The Long Night

Will my heart ever be happy again? The long night is very long. I can't believe it will. Coming in contact with the harsh realities of life is quite earth shaking. Many souls cannot recover from it. I am still a baby, crying out for security—for someone to hold my hand. It is not the grown up me, it is the child within. It is still February, it is still winter. The winds outside remind me that the winter has not yet passed. My beloved is still on journey, or perhaps it is me that is still on pilgrimage, not him. There is a silence in the sunshine, that wavers in and out of the cold winds. A bit of warmth amidst the cold. March is around the corner then April. Then April 25th will come and how will it be? Who will I be? Where will I be? Through the corridors of darkness, my roots have plunged through caliche and it seems the ground has been broken up —new seeds from God may now be planted in my heart. Though through it all I have not seen His face. So quiet, resting, while the earth turns on its axis to bring the summer rains again.

But it is lunch time and I have only a echo to keep me company. The silence has not yet become my companion. This is a grief no one can take away but God.

Valentines Day finally comes!

 Valentines Day came today, Saturday Feb 18th.  I woke up in a state of pure bliss for some reason. My discovery  of the word “perichoresis” (to dance around) may have had a part in this unexpected gift. Perichoresis I quote "...has been called the 'divine dance,' that profound union of Father, Son and Holy Spirit that has gone on since eternity past, goes on now, and will go on forever, except that the dance of eternity will have a select audience—those whom the Father has foreknown, the Son has redeemed, and the Spirit has enlivened and sanctified. Perichoresis is a fellowship of three co-equal beings perfectly embraced in love and harmony and expressing an intimacy that no one can humanly comprehend. The Father loves the Son by means of the Spirit’s procession and the Son loves the Father by the same means. The Spirit loves both the Father and the Son and eternally proceeds from the Father and Son.” 


I was so excited about this divine dance that my heart was skipping like a lamb, joy nearing ecstasy. As I made breakfast for the kids, I asked myself, "Where have you felt like this before?" Surprisingly I discovered that my life has been filled with memories that contained this level of happiness. The earliest memory was traveling on Highway 28 to Old Mesilla on the back of a motorcycle, thanksgiving in a cabin in Cloudcroft,  traveling to Grand Junction with my new bridegroom, traveling through Tucson and the red rocks, camping in Idaho with my new man, going to Pasadena to go to grad school...leaving YWAM for the great unknown, wondering if  life existed outside of YWAM, moving into Oxford. All of them in some degree had this traveling component to them. My missionary heart already being revealed in the mundane. 


My heart was so entwined in my new gift from God, Hans,  that it could be said we were doing the perichoresis dance ourselves. So love starved were we, that we were nearly inseparable for the five years of our married life. And there was my Valentine's Day gift! The memory of a wondrous gift of companionship, equality, and an apostolic call were all part of God's great plan for me. Hans is in such awe inspiring company now—Paul, Thomas, Philip and John, all among the great cloud of witnesses, the communion of the saints. 


But in the last two years, I had forgotten that my life had been filled with such joys.  Perhaps it was the presence of  dark shadows and longings, like a cloud obscuring the sun.  Stay, Oh Sun, stay. Today I am like the disciples on the road to Emmaus who gingerly reached out to the Redeemer saying,  "The day is late, won't you stay with me a while..." 

Isaac's Revelation

As you know I am still processing Hans' passing from this earth. Yesterday at the mini-retreat I had significant insights, which as a thinker I absolutely needed in order to resolve it in my heart—unresolved mysteries which tumble around in my head make for all kinds unrest I cannot find peace or rest until they are resolved.  So what I am about to tell you is unusual, but honestly true. 


One of the troubling factors in settling Hans' account on earth, is that it felt like an event born out of chronological time. We were heading somewhere, divinely appointed and birthed in God and then—out of nowhere, this sudden and abrupt end occurs. I have not been able to make sense of this tragic interruption.

So that is where the Spirit was taking me too on my mini-retreat. The first song the Spirit choose was a sweet and peaceful instrumental. We were supposed to center down and "remember" the Lord, as the Psalmists says, "To magnify Him." As I looked upon my history with the Lord remembering his every incredible kindness to me, I said this prayer: "Words cannot adequately describe the incredible insights you have given me, the favors you have granted, the incomparable passion and love you have bestowed upon me in the past but which now has become so totally irreconcilable with the crushing and breaking asunder of my heart with which you have wounded me in the loss of my husband. It remains the biggest hurdle of my life and Lord, it stands between us." It was the barest moment of my life with God.


