Won't You Stay with Me?

Dear Aaron,

Once I asked a friend who lost her sister to cancer, "Does it ever get easier?" Her gentle answer was that grief changes, sometimes mellowing, sometimes roaring up at you. I've found that grief is only "easier" if you ignore it and dive into something else...to the exclusion of deep soul reflection.

Perhaps it's only natural that I miss you extra in December and January... The end of Semester and around your birthday. The end of Semester was so traumatising—losing our community to go back to people who didn't understand how much we had all changed... Going back to greyness—both in external and internal landscape—where there was nothing in particular to work towards or hope for. You, Reese, Chelsea, and to a degree Stephen were my lights in dark places when all other lights had gone out. In each of you was the light of the Messiah, spilling out onto anyone in your paths. I'm so thankful for that Light in the greyness; for your steady friendship those handful of years.

As we descend into the darkness of the Advent season, and the physical darkness of Winter, I can't help thinking of the Christmas you visited me in Indiana. It was exhausting, you were a bit flighty at times, and it is one of the sweetest memories I have. When you read Tolkien to me while sitting on the floor in my old room. You, lounging on the woodpile and reading. Walking in the frigid cold and trying to sort out our sore souls, our loves, our hopes... Both of our hopes were dashed, and somehow I missed what could have grown into more with you. Now that I'm married, I don't grieve that loss so strongly, but I wonder what course our lives would have taken if things had been different. They aren't different, though...and so, I miss you.

One day this autumn the song below came across my playlist. Without warning, grief spilled out of my heart and eyes. All I could think of was you...

Medicate, meditate, swear your soul to Jesus

Throw a punch, fall in love, give yourself a reason

Don't wanna drive another mile wonderin' if you're breathin'

So, won't you stay, won't you stay, won't you stay with me?

It seems like there just weren't enough reasons left... You had fallen in love once, if not twice, and that didn't work out. Maybe you threw some punches. You spent time meditating on Scripture and music and good books...you even had medication. And I know that your soul was and is sworn to Jesus. Jesus is enough to make all wrongs right in His time.

So, the words I wish I could have told you and had you really hear are these:

Oh, you're spiralin' again

The moment right before it ends, 

you're most afraid of

But, don't you cancel any plans

'Cause I won't let you get the chance 

to never make them. . . 

 

Don't let this darkness fool you 

All lights turned off can be turned on

I'll drive, I'll drive all night

I'll call your mom

Oh, dear, don't be discouraged

I've been exactly where you are

I'll drive, I'll drive all night

I'll call your mom

I have called your mom—many times—and it has been a help to us both. But I just. miss. you. You were the one who had changed because of Semester. You are the one I shared life experiences and memories with. And I wish I could see who you could have become. You could have filled books with poems and the air with songs. For now, they reverberate, hanging in the air...invisible, just unheard. So close, but impossibly far—the curtain of death hanging between us. 

Oh friend... The darkness may have fooled you for a moment, but the light turned off can be turned on. The Light of Jesus never goes out...and it spilled out of you into dark places. The Light goes on and on, lighting up lives you never knew—but one day you will.

In many ways you have and will always stay with me. For that, I'm deeply grateful. <3

Call Your Mom — Songwriters: Todd Sherman Clark / Noah Kahan

Proof That We have Loved

"How can we say that God has cheated us, 

when this crush of grief is proof that we have loved?”

—Steve Bell We Believe in Love

Part of me wants to just leave it at this lyric and not say anything. Isn't that enough? 

But the other part of me, the part that cries until I'm sick, wants to work it out in all the words.

____

Dear Aaron,

Today is your birthday. 

Why do we say someone "would have been" a certain age if they have passed from this life into the next? Perhaps people quit counting in the 'normal' way because years don't matter or add up or work at all in the Eternal Kingdom? Still, you were born in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and you will go on forever in His Kingdom, so you are thirty-four today from where I stand. 

Today I'm tried... Tired from being up late and early while visiting Kasey the last few days and tired from travel. But I'm 'other' tired, too. Tired of the world being broken. Tired of loving and losing. Tired of missing so many people because of distance, physical and metaphysical, emotional and spiritual. 

