FROM GLEN WORKSHOP, 2006....
I am leaving tomorrow for Santa Fe. My apologies to those who have been waiting for these chapters.
“Be properly scared, and go on doing what you have to do, but take the necessary precautions. . . . Cheers, Tarfunk.” Flannery O"Conner
Looking forward to seeing you all again.
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FRAGMENTS
IV. GREAT LENT 2006: CONFESSION:
"With the Cross that Catches All Thieves, He Caught That Thief For Life."
Confession
The words claw their passage
From the mouth, a lifetime's shame revealed,
as the best face crumbles.
The secret me is thrown before God
like a shackled intruder,
the strong man who always threatens to return
is finally bound; I am released.
The priest begins to speak,
but instead of condemnation he grants eternity's pardon,
and all that was named is no more.
I am reformed to begin again,
daring to believe in such miracles.
—Stephen Baile (1)
Where does sin go when you are not allowed to speak of it, confess it, or even admit that sin is sin?
The Lament is silenced.
The church is practicing her prerogative of binding and loosing.
Love is loosed
No greater love is to be found than not offending another's sensibilities.
Sin is bound.
Bound so tight it is nowhere to be found, except in me.
My soul was never served notice on the new rules, of no rules.
All is lost
Speaking, I would commit a greater sin, against love.
If I remain silent, never reveal in all its darkness, the evil that lives in me,
I take the weaker medicine, and die slower.
What happens to the soul when the church's confession of sin
becomes nothing more than a vague declaration of corporate wrongs
done to anonymous persons half a world away?
How do you stop the numbing of your own heart as you break law after law?
murdering with words and deeds the person standing right next to you?
When you violate the Word that is carved into your heart before memory?
How do you lift your eyes to heaven when there is no absolution proclaimed?
Neither is there a call to turn from this road, since all roads are one.
Who will unbind your heart and conscience, and free to stand and begin the climb again,
to that God-imaged person you were meant to be?
When I close my eyes demons sneer and dance in the darkness.
Ordinary sounds startle my senses, they all become whispers and wailing’s
accusing me of what I already know.
It will not do to assure me that it was all washed away at that font, long years ago.
That infant wailed because she knew.
She wept for the sorrow of the stain, and the joy of the cleansing.
But she also wept for the struggle, and violence to come.
The evil that tempt, succeed in ripping her from that state of purity;
and she would go willingly.
Most of all she wept because the day would come when she would cease to weep,
and she would forget Him who will never forget her.
This daughter of the Immortal King demands to know
what she will answer Her Father when her poor soul stands before Him
unprepared and unable to give answer.
I do not fear the His future words, " I do not know you".
I fear more my words, spoken today;
"Father, I do not remember you,
I can't recall the slightest contour of your face, or the touch of your hand.
And your voice, the voice that sang and still sings all things into existence, I have become deaf to it.
I have locked myself in the silence of my soul and will never hear, again, the music of the spheres."
Sola is a very small word, and it shrinks and stinks in this noon of the dark night.
Sola the soul, who has turned away.
By what Grace have I received yet another chance, and another and another?
It may have been the true seed was planted,
all the possibles were possible. But no one has checked on it since that day.
I think they underestimated my ability to poison the soil in which it they planted.
But the words I need have been locked away.
The words that replaced them are powerless.
The words I need to speak are eating the inside of me,
and there is not much left feed them.
Soon they will die and rot.
And what will grow in that rich hubris causes me to shudder.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Relic from unenlightened times, banned by those who no longer sin.
I will invoke them, and at worst, add a few more grains of sin to this desert.
I ache to fall on my knees and let my face taste the dust
"O Lord, for many times have I promised to repent and proved myself a
liar by not fulfilling my promise. Thou hast picked me up many times
already, but every time I freely chose to fall again. How many times
hast Thou enlightened my darkened mind; yet every time I return again
to base thoughts! My whole body trembles when I contemplate this; yet
every time sinful sensuality reconquers me. If a righteous man can
barely be saved, then where will I end up, I who am lawless and sinful?