My eyes shifted to this picture which was sitting on my desk, as I looked at Hans securely holding my hand, God spoke these words into my heart,  "I gave you this man to guide you, train you, and love you. He will present you to me at the marriage feast and he will be proud of his work in you and of your efforts. Your arrival into maturity (perfection) was his end." I saw in this picture him leading me up the mountain to the throne of God. 


Of course, I was shocked. This meant so many things. Immediately it meant that in some way, my own spiritual life and discipleship was part of Hans' call and a completion of his mission on earth. I believe it means the same thing for all our children. Our maturity in part became the conclusion of his life. It meant that we had all reached a place that God could make a pivotal change in the course of direction and use for each one of us. 


For a moment, I wished that I had stayed immature and insecure so that he would have remained. But then I also understood, that at my completion he too had been perfected. He had reached the end (in love) for which he had been created. I am not talking about works as an end, but a spiritual place where the soul is in a state of compliance and readiness for eternity. I had seen this disposition in Hans toward the end of his life—a sweetness that was nearly unbearable. 


Then I asked God if it had been ok for Hans to die before our Isaac was born? "Isaac" being the seed of the promise? And God simply said, "You were his Isaac." By this I was struck dumb. It is unbearable to think of this when I remember all the fitful ways I behaved while  married. It was not a tame Isaac that Hans carried up Mt. Moriah,  but a rebellious and unformed Isaac. I could not compare with the earthly Isaac's submission to the will of God and trust in the Father that he displayed. 


It also occurred to me that Hans' "Isaac" was different than mine. This explained why we had so many difficulties in describing the vision of our mission. Now I see we were working on different blueprints with different endings.  My "promised son" was much different than his. I could feel my soul relax as I began to let the words sink in. But I was full of questions:


How can another person be someone's else's promise?
Can another person's dream mean the end of someone else?
Did Obi Wan Kenobi die because he knew he would be more useful to Luke as a ghost?
And weren't those Jesus' words too? It is better that I go away, so that the comforter may come to you? 
What did it mean for the bringing forth of my own dream? 


I asked Jesus to not shrink back, but to keep the windows open for me a bit more. I asked in the Spirit if I could touch his wounds, like Thomas did. He said, "You have. Your fingers are inside my wound as you grieve Han's loss. Your sorrow is because I let you into my wound and now it is your wound too." My sorrow will always be there as it is for Jesus too. Somehow the loss I feel is part of God's revelation of Himself to me. I am not alone in this terrible tragic pain I feel nearly all the time. 


This morning I did not feel the heaviness of being alone, abandoned or lost. I mysteriously felt part of a bigger picture, enabled with the designer's grace to live out knowing that somehow I had been incorporated into Hans and the Lord. 

Aah...where is my roaring fire?

I open the door to the backyard to let out the cat and close it quickly. I am not happy with what I see. The yard feels frozen and empty of life. The grass appears to have a thin layer of snow on it and the trees are splintery and colorless. How can anything good come from this? It is a season. That's all, a season of life. Spring reminds me that all things evolve and that time is God's best cultivating tool. Peering out the window, I see that only doves in the trees stay on, all the wasps and bees have disappeared. The wind is cold and uninviting, the tables are opaque with dust and watery from last summer's splashing. How, I wonder, can anyone enjoy themselves outside right now? The Denver storm has brought cold winds to El Paso and we feel blown about in this sunny city, we feel a frosty bite taken out of us. Our winters are pleasant not bold. But it is the chill to the soul that I feel the most...a hurry to close the door to the tomb...and wait for God's most majestic promises to reappear in the land. I forget that the earth below is waiting to spring forth too, that nature groans under the weight of its own longing..as well as I. We are growing even in the dark and soon it will be evident what we once were. My midnight oil burns bright inside the house, my mind running a thousand miles each evening. My portable university follows me everywhere I go and I store up grain to plant in the spring. Virgins congregate at my table every Thursday night and we enjoy a meal of rich bread and wine as we fill our minds with heavenly visions...but other than that, the winter is here for a while....I cannot yet put away my overcoat and boots. Patience...is wearing on the flesh... Aah..where is my roaring fire? Imagination is a wonderous gift of God. If you can think it...it creates another dream and the future remains fraught with interest and intrigue.