But I'm not tired of missing you, because missing you means I remember you. Missing you is a habit. It is a daily thing. I've been missing you since before you died; but I've only felt really free to give that feeling full expression since you died. The longing and the grief mingle painfully, even still. The love that I can't seem to send across the veil or through the thin spaces to you feels restless in my heart. It wants out. It wants to go to you. But it's like a bird with a broken wing, thudding back to earth after pitiful attempts to fly. 

Today is your birthday. . . 

. . . But I don't want to be sad. I am thankful you were born. You have taught me so many things, in life and after death. In a way, you connected me with Kasey—with Oxford—with poetry—with music—with myself. Not wholly, but in ways no one else could or did. Thank you! Thank you for being born. For living life. For being my friend. For sending me on a grand adventure. For helping me see I was capable. For giving me the chance to meet my best friend. For being faithful while you could be. For knowing wisdom came from outside of us when we were both confused about life. For introducing me to your sweet family (though I really wish you would have done that differently...). For ringing bells—not in steeples, but inside of me. For being you... Aaron E Hennig. 

Today is your birthday, and the crush of grief is still there, the proof of love. 

God has not cheated you nor me, He gave us gifts: friendship, camaraderie, hope, love. And through you, He has given me so many more of those gifts in other people. Some other days my heart will spill open in grief for some of them, too. I pray those days are so far away I can't imagine how far they are. But I know I can't outrun grief, because I can't outrun love. And I don't want to. 

Today is your birthday, my friend, and you are basking in the Father's love. The love that you can't outrun, even by death. So, I'm sending my love for you to Him...along with a bear hug.

Love always,

Johanna

I Shall but Love Thee Better after Death. . .

Dear Aaron,

Why do I still write to you? The last note I received from you was seven years ago next month. Seven. Years. And of those seven years, you have been gone two years, four months, and two days. 

I suppose I write for the reason I always did. . .you are my beloved friend. Reading your letters has taught me much, both then and now as I re-read them. And I always felt like writing to you in particular brought my thoughts together in ways that didn't happen with anyone else. Oh, I wasn't brilliant or particularly deep, but when I put pen to paper for you, it was like all the synapses snapped, all the thoughts aligned, all the pieces came together into a full picture. Writing to you made my world bigger, my thoughts clearer...it made me a deeper, richer person than I was. That has never happened in such a way with any other correspondent-friend. 

“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.”

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

Perhaps it sounds a little selfish, but I think the heart of Miss Browning's above lines is this: you are such an inspiring person that those who are given the gift of truly knowing you can't help but become better because of you. 

She's right, you know. So many times I have mourned the loss of your friendship, and then the loss of your life—and in that, I've mourned the loss of part of myself. Some part of myself was diminished when you shut me out of your life—and that part of me died with you, Aaron. I grieve that the world is a poorer place without you, you generous soul. I grieve that your family keenly feels your absence. And I grieve the loss of beauty, cheer, and depth I once had when we were so regularly in touch. 

There have been persons in my life who seemed to call out the worst in me; I did not like myself when I was around them. My family and friends didn't like who I was when such persons were in my life. But you weren't like that. You called my mind and heart to soar upward; to look toward God's Beauty, reflected in nature and poetry and music. You inspired (breathed life into) me to want to read more, think more, live more, experience more. I love the part of me that you brought out. I mourn that part of myself, now buried with you. And I eagerly await the renewal and resurrection of that part of me in the New Kingdom. It will be refined and redeemed... To know you again, not as we did, but in a much fuller way, will bring out a facet in me (and you!) that we only had a glimpse of during the years we were friends.

I can only pray that my own friendship, such as it was, inspired you and made your life somehow better, friend. And I pray that in the New Kingdom we will continually draw out the good in one another, calling one another "Further up, and further in!"

As I read Elizabeth Barrett Browning's gentle lines again, I realised why I still write to you, Aaron. I still write to you because I still love you. I will always love you. I love who you were. I love who you inspired and encouraged me to be. And I can't wait to get to learn to love you anew in the Kingdom Coming. It will be a different love there—a love pure and untainted by selfishness or any fallen thing. Loving you in the Kingdom will be something glorious that our earthly friendship could only catch a glimmer of.

