Death is not our home

As I mentioned once when a friend was shot, I have a tendency to respond to death by railing against it, which ought to strike me a bit like railing against the ocean for lapping up on the shore. “Death is natural,” people would reason with me. “Death is just a part of life.” “This world is not our home.” “Our citizenship is in heaven.” “He has gone on to a better place.” (Etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.)

I was never sure what exactly I was protesting. On the surface, after all, these adages were true, and I certainly had no argument against them other than the fact that my spirit kept rejecting them like a failed organ transplant. If death was indeed as natural as it seems to be, why would it shock us as it does? If this world was not our home, why would we have to keep reminding ourselves of the fact?

It didn’t help that Scripture is not half as clear on the topic as we make it out to be. It was downright frightening to imagine all the unsatisfying sorts of resolutions that could fit within the vague descriptions of the afterlife that were given to us by a God who never seems to spell the future out as clearly as we expect him to.

If this were a theological blog, that would have been a great set-up to introduce N. T. Wright, whose eschatology (theology of the end times) regarding the New Creation and the Resurrection (of us) I found to be quite healing after my years of railing. (He infamously says that “Heaven is not our home; we’re just passing through”—as we wait for our coming bodily resurrection in the transformed earth.) For now at least, I am friends with too many Biblical scholars to feel comfortable presenting Wright’s eschatology. Let’s just say that I have found great hope in the belief that just as the material creation fell (not only our souls) and just as Christ’s material body was raised from the dead (not only his soul), we are awaiting the restoration of the material creation (not only the spiritual), the resurrection of our material bodies (not only... well, you get the idea).

On the contrary, this is still my listening-blog, and yesterday as I sat through a funeral hearing my rector encourage the grieving family with the emphatic hope that the dead man had gone on to his true home where we would eventually spend eternity with him as well, I forbade myself from questioning his eschatology. Instead, I remembered my sister-in-law’s grandmother who died this past spring. When her son talked to her a bit about the possibility of a bodily resurrection, the dying Appalachian woman simply brushed him off by interjecting, “I don’t know what will happen, but as long as Jesus is in charge I know it will be good.” After a long life of walking beside Jesus, she had confidence in his goodness, and it was enough to face the unknowns on the other side of death.

I may not ever be graced with the simplicity of faith that Appalachian woman had, the faith that could find comfort in adages about heaven or that would not care either way. I’m grateful at least that in the Church my overly-intellectual faith can learn from her simplicity, that her confidence in the person of Christ can shed hope on my endless queries. As I learned from my unsettled spirit, a robust eschatology is important; as I learned from that grandmother, intimacy with Christ is more important.

We Are Six

--------A simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?

Three separate dear friends of mine from three separate times past gave birth to three separate beautiful baby girls in the past week. Life is beautiful.

And today is the fourth birthday of another friend’s baby girl who died a few months before her third birthday after a short life beset with inexplicable seizures and a shrinking brain. And here in this strange intersection of life and death, I am reminded to continue praying for my two other dear friends who lost newborn sons this past fall, one because he had inexplicably failed to form a skull during the early months in the womb, and the other because he inexplicably failed to keep on breathing in the early days of his seemingly healthy life outside it.

I could insert some well-known maxim here, something along the lines of the familiar “Life is short” or Tennyson’s “O life as futile, then, as frail!” or Macbeth’s “Out, out, brief candle! / Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, / And then is heard no more.” These are true of our experience, certainly of the experiences of those three grieving mothers.

But I wonder if these maxims are so often repeated because our spirit so thoroughly rejects them. If they are so true of our experience, true as obvious statements like “The sun is bright” or “The grass is green,” then why do we have to keep reminding ourselves of the shortness of life? If Macbeth was right that life is a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, why would we be so disturbed when my friend is given a full two hours (or two days, or two years) with her child?

Perhaps “the deeper magic,” to use Lewis’ lovingly weathered phrase, is that life is not a candle that can be extinguished. Perhaps my three friends are still grieving because the have been torn away from children who still exist. Perhaps (and pardon me if I’m being too erudite, too Platonic, or too Catholic here, especially for such a sensitive issue) love and life are parts of the same thing, as if life is the matter and love is the substance (or vice-versa?); and as the love exists no less in the grieving mother than in the celebrating one, perhaps we are assured that the life exists as strongly.