A New Heart for Valentine's Day...

You know that this blog is about grief, right? It is about the process of finding life again...and about the journey to a reality you can live with once again. My other blogs urban abbess and desert abbess are about sustaining life in an urban setting (to repair us for the apocalyse) and the desert abbess (to train us for the life of the cross); then there is tALITHA CUM, which is my life of despair moving toward wholeness, I pray. Today describing "how I am doing" I scrambled to find a meaningful metaphor that would keep me from crying but be truthful in the details. I scanned the horizon of my experience these last few months and the only thing I could see was a barren desert with a long winding road down the middle. No landscape, no flowers, no wildlife,just monotony and an endless series of hills that had to be climbed and put behind oneself. Not very exciting. But not stress free either. Because for all of its monochromatic hues, it was scary too. Just being on a road toward a destiny you know not, is scary. I repeatedly turn back looking for my normal life. Then I discover its gone. There is no normal to go back to. I walked into Hans' office this morning with the clear goal of getting him out of his desk chair and going for breakfast someplace, wanting to hear his voice again. But when I walked in, it was my own office I was looking at. I didn't open the closet door where all his clothes still hang and rest. Nope...its a whole new world and I am on this journey alone. How can any of this bring glory to God? I don't know. I only know that it is a desparate dark and lonely road, and I am traveling it with a silent companion who never speaks to me anymore. Just walks along side of me in a quiet softness. I have walked with Him too long to ever think He has abandoned me, but at the same time, it feels like it. My feelings will not however, undermine or erode my faith in Him. I will walk this road, step by step, but I am not happy about it at all. My spiritual mentor asks of me to look for something lovely today, some place that I stopped (in the spirit) and enjoyed myself and was refreshed. These moments are so hard to find. It is a really a stretch to find...there are no desert blooms that I can pick on this God-forsaken road. It occurred to me at some point today, that I am on the cross. There were a few this week. All of them deeply personal but highly revealing. All clearly point to the loss of love that I have experienced in this year. I promised one of my clients that she would get a new heart for Valentine's Day to replace her broken one. I pray that for myself as well.

The Missing Leg

Its still cold outside but even colder inside. I long for days of uninterrupted silence where I can be alone with God. My juices are not flowing this day, will be locked into an embrace of my inner healing posture with a client for several hours which requires an incredible amount of physical fortitude..on the the part of my brain. Tracking people's thoughts is hard work. Often they do not know where they are going either. But we know that ultimately the Spirit will guide them to the right place. Afterwards I can do nothing but eat and rest. In the old days, my honey would take me out for lunch. Today I meet with a group of widows to eat together and complain about the weather. Perhaps its the weather in our inner gardens that we are ultimately grieving...

I met with a man who lost his wife. He said half of his heart died the day she did. He can't get started living anymore, the fuse has been pulled. He is young and has decades ahead of him. I hope and pray that soon God will set him free from the weight of loss upon him. Perhaps by Valentine's day he will have his heart back or grow another one. The wound in my heart is healing, but there is no growth yet to replace what was ripped away. Left is just a cauterized wound, not bleeding as much as before...but now I feel like the guy with the missing leg. He still tries to walk on it, only to fall down and then remember...Oh, it's gone.

The Long Winter

Well it has been a long cold winter for me, just coming through another loss of sorts. Daughter Julianne and kids rejoined her husband in a nice home near the school. I took the time to spread out my wings (and furniture) throughout the spacious place. I have five desks and am constantly running between them. My work is all over the place where I used to be in two little rooms earlier. But these are all inanimate objects that keep me busy, the real story is just below the surface. How am I doing? Well...I just don't know. I am still as confused as ever about my life and the direction it's taking. I know there is movement, because every morning I put one foot in front of the other. But spring has not arrived, spiritually speaking, and I wonder if I will ever get out of the cocoon of my sheltered life. I feel frozen most of the time, unsure whether to go left or right. It's a debilitating season. My wings have been clipped and I cannot even go from tree to tree anymore. My groom still lies in the upper valley and I only make it up there every two weeks. I change the flowers/decoration every season and soon I will have to have a room just for them. So I don't think this is working out well. Surely there is a better plan. Plus the expense of buying decoration is increasing. I know Hans would rather I buy food. I spent three days in the dark last week, the electricity was turned off. Oddly enough it was an enlightening time for me. I was quite happy inspite of the terrible inconvenience of not having heat or light in the evening. Most of the day was spent traveling around in my car charging my phone. Simplicity is the goal or at least one of the goals. I spent half of my life building my nest and the second half taking it down. Where is the sense in that?

