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Life has a way of just...I don't know....being what it is...
and days dawn, one after another,
and I find myself tangled in the messiness of it all.
Easter comes and it dawns with this cutting brilliance that is
at once
completely new
and yet
somehow
wholly familiar
and my heart and soul swells to be privy to it at all.
I know that I should rejoice,
...and again, I say, rejoice...
that I should live as the Easter people do,
but it seems that I can't shake the hard idea that
in order for there to be new life
the old must first
die.
Easter is Easter because of death.
Always,
there is the dying...
to self
to expectations
to entitlements
to me.
And I want to... really, I do... I want to grab hold of the golden thread that connects me to You,
that holds me steady despite this whirlpool of the daily
but my head instinctively turns to the blur
and I soon forget what can hold me fast.
I keep forgetting.
I look around me and I think I see truth.
I see dew drops and bluebirds and birthday cake, yes. These things are true.
But I also see pain and sickness and addiction and lies.
These, too, are true.
Right?
So how do all of these things set me free? I thought that that was what the truth was supposed to do...
set me free.
But I just get more tangled. Choked. Jaded.
And then I know, even more profoundly, that this is the essence of who I am...my baseline...my truth.
Like Emily...
"i feel utterly human. i have never felt more human. humus--latin for earth, or ground.
and i need to be held in a way that makes me believe it's okay to be dust."
What I need is another death.
I need to let die
my need to live life
the way that I think it should be...
Because my way of orienting the world and its happenings,
it's joys and it's disappointments,
all of it, really, is all about me...how to make life better, more enjoyable, more bearable, more... for me.
And that truth that I claim to see...the good, the bad and the ugly...the daily everything...
the whirlpool that blurs and pulls...
it is really proof that you are at work...
It is not proof that you are distant or removed or unjust or plain ole mean.
It is the promise.
Linking with Imperfect Prose
hard to do for sure...to let die our own desires...some of them god gives us for sure...sometimes it is the how we receive it we have to let go of...
ReplyDeleteoh, this resonates...deeper than i wish it did. thank God he does make beauty from our messy lives and half-hearted offerings. grateful for your voice and his Truth.
ReplyDeleteI keep forgetting.
ReplyDeleteThat's really the problem isn't it? I keep forgetting why I'm here. Who put me here. What my purpose is. Thank you for this lovely reminder.
Theology is great.
ReplyDeleteEmpty tombs, life from death . . . even big words like "propitiation" and "substitutionary."
But I think theology's crucible is this random thing we so casually call "daily life."
Tries it. Refines it. Makes us remember who we are -- our humanity, as you so beautifully stated.
I hear you trying less to *understand* a God who is so far beyond . . . and turning instead into a *follower* of the path divinely placed before your feet.
And that's certainly a beautiful thing.
theology's crucible... yes.
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