Perhaps I do not merely believe that the Church is a single body made up of the apostles and saints and my ancestors and my descendants because I learned it in a book or a sermon or a creed; perhaps my soul has always known it. As Christendom—Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants alike—affirm together that the soul is eternal and does not die when the body stops breathing, perhaps I do not believe it because I am brainwashed but because it is true. Whether we believe that we are anticipating a future reunion with our loved ones or that we can even speak to them now, we believe that we are mutually connected to a living unit of humanity that includes the not-yet-alive and the live and the even-more-alive.

Apart from that hope, I do not know how people can endure the severity of love. And to each of those six loving mothers out there, you are in my prayers.

"How many are you, then," said I,
"If they two are in heaven?"
Quick was the little Maid's reply,
"O Master! we are seven."

"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
'Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, "Nay, we are seven!"

from “We Are Seven” by William Wordsworth

Blood and Feathers

"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

Emily Dickenson

Hope is not a thing with feathers, for
It does not sing or fly. Whoever told
You otherwise has never felt the cold
Despair that spreads it dragon wings to soar
Away. Hope does not fly away, O glory;
It is made of flesh and blood that fold
Around us like a Virgin's womb who's bold
To sing the Word without the tune, the story
That begins and ends in water and
The bloodbath. Any less is sentiment,
Mere air that cannot perch a soul or stand
Against the slings and arrows it is sent.
There may be Hope that flesh and blood can wear,
But disembodied hope is but Despair.

Waiting for what is here

An warning to all genuine luddites out there: this post begins with a Facebook reference. I am sorry. I couldn’t think of a better way to frame this. But genuine luddites shouldn’t be reading blogs anyway.

Last year in January when I was celebrating my first month with my third nephew, friends of mine in Cork were expecting their first son. I remember watching their Facebook statuses as the little fellow lingered in her womb:

Joe can’t wait to be a father!

Maria can’t wait to see her son!

I was struck by the difference. The father-to-be knew that his whole life was about to change at any moment. The mother-who-was knew that hers already had nine months earlier.

And today in our last full day of Advent, I am struck by the hope that lies in the union of those two facts. Yes indeed, we are waiting for something that has not happened yet (and there is hope in that: to think this were the fullness would be despair!). And yes indeed, we are waiting for something that is already here (and there is hope in that: to think the fullness were inaccessibly distant would be despair!).

Our redemption is here, the pregnant Mary knows. And O for our redemption to come, the faithful Joseph beside her awaits. And I who long for his kingdom to arrive and put the world to rights as I am connected to the Church where it has already begun, I who long for his healing to arrive in my soul where he is already present, may rejoice and long beside them.

Come Lord Jesus, you who are already here!

The Present Tense of Hope

The readings at church this past Sunday came from II Kings 4:42-44 in which Elisha miraculously feeds 100 men with 20 loaves, Psalm 144 for which the congregational response was “You open wide your hand, O Lord, and grant our desires,” and John 6:1-15 in which Jesus feeds the 5,000. Father Padraic, whom I got to know last year, gave a lovely homily that emphasized God showing up in history, ultimately through the incarnation where he walks up another hillside to feed the people as he opens wide his hands on the cross. It was a fabulous homily for an English major.

But as any of my regular readers may recall, God’s presence was an issue of serious question for me this past spring. Furthermore, though Ireland has proved to be a refreshing holiday from my characteristic melancholy, the intensive language school has a tendency to push each of its victims to his breaking-point throughout the summer, and Tuesday ended up being my day to snap. That afternoon I found myself unable to study and hounded by all the questions that I knew where waiting for me in the US, and I left my homework and went to the cathedral to pray.

And eventually Father Padraic showed up beside me, having uncharacteristically decided to do his evening prayers in the cathedral that day, and finding me crying in front of the crucifix he asked me if I’d like to get a cup of tea with him. We walked to a nearby cafe and talked for about an hour.

“But there are sometimes God doesn’t seem to show up,” I interjected at some point in the conversation, thinking about the situation this past spring. “And I can’t walk away unless God starts providing more people. Sometimes there is no one else...”