Todays meditation is about living a life in harmony and balance. Many of us can suffer from wanting too much. I think I fall into this camp. Last night at Jume's, the lectio was from Mark 3. The story of Jesus' family coming to rescue him thinking that he had lost his mind. The story begins with the statement, "There were so many people surrounding him that he didn't even have a place or time to eat." Jesus' family is coming to claim "custody" over him and take him home.  But Jesus has this startling thing to say when he is told that they are outside looking for him. He virtually denies knowing them. Instead he looks at the ragtag group surrounding him and says "You are my family." I take it to mean that he is saying, "My loyalties are to you." Clarifying he says, "Whoever does the will of the Father is my brother, mother, etc.," I pondered this and wondered what were these simple folks doing that qualified them as "doing the will of the God?" I long to do the will of God as well. In fact, I am simply feverish about it. So...these people were doing it. Sitting around His feet. That is the simple answer. I know this sounds ridiculously corny, but this is what is revealed. This is God's will. But I want to do...and I suppose there is a time in which we will be "sent out." But first we must sit at his feet.

I keep thinking about the warning that the OT gives against false prophets. It says, that "those evil men who prophesy in my name, did not even bother to darken my counsels, did not stand in My chamber—did not receive My word for My people." I suppose this is what it means to first sit at his feet. And I believe it is possible to want too much, if we can't even sit at his feet and listen to him. All who went —first sat.

The reading for today from the online retreat from Creighton asked the question, "Who do you admire?" "Who is your model for living a life in balance and harmony." A life that is free—free from the desire to be famous, successful, materially rich, sensuously blessed, etc., It took me a long time to find three people who I admire and who I want to emulate. But I finally found them. First there was Martin Luther, Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen. They all had something in common, or threads of my life showed up in theirs. These are the qualities I admire: long hours of dedicated study, good scholarship, pondering over the hidden meanings of the Bible, the hidden manna or wisdom. 2) long hours of dedicated prayer and communion with God. 3) The ability to write, teach and preach. These are the things to which I want to dedicate the rest of my life. Emulation precedes imitation they say. I also think that these people had the courage to say what they thought. I tend to couch my language in terms that are culturally relevant to people and politically correct. At least in the sense that they won't stumble over them. But this often has the effect of blunting the prophetic edge in them.

I wonder, what else can be lost, if I do this, just give myself over to this endeavor. What is the cost of this life? My mentor says, that we must be willing to give up all things that do not lend themselves to the end for which we were created. And conversely to use all things toward that end if needed. That is a good paradigm for living, although it doesn't sound very balanced does it?

Last night I saw some new faces...emerging leaders and young adults. It shows the cycle of life in process and for that I am grateful.

At the End of the Day?

What makes up a human life? I am sorting through things in my life in order to arrive at a greater level of simplicity. Yesterday in order to prepare for the tax season filings, I threw away seven years worth of check stubs and old barely readable receipts from 2008-9.  But I also found old check book covers, registers, medical records, etc., and all of them went into the recycle bin. I kept a few of the Hans and Judy account deposit slips, but the majority went into the trash bin. This morning I feel rather bleak. I feel sad, as if part of me was thrown away as well....as if part of my life was thrown out without a second thought. What is it that makes up my life anyway?