If the path that leads to life is strait and narrow, then how can I be
vouchsafed such good things, I who live a life of luxury, indulging in
my own pleasures and dissipation? But Thou, O Lord, my Savior, Son of
the true God, as Thou knowest and desirest it, by Thy grace alone,
freely turn me away from the sin that abides in me and save me from
ruin." (2)
But I have been commanded to stand
on legs that will soon collapse from dry rot.
This church is a beautiful place, and you, my brothers and sisters, are flesh of my flesh.
You live in your land of Grace, but I am ashamed to say,
I have misplaced my grace colored glasses.
You can be saint and sinner at the same time, and not get confused.
I have more faces than the moon.
And they are all dark.
I add my voice to your prayers imploring God
to make us a better people, so we can make a better world.
But I played no small part in those wars, famines, genocides, diseases, and poverty.
I am guilty of all of it, and more, smaller yet greater than these.
I don't know how to stop.
I am responsible for every sin that was ever committed and that will be committed everywhere and forever.
I don't deserve your kindness.
You spare me the confession and anoint my wounds with affirmations.
But your sweetened Affirmation of Grace
can no longer even be heard under this pile of decay.
The texture of your prayers is thin, so careful not to break a bruised reed.
It also has no power to raise the dead, and I stopped breathing long ago.
In love, you have sifted out the solids,
hardened words not befitting a christ.
And you have made His yoke so light
it floats away with the slightest breeze.
The Gospel no longer thuds and thunders with the weight of glory,
but swirls in ever changing formation, dust-motes in the sun.
You have made a grave miscalculation.
I was not strangled your smoke and strange songs,
or burdened by your prayers grown fat and opulent on dark wine and oil.
Even your torrents of letters. laws and leaves falling over two thousand autumns.
was not what crushed me and blotted out the sun.
I was born buried.
The demons are taunting and singing in my head
and I won’t mix that unspeakable language with your holy worship.
I am not leaving because this place is a desert,
I leave because I am a desert.
This Great Lent, this season of bright darkness,
I have been blinded by the sun and can only see
the black of my own heart.
The weight of unconfessed sin has grown day-by-day, week-by-week
I have become so hard and brittle, uncharitable and unforgiving.
I walk on fine, white, shifting sand, dust from dry bones, still living.
How many ages has it been?
God has been willing, but I would not.
Like my entire race, I am a master at self-deception,
There was, and is, not one thought, word, or deed that I could not justify.
even if I had to tear to pieces the Word, the Way to do it.
Most of my sins I abhor.
There are a few with which I am locked in a struggle to the death.
But there are others that I cling to tightly, even fondly.
I will lie to you about them till the day I die.
If anyone cared more than cared to ask.
Are there any who would ask for the truth, just once?
When you marked that wailing child, so many years ago, with the Cross of Christ,
you hollowed me out so He would have a place to live.
And He does not leave, once invited. I can make this place Holy,
adorning it with precious jewels, living on feasts of milk and Honey.
Or I can wall it off, brick by brick, sin by sin, and live a shriveled, small life.
I can silence Him, but I can't evict Him.
I can entombed Him, and no angel can roll away the stone,
once I have sealed it with my own hand.
I have tried scraping these bones clean of skin and flesh, to try to banish Him.
But He is somewhere I cannot reach with blade, poisons, or spell.
Recklessly, I gave the demons room to dance to unhallow this ground,
but they saw His mark and fled.
His Grace and Mercy crowd out everything I try to put in their place,
And I have tried many.
Still, He will not relinquish His ground.
So I have laid myself out on that rock --------
Half hoping for another ram caught in the thicket
to take my place.
But that belonged to another time and to all time.
Let no angel stop His hand.
He can do no worse than I have done to myself.
And He comes, destroying and restoring.
This desert may become a garden one-day,
There only water here is tears.
He knocks down the rocky walls, but it is love that strikes the blows.
And in love, He pries open those secret places
where I hide the bones,
hide what I do not want to give up;
Risk all.