I love you, friend. I love much of what you love. I love your sincerity and earnestness. I love your love for Beauty. I love your silliness and exuberance (from ringing bells to quoting poetry on tables and playing guitar until people hollered at you). I love your generosity. I love your unquenchable thirst for wonder and for knowledge. I just love YOU. And I miss you. Oh, friend, I miss you. So. Much.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

From the places you've been torn. . .

"There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve—even in pain—the authentic relationship. 

Furthermore, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.”

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

______

Emptiness. I have felt its greed in my heart and in my body. There is a permanent hole in my heart while I walk on this side of the Kingdom coming, and God Himself does not fill that emptiness. He is leaving that slow-bleeding hollow right where it is. It is that absence that somehow makes me feel your presence more sharply, Aaron. 

For years there was an Aaron-shaped empty-space where you should have been in my life. You didn't just drift away, as so many friends do when life carries us along. You were sharply cut away from me one winter's day in Alaska. You became a stranger to me over the course of time, and in a particular instant you saw me as a stranger to you from then on. No one understood the ache I carried inside of me from that encounter. I didn't even understand it really. I didn't know how deep the wound went until that parting shaft was ripped out one September day, the barb leaving a gaping hole in its reverse exit. 

No words could fill that hole. No friendship on earth could patch up that wound. But when I read Bonhoeffer's above quotation, it resonated all the way down the path of that still-bleeding laceration. "It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness." He leaves the torn up place to allow us in that empty, painful ache to connect with the one we've lost: "For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled, one remains connected to the other person through it."

How strange. In those five years where even my closest Semester friendships began to wane, I felt a deep connection with you—the friend who had abandoned me. When you ended your precious life, the pain was unbearable precisely because you had already left an empty place, unfilled all those years, where my connection to you was strong. It remains strong. That emptiness makes me curl up in a ball and ache sometimes, because absolutely nothing can fill it except you. And nothing I can do will get me to you. Only God can do that, and this isn't the right time yet. 

"Furthermore, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation." I have forgotten so many details, moments, jokes, and sayings of our time together at Semester... Certainly I have forgotten more than the ones I can and do remember. But I treasure what I remember. I treasure your letters. You taught me things while we corresponded, but you have taught me much more through those same words years and years later. And the more I understand what you were saying, the more deeply I value your mind and heart, your self. Thus, the more difficult the separation. The assuaging answer isn't to forget or to stop reading your letters. Though there is intense pain in the separation, there is profound healing in remembering, especially in remembering together with your family or our friends.

For years I have felt that all I had to offer God was emptiness. Empty hands. An empty heart. Empty desires. Empty relationships. Empty arms. An empty shell. The times I've been the wisest (though they felt the most foolish) were the ones where all I had was emptiness to offer on the altar to God. Now I begin to learn that the very empty places are the ones where I find connection to the person or dream or thing that is missing. It's not the connection I would choose. The ache can be debilitating sometimes. I would give much to reach out and wrap you in a hug once again, my arms full rather than empty.

Until the Kingdom comes in its fullness and we run to the Supper of the Lamb together, I will try to remember that God isn't filling the hole, He isn't fixing the ache, and He isn't covering over the emptiness...so that I am still able to feel connected to you. Not in an idealised or idolised way, but in a  way that beckons me "Further up and further in! "

Love always,
Johanna

_____

Title: 

This is the hole

Where most of your soul

Comes ripping out

From the places you've been torn

(From"Always" by Switchfoot)

What If. . . ?

What if I weep for you?
You, who can weep no longer,
your eyes fixed on the Author
and Finisher of our faith,
not upon the mounded grave. . .

What if I ache for you?
The ache of separation you don't feel,
you, who are with the Father,
who are here no longer,
yet who dwell in thin places. . .

What if I rejoice for you?
You, who have stepped off
this mortal coil into the Kingdom
coming, to meet in the Kingdom
to come, under Spirit, Father, and Son. . .

What if I reach for you?
Reach out my hand, to empty air
for you, whom I can't touch
until the Kingdom comes, fully
and wholly, Heaven and Earth, together. . .

What if I miss you?
You, who have my heart, still,
though I didn't know it until
too late, when you passed the gate
between here and where I can't be yet. . .

What if I say your name?
Will you come back again,
my dear poet-friend, whom I miss so
fiercely? Will you teach me to see,
show me the ways of the Kingdom coming. . .