I remember the circumscion we underwent when we left Oxford. I had help in making decisions about what to keep since it meant moving to a much smaller house. Literally a ton of things were thrown or given away. One loss in particular was a set of anthropology booklets put out by Eugene Nida, Donald McGavran and a few other "fathers" of the contemporary missionary movement. They were my peculiar treasure. I remember the first time I found these booklets in Hans' library. I was starving for knowledge, having been a missionary for several years and virtually powerless in my endeavors. Finding these booklets was like finding THE cure for cancer. But 2010 came and they had to go. I was no longer teaching missiology and my life was taking a turn to the unknown. And so they were tossed along with all the other bits of our life. I had already transferred these particular booklets several times in the last twenty years. It was their time.

But ten years worth of binders with tax information soon followed, as well as 1040's, 990's and hundreds of duplicate check binders. Also included were enough books to fill a garage and then years worth of the journal we published for ten years. On one hand it was liberating to free from the weight of these possessions, but each one was also connected to a precious memory. It was painful, so I didn't look as the girls tossed things about.

I remember when Charlie Brown died and we thought we were helping the widow by getting rid of an old ugly couch that she had hated, but had been a particular treasure to him. He had brought it with him from the east coast in the move to El Paso. The moment we pulled out of the driveway with the old thing, she said, Well there goes Charlie! The couch was like Charlie himself!

The personal effects of my first husband, including his body having been donated to science, don't exist anymore. Perhaps a tiny pair of handcuffs that he wore as a necktie pin is all that remains. At first he left all of his political science journals, some clothes, but over time that has been absorbed by the dust,  left behind in the trek through the wilderness. Things you just can't carry it with you. The journey is too hard, too long, too hot, and too treacherous in some places. You must get rid of things that weigh you down. But...it's you is that being left behind, pieces of you.

For months before Hans died, he spent hours cleaning up his computer unbeknownst to me. Later I went to look for his drafts and they were all gone. I sure he thought he was doing me a favor, but I felt robbed, cheated of "the stuggle to compose" his sermons and his courses. But I am doing the same thing today—going through all the bits and pieces of my thought life written on scraps of paper all over the office.  These scraps might be meaningful to my kids someday, but today they are just a heavy weight on my shoulders. Perhaps I need to rethink these things, maybe these scraps are not mine alone, but belong to the ones I leave behind. In any case, I shall organize them and spin my story the way I would want them finally perceive the culminulative life of their mother.

I think about the clothes that I have given away and I  miss them. It's not that "I might need them someday" but that "I might miss them someday." There was a me that is gone and I can longer retrieve her. It so strange that when you hold up a dress to give away, at the time, it is just an "old thing" but years after it is gone, it is part of who you used to be.

 The personal effects of Hans have been moved from his old desk to the stand next to my bed, just as they were when he lived—in a sort of carefully crafted chaos. His towel, razors, boots and undies all remain in his closet. His library remains intact. Nothing has changed in that regard. His hats grace the tops of the bookshelves, his wallet, watch and glasses are in the glass cabinet. Why do I do this? Because this is all we have left, his robe, his clothes, his pitiful shoes. Yet the Scriptures say that blessed are those who die in the Lord, for they have ceased from their labors and have entered into their rest, having their works go with them, part of the fruit that remains. That's all we can take with us, our works. Our works are the things deemed of eternal value, not wood, hay or stubble. But for me, his life, my life, is embedded in these things, because memories are attached to them.

 As I look at my jewelry bin, I think everything I have brought into this house is an item which has the potential to become one of those things I attach to and therefore at some point must suffer its loss.  What do I want my remains, my "effects" to be? Well perhaps the things I imparted to others of a more "spiritual nature" such as my words or my intellectual works. Although Henry Nouwen is dead today, his spirit lives on because his words are available. So too are the words of Art Katz. This is the intellecual properties of men who were prophets to their own generation and their words remain. They were actually the words of God spoken through men who were the oracles of God, which is why their words remain. I pray that mine may be like that as well.

 So I want my physical possessions to get smaller and smaller and my thoughts, hopefully, to get larger and larger and written down in such as way that my heart may remain with you. For everytime I read from Henri or Art is like they are speaking to me from beyond the grave. These words were the substance of their lives and the fruit of their suffering as they came to know God in deeper and deeper ways. I don't know if I will teach anymore, perhaps my days of service are over in the spoken realm, but I can write them down and if they are God's words, they will remain.

