The Hands of Kindness

A woman takes 

another woman 

by the hand

gently leading her 

to the bathroom 

to wash 

the tear tracks away  

They walk slowly, 

one matching her pace 

to the other.  

The bond of love 

amidst the chaos 

of broken things 

around and in them 

is strong.  

And in the tender space 

between two clasped hands

broken things do not seem 

quite so broken 

any more

Being Loved

Being loved . . . 

it is a fine place to begin . . . 

and I can see the glimmering of the deeper forest a ways off but not so far as before . . . 

the forest depths that are God’s own deepening and loving and being . . . 

a place not light but dark . . . 

a place where privation thrives

it is a good thing for the only thing, even that small thing, is the only thing . . . 

God . . . 

and yes, dear Julian, all is well and will be well and whether I am here for the broken or they for me ceases to matter for there is only love . . . 

for me . . . 

for them . . . 

my own but an imperfect imagining of the real thing, the only thing, that is God . . . 

but it will have to do, for it is all that I have and all that I am . . . 

and lo, it is enough and more than enough and here I am and this then is purpose – 

not in the broken ones nor in me, but in God . . . 

where purpose has always resided . . . 

where else could it live?

Broken Packages

Jeanne Lou gave me what she and the girls could retrieve from my mom’s crushed car a few days back, but it wasn’t until last night that I actually inventoried what was left of Mom’s abortive over-the-river-and-through-the-woods journey to my house that ended in her wreck coming down the Virginia-facing side of Cheat Mountain.

The Christmas presents, so carefully wrapped, presented with torn paper, crushed boxes, and those blasted containers I can never open without serious self-injury now not so smug.  It all looks like the after-Christmas-morning melee – how did I never see our Christmas morning flotsam for the wreckage it is?

As I survey it all, various me’s emerge:

Clinically-detached me wonders at the science of impact on a cold winter’s day, where so much survived intact, but the plastic bits are all shattered.  What is it about the properties of plastic that metal and rubber and even glass could remain unbroken, but not the plastic?  This is what I think as I survey a small yellow funnel Mom had for adding oil, now in bits – and other plastic things as well.

Theologian me surveys it all and wants to draw some meaningful metaphor out of the things that survived and those that did not – surely some important insight about our own brokenness is called for, what with the tattered paper and cracks so visible.

But it is daughter me who prevails as I solemnly open each gift bearing my own name, as always bemused by some gifts and touched by others – observing how Mom’s skin is now as delicate as wrapping paper – and just as torn by the indignities of being hurled about a moving missile of a car on the skids in the snow mountains of West Virginia. . . how her broken bones must look like the shattered bits of the new steam iron she was bringing me, still in its box. . . and as I sit alone in Mom’s house in the darkness of the night, with only the sound of her ticking kitchen clock, within the vagaries of my own soul, I weep.

Advent Reflection: Finding Hitler in the Manger

Adolf Hitler is so iconic for evil that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to consider him as a mere human being.  I try but do not, I suspect, get close.  Why would this be an exercise undertaken during Advent?

I am reading an Advent devotional book composed of writings by Dietrich Bonhoeffer entitled God is in the Manger .

Much of the writing is taken from correspondence during his imprisonment, which ended in his execution upon orders from Hitler just weeks before the end of the war, at a time when it was obvious that the end was imminent and that his ‘side’ would lose.

What goes on in the human mind that, upon realizing his own end draws near, insists on taking others with him?  I want to say that I cannot understand it, but the truth is that I can.

Hitler’s legacy is writ large upon the pages of history, but many of us have our own moments of selfish cruelty, don’t we?  The moments when, realizing the loss of our own hopes and dreams, we lash out at others: aiming, consciously or unconsciously, at breaking their dreams, as if our own brokenness insists that everything and everyone else be broken too.  The moments recorded only upon the hearts of those we damage.

It is the revenge impulse of the angry child, deprived of its toy, that breaks Mama’s prized vase.

Wouldn’t it be nice if a neon sign blazed from our foreheads when such moments occur:

Warning!  Danger!  Seeming adult is an angry child today!  Approach at your own risk!

For my own part, I regret the vases I’ve broken over the years.

I never thought I’d look to the manger and find Hitler there.  But Bonhoeffer was right: it is not our Hitler selves who inhabit the manger; it is God.  And this Advent, that’s where I want to be too: helpless, hopeful, and doing no harm.

Breaking In

Not all break-ins are illegal.  But they’re all surprising.  Just so with The God who came to earth and walked among us.  What follows is an excerpt from Sunday’s sermon reflecting on Jesus coming to his disciples after his own death, risen but scarred.

In the Gospel of Luke, we read perhaps the weirdest promise ever made . . . here I am, proclaimed the dead one now living.  Look at me . . . touch me . . . eat with me . . . believe in me . . . but even more, believe me . . .

So Jesus, wounded, just-from-the-grave, Jesus, tells them – the spirit-wounded, sad-hearted, broken followers of no leader – here I am.  Touch me as I have touched you.

That day, that moment, their doubt, their uncertainty, their disappointment, was not, I believe, in themselves . . . it was in him – the one they gave up everything to follow.

I can just hear the musings of their minds –

I was doing fine as a fisherman.  How grand he was with all his talk: “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”  I did follow and now I fish for nothing.  What do I do now?

Tax collecting was a good living for me.  And at least I had my other tax collecting friends.  Who do I have now?  

Where will we go now?

What will we do . . . now?

Whom shall we follow . . . now?

And there he was . . . right in front of them . . .

And he was the same as always . . . but not . . . for now he had walked through the valley of the shadow . . . and he had the scars to prove it . . .

And herein lies the “T” hard but oh-so-important truth of the Gospel . . . our God lives . . . and living, our God carries scars – the marks of wounding . . . the reality of the cost of our brokenness imprinted on his hands and feet – not as some perpetual sign of our guilt, but as the reality of the cost of brokenness and the enormity of a love that would bear it.

The cost of the brokennes of the world was the very life of God . . . the enormity of God’s love is that God would bear that cost.

Just as it is with us, God’s scars are permanent – they will never go away.

But just as with God, our scars can be borne and transformed.  And we and our world will never be the same, for the Dawn of Love has come among us and we are set free.