What if I love you?
You, bell-ringer, song-singer,
hope-bringer, who quietly gave
all of yourself away—all of your mind
away—all of your life away,
                                             what if. . . ?



I do. . .
              and I will.

He Makes My Griefs to Sing

Wounded I sing, tormented I indite, Thrown down I fall into a bed, and rest: Sorrow hath chang’d its note: such is his will, Who changeth all things, as him pleaseth best. . . . . .I live to shew his power, who once did bring My joyes to weep, and now my griefs to sing. — George Herbert

“...Songs, like trees, bear fruit only in their own time and their own way: and sometimes they are withered untimely.”  

—Treebeard (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King)

And so it is with people. Sometimes they are withered untimely. 

Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here
The tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be

Nine months have gone by, and still the fallout of your untimely withering haunts me and hurts me. I saw who you could be. The poet you were...the poet you could have been, the world will never know. You died untimely, Aaron. I feel the tension of who you were and who you became—and who you could have become if...if 'how it is' and 'how it should be' somehow were different. What if how it is were changed to how it should be? You would still be here. We would still be friends. 

Or would that be how it should be? 

No one is ever told what would have been... And who can say how it should be, except the Maker Himself? You would still be here, I believe—but perhaps we would still be separated. Friendships grow, but they can also change and they can wither, too. I know that is okay, but sometimes I really hate it. I don't want to not be friends. I don't want you to be gone. I don't want to bear this perpetually bleeding wound... Because I want you to still be you. I want you to still be alive and 'normal.' I want to still be friends. I want that to be how it should be. But I don't get to be in control.


Maybe redemption has stories to tell
Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell
Where can you run to escape from yourself?
Where you gonna go?
Where you gonna go?

Salvation is here

"Where can you run to escape from yourself?" If only I knew. I think you wanted to know, too. To escape from the torn, tortured part of your mind. And honestly, I want to run from the ugly, mean, revolting me that I too often am. I want to escape the things and the people who overwhelm and suffocate me. And I think you did, too. I evade and hedge and hide... You took a more drastic route to escape from yourself. I think I understand, a very little bit. I am trying to forgive you for leaving me...for leaving your family...for leaving a broken world that needed your songs. 

Only God's forgiveness to me in my brokenness fuels my love, my ability to forgive. And I know His forgiveness inspired you. Do you remember penning this: "Unmerited favour is my only remedy"? You did...and it rings in my memory like a clear bell-cry. Unmerited favour is my only remedy! Indeed. 

When Redemption is fully perfected in the Kingdom-coming, I want to hear its stories. I want to hear redemption in your story...to see how it threads through and plays out. Will you tell me the story? Will you teach me the language of the Kingdom? Will you help my tongue and heart live the words and ways of the Kingdom? 


When it feels like surgery And it burns like third degree And you wonder what is it worth? When your inside's breaking in And you feel that ache again And you wonder What's giving birth?

If you could let the pain of the past go Of your soul None of this is in your control If you could only let your guard down You could learn to trust me somehow I swear, that I won't let you go If you could only let go your doubts If you could just believe in me now I swear, that I won't let you go

Nine months later and this song still makes me cry.

Jon Foreman said this about I Won't Let You Go: "If the Author of time and space, the one who breathed my soul into existence, were to sing me a song about trust, it might go something like this, 'I love you and I won’t let you go.' I believe that where you put your trust begins to define you."

Where you put your trust begins to define you. I've put my trust in myself, in my friends, in my family. I've had friends leave me, annoy me, and/or smother me. A friend recently asked if I got tired of them... My response was honest, "I get tired of myself and can't get away from me. So yeah, I get tired of everyone I know at some point. The only exception is God. I don't get tired of Him." I've put my trust in people (myself included) who let me down, who don't satisfy, who don't know what to do or what I need. For a season of my life, I even put some of my trust in you, Aaron. I trusted that you were a first-friend—someone who understood gloaming and poetry, who had seen the grey-green wave in the sunrise, who would be my friend in rough times. In many ways, you were and you did.

But my ultimate trust can't be in any creature or creation. As wonderful as people are, as much as mountains and pine trees and rivers are 'home,' they will fail me, even hurt me. It isn't that we shouldn't trust others or not revel in creation. If we first trust God to love us and to not let us go—even when we want to let go and are tired of ourselves—then we can trust others and love them and creation. But if we don't truly trust God first, how can we trust or love anyone or anything else?