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1 This poem was published on page 31 of the volume 9, number 1 issue of The Handmaiden, A publication of Conciliar Press.
2 Prayer, St. Ephraim:
FRAGMENTS
III. FIRST LOSS
ON READING THE OPEN JOURNAL ENTRY OF MY DAUGHTER, CONCERNING THE TRAGIC LOSS OF A FRIEND.
(Teresa was 16, a child of God, a beautiful soul, a talented violinist, beloved daughter, sister, and friend.
She was a close friend of my daughter's. They met in the summer of 1997 at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp and played in the Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestra together for two years. Teresa was concertmaster of the orchestra-- the highest chair in the string section.
She died in a car accident on a rainy November night in 1999.
Three days after her death, these children, for that is what they were, gave the performance of their life.
The Concertmaster's chair, where Teresa should have been that night, sat empty in tribute.
Canceling the concert was not an option, for silence would have not been a tribute Theresa would have chosen, and they all knew it.
The Angels were there that night. I saw them.
My daughter never spoke one word about the ordeal for five long years.
Last week, she told the story, simply, honestly in journal entry for all to read.
She told it in a way that only hinted at the storms still raging underneath.)
I wanted to say so much to her, and I don't remember even what I did say.This is one of a hundred variations of what I want to say, maybe more to myself, than to her.
Death stings and it is still an outrage to the human spirit,
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Even through Victory...
.... And I marveled at the courage you and your friends displayed on that dark day and the days that followed. You were children! My God! The very foundations of heaven and earth RAGED at such a senseless loss. I remember that concert. Teresa's empty chair swallowed the whole stage. I think the Angels played that music with you that night, one
sitting beside each of you, otherwise not a note could have sounded for the pain. Damn death, and whatever force brought it into this world.
As parents, we were forced to swallow whole that cold dry bread of truth; that if Teresa's chair was empty on that night, any other chair could be empty tomorrow, or the next day, or the next.
And I remembered C.S. Lewis' words: that he never knew that grief felt so much like fear. That night the lines that separated grief, fear, rage, despair, and all lines giving order to creation, descended into chaos. If the Spirit had not hovered over the chaos that night, nothing would have kept the world from shattering. But even that presence could offer any comfort, in any form we could understand.
We feared not only for ourselves, but also for you, our beautiful children. We feared for your lives, your spirits, your joy, and your faith. How could you bear it if we could not? We thought we had sampled the worst this world could conjure, but we were wrong. Hell, no matter how deep must have a bottom, but we learned that night it is a bottomless abyss.
It may have been the only time I had any insight into the sentence; ” Jesus Wept.”
It had nothing to do with those grief-stricken friends, and their broken hearts; it didn't even have anything to do with the loss of his friend, Lazarus. It had everything to do with something that was, in a sense, your lovely creation-- in as much as we are allowed to imitate the Creator in this endeavor. As parents, we poured not only our image into you, but also the wild hopes that one day, by His Grace you would become whole and complete. You would become the person that God meant you to be, and a friend of God, worthy for Him to cherish and love, not only out of mercy, but Holy Love. You would become part of the pure and spotless Bride, the Church. One day you would be fit consort for a King.
But, we forget that we are not yet done with the Fall of our first parents in Eden.
And all our hopes can be dashed in one moment. The one we created and loved, lies before us lifeless, and in that moment we can lose all hope. For anything we create in this life, must suffer this fate, even if it is only a passage to something better.
It will all one day lie before you, lifeless and rotting.
It is one of the most desolate moments in life, and one whose devastation may have taken even Christ by surprise. It was the only moment to record his weeping.
It seems, for Christ, it should have paled next to things like the beheading of his cousin and best friend, the betrayal and abandonment by those who swore they would never leave him, and what about knowing your mother is watching, feeling each blow as she stands as a silent witness to the torture and death of her beloved Son. Did he weep when nails and thorns tore into his flesh? If there were tears, the Spirit didn't see fit that they be recorded for our edification.
But this, this is something different-- if you have the courage to look, and see. This is the place where humanity and divinity have the most in common, the most to lose.
