I lost my faith several years ago when the whole house of cards fell in. Now I'm wandering in this post-religious wilderness, and I'm finding a sacred beauty in the mushrooms and wildflowers that grow amid the shadowy ruins.
Incarnate: from the Latin, meaning "to become flesh." This is what it's all about, isn't it? It's the rubber-meets-the-road moment of Christianity. At the heart of the faith is this crazy belief that inifinite God chose to become finite man -- not that he put on a human costume to walk around in, like some sort of "Edgar suit"; not that he was a spirit everyone thought was real; and not that he was some supernaturally gifted demigod like Heracles or Perseus.
Christian orthodoxy teaches that Jesus was fully human, tripping over his own feet when he didn't watch where he was going, forgetting what he was saying in the middle of his sentence when he was tired; getting irritable when he was hungry or tired; and whacking himself on the thumb from time to time when he was working with a hammer. He probably farted at embarrassing moments too.
Often we feel we are closest to God when we are astride the crest of the wave; faith teaches us that God is closest to us when the wave has pulled us under. In our weakness, our fraility, our humiliation God identifies with us and cloaks himself in our likeness. When God became flesh-and-bone he didn't walk the halls of power as the son of an emperor, but among the huts of peasants who worked with their hands. He didn't speak the Latin of Virgil or the refined Greek of Homer, but the Aramaic of nobody and the street Greek of everybody. He could have been anybody, because the nobodies of the world are the people whom God treasures most.
The loneliest song I have ever heard is "Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child." Born out of the centuries of slavery here in America, it was the soul-aching cry of children who too often had been taken from their mothers during their infancy, and of adults for a motherland that would welcome her lost children home.
Though most of us today do not have an ache that exquisitely severe, we all know the need to belong to and with others. Our popular entertainments reflect that longing with romantic comedies and with sitcoms like "Big Bang Theory" that celebrate belonging to a suited tribe of like-minded people. It is as John Donne wrote in 1624: "No man is an island, entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."
When we are truly fortunate, we find that missing half of ourselves and cleave together for a lifetime of friendship or marriage. When heaven smiles, we have children or parents who understand us to all our hidden depths. And when heaven laughs with us, we find a tribe that never puts us aside: partner, friends, children, all.
This is one thing I have found true: Heaven itself is the tribe for us all. The dimwits at church and in the neighborhood around us may think themselves too good for us, but heaven never does. Quite the opposite: Heaven always pursues, always draws near, always sits at our side.
Surveying the collection of carols in American hymnody, one might be excused for thinking that Christmas was about angels.
The Christ child gets attention in carols like “O Holy Night” or “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and the magi of Matthew's gospel take center stage in “We Three Kings,” but we just can't get enough of those angels. Whether the heavenly host sings alleluia in “Silent Night,” or angels greet the newborn Christ with sweet anthems in “What Child Is This,” it's rare to find a Christmas carol that doesn't mention them. We just can't get enough of the angels proclaiming Christ's birth to a group of frightened shepherds.
The angels take center stage in the story of the first Christmas in “Angels We Have Heard on High.” In the structure of the song we are neither shepherds receiving the announcement of Christ's birth, nor are we angels declaring the news. We are instead a third party, wandering the countryside and arriving too late to witness the stunning tableau that transpired outside Bethlehem.
Imagine and take it in for a moment, what that spectacle would have been like. The gospel of Luke mentions a group of shepherds in the fields near Bethlehem tending their flocks of sheep, one presumes in connection with the sacrificial system at the Temple in nearby Jerusalem.
On the one hand is the landscape, barren except for the scrub, meadow muffins and a small flock of sheep that dot the area. Scattered through that flock are rough-spun shepherds, some sleeping, some possibly drunk and some watching the scene with whatever emotion sits in the hearts of a shepherd late at night. On the other hand is a heavenly visitor who has just appeared, illumined and illuminating with an unworldly light that burns with a wondrous terror.
Caesar and other rulers concern themselves with halls of power and faraway kingdoms. Whenever they have an important proclamation to share, like the birth of an heir, they send messengers throughout the realm to declare it to the mighty. The angelic messenger is here to declare that God has restored the royal line of David, Israel's golden king.
