When the cavalry comes...

You've Got A Lot of Heart.

I realized this week that I had never really told you about the weekend Holly and I were able to spend in Denver a few months ago. We flew up there on a Friday, but just barely. Our friends Randy and Kaye were scheduled to pick our boys up after school and get them to ballgames and practices over the weekend. Our flight was scheduled to leave around 2:30 pm. We received a call at noon that Randy had fallen off the roof while hanging Christmas lights at Holly's office. He was in the emergency department with a broken hip and broken back. Kaye was with him and he seemed stable, but was being evaluated and would need surgery.

Holly and I finished packing, and then called and texted a "backup sitter" and teammates' parents to help with transportation. Jacqui graciously agreed to keep all of our boys for the weekend and we made it to the airport only to realize in the excitement Holly had left her driver's license in the house. We somehow made it through security and Holly called her business manager who made it from their office to our house and to the airport in record time to deliver the license to Holly before Southwest closed the door. 

We made it to Denver and drove to a suburb that evening to see the Killers play that night. As per tradition, I tried to make it in with the "big lens" and was sent back to the car. We had plenty of time so I wasn't too bothered. I then took the regular lens in and we saw a great show. My backup camera was great until the battery died. Holly had her new iPhone and I used it to take a video. It is pretty amazing considering it was on a phone...

I got a few good pictures and many not so good, just enough for a slideshow. Actually it is just an excuse to have you hear the song. The song is Be Still from their new album. They didn't play it at the concert, but I have listened to it quite a bit. It is a song Brandon wrote (I think) as a lullaby for his three boys. I can't listen to it without getting a lump in my throat, and thought you would feel the same way.

Be still
And go on to bed
Nobody knows what lies ahead
And life is short
To say the least
We're in the belly of the beast

Be still
Wild and young
Long may your innocence reign
Like shells on the shore
And may your limits be unknown
And may your efforts be your own
If you ever feel you can't take it anymore

Don't break character
You've got a lot of heart
Is this real or just a dream?
Rise up like the sun
Labor till the work is done

Be still
One day you'll leave
Fearlessness on your sleeve
When you've come back, tell me what did you see
What did you see
Was there something out there for me?

Be still
Close your eyes
Soon enough you'll be on your own
Steady and straight
And if they drag you through the mud
It doesn't change what's in your blood
(Over chains)
When they knock you down

Don't break character
You've got a lot of heart
Is this real or just a dream?
Be still
Be still
Be still
Be still

Over rock and chain
Over sunset plain
Over trap and snare
When you're in too deep
In your wildest dream
In your made up scheme
When they knock you down
When they knock you down

Don't break character
You've got sooooo much heart
Is this real or just a dream?
Oh Rise up like the sun
And labor till the work is done
Rise up like the sun
Labor till the work is

Rise up like the sun
And labor till the work is done

Where I Am Folded

Hey brother, I am sitting with this Rilke poem and it moves me in ways that music does.  I can't articulate the stirrings but still I am stirred. 

Your friendship continues to be a place in this world that echoes these stirrings and because of that I am not alone. I am connected, still tiny but near. I love you.

Matt

I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough
to make every minute holy.
I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough
just to lie before you like a thing,
shrewd and secretive.
I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,
as it goes toward action,
and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times
when something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone.
I want to be a mirror for your whole body,
and I never want to be blind, or to be too old
to hold up your heavy and swaying picture.
I want to unfold.
I don't want to stay folded anywhere,
because where I am folded, there I am a lie.
And I want my grasp of things
true before you. I want to describe myself
like a painting that I looked at
closely for a long time,
like a saying that I finally understood,
like the pitcher I use every day,
like the face of my mother,
like a ship
that took me safely
through the wildest storm of all.

International Conference on Inflammation of the Eye

Above the hotel gate, I saw a sign: “International Conference on Inflammation of the Eye” for those who have cried too much or not cried enough. All of them with name tags on their lapels

like temporary nameplates in a cemetery or markers

in a botanical garden.

They approach one another as if sniffing, as if checking, Who are you where are you from and when

was the last time you cried.

The subject of the morning session is “Sobbing:

The end of Crying or the Way It Begins.” Sobbing

as soul-stuttering and griefstones. Sobbing

as a valve or a loop that links cry to cry,

a loop that unravels easily, like a hair ribbon,

and the crying—hair that fans out in profusion, glorious. Or a loop that pulls into an impossible knot— sobbing like an oath, a testimony, a cure.

Back in their cubicles, the women translators are busy translating fate to fate, cry to cry. At night they come home, scrub the words from their lips, and with sobs of happiness they start loving, their eyes aflame with joy.

Yehuda Amichai (2000, p. 147)

This speaks to a dynamic in our friendship I don't know how to articulate but is there and present.

I love you brother.

Seventeen Days

It's 10:02 pm, and the tears keep coming. I haven't seen so many tears in our house since The Russell's moved to England. I actually thought we had made it to the end. We took the Haggard boys to dinner, because we wanted to have some company. Holly fell asleep after telling the kids goodnight, and I sat with them in the Colonel's room talking about our favorite times with Paul and David, and about the chances that we may see the little rascals again. The hope that we may someday connect again seemed to dull the ache enough for all of them, and they fell asleep.