There ain't no darkness strong enough
that could tear you out from my heart There ain't no strength that's strong enough
that could tear this love apart Never gonna let you go

It's still true. Though Treebeard also says, "Never is too long a word, even for me" I dare to say it, with God's help. Because eternity is both now and to come. And for eternity I will hold on to the love and friendship you gave to me. Not in a grasping, hoarding way, but as a handhold on the face of the mountain as I climb toward the Lord. I will hold on for dear life—because life is dear. Your love, your generosity, the beauty and wonder of your soul are supports for me on this path. I could not proceed—I would not be where I am today—without those holds you provided. Your friendship has changed me, deepened me, strengthened me...made me more like Christ. Thank you, Aaron. I love you and I miss you, friend.

~ Me

I close my eyes and go back in time. . .

Dear Aaron,

Sometimes I'm afraid of forgetting... Forgetting the sound of your voice (thank God for recordings). Forgetting the real you—afraid of making an idol out of who I think you were. I've been afraid of forgetting what it feels like to bleed; not that I enjoy the wound, but the pain means I'm not numb.

The last few weeks have been strange. I've been happy and hollow. Lonely and sad for other reasons. I've felt distance between myself and reality. I've been angry. I've been scared. And I've been running from what I want, though I don't know why. I felt like I didn't have permission to grieve. Like I was avoiding it until I was in a safe place. But to avoid grief means it takes time to reacquaint myself with that beast who, it turns out, is also my friend.

In some ways, I feel like I'm near you in the grief. And it comes whirling in when I am alone in my kitchen, listening uninterruptedly to Switchfoot. When I hear someone in a film give voice to what it feels like to lose a belovéd. The emptiness I've been holding at bay rushes in like a rising tide, sweeping over a floodgate. The words awaken something inside of me. . .

Here's to the twilight Here's to the memories These are my souvenirs My mental pictures of everything Here's to the late nights Here's to the firelight These are my souvenirs My souvenirs

How did they know? About twilight being the time when poetry sings the clearest? How did they know about the mental images of the Lodge? Of several of us piled on the couches by the wood stove, late into the night, listening to Dave read about the Old Squire? How did they know about the sharp, brief images of the van ride to Denver, your lanky self on the floor, drinking in all the conversations? Of the crisp picture of you on the trail at the Continental Divide? So many memories have faded, blurred, and been lost forever. . . But the snatches and moments I have still are like leaves of silver and gold.
I close my eyes and go back in time I can see you're smiling, you're so alive We were so young, we had no fear We were so young, we had no idea That life was just happening Life was just happening

This is the part that makes me weep. . . When I close my eyes and go back in time, I of course see you smiling. It hurts that you were so alive then but aren't now. But no. What am I saying? Of course you are so much more alive now. . . How can you be so alive and yet I feel so hollow?
Here's to your bright eyes Shining like fireflies These are my souvenirs The memory of a lifetime We were wide-eyed with everything Everything around us We were enlightened by everything Everything

Remember being both bright-eyed and wide-eyed? Remember the unquenchable thirst for good books? It was like Semester was a salt you could never get out of your mouth—giving savour to everything, and simultaneously bequeathing an unending thirst. And your firefly-eyes lit up at the prospect of those pages yet to be read and known and loved.
So I close my eyes and go back in time I can see you smiling, you're so alive I close my eyes and go back in time You were just a child then, and so was I We were so young, we had no fear We were so young, we had no idea That nothing lasts forever Nothing lasts forever Nothing lasts You and me together Were always now or never

Nothing lasts forever. . .even when it feels like it always will. Like we will always be friends, of course. What could possibly change enough to change that? And in some ways, that is true. Our Semester class will always be family, no matter how many years go by without communication. But some things change the core of who we are. Like Semester changed the core and trajectory of our lives, so does mental illness—so does death.