In a sermon recently given, someone said, "The poor have no history." I pondered this statement until I understood its meaning, which is to say, that the poor live and die without a legacy. They have nothing to give their kids, no inheritance, no riches, they are raised out of the earth and return to it as faceless people not having created a history, a story, to leave their children. Better had they not even been born. I wonder if my generation will leave behind a legacy of riches or simply no legacy at all. Have we eaten all the grain of the fields and leave nothing for our children? Then perhaps we really are the church of Laodacia? Having thought we were rich we were really poor.

What will I leave my children? I hope in the physical it is just dust.  In a book I read not too long ago, Journey of Simplicity, Traveling Light, were listed were the personal effects of:

Thomas Merton: Timex watch, one pair of dark glasses, tortoise frame, two pairs of reading glasses, plastic frames; two Cisterian leather bound brevaries; one rosary (broken); one small icon on wood; Virgin and Child. A one room hermitage with desk and chair, books and firewood for heating.

Father Fossima: russian monk and elder of the monastery: narrow iron bedstand; strip of felt for a mattrew; candles in the corner; a reading desk; a cross and the Gospel.

Ephraim M'kiara (Kenyan mountaineer and elder in the Pentecostal church of East Africa: battered leather bag; huge bible; thin blanket; piece of hemp rope; small package of food; kitchen knife to cut footholds in ice; a thin jacket and barefoot.

Bilbo Baggins: a borrowed dark green hood; a borrowed dark green robe; alot of pocket hankerchiefs; pipe, tobacco, walking stick and money.

Bill Washovwitz (New jersey backwoodman, born again Christian): sturdy saltbox in the woods; enameled cabinet and kerosene stove; small table, sleeping bag; kerosene lamp, rifle; lined writing paper, papers with words written on; Bible correspondence course; huge bible and dictionary.

Jesus: a loin cloth and his disciples.

Frank O'Malley (greatest educator of our time): Lived at the university dormitory, a bed lumpy with books; old essays by students, old books by former students; old checks from student repaying loans, never cashed.

Mohandras Gandi: two dinner bowls; a wooden fork and spoon; diary; prayer book; eyeglasses, three porcelain monkeys speak no evil, hear no evil, hear no evil; watch, spittoon; letter opener; two pairs of sandals.

Yet all of these men and women changed the world—having given their all for the cause of others.

Well, you don't want to see my list. Me and Emelda Marcos would be sisters. Not to mention the number of devices I currently own. So I am going to continue to purge and also think about these things. What is mine and what belongs to the future? I don't want to leave only rags behind but neither do I want to be shamed by the extravagance of the western lifestyle.

 These are not simple things to sort through, but clearly, our true riches are in the love we shared with others and perhaps the wisdom....or the life we modeled for others in pursuit of the pearl of great price!

Loss in the Face of Eternity

I think I get it. A secret of life. It bears writing down if only for the aged. I presume it is linked to the way Americans handle time. We more or less live in the future and everything in the present is a sort of waiting period for the future where my "can't waits" live. But when we are old we wake up and discover it is not like that all. Life is about change and loss.  Change happens anytime the Cloud moves. But sitting in camp, day after day, makes you think that the Cloud has forgotten it is on a journey. We get up, do our daily but tedious duties and wonder if we will ever make it to the Promise Land—you know that place of milk and honey.  I might say that while we are in camp, we are fitful and discomforted. Things are not perfect in camp, they are makeshift at best. But then suddenly, the tedious becomes the past and the Cloud has moved and you are scrambling to catch up. We are never ready for change.

For example, we got a ghastly diagnosis in December 2009. The life we called the "Abbey Experience" ended, a sort of death if you will. Seven years of fellowship, preaching, teaching, praying, children growing up, cleaning and sorted ended in a twinkling of an eye.  The tedium of planning schedules, printing the bulletins and finding nuggets of gold to share became both its charm and a source of loss. Then came fourteen months of nothing but pure rest. Hans writing, me reading, eating out, endless appointments at the oncologist office. For the majority of the time he was in good health. However, the undercurrent of the unknown was always present with us even though our daily life was pleasant,  our only responsibility was getting to the doctor on time. But everyday there was a "waiting." Everyday death was with us. Yet everyday we had each other and everyday we said, "When will we return to normal? When will we return to the life we had once known?"  Those days of "resting" ended on April 25, 2011, 14 months later. The "quiet" we  lived out everyday was over. Like a seed, he was buried in the ground, hallowing the Mesilla Valley.

