoped for, was yet-to-come, but was never fulfilled. However, we know—we know that God is with us, he has come. He is here and he is not silent. He does not stand aloof nor remain indifferent to our plight. But what is he doing when nothing changes? Theology fails to comfort the abandoned and hurting. Heady discussions aren’t the equivalent of the Holy Spirit changing hearts and healing brokenness. All our comments and platitudes don’t end that bleak feeling of the sucking, downward spiral of depression when nothing changes, even though a person has remained faithful to Jesus. If God is with us, why is hope often invisible for the steadfast, God-honouring believer?

I want answers for my friend; for myself. Yet all I have is questions. I still see the Light rising in hope, but how do I give my vision to my friend? How can I be her eyes and impart God’s hope to her? How can I bear her burdens and share my joys? Reality sometimes presses us hard with its weight—how do we hold on to real, robust hope that makes our souls buoyant? When we trust God to stand up for himself, to stand up for what is right, how do we not lose hope in the waiting?

I don’t have solid answers. I don’t have something tangible that keeps depression at bay. I know God is with us. My friend knows he is with us. She wants to see him with us. To see him move. To see his power. To see the Light dawn in the pitch black she’s been living in…But what if she is in the middle of a kind of “four hundred years of silence” history with God? What if the coming hope is so bright that it must be preceded by inky silence to contrast just how mighty God is? That’s not a query my friend can cling to; not the light at the tunnel’s end that she needs to see by. But it may be the truth; it may be reality. I believe she will trust God, even if redemption doesn’t come in her lifetime. It will be a continual, exhausting choice—but God with her and in her will help her walk in the starlight. And I believe that her prayers and obedience will advance the dawn in all its glorious brilliance, even if she never sees the Dayspring.

Time and Eternity Have Kissed

Christmas is not an event within history, but is rather the invasion of time by eternity.

~ Hans Urs von Balthasar (Light of the World)

There are things in the scientific and supernatural realm that overlap—or perhaps dove-tail—and pique my interest immensely. Two in particular are light and time. We are told that both move at a constant rate in the same direction—I have my doubts about this, however. Perhaps this is because I am seeing light and time from the other side, the ontological side. 

Scientists see time as Chronos—constant, linear, measurable; unable to grasp Kairos time—the time that stands still or races by without being noticed, the time of being, the time of eternity—immeasurable. I have noticed that my friends in the hard sciences like to measure things, to have precise definitions or parameters, to place things and persons into neat boxes. From kingdoms and classes, to preferences and personality types. Yet persons are dynamic, able to deviate from a habit or routine, to say or do the unexpected. 

When it comes to Kairos—and maybe even Chronos—I think time is dynamic rather than constant. I cannot break it down further, perhaps because I would be trying to dissect a mystery, to grapple with the immaterial. In the midst of our chaos, the mystery of Kairos steps quietly at first, then loudly announced, into Chronos. The Eternal God Himself entered time. No, as von Balthasar says, "invades" Chronos. He invades more personally still, letting us know that He has "put Eternity in" our very hearts, and it searches out Eternity Himself.

The very first Christmas was the collision of Chronos and Kairos—the invasion of time by Eternity. It is both a reality and a mystery, a sacred moment changing all of history. Let us be still, in awe of God Himself becoming man, of time being entered by Eternity.