I wish I had known it was 'now or never' and visited you in Rhode Island. I wish I had made those memories with you that haunt the hollows in the woods and the corners of your parents' home. But when do we know in the moment that it is now or never? We don't, and we take for granted the life we are given. Can you hear me? I close my eyes and go back in time I can see you smiling, you're so alive I close my eyes and go back in time You were wide-eyed, you were wide-eyed
We were so young, we had no fear We were so young, we had just begun A song we knew, but we never sang It burned like fire inside our lungs And life was just happening
(and nothing lasts, nothing lasts forever) I wouldn't trade it for anything My souvenirs

Can you hear me when I talk to you? When I whisper through my tears, How could you? How could you do that to your family? How could you leave me? I think I'm really asking why the brokenness of the world is so particular, devouring my friend. How could something that happens to other people happen to you—and consequently to me? How could someone so alive die?

Remember being so young—facing your fears by driving nearly a thousand miles; by jumping on a table and reciting poetry? Remember the songs you sang to me in ink on envelopes? Remember the dreams and desires that burned inside like fire? I do. These are the souvenirs of our youth. Then you put me in a place to step from youth into depth—into both my own smallness and the largeness of the world. You gifted me dear memories. Sweet souvenirs. Deepest friends. Your very self.

Can you hear me? Because I want to sing thank you. . .with the rest of my life.

___________

—Souvenirs by Jon and Tim Foreman

When it Burns Like Third Degree

Grief is simply love with nowhere to go.

—Kenneth Robertson

Nowhere to go. . .That feeling when you come home from work and can't decide if you are hungry or not. When you can't settle. When you feel all of the loose ends unravelling. I have wandered aimlessly through the house, feeling both lost and as if I had lost something too dear to name. 

One moment I will laugh over a line in a letter, the next I will break my heart over the ache of the emptiness. Over the loss with no chance to reconcile this side of the veil. It is love wanting to reach the one loved, but that one resides in a place I've never known. . .A place I've longed for all of my life. But how does love cross the chasm of death? 

Death can't stop how life works; not truly. But it sure as Hell seems like death is winning; like death has the upper hand over life. Death stepped in and stopped the end goal of my love: my friend himself. And now that love wants to run on, over Sunset Hill, across the water, East of the Sun, West of the Moon, up to the top of the golden mallorn tree, where my elven-friend must dwell under the stars. But though I've seen many glorious golden trees with milk-white stems, and though I've stood beneath a silver shower of starlight, my love seems to whirl away on the crisp breeze, as lost as I am.

In the lostness comes the haunting fear. The fear that I will forget. That I will go on with life and not remember the reason why my life took a turn for the better. I am afraid that I will forget to say 'thank you' through my life itself. I want my friend, quiet though he was much of the time, not to be overlooked or forgotten. And I am so afraid to let go of the ache, of the tears. I am afraid of this gaping wound healing over. . .

When your fear is currency
And you feel that urgency
You want peace but there's war in your head
Maybe that's where life is born
When our façades are torn
Pain gives birth to the promise ahead

Out of this pain has been birthed the most urgent desire to reach the Kingdom. The promise of what lies ahead. Reuniting in an unfallen, unbroken place, where the bell of doom has been unrung and the deplorable word—mine!—has never been uttered. I long for that place. So. Much. But I love this life, too. Today I asserted that wondrous line, "Dear old world, you are beautiful, and I am glad to be alive in you." And I am. Glad for the Beauty and the grandeur, for the friendships and the love spilling over. . .And I am desolate, too. Both together, rolled up in this dichotomy I don't even understand. I ache when I am alone and let myself remember. Yet, oh, I want to remember!

If you could only let your guard down
If you could learn to trust me somehow
I swear, that I won't let you go
If you could only let go your doubts
If you could just believe in me now
I swear, that I won't let you go

When I first let these words run over me, I cried. Oh friend, I wish you could have let your guard down with me, with your family, with some other friends. . .And I wish I had been worthy of that, and of your trust and friendship, too. I will always carry you in the fabric of who I am. So in a way, I can't forget. I can't love anyone else with the kind of love I have for you, my fair elven-friend. And I can only pray that this love that has nowhere to go in this life will be poured forth, refined and purified, into the man I will one day meet again in the realised Kingdom. 

There ain't no darkness strong enough 
that could tear you out from my heart

There ain't no strength that's strong enough 
that could tear this love apart

Never gonna let you go




______

"I Won't Let You Go" by Switchfoot
Songwriters: Jonathan Mark Foreman / Timothy David Foreman

What is Your Grave?