So I snuck out of the room and decided to grab some cereal, as I had passed on hot dogs at Wienerschnitzel. I opened the fridge to grab some milk and saw this...

Clayton had decided, evidently, on returning from the airport, to write their names on a Sunny D (Paul's drink of choice) and on the jug of chocolate milk (David's favorite). He must have thought this would be a way of keeping them with us in their absence, at least until the drinks were finished (or the milk spoiled). Seeing the bottles was enough to make me hear their Korean accents as they each would ask for their drink... and this in turn was enough to turn on my tears again.

Two or three times today I have thought of Jon Foreman's words in Switchfoot's song, Yet, "If it doesn't break your heart it isn't love". We have five broken hearts in this house tonight. Thankfully, these little guys we quickly grew to love are just off on the next leg of their journey, and then they go home to their families. But our hearts hurt none the less. The crazy thing is a few years ago I would never have even let myself think it possible to love someone in less than three weeks. As a matter of fact, a few years ago, I would have made a logical reason in my head why we shouldn't host two South Korean boys for seventeen days.

My tears tonight, as you already know, come from many places. They come from a place of love and pride watching my boys welcome these guys in and then love (and play, and share, and fight) with them like brothers. They come from a renewed love for my wife watching her mother two more boys with her whole, beautiful heart. They come from an ache that says these days are fleeting, and that these seventeen days with these guys (that passed like a blink) are a clear metaphor for the years I get (God willing) with my own guys before my heart is broken again and again, and again. They also come from a nagging voice that tells me I wasted some time, grew grumpy and tired, got selfish and controlling, and let some magic slip away not quite realizing it until it was too late. And lastly, they come from a place that is just a mystery. They are tears that somehow, in all of this fragile, messy, beautiful thing called life... just cannot be held back.

The Hardest Part

"This is the hardest part" he said, his chest repressing a heave as he looks at me.  He is a mix of fear, courage, inevitability and reluctance, and then he turns and we began the final ritual of the morning.  He walks towards through the courtyard, I move to the farthest point so that when he turns for the last time before he disappears into a world I have little to do with, he can turn, our eyes meet.  Mine reassuring him, his holding back the tears, mustering up the courage for the next 5 steps, the next 10 minuets, maybe the next 10 years. When I finally walk through the pack of the other parents my own tears flow.  I am unable and unwilling to stop them.

I think he is right, the hardest part is always letting go of the safety of connection and stepping into a place that is contingent, volatile, evaluative. Surrender.   You don't know if what you are letting go of and turning from is actually "in you" or only resident in the relationship you turn from.   I want to shout to him "It's in you!" I think in various ways I have been saying this to him since I held him in my arms in Guatemala City.  I understand in my 40's through you, my mom,  Ted, meditation, the Holy Spirit that it is in fact 'in me'.  But it does not make the turn away and towards any easier in the actual event of turning (I remember sitting on my porch saying goodbye to you).  Today I am learning how to trust the turn.  There is a joy and pain attached to it all - and in these events I can see the beauty.

Our time together over the holiday was wonderful and I feel so lucky to be my kid's dad, to be married to Michele.  My boys are growing with a wide eyed wonder, a creativity and strength and interest that is beautiful and deep.  Their relationships are becoming friendships and they have a lifeworld that is particular to each of them but collectively in communion.  It's all so fragile, it's all so beautiful.   

O Come O Come

It aint all there yet and it's a rough draft but it's what I have at 7:01 on Saturday night.  I love you and miss you and thank you for singing your song next to me, helping me listen to the song of God.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

Third Week in Advent 2012

St. Edwards King and Martyr  

In more ways than one we are waiting in darkness.  Isaiah prophesied Jesus’ birth by saying, “the people in darkness have seen a great light”.  Darkness is a reality and the biblical witness seems to be clear that it is a reality that we live within, it won’t disappear.  It never is fully uprooted or routed this side of eternity.  But the gospel speaks of another reality and offers us something which is more subtle and helpful:  “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it, master it, put it out (Jn 1).   This is the circumstance of our existence, this tension of light and darkness is the paradox of our life, the mystery of faith that we all live into.   (RR 12/12/12)

There is an aching and a longing that is expressed today in these Antiphon’s that echo in us a longing that is ancient and aged.   An expression that uncovers our hidden longings - longings that we learn to mute, suppress and manage as children early on,  longings that get socially formed to become more acceptable and less ‘needy‘.   But in these songs that we sing this morning, in the Antiphons and particularly in Malcolm’s poems (as I have lived with them this season) - the human stuff of desire, frustration, resolve, longing, fear, desperation and prayer are held together, within a harmony of our humanity.  I sat in this very sanctuary alone this week and maybe it was my imagination that I let roam, but I swear to you I could hear 800 years of people gathered in this site under this roof - protestant and catholic,  monks and tanners, intellectuals and alcoholics (some of them occupying the same category no doubt), workers and homeless, emigrants and royalty whispering, chantings, singing this central refrain, not only of this season, but of all humanity that comes out of the darkness:  O Come, O Come Emmanuel.  Come. 