“Watch out with those kinds of words,” Father Padraic interrupted me. “There are six billion people in the world. You only have a vague idea of what God is doing with one of them.”

“I know...” I admitted. “I know I shouldn’t say any statements with words like ‘no one’ or ‘never,’ but it certainly seems like God stands aloof sometimes.”

“Maybe you’re asking for the physical proof like Thomas was,” Fr Padraic suggested. “Unless you have the categorical evidence that you can see and touch you will not believe in the risen Christ. But blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. The call of the Christian is a call to hope in the risen Christ.”

I never thought of myself as a Cartesian materialist demanding physical proof. But maybe he was right; one way or another, he was certainly dead-on with suggesting my need to grow in hope.

“What do you mean by hope?” I asked. “Is hope in this case a future thing, hope that God will work everything out in the end into a beautiful story that makes all the evil worth it? I have plenty of that, but a hope for the future can often lead to a despair in the present.”

“No,” he assured me, “it is a hope for the present, hope that the risen Christ is alive now and working miraculously whether or not you see him. Your friend back home, for example, might have 50 people in her life right now; it is a hope that God is using the other 49 as well, whether or not you see it. It is also a hope that God is taking care of you, using people in ways they are not aware of to meet your needs, like when I came to the cathedral this evening when I would normally be elsewhere. You are not always given the chance to see him, but he is risen.”

The next morning was the feast of St. Martha. At mass we celebrated her belief in the resurrection that she had in the midst of her grief, hope that was not only in the future tense, but also the present:

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”

In a Country Churchard

I knew I was in Northern Ireland and not the Irish Republic when I took a stroll through a graveyard. The difference between the Protestant graveyard and the Catholic ones I was growing accustomed to in the rest of the country was quite surprisingly great, though they were both certainly beautiful. But as I wandered through the northern churchyard, weaving my way around cross after cross, I realized something that surprised me.

I was missing Mary.

Not just her. I was missing the human element that warms the Catholic graveyards I had been exploring in the towns down south, the statues of saints who have lived and died before us who may yet (according to Catholic theology) be actively praying for us who are still alive. A Catholic graveyard is an active place; even in its stillness it is a junction of the living and the even-more-living. And in that intersection, they have faith that the loved ones they bury are not actually gone, not anymore than Mary and the other saints are.

At least, so I gather.

One way or another, the marble crosses in Northern Ireland felt a little bit cold in contrast, as if they proclaimed a disembodied abstraction—an abstraction that was certainly true, and that the abstract pieces of me could touch, and that offered hope of reaching completely when I would eventually become an abstraction too. They were still quite beautiful, and probably a little theologically safer, but a little deader (if I can use that word for a graveyard), certainly a little farther away.

One of the headstones in a little graveyard in the town where Patrick had built his first church comforted its Catholic grievers with these words (right behind a little statue of a praying Mary):

Those who die in grace
go no further than God,
and God is very near.

Sitting with Solomon

Last night as the Church calendar was preparing to enter into Lent, we began reading Ecclesiastes in the regular Tuesday night Bible study that meets at my house (in which we remembered to commemorate Fat Tuesday with plenty of beer… Dead Guy Ale was the hit for the night).

A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.

I was struck by the fact that most people in the room of 21st-century grad students connected with the author’s lamentation so many centuries later, yet we tried to bypass the point in the light of the Incarnation. When struck by the vanity and weariness of the cyclical world, the constant ocean that we like streams pout into with out ever being able to fill, we want to immediately jump to “Jesus changes that!”

But before such a hasty dismissal, let us remember that the author, who obviously knew nothing about the Incarnation, certainly has a message that we have not learned and a Faith we have never had to attain (our Bible study got into a big discussion about whether or not we could see ourselves obeying God just because he’s God rather than because we know things will be better for us if we do). We would do well to learn from him, to let his faith instruct ours before we instruct him with our knowledge of later history.

Rarely are we forced to sit with difficult truths about human existence as the author of Ecclesiastes invites us to do, and as the Church calendar writes into two out of the six seasons. But unlike Advent, Lent is not about sitting with our longing for redemption as we wait for Christ’s coming; we sit with our sin as we wait for his death. I am accustomed to thinking I can identify sin, confess it and change it in the same fell swoop; Lent invites me to simply sit with it.