And a new life began for those of us left behind. A year of waiting for a return to something we call normal. And then it came. A year of life under the sun and heat, sleeping late, homework, shopping,, cooking and visits to the grave. We lived in a cocoon after Hans' death, each one carrying his or her grief in an unspoken way.  Then school started and that idyllic life ended. An entire life died...and new people came into our lives, Katie, Timothy and Gilbert. Pressures came in, expectations and late night homework projects and a broken heart—basketball games and field trips were part of the adventure.

Then the cloud moved and Gilbert and Julianne decided to give their marriage another try, having found friendship in the last seven years of separation. And looking for a new house became the new normal. Gilbert became a daily presence in our house. And a new center for their lives was forged. I had gotten used to the sounds of footsteps in the kitchen, the spoon making noise in the kitchen late at night as a bowl of cereal was eaten, and Emmie running into the bedroom to see if I was still alive. I had gotten used to the late night chats with Julianne over this or that, or endless episodes of cutting out magazine pictures on a scattered dining room table. Today they close on their new home and this life that I have known for almost three years, is over. They will never live here again. I will face my aloneness once and for all.. They will not come "home" anymore and their lives will spin off somewhere else—fertile vines in the fields of the Lord.

The point is that patterns develop, we get used to certain emotional comforts and we live in them, not dealing with the fact that they are temporary and that we should give thanks. But it's kind of like a child giving thanks over dinner and thanking God for the silverware. They are the mundane things of life we taken for granted. But then they are gone. Kind of like the cat that you bend over to feed for the umpteenth time, wishing he or she would stop their incessant meowing,  then suddenly they don't come home, gone, missing and never to return. You would give anything now to reach down and feed that cat again.

I think the list could go on and on and perhaps this IS the wisdom of aging. I remember moving into my first house with Hans and the exhilaration of that event is indelibly impressed upon heart. The thrill of  moving into my dream house with my dream man, how can I deny that thrill to my children as they grow and move into their own destinies. Yet these things are temporal, they fade away, they end. We ourselves are also moving on..to our end...and for us it is another new beginning, an eternal now in which things shall never end. The end of all loss and grief...a perpetual rest for the people of God. Compare that to hell which is endless remorse and regret.

So what do we do in the meantime,while the Cloud stands still? How do we live in the camp in the "unfinished moment?" I think I am beginning to see that a large part of it has to do with undoing the complexity of American life with all of "its dreams" so that the moment can be fully lived and revered. Please see the blog http://theurbanabbess.blogspot.com/view/classic where I try to solve the riddle of   shalom in the American experience. But a lot of it is the reality of "old things passing away" and the "new" which Jesus has wrought coming into being. We are positioned in the "way" of old and new and this tension fills our creaturely part with dread and fear. We long for an established world—this one having been subjected to futility. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.

A Light in My Darkness

After a period of weeks of nothing of note coming forth, I finally have seen (under the light of heaven) that my behavior in recent weeks has been as one who is drunk. But not with alcohol, but with hidden grief. By hidden I mean, not perceived. My language and emotions have been violent and wild, speaking without thinking, feeling without fear of consequence, a drunk ravaged heart wandering in its own desert. This is why it is helpful not to judge people, who knows what is really going on in the human heart, but God alone, who at the right time, comes in from the desert riding on a donkey. There are some places in the human heart that only a donkey can travail. I am ravaged and mad like King Saul in grief who needed a gentle David to sooth his soul—or like a wild lion who suffers from the decay of a rotten tooth and cannot extract the dreaded fire within his mouth.  Who would have known this? Save the gentle nurse from heaven who pours His oil on me in drops...of which my head and heart hungrily search. I reproach myself daily to "get on with life" not knowing that the condition of my soul is not so friendly, but starving, lunatic from loss of a peculiar hand to guide me. 

Thank  God it is the season of Epiphany and the brothers of the Jesus Initiative have soothed my fire with liquid balm. It is the only thing that calms the irrational beast within.  I will try to copy a portion of it for your reading. 

