Good Grief

I heard someone say awhile back that if you really have passion for someone, and they hurt you, as we've hurt God, there's no such thing as "simple forgiveness" (as in, why couldn't God just forgive, without the cross?) They said they were thinking that all that blood and agony is exactly what it looks like when God forgives.

:(

Wow. Yeah.

I don't know. Advent isn't even over and already I'm into Lent. My circadian rhythm's out of whack - why not the other? This is what's coming my way these days - may as well go with the flow.

I need to get beneath the anger and just stay with the grief as long as it takes, I think. Unresolved grief keeps us forever children. That's been true in my case. So what do I make of the whole deal in the light of Christ?Yeah, I want to go there. It's about time.

I've always been gut-struck by that part of the story, just after his supposedly triumphal entry into Jerusalem and after the crowds have dispersed, where we see Jesus weeping as he beheld the city (Lk 19:41). Rather jarring sequence of events, seems to me.

Palm Sunday is a sad day for the Man of Sorrows. And for good reason. I'm thinking he probably knew the same crowd would be out the following Friday singing a different song. Unrequitted love will break your heart like nothing else. Saddest story in the book. But hearing the songs of praises on their lips - oh how sweet the sound! - but you know better? That'd make anyone absolutely crazy! I can't help but notice he got real irritable right after that - he cursed a fig tree; went postal in the temple. Sounds like a classic guy thing - what I know of anger it often serves as a mask for fear or shame, and even more often for grief. Mix in a little jealousy there and you get fireworks. My take on it is what we're seeing is Jesus coming to terms with the reality of the situation there, and it didn't sit well with him at all. On Thursday he spent a pensive evening with just his closest disciples, but even then the coming betrayals and denials hung over him like a shroud. And that night in Gethsemene, alone with God, sweating blood like tears... even still, he was most gracious that night, Who on the very night he was betrayed broke bread, and said, Take. Eat. This is my body, broken for you... (not at all classic, but rather classy, I'd say).

You've heard the theories, I'm sure. It's said that what he wrestled with there in the garden that night was the coming separation from his Father; or worse, suffering the full force of God's unmitigated wrath that was millennia in the brewing and filling up to overflow. (You know, "Habakkuks oft cited but hasty assertion that God is of purer eyes than to look upon sin...") I don't know about that. Yeah, he did cry out, "My God my God why hast thou forsaken me!" Maybe his Father's rejection was something he wrestled mighily with before accepting, I don't know. Who does. What I'm thinking though is that it's just as possible what he wrestled mightily with there in the garden was having to face up to and endure to the dregs the bald-faced straight-up unmitigated rejection - a total and ultimate rejection with extreme prejudice - of his own people; the people he nevertheless loved so passionately, so dearly, so impossibly. I'm sure he suspected, but I wonder if, like us, he'd rather not go all the way into that awful truth. I don't think Jesus told himself pretty little lies - I think he knew the score.

Can you imagine the torment? Talk about exquisite.

I have to wonder what correlation there may be between his being "despised and rejected of men" and his godforsakenness there at the very end.

"We esteemed him not."

:(

He was in the world

The world was made by him

And the world knew him not.

He came unto his own

And his own

received him

not.

Lord have mercy.

Yes, have mercy. Because I see a correlation - here, now. I'm hooked. Caught in the net. Afraid to ask what's next. Not sure I really want to know.

Just stay with the grief as long as it takes.

Eat the pain. Eat it! Drink all of it. It'll be okay.

What do you expect?

Someone reminded me out of the blue today that Christmas/Advent is the "irrational season".

Have you heard this from Madeline L'Engle? I hadn't.

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason,
There'd have been no room for the child.

That sounds rather dangerous to me for some reason. And at the same time so hopeful and even exhilarating. Go figure.

What do I expect in this pregnant time? Besides the usual ambivalence? In a word, I expect the worst. I do, dang me.

What I *hope* for in this time is that the worst will turn out to be be the best, nevertheless.

For the present, between that expectation and this hope, I labor along in ambivalence. I have especially mixed feelings about this particular notion that's borne out in the following rather poignant quote which accompanied the one above when I googled on the topic, juxtapositioned just so marvelously:

Loving the Wrong Person

We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. It isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems – the ones that make you truly who you are – that you’re ready to find a life-long mate. Only then do you finally know what you’re looking for. You’re looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: the right wrong person – someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, “This is the problem I want to have.”

But... And? So? Yes, but. I do hope for the best.

Because I can't help but notice the signs.

I keep being reminded (thanks be to God in Christ in you Bob, and you Jeanne, and you Laura, and all of you, as well) about the reason for the season - whenever I see the extra-ordinary become ordinary and the ordinary become extra-ordinary - in all the lovely little gestures and all the humble but significant gifts, given and received. And even better, and closer to home, whenever I see how when things don't go according to plan, at all, but turn out in the end to be better than either if us had barely dared dream, much less expect.

So I wonder what's being birthed in me - in us - these holy days. Something is indeed stirring. Has been for awhile now. I see such beauty all around us, all the precious babes born into the world, into this little corner, and I wonder; will it be so with me and mine? Will anyone call me blessed? Will I?

What will be will be. Let it be. Tell me once more that all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well - remind me Whose I am. I will and do believe you. I see it in you...

And I rejoice. And so I hope.

But I haven't a clue what specifically to expect. It's bigger than me. I do expect it'll be different. And also the same. Isn't that how it works? Even from the beginning? Is now? And ever shall be?

Is that not very Christ? To be expected?

I s'pect so.

The presents are under the tree. And around and about, as well.

I wish you all the blessed best - the best that you are and have been for me.