Juxtaposed

Starry stubs of light
pool time in waxen white
flowing from this shadowed season
when sadness should be bright

In darkness tinged with light
we wait the coming time
when God sneaks in like treason
and all will be made right

But this time it's different
The subtle shades of Lent
look more like darkened joy,
like the negative of a print

Everything is going in reverse
all the bright is coming first,
and then darkness rushes in
swallowing the light of the universe

Is there Easter at the end,
or a deeper darkness to wend
through before day rises,
edged in shade as I am unmade?

In this bright hour...even the mountains know you're gone

Dear Aaron,

Gloaming has always been my favourite time of day, even since I was a small child. The words gloaming and twilight have a romantic, magical air to them. Dusk brings with it certain smells, a slowing down, a stillness, a place for pondering and reflecting.


I never knew the dusk could seem so sad,
an empty aching in my soul.
In this bright hour I speak your name in the wind,
the shining world outlasts us all.

Unlike the author of this song, I know about dusk: it can wring my heart of many tears. Dusk is when I slow down enough to listen to my thoughts, my heart, and the Holy Spirit. . .Especially in the Spring through the Autumn, when I can sit on my porch as the light fades. In this bright hour, fading from colour to grey, the ache permeates my soul. Not a throb, not a piercing pain. . .a continual ache. Like arthritis, steady and dull, but very present.

How many evenings have I whispered into this gloaming that I miss you? And how many hours in years past did I sit at my desk or on the porch, grasping for the last light of day to see by as I wrote to you? The smell of Spring and fresh turned earth makes me think of evenings spent reading poems until I couldn't see the words on the page. Poems we discussed, and at least one that you memorised, reciting it on my voicemail. How heartbroken I am not to have that voicemail still.


Even the mountains seem to know you're gone,
the foothills shimmer where they stand.
The sky is still and much too beautiful,
and I am missing you again.

In the quiet, as the mountain turns from rose to periwinkle-grey, I feel a profound sense of loss and loneliness. I miss you so much it hurts. There are times when I get alternately sad and angry that you never came back to Colorado. Never saw my home. Never drank tea with me on my porch. That we never climbed a mountain together after Semester. Why? Why do I miss you so much? After all these years, why is the pain still there, strong and sharp?


I think of songs I might have sung to you,
the love I wanted you to hear.
Every time the blazing sun goes down,
another promise disappears.

I never knew the dusk could break my heart,
so much longing folding in,
I'd give years away to have you here,
to know I can't lose you again.

Maybe the answer lies in the longing. . . We were friends, good friends, for years. Then it all began to crumble. Your letters grew shorter and fewer. Sure, things change, life gets busy wherever you are—I understand. But it wasn't that. That has happened to me before. This was different. You changed. And when I saw you for the final time, you left me when I wasn't the person you wanted me to be. I wasn't someone else, I was me. . .and that wasn't enough. I wasn't enough. I can't pretend that I didn't cry, that it didn't hurt to have you reject me and abandon me. But for years I'm not sure that even I understood why it hurt so much.

Some part of me loved you in a way that I didn't expect. Yes, I loved you at first as that quirky kid from Rhode Island, and then as my dear friend. But is it possible that the severing of our friendship hurt and continues to hurt because some other love mixed itself into my heart? We often fall in love with someone wholly unobtainable, even spurning those within our reach. Is that it? But no, I think it was and is more than that, but I learned it too late and I regret it bitterly.

So much longing folds in, I'd give years away to have you here, to know I can't lose you again. To give up years to be with someone you love sounds worth it. But how many other people that we love would we miss time with if we could barter that way? I can't go back and reach out more than I already did once upon a time. I can't undo mental illness. I can't undo my life choices, and I certainly can't undo yours. I can't have another shot at being friends, at being anything more than that. And I wish to God that I could. But we can't live in the past, and we can't undo it. Even though I know that's true, it doesn't stop the pain, even as I try to live here and now, knowing what I know. We can't buy more time with our lost loved ones, but we can invest in those we love now.


Help me remember the San [Juans], the foothills burning in the light.
Let my heart rise up to where you are, I long to be with you tonight.

Of course I do. I long to be with you tonight in the Kingdom. I long for all of us to be free from death and its severing, searing pain. I am both angry and envious that you are there without me. That you don't have to watch person after person you love die. But I am not angry at you, and that makes a great deal of difference. 

I miss who you were. I miss who I was. Sometimes I wish I could somehow go back to who I was when we first met, yet also know all that I know now. I know myself better now, and though I have a deeper experiential knowing of God and Life, I miss the person I was. . .The girl who loved poetry and saw light and all those little birds. The person who had time upon time to write, to walk, to listen. I miss loving every little thing about life, delighting in every Beauty, no matter how small or grand. And somehow, I feel like that part of me began to die when I lost your friendship. It was like a light went out; like all of the connections my heart and mind could make between Beauty and reality got scattered and broken.

Sometimes, when I whisper into the blue-grey of the evening, "I miss you, friend" I am also missing me. Do I think that if I could find you I could find myself? No. But I think that if I could find you, you might awaken something asleep in me, maybe even resurrect something long dead. You had a gift, my friend. And you left some of that gift infused in this world and inside of my soul—but so much of it went with you when you left. Does the world know what it's missing? How could we know what we don't have? And yet. . .I often long for what I never had. I often grieve what never was. I know that you are gone. . .Even the mountains seem to know that. In this bright hour I speak your name into the wind, and remember that the shining world outlasts us all.