The Feast of the Epiphany of the Lord:

Epiphany is a Greek word, which indicates a showing, a manifestation, usually of divine glory—what we might today call a revelation. The incarnation is an event that not only changes our world, but the way in which we know and understand God. It is His self revelation and the liturgy invites us to journey into this mystery. Yet for such a momentous event in history and in our understanding, it is given, even with the angelic proclamation, soto voce, revealed almost in secret to Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth, then shepherds and now to strangers from foreign lands. It is as if we are witnesses to a seed that is planted and given a vision to what it will become. But we know that we must wait. 


In this sense we  conclude our Christmas celebration but begin our vigil of watching and following, wondering where is God going to take us. Every epiphany or revelation is not just given to our eyes, our seeing, must also be accompanied by understanding. The test of our understanding will be in the response that it evokes. For understanding even the smallest part of this gift of Christ, requires a response, a movement of the heart and of the will. How do you understand this gift from God? 


We have been well tutored by the season, and by the people who have brought us to this moment—Mary and Joseph in their accepted consent to God's plan, the shepherds in their response to the angels and now the Magi and their response to the star. For all of them things will change, their lives will change— they come, they see, they ponder. They are not drawn into some escapist reverie, for they are to return to their people and to their world and  they are to continue their journey, but now with new eyes, new  understanding, new hearts into a new world, a new hope that God is now one with us, and that the darkness is finally giving way to the light which has come into this world. 


This is the great movement of this Christmas season as it reshapes and reforms our lives. And it opens us not only to the Epiphany of Christ but to the Epiphany of humanity in Christ, a new way of being and acting, of living and loving and hoping. All of this is contained in the feast we celebrate today. But it is given to us in a picture told with color and economy by Matthew. 

We are introduced first to these strangers, the Magi, who are the masters of an ancient wisdom, a science which is not part of the revelation that Israel alone possesses—yet points to it. They are the seekers and they have the courage to trust their wisdom and follow where it leads. Here too there is  humility, because they know that for all their skill in searching, for all  their knowledge of the skies—that knowledge is incomplete, it remains a riddle and a hope that cannot find fulfillment, until it comes to the Scriptures wherein is found the revelation that God gives of Himself to His people. Unless [their seeking]  leads  to this, it remains a futile searching, and a sterile wisdom which  cannot answer the deeper longings of the questing of the human spirit. What deep longings does the coming of Christ fulfill for you? 

Then there is Herod, whom we know of from other sources outside Scripture, we know that he is a cunning political operator, who is finely attuned to the lines of power in his world. When we dust away the layers of sentiment that have built up over the  ages, we find in the Gospel a stark, austere realism into which this child is born—a world of ruthless power and political treachery.  It is a world where the poor have no voice and no history. It is world of calculated violence. It is our world. What feelings stir in you as you contemplate this? 

In both Matthew as Luke, the infancy narratives with their gentle and quiet confidence show the unfolding of God's plan within the tragic and grotesque history that we make for ourselves. It is a new history that has been written by the Spirit in which the poor have a voice. It is a their history and it is the history of God's freedom which cannot be imprisoned  within the iron cage of empty human plans for power. Is this something you can do this year? Let God's plan for you unfold without letting yourself interfere?

The gifts of the Magi are prophetic gifts. They are not only rooted in the ancient visions but they also look forward to the journey that the newly born Christ Child must make in order to heal the broken nations of the world. Gold for His Kingship, which is not dependent on any worldly power or politics but on the sovereignty of God.  Frankincense  for the worship that is his due as Son of God and Myrrh as the mark of His suffering through which He will heal our humanity. As we contemplate the picture of the adoration of the Magi as the Gospel of Matthew paints for us, we might linger and ponder the depths of its beauty and of the mystery it invites us to enter. 

The Magi went back "another way". So we too are sent back into our world by "another way". The way that He has already traveled for us. The way in which we find him  walking with us. The way that leads us back, rejoicing,  to the Father. Let us pray that 2012 will bring us closer to Him and to the light which is our goal. Let us pray that He who has come to us in His poverty will find us like the Magi, on our journey to adore Him [with our gifts of faith, worship and sacrifice.) 

Glory be the the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

And it is here after contemplating the Scriptures that my irrational soul becomes sane again and in short, I am allowed to live again. So do, must you, in your grief and in the 'Great Sadness" that so often consumes us be made whole again. A light in our darkness has come.