FROM THE BOUNDARY
As the wind in sheets and stabs howls about my house early this Monday morning, the rain with no finesse at all slobbers the earth with indiscriminate bucketfuls, and thunder grumbles somewhere under its thick gray duvet, I can’t help but reflect on the uncertainty of it all, of life, yours and mine. It’s kind of comforting that we’re all subject to a deportation order, however much we claim we’re here for the public good and the long haul. In recent days, the trooping of hurricanes has raised all sorts of questions about God’s activity in the world. And now ‘MARIA’? Oh well. Hell hath no fury like a woman, I suppose. I’m not altogether surprised that Trump’s evangelicals haven’t claimed that Harvey and Irma amply demonstrate that God is pleased with Trump. Indeed, they’ve been strangely silent. But I don’t think they’ve come round to the idea that weather is just weather being itself with no sub-plot, and I suspect they’ll soon claim that survival, for most at least, in the face of hurricanes and earthquakes is itself an act of God, another proof that good will never succumb to evil, because God has ‘listened’ to our prayers – which raises the conundrum of what prayer is, its nature and purpose, and what went wrong for those who died. Meanwhile, the storm outside intensifies and then softens, and then furiously returns playing its little jokes, a parody of life itself.
Tuesday 8:15 a.m.: sodden earth, damp roads, early thunder gone, no rain. Still gorgeous girl from up the road, no smart phone in hand, glides past in heartfelt, zinky maroon to catch the bus, patting her hair. Poor old man in zizzly sky-blue shorts follows, walking his dogs – me. Fool driver swerves between us, she and me, at insensible speed. So there – life goes on. What’s changed? But that’s the point, isn’t it? Nothing has changed. The human spirit ever raises a finger to yesterday.
We Christians call it all the ‘way of the cross’. It’s a cross not only of suffering, tears and loss but also resurrection and life. We all know that life can be a very tough journey, a long slog along a knife edge. It doesn’t really matter who we are. The blessings and woes of life crash land on all of us, rich or poor, good or bad, white or black. The same sun shines upon us all, and the foot lights dim too as we fumble our way through the lines of our play. If we’re sharp enough, we learn something from all we’ve experienced. If we can stand outside ourselves and look in, with no special pleading, maybe we’ll see something of how we think, feel and behave and so reach towards a wholeness and fullness within ourselves which always stared us in the face though we never saw it, heard it, or dreamed of it. As they say, that way we lose our life in order to find it.
In all of this, we don’t have to be so miserable you know. It’s all about waking up – though no one should blame us in our sleep walking. It’s about saying ‘YES’ to ourselves, yes to everything that’s good and true about us, and so also ‘yes’ to life in all its wonder and beauty. But remember: it’s a creative thing this waking up, a God given thing. It doesn’t entail some sort of punishment for what we once did or didn’t do. It’s about good news. It’s the Gospel at work in you and me.
How can good news be about guilt, judgement and harsh sayings? How can it pull you down and condemn you? It can’t. An authentic Gospel is about raising us up to become whole people not half people and releasing the divine power within us, the beauty and creativity within us. It’s a Gospel about hope and release and it sets us free to be our true selves – not by threats and promises, but simply by opening our eyes to what life is, what truth is, the truth within ourselves. If it were all other than this, how gloomy religion would be. For God’s sake no. Let’s clap our hands and cry ‘yes’, yes to ourselves and so also to life.
However, this ‘yes’ will only come about in the context of something we’re apt to forget. It’s a very sacred thing. We call it ‘joy’. “These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full,” Jesus says. Our sorrow, he says, will ever be turned into joy, a joy which no-one must ever be allowed to take from us. It’s an idea in the Psalms too: “Those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy” (126). All too often, people of faith, busily judging everything, condemning everything, are seen as destroyers of joy, the joy of life. They seem only to want to pull you down. Maybe it makes them feel good, this role as kill-joys, frowning on this, on that. They can’t really see, of course, because of the planks in their eyes. Pity them – and, if it’s really necessary, tell them to go their way. In your joy, you deserve better than that.
Go safely, then – until the next time.
Confucius from the boundary: “Not teach ripe person: waste of person. Teach not ripe person: waste of words.”