Angel Fire by Fernando Ortega and Elaine Rubenstein

Through the Cracks

Violence cracks our world,
leaves lives black and blue
emptier than when day broke,
leaves lives numb and days grey

Shadows crawl stealthily,
silently blotting the beauty
our eyes can only see
by the sun's bright rays

Darkness is like a shroud,
clothing our dying senses
too poisoned to see value
in life or how gaping death is

Hope seems like a dream
in the inky night, intangible,
unreal, a delusive phantom we're
weary of being told is substance

Faster and swifter, now,
the shadows come, thrusting
our world into the chaos of darkness,
we are unable to feel, unable to heal

Lives are bleeding out,
much faster and swifter, now,
running across thirsty ground,
fracturing families and dividing men

Swifter and faster than
eye can see, light shoots across
the night, like a bullet's flash—
light dispels darkness in an instant

It comes unexpectedly,
like hope revived, alive and
real to hold to, no longer a ghost,
but now an Anchor for battered souls

Light shines in the night,
and the darkness cannot cover it,
cannot understand, cannot hold out,
so the shadows flee, like paper-thin dreams

Slowly, slowly, now,
men begin to understand, to see,
to apprehend truth—they are set free,
and they begin to heal, begin again to feel

Cracks allow the light
to shine through—lives black
and blue are healed, made new,
as Light and Hope overflow thirsty souls

The Waiting is Not Wasted

Waiting. We do a lot of waiting at this time of year. We queue up to buy gifts—and to mail them. We wait for Amazon orders to arrive in the post. We wait in airports, traffic, and coffee shops. We wait for Christmas break to wrest us from our studies, our work, our loneliness. Sometimes we wait at a tremendous pace, as if filling our days with work or parties or consumer pursuits will make time gain speed.

Waiting...Israel was waiting for a Messiah in the days of Caesar Augustus. Waiting for a Deliverer, like in Egypt long ago. Israel was waiting for freedom. In those same days, a woman named Elisabeth was waiting to deliver her first child, though she was old and infertile. A young, unmarried girl was also waiting quietly and patiently. She was awaiting the promise given to her by an angel of God. Waiting to see what her belovéd would do when she told him she was pregnant. A virgin giving birth to a child, it sounded like a silly sham, a cover up for fornication. Yet the prophecy was there in Isaiah, "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name [Emmanuel]."1 There they were—Elisabeth, Mary, and all of Israel—waiting.

Nine months of waiting brought forth John. The same length of gestation wrought the King of all creation into a creature Himself. Then came the patient, silent years of growing—like a seed underground, waiting to break into the sunlight. After thirty years of quiet growth, John paved the way for his kinsman, Jesus, and for three years all of Israel waited to see what would become of Mary's son. You know the rest, He was killed and His disciples waited three days in fear of the Romans, in fear of the Jews, in fear that all their hopes had been placed in the wrong man. But their hope was fulfilled. The anticipation was exceeded. The waiting dawned in resurrection.

Awaiting the arrival of the Messiah is what the season of Advent is all about. We have stepped into that waiting period. The fasting before the feasting. The season of darkness is upon us, like it was upon Israel.

In preparation for celebrating the arrival of the Messiah, I began to think about the advent seasons we go through in life at times. Sometimes they are long, unyielding periods. The darkness is thick, we see no light of hope at the end of the tunnel. The Messiah seems far away. We cry out, "How long, O Lord? How long?" with seemingly no answer. Israel sat in crushing darkness, hope draining out of her that the long awaited Messiah would ever come. Nearly all Israel had no inkling that the dark night of their fallen existence—and the agony of waiting—was about to end in dawn. Often we do not sense that the approach—the Advent—of God is near at hand, either. But the truth is that: 

"Because of God’s tender mercy,the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us,to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,and to guide us to the path of peace."2

The light at the end of the tunnel may not come in the form we would like, or hope for, or expect. Jesus did not come as a mighty warrior, He entered Israel as a fragile baby. He did not enter Jerusalem in triumph, riding a white charger, He rode in on a humble donkey colt. So, too, our hope may be realised in ways we didn't foresee: in an encouraging friend walking alongside us through the daily grind; in having a good job—when we didn't expect we would have to be the sole provider for our family; in the welcoming embrace of our parents—rather than a lover; in strength for this day, when we thought we were depleted yesterday. Hope is sometimes realised in a change of heart, change of mind, change of plans that looks like a faithful friend. The dawn comes in shades of colour we never anticipated, sometimes after we have given up looking for the light. The daystar rises at the right time—even when it seems late—because of God's tender mercy, because of His kindness.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend [understand or overcome] it."3

Whether you are waiting in line or waiting for something in your life to change, let the longing to be finished with waiting remind you that you are being cultivated. Like a seed underground, like John the Baptist and Jesus in the decades before their life's work began—the waiting produces patience and strength of character. The waiting gives you roots so that you may also grow upward and produce fruit. The waiting is not wasted, it ends in the dawn of resurrection.

_________

1. Isaiah 7:14 (ESV)

2. Luke 1:78-79 (NLT)

3. John 1:1, 4-5 (NKJV)