And even if he breathed life back into his friend, reversed the decay, it would only delay the inevitable. For on another day, this man would again fall to the same enemy, and again would become rot, food for worms.
That day death and the grave held the field,
And Jesus knew it more intimately than he had ever known anything.
This was why he came; to reclaim his beloved from the jaws of Death.
The tide would turn. Rumors of it had been gathering strength. The sky whispered it to the stars. Hidden in the Eternal Light, the plan was set down; it was “bound in a single book of love, of which creation is the scattered leaves.”
And if Jesus had full foreknowledge ot all that was to come is for theologians of Christology to wrestle with.
He knew this much, that to undo this curse, something unspeakable must come first.
Maybe that moment as he confronted the rotting corpse of his friend, one of millions He destined to lavish all His love maybe the culmination of all that loss, and waiting, and the absurdity of the whole improbable plan to fix this mess was laid bare, and he wept.
But this night, two millennia later, we occupy the same moments as we mourned for Teresa, and mourned for all that we had lost in the past, and mourned in anticipation of what could lose in the future. They will rise one day, but not that night.
We also have the gift of hindsight and foresight. WE KNOW the outcome of that story two thousand years ago. WE KNOW that our redeemer lives. But we now understood about that damn cup.
He said it would come to this.
He said that we would drink from the same cup that he would drink.
Once we signed on with him, there would be no passing the cup on without drinking whatever was inside. The choice to avoid that was a divine prerogative alone.
But foreknowledge, human or divine, cannot stop the fear, trembling and pleading to be spared from the terror of that dark portal through which we all must pass
This Orchestra Hall with the best acoustics in the world---
What an improbable place to become our Gethsemane.
The air that had carried sweet strains of Bach, Brahms, Mahler, and Beethoven now
Begged for silence. But it echoed with the heartbeats of human fear, and a descant of terror. The sourness of perspiration like great drops of blood mingled with the music.
We thought we had reached the limits of our strength, but there was one final insult to bear. At the end of that concert, in tribute to Teresa, the orchestra played Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze". My mind screamed- Lies! It was all lies! How could sheep safely graze when God allowed one sweet little lamb to be swallowed up whole by death?
I flash to your baptism day, dear daughter;
“Loving Shepherd of thy sheep.
Keep Thy lamb, in safety keep.
Nothing can Thy power withstand;
Nothing can pluck the from Thy Hand.”
Did I hear an echo?
"My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"
He didn't miss a beat in this lesson.
The final notes of Bach sounded.
We all stood and silently watched our children, inconsolable,
as they wept and wept.
O what fools we are!
We spiritualize and play hermeneutical games with the Word.
When Paul said, "We are crucified with Christ............"
WHAT WORD DID WE NOT UNDERSTAND?
You want a definition of Free Will?
Getting to decide which nail rips into your flesh first--
The right or the left.
In the end, He will have his way with us, and all that will count is whether we swallow what is in the cup. But what is in the cup is the only thing that will sustain us in moments like these.
As with Christ, in The Great Reversal, all that will have meaning is our obedience.
And the best we can hope for is Mercy and Providence
And if we look for any comfort, it is this: that His mercy has ruled the day from the dawn of time.
And Divine Providence, in all it’s bewildering and improbable forms: arks and floods, angels who wrestle and maim, storms and whales, and families that sell you to the highest bidder, has shown that He can be trusted.
Kyrie eleison.
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Today I see tears in your eyes whenever your here "Sheep May Safely Graze".
Five long years I have been waiting for you to speak of this day;
And you speak as if the pain has not diminished, but multiplied.
Five long years just to come up with the words to put shape on this violent theophany;
And it will be a lifetime to put words to what lie beneath...
Thank you for writing down the words of this story.
That took the courage of a warrior.
You, a weaver of words,
know better than anyone,
that naming a thing makes it real.
And I know how much you want it not to be real.
One of your dearest friends counseled:
"Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak
whispers o'er the heart, and bids it break."
Too long your heart has been broken, and there is only one Healer.