I can’t end this post with a pithy glimpse of hope about the redemption we will celebrate in 40 days. I am not ready to look to the conclusion until I have sat with Solomon here in Ecclesiastes 1 for a while.

The ears of the deaf unstopped

Two years ago my homeless friend (I’ll call him Benedict) got out of jail after spending seven months there for an armed robbery he didn’t commit, and made a courageous choice: he asked to be placed in a halfway house, somewhere far away from the college town where I had met him. After keeping my number in his wallet during his whole stay in prison, he called me that spring to invite me to visit him.

I remember the conversation I had with a friend who joined me to share the drive. While giddy about seeing Benedict again, I nevertheless confessed the despair that I had maintained as I had entered the lives of various homeless men and women.

“Sure, hope is being fulfilled for Benedict,” I continued, “and I suppose it was fulfilled the summer that I prayed for Lawrence and returned in the fall to find him well-fed and off the streets, but what about the people God doesn’t help?”

To make my point, I tried to think of examples.

“What about Herman?” I began, until I remembered that the haggard old veteran had recently ended up in an apartment.

“Or what about Barbara?” I continued, until I remembered that she had recently ended up off the streets as well.

My friend simply smiled as I struggled unsuccessfully to come up with an example of a homeless person whose life I had entered in college who was still on the streets. I was shocked that my tragic-example trump-card had been trumped. Somehow, though I had maintained the impression that God never helped these people, that their lives were a stagnant position of misery, he had seemed to go behind my back in his process of transforming the physical, tangible hardships of their lives.

I visited Benedict again on Monday. He is now in a house of his own, for which he shares the rent with his newly-reconciled mother and little brother, who have moved down South to share life with him. He has worked a full-time job for the past two years, and they are preparing him for more managerial roles as he is reaching his 50s. He just started a 401k.

God has been in the process of redeeming the decayed parts of creation, even when I have refused to see it. And God has done it without being dependent upon my own attempts to hurry the process.

Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who have an anxious heart,
“Be strong; fear not!
Behold, your God
will come with vengeance,
with the recompense of God.
He will come and save you.”
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped…

In the case of Benedict, it was my hands that were weak, my knees that were feeble, my heart that was anxious, my eyes that were blind, and my ears that were deaf. They are slowly becoming unstopped.

Not without hope we suffer and we mourn

I am finally reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and I wonder where it has been all my life. What other gems might I discover out there in my quest to turn myself into a “master” of literature?

My impression after spending the morning in the first two books is that just about every tale is one of sorrow. The end of each story seems to involve some character left in grief, some virgin unable to escape the clutches of a ravisher, some man unable to attain his woman (cleverly, those are often the same tale), some parent morning the loss of a child. Even before we are given specific characters we are given grief, as the golden age turns into the silver and then to the bronze and then to the iron… there is a sense of a loss of greatness woven into the fabric of great mythology.

And it is Advent. The Christian story is not unique in its story of a Fall, or in the sense of mourning that it carries with it. Rachel is left weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more just as surely as the sap that bleeds from Roman trees speaks of Clymene’s daughters whose grief for their fallen brother Phaethon transformed them into those trees. Who can look at a Raven without suspecting the ominous treachery that brought Apollo to kill his beloved with his son within her womb, anymore than he can look at a serpent without suspecting Eve’s deceiver?

Rather than a rival to paganism, Christianity seems to answer the hopeless cries of Io who suffers for a treachery larger than her mortal scope had concocted and deeper than her mortal strength can escape. Christ’s coming meets the pagan wailer just as completely as the Hebrew wailer, though the former had not known he was waiting for redemption as the latter did. His coming meets this fundamental piece of our humanity: our sense of loss.

Advent is a reminder that we are the Hebrew and not the Pagan; we are in on the secret that redemption is on its way. The wind that blows against the wailing reeds by the riverside may as well tell the tale of Pan and Syrinx; Paul declares that creation has been groaning with the pains of childbirth until now. But we groan with hope, the hope that our groans are heard, that they have-been-are-and-will-be answered, that God has felt our grief as much as the gods did, but actually has power to redeem it.