Fifteen hundred years earlier, Moses went to Pharaoh and declared that God had sent him to save Israel from slavery and genocide, and to deliver his people to their own land. Now the angel is declaring that God is sending a new Moses to free Israel again, but the announcement isn't going to Caesar or even to Herod. It's going to the beneficiaries of that news, a group of social outcasts who can't even give testimony in court.
It's hard to tell which is a bigger shock to the shepherds: that the messiah has been born, or that they're the ones who are receiving the birth announcement.
This is the scene of wild, uncontainable wonder expressed in the opening lines of “Angels We Have Heard on High.” That first verse comes from the shepherds themselves, struck senseless with wonder. They have seen a host of angels and heard those angels, lost in worship, as a heavenly song rolled over the plains and came echoing back from distant mountains.
This is their witness account of what they heard and what they saw, and frankly it is incredible.
By the time we arrive on the scene, it is 2,020 years later. The angels are gone. Their music, however glorious it once sounded, has faded into silence. There is no one left living whose great-grandfather might have been stirred by that song. All that remains is what purports to be a written record of their encounter, and whatever questions we have.
The first verse is the account of the shepherds; the second verse is ours, and it is addressed to the shepherds. Why this celebration? Why this singing? What could you possibly have heard to set you to such celebration?
These are all reasonable questions, whether they are asked as the shepherds rush toward Bethlehem, or two millennia later as we wonder at the story we have heard. Either way, the shepherds' response in the third verse is the only one suitable. They don't argue theology with us. (As for how they feel about it, that should be obvious from the major key and upbeat tempo to the carol.)
Nor do the shepherds even talk about what they think the birth of Jesus will mean for them personally, for their nation, or for the world. Their initial response is simply “Come to Bethlehem and see.”
What do we find there? A baby, certainly; some would say, no more. The remainder of the third verse, and the fourth verse as well, state what the shepherds themselves believed they would find: Christ the Lord, the newborn king, Lord of heaven and earth, laid in a manger.
And woven throughout the song at the end of every verse is the song of the angels itself, rendered in a rolling chorus that rises and falls in rapid tempo, the Latin Gloria in Excelsis Deo, “Glory to God in the highest.”
This, then, is our cue, as visitors to this pageantry. We have missed the angels, and are witness only to the record of what Luke tells us the shepherds found.
Follow the shepherds. Come to Bethlehem. What do you see there?
1. Angels we have heard on high Sweetly singing o’er the plain And the mountains in reply Echoing their joyous strains Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo! 2. Shepherds, why this jubilee? Why your joyous strains prolong? What the gladsome tidings be? Which inspire your heavenly songs? Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo!
3. Come to Bethlehem and see Christ, whose birth the angels sing; Come, adore on bended knee, Christ, the Lord, the newborn King. Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo! 4. See Him in a manger laid, Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth; Mary, Joseph, lend your aid, With us sing our Savior's birth. Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo!
I was going to say that a lot of times promises don't have any meaning because of how easily they're broken, but then it occurred to me that I was looking at it all wrong. If promises were empty, we wouldn't care if they were broken.
It's precisely because they carry such weight and pack such value that we're cut to the very soul if someone breaks one, hesitate to make them, and won't even accept them if we know they won't be honored. A friend who breaks every promise he makes isn't much of a friend, and is soon forgotten.
I learned the value of a promise from my parents. They made a promise to each other, five years before I was born, that they have kept faithfully for nearly 52 years.
In the time since they swore to put each other first, before and beyond all others, they have never strayed from each other's side. There have been times it would have been easier for them to part ways, but they always stayed. That promise changed their lives, and it has been a legacy my brothers and I each strive to uphold in our own lives, in our own marriages.
There was a second promise that my parents made, that I also have made on three separate occasions in my life. That's the promise of a parent, forged in the heart for nine months and declared with the first look and the first touch of a new baby.
It's much like the promise I made to my wife: I am here for you. I am not going anywhere. If there is anything you need, I will move heaven and earth to get it for you. Your happiness and your well-being come before my own.