About an hour into a conversation with a friend, we began discussing the death of Lazarus and Jesus weeping with Mary. Jesus had purposely waited to come to His friends that He might glorify the Father through the resurrection of Lazarus. Jesus said to Martha, "I myself am the resurrection and the life." He knew he was about to push death right out of a man, to make him what he should be: fully alive. He knew, and still, when Mary ran to meet Him, trailing mourners and friends and tears, His anger was roused and He wept.

Everyone who saw Jesus weep said, "Look how much He loved him"—but Jesus was about to return Lazarus to life, He was not distraught because He would not see Lazarus again. No, He was angry when He saw how upset and sorrowed Mary and the others were. He was angry because death was not part of the world He had formed. Death had come to steal life, joy, and fellowship away. Death was hurting His belovéd friends—and so He wept at the brokenness, at the pain suffered by His friends. And then He stood there and called Lazarus to come forth, to live and breathe as he was made to.

At this point, my friend asked me: "What grave are you standing next to?" The question struck a chord that is still vibrating within me, as some weeks before, another friend had asked something similar, "What in us needs to die so that God can bring His life into us?" Perhaps having thought on that question already prepared me a bit for the second conversation. I confess that it takes God bringing something to my attention quite a few times before I really give it the thought it deserves. 

A few weeks after these conversations, John eleven was my morning reading. I'm not sure I had ever noticed before that Jesus wept out of sorrow for Mary but also out of anger. Death is not the way it is supposed to be—and Jesus knew that, knew that one day death would be swallowed up by life, like you swallow a poppy seed. You are so much bigger than a seed, more complex in your biological life, and greater than it in every way. Life is like that when it swallows death. Death only exists as the privation of life, of something God made good. Any sin or evil is only ever a twisting of something God made good. 

When I thought about Jesus standing next to Lazarus's grave and calling him to come forth, I realised that Jesus was calling Lazarus back to what was good: life. Much like the man in The Great Divorce with the lizard of lust upon his shoulder. Again and again the solid person asked if he could kill the lizard and the man whined, promised his pet sin would be very good now, even begged not to have it killed because that would kill him. But in the end, when he cried out that yes, the solid person could kill the lizard, he did not die. The lizard itself was restored, or reformed into something good, a stallion. It was such a warping of the good thing God had made that it seemed impossible that such a magnificent creature could have ever been shrivelled and degraded into a lizard.

At the grave, Jesus turned death into life. He unbroke the Fall and its consequences. He remade the fragmented, and He continues to do so in our lives. When I think about what needs to die in me I find that the grave must be my own. I need Jesus to be standing next to the grave of me and my selfishness. It is always myself at the root of my sin—whether it is lack of compassion or sacrifice; or if it is self-righteousness and self-consciousness; or even if it is my "good" efforts. I need to die so that I can be raised to new, abundant life in and from Jesus. He made me to be fully alive, fully—unfallen—human. I need the resurrection, the resuscitation, the breath of the Spirit animating me and keeping me alive.

What grave are you standing beside?

Love is Stronger Than Death

How does love construct a self that is stronger than death? It constructs my I, not my me; my subject self, not my object self, who I am, not what I am.

What I am is determined by my heredity and environment; my without is determined from without. This is not stronger than death. But who I am is determined by my free choices to love or not to love; my within is determined from within.

This inner self, or who, is not of a given size, like the body, but is elastic. I am as much as I find my identity in, or identify with, or care about, or love. I am not a little ego imprisoned in a bag of skin; I am as big as my love. By my love I construct the self that is stronger than death.

~ Peter Kreeft, Love is Stronger Than Death (pp 42-43)

Do you agree or disagree with Kreeft?

Surely there is a difference between who we are and what we are. Does love construct the 'who' we are? If so, is it our own love, as Kreeft says, or another's love? Is it human love or divine love that gives us our identity, our strength over death?

I will post my further thoughts in the upcoming days, but I am curious to know your thoughts, dear Reader.

~ Johanna

The Silent Majority

I seek, like Thoreau, to ‘read not the Times; read the eternities.’ If this sounds snobbish, it shouldn’t; it is the opposite of snobbery. The merely avant-garde thinker is the real snob.

The object of his snobbery is not the living but the dead, the great ‘silent majority’ of pre-contemporary thinkers who are disenfranchised not by accident of birth but by accident of death.

~ Peter Kreeft, Love is Stronger Than Death (Introduction)

Recently my father and I discussed the qualities of postmodernism afflicting our generation and infecting our churches. The more I interact with Christians who have not been exposed to great literature, past philosophers (both Christians and atheists), and an historical context for Scripture, the more I see a gaping disconnect between their beliefs and their lifestyle.

I am shamefully aware of the reason the media labels Christians as uneducated. A whole subset of persons believe that 'Christian fiction' and films like 'Facing the Giants' or 'Fireproof' are real art, and 'safe' to absorb. I am more terrified to hear that a person's most influential book list includes The Purpose Driven Life, The Left Behind series, 'Christian' romance novels, and the like than if it included Nietzsche, Thoreau, Hemingway, or Wilde. At least the latter authors wrote about the great questions of life, death, and existence and did not give pat[hetic] answers.

Many Christians view life, and its ultimate questions, in bits and pieces. This is echoed in the poor writing, mediocre art, and empty answers given under the guise of 'Christian' psychology. Fragmented thinking stems from lack of discipline and the aforementioned postmodern mindset that has driven both the world and the church mad. There is a popular belief that this generation is the first of its kind. Thus, history is not too important, and dead white European males are hardly worth listening to. How would one of those know what this generation faces? Yet 'this generation' does not know what the elementary diagnostic questions are, let alone how to answer them.

Perhaps I should lay out some of these questions: What is a good life? What is the meaning and purpose of life? What is a good death? What good is death? Why do I exist? What is a human being? What is love? What is a good love? Is there a God, and is He good? Are we alone, drifting through a meaningless, void universe? Is matter all there is?

In our world of ceaseless noise and unending images, we rarely even go to sleep or drive in silence. If one takes long walks, they are spent talking on the phone or listening to an iPod, rather than in silent reflection. Without solitude and reflection on what God is saying through His Spirit, Scripture, literature, philosophy, and wise men, one splinters under the pressure of outside confusion and noise. When would one have time to ask the above questions? When would they have the mental silence to think through even one of those questions, or to seek its answer?

There is another set of questions that I have not yet raised. Questions every member of humanity ought to ask, but especially those in the Church. Queries like, "How did our forefathers face such-and-such moral dilemma?" or "What has been previously written on this subject?" What did Erasmus, Cranmer, Luther, Kirkegaard, Kant, and Lewis write on issues of when or if there is ever a time when lying is acceptable, or of love, death, or the meaning of life? The current era is not the first generation of Christians. Thus, it is wise to gain knowledge from (and pursue it further than) our Godly ancestors.

The Church has stepped away from the Silent Majority, those who penned timeless truth in the creeds and confession. The Church no longer repeats daily the Lord's Prayer, nunc dimittis, te deum laudamus, or magnificat. Yet this goes directly against Scripture, where God constantly tells the people to remember the things past, or to do something (a feast or festival) as a memorial. A 'memorial' means partaking in the feast or fast to remember God's work on one's behalf. Why celebrate things like Christmas (the Incarnation) or Easter (the Resurrection) if one is not centred on the event commemorated? In like manner, why set aside the prayer book and the likes of Erasmus and Cranmer, for the pabulum of far too many evangelical sermons?

The Church ought to look like Christ, not every wind of doctrine breathed out by the world. The Church ought not copy slogans, chant cute-but-trite sayings, or make facsimiles of popular culture icons to share the already compelling message of the Incarnation, the good life, a good love, the purpose of death, or the Resurrection.

The Church ought to have the best writers, film-makers, artists, businessmen, congressmen, mail carriers, clerks, rubbish collectors, historians, professors, mothers, fathers, etcetera, that the world has ever seen. Those in the Church ought to be well-educated, reasonable, logical, well-read, teachable, humble, wise, and honest. They ought to be the farmer-statesman - unafraid to till the soil, yet able to speak intelligently upon a host of worthy subjects from philosophy and history, to the arts and politics. Above all, the Church must not forget that many wise voices still speak from the past, and that she must leave a wise and prudent voice (and world) to those who are yet to come.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.

All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.

I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross.

~ G. K. Chesterton; Orthodoxy, 'The Ethics of Elfland' (pg 48)

~ Johanna