This is a song for a people with their backs against the wall, who have run out of options who are powerless and position-less.  Who have used up their resources, who have had resources taken.  O come o come emmanuel.  It is the cry of the victim who longs for a restored innocence and a different future, it is the cry of the perpetrator who cannot unweave the heartache and misery of the past.   It is a cry that emerges from the streets of Syria, in front of the wailing wall and behind the wall in Gaza.  It can be heard in alleys and corners where addicts buy their vials before slipping into oblivion and in the boardrooms of multinationals strategizing how to balance their future - all of our futures- on the head of an ethical mirage called the ‘letter of the law’.  It is the cry of the spouse who cannot turn back time, the prisoner serving a sentence where all he has is time.  It is the cry of the  destitute, anxious and afraid who feel the powers of the State pressed against the soft neck of the oppressed. It is seen within faces of children on every continent who need food, who are conscripted for war, whose groans are “too deep for words”.  It is the unspeakable mourning that that comes from NewTown Connecticut.  It is a for a people with their backs against the wall.  O come o come Emmanuel.

And the cry to this one called “emmanuel” is a breath prayer to the one who “makes a womb of all this wounded world” who creates a “tiny hope within our hopelessness”( and sometimes that is all you need is a tiny bit of hope to tie a knot around your rope).  It is the cry of the withered and rootless who long for life to be rooted within.   And Emmanuel is the name we give the movement of God, when God is present where we least expect him but most need him most.  This cosmic movement that includes into the life of God every dark alley, every tenebrous night, every god-forsaken experience.  This light that the darkness cannot master.  This God who is love all the way down, down into the depth of humanities darkness, down into our frailty, our broken systems and institutions.  When we are reduced to a pool of tears and our fears like black birds circle overhead.  It is this God, who put on flesh and moved into the darkness. Emmanuel, God with us, God for us, God not abandoning us.  

And in this movement, it is the very voice of God who takes up this song and begins to sing it back to his creation, like the call and response in an african-american church.  We sing O come, O come Emmanuel and the life of God answers back to us,   O come o come. The life of God answers back:   Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden, all you who are vulnerable, who mourn the loss of all that the earth has snatched away, all you who are broken down, disheartened, humiliated and overwhelmed Come unto me and I will give you rest.   

Come, if there is anyone here this morning who cannot see the "Wisdom" of it all, someone who is unable to make sense of his situation, some Willy Loman who cries, "The trouble with Willy is that he does not know who he is," someone who understands many things a little but nothing enough to live on, someone for whom "the most High" is so high as to be out of reach.  Come.

Come you who feel trapped, captive to some slavish Egypt who is afraid  of the desolation that is ahead, the sea of obligation that threatens to overwhelm, who sees no one to lead you through the barren debacle of your circumstances. Desert everywhere.  Someone who wonders if they are delusional or stupid to keep facing the way of faith.  Come. 

Come, the Spirit of God might say, to the one  for whom this hectic life is a killing pace, someone who is left sighing, “I am just dead”, or “I feel like the devil, or I feel like hell”-- and for whom these are not mere figures of speech, but the very symptoms of Satan's tyranny, the depths of hell and the grave.  One for whom anxiety, desperation and compulsion feels like a dark and constant companion.  Come.

Come to those who feel outcast and for whom all the doors to home have seemed to close, someone who has lost the key to life, who feels on the outside looking in. Come. 

O Come those whose shadows compel them to practice their pleasure only under the cover of darkness - who themselves feel dark and desolate  through and through.  Those whose foundations have been shaken, or cannot find a firm footing because of a broken home or a failed opportunity or frail mental health, if there is someone who longs for something more solid than her own feet of clay, Come the spirit of God would say.  

This God who is love all the way down, has come near and in this place we can bring our inconsolable longings, these memories we cannot make sense of, redeem or use to push ourselves into a preferred future.  To this one born of blood, this fellow-sufferer who has descended to our depths.  Come.

Advent holds a deep paradox for us.  It holds the paradox of the One coming - not yet fully here - and yet with us from the beginning of time. And this call and response into the life of God and the life of God back to us is to produce something other than a depressed or ‘weak-kneed’ Christianity.  We are to take Luke seriously when he says “lift up your heads” “raise your heads” because Advent creates new men and women.  We who are exposed and defenseless, we who grieve into the fathomless depths are to look up, positions ourselves and our songs of lament towards the one who sings over, in through and with humanity. Could this be how reconciliation begins?   Does it begin in fathomless grief and longing, with our backs against the wall ? Do our actions to bring justice to the nations, to not shout or break a bruised reed, to not snuff out a smoldering wick, to not grow discouraged until we establish justice, to hold Gods hand and be God’s promise, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison, to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness (Is. 42), do these actions constitute the raising of our heads, do they embody the very song we sing today.  

O Come O Come Emmanuel

This is the paradox of advent - this call and response, this tension that is held within our humanity made possible by His.  And the reality that we are Christ’s coming now, this advent and again and again and again and again beyond time’s end.  Amen.