Promises change lives. A promise by the right person can change the world.
This is an abandoned house, one of at least three that I pass every day as I walk the dog. There used to be people who lived here, up until some time shortly after the Great Recession.
In its years of dispossession, the siding has come off the home in some places, the windows and doors on the first floor have all been boarded up, and trash has filled the side and back yards.
Given that I live in an urban area, the house probably isn't vacant. Homeless people have been known to move into empty houses, which also are frequently visited by drug dealers and their customers, and by teens looking for the easy thrill of exploring abandoned places. Opportunistic thieves probably removed anything of value years ago, including copper electric wiring and even the plumbing.
Many people who see this house probably see an eyesore and wish the city would tear it down. I see an opportunity for a nonprofit organization to rebuild the neighborhood. Imagine buying properties and restoring what time and vandals have removed. New wiring, new floors, new plumbing, new insulation, new siding, and then new residents who buy the property for nothing more than the cost of the restoration and a promise to live there for the next 25 years.
Restoring this house would take work, time and money. Probably the inside would have to be gutted. But what a thing that would be, to see a desolate property like this once more provide shelter and a home for a family with children who would play in the back yard and enliven the neighborhood.
Over the years, departments of Transportation have seen the benefit in adopting universal symbols for street signs. That way, even if you don't know the local language, you'll still recognize the yellow triangle that means yield, the red octagon that means stop, and the wavy lines under the car mean that you soon will drive on bacon.
Signs can be extremely helpful to read, but of course not all signs are as obvious as road signs. Fatigue, fever and general aches are all signs of flu, dengue fever, West Nile virus and bubonic plague. A sore jaw may be a sign of a toothache, tension, or a heart attack. A red dawn could be a sign of rain, or it could be a sign that it's just going to be a nice day.
To understand a sign properly, you've to understand it in the larger context of all the other signs. If that fever is accompanied by mosquito bites and you live in the tropics, dengue fever is more likely than it is in New England. If you also feel like you've been beaten with a baseball bat and you're afraid you won't die, the diagnosis is even easier to make.
Right now I think we're all reading the signs anxiously. A Russian ambassador was just assassinated; an apparent terror attack in Germany left 12 dead and many others injured. Trump, elected on the strengths of our fears, says and does things that have milions of us eyeing the next four years nervously.
Know the times by the signs, they say. That's also a good way to know your neighbors by the signs they give. What do the signs say to you?
Sometimes it's good to step outside and take a fresh look at the house. There's so much we know and so much we think we know, that a fresh look from outside can help us to rethink what we've always taken for granted.
There's obvious stuff we can see, like the seams where an addition was built 60 years; or the stains left by algae, weather and city air over the past 20 years. Other times there are personal stories the house recalls, like the Left Behind cookout in the back yard one spring after the latest prediction of the Return of Christ went the same way that all the other predictions had; or that gray October morning in 2002 when I watched a social worker drive off with my foster son and my heart flooded with grief.
Other possibilities eventually suggest themselves, especially once you ponder the inside of the house. Can we change the layout of the first floor? Is another addition possible? Is there a better way to stpre everything? What others can the house provide sanctuary for when the need arises? Walls shift, doors open that I never knew existed, and unfamiliar corridors beckon me to a lifetime of discovery.
Truth is contemplative, so I explore it a composition notebook, or on the pages of Libre Office. Truth is interrelational, so I discover it in the twists and turns of conversation with good friends. When we were children, truth was revealed in what we read, or by a trusted source, like a father who told us that people reproduce by budding like yeast. When we become adults, we put childish ways behind us, and we begin to ponder things anew and reconsider everything we've been told.
The search for understanding can be unnverving, but it begins by taking a step outside and looking at the house from outside. And it never stops.
The whole idea behind this Advent series is a daily meditation on themes culminating in the celebration of Christmas in a few short days. Every day, take a photo around the day's theme, and share your thoughts. Today's theme is "peace." Pray tell, what does peace look like?
Does peace look like the ruins of Aleppo, where Russian and Syrian forces have been slaughtering civilians who until recent days were kept in chains for long and brutal months by ISIS? Well, that's a warzone, admittedly; maybe it's more like life here in the United States, where about 27 people are sacrificed every day to our firearms fetish.
Maybe it looks like Flint, Mich., where they still have poisoned water pipes; or like Washington, D.C, where the wealthy and powerful are about to get a solid lock on wealth and power for at least the next four years, and leave a mark that will linger for decades.
Cynically viewed, peace is an illusion in this world. It's a temporary pause in fighting because one group has enough power to intimidate all others, and some of those so intimidated change their positions in order to enjoy the prestige and security they're accustomed to.
Less cynically I would have to agree that peace is not an illusion but an aspiration that God has for us, one where the supernatural world bursts forth into the natural world and orders thing as they are intended. In those moments of when heaven arrives, and as its scent lingers afterward, we find impossible things happen. Soldiers leave the trenches, exchange gifts, and play soccer together in No Man's Land; the Christian greets the Muslim like an old friend, with a heartfelt "Salaam!" and the Palestinian invites the Israeli to tea.
These intrusions of heaven are small as a newborn child; and so we must be wary. The powerful always see such outbreaks as a threat, and want to kill the baby in the crib.
Gladness is one of the times that it really is the destination and not the journey. Gladness it what we feel after a long wait, after a hard slog, and after good effort.
It's like fermentation. I really don't care about the lactobacillus-and-yeast culture, except as a means. I'll wait it out, because the wait is worth it, but what I'm after is the alcohol, whether it's in the wine, the beer or the bread.
There are other things to do while the yeast performs its holy work, to feed the culture, to build the right flavor, and to prepare the right storage for the final stretch, but once all the work is done, and the waiting has finished, then the party can begin.
This Sunday is the fourth Sunday of Advent, something I suspect has escaped the notice of many Christians in America.
What we popularly consider the Christmas season technically is the Advent season. Advent is a part of the traditional Christian calendar, beginning four Sundays before Christmas, and ending on Christmas itself. The four Sundays of Advent are marked by lighting candles on a wreath, each with a different theme. The fifth candle, the Christ candle, is lit on Christmas Eve or Christmas. In a liturgical sense the Christmas season does not begin until Christmas itself, and lasts for 12 days before ending on Epiphany, or Twelfth Night.
Fortunately, this doesn't make a difference to any but the stodgiest and most annoying people. Luckily for the rest of us, they have their own churches where they can fret over these things and wait until Christmas before they start singing Christmas carols, without ruining the fun of the season for the rest of us. (You know who you are.)
Advent technically has its own set of carols, such as “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus,” written by Charles Wesley; but for whatever reason these have not received the elevated status of Christmas carols. With some exceptions.
Chief among these exceptions is “O Come O Come Emmanuel.”
Like all other great songs, whether they are hymns, Christmas carols or something else, “O Come O Come Immanuel” is best learned not from a lyrics sheet but by immersion. You grow up hearing it sung as the last leaves fall from the trees and as the sky first grows leaden with winter. You first sing it yourself before you can read, and learn to lose yourself in its somber notes at an age when it still thrills you to watch your breath chill in the air around you.
Some Christmas carols contain lessons on the meaning of Christmas, or they retell a familiar story around the Nativity. Some try to do both. None of that applies in this case. There is no progression of ideas in this carol, no breakthrough or “aha” that it tries to impart. Each verse begins the same way as its fellows, and each verse ends the same way: God, come rescue us. We are suffering here for want of you.
“O Come O Come Immanuel” was not written as much as it was grown — not from among the mountains, fields and forest rivers, nor from the bustle and jostle of our cities. It springs instead from the eternal longing in the human heart to transcend this sullied flesh and to connect with God. It is the prayer of a soul chained to the earth while it longs to dance in fields of glory.
“O Come O Come Immanuel” is not merely a hymn. It is Advent itself, given words and stretched over a frame of music that glides by as regularly as the chimes that call monks to prayer. It is a song that exudes the universal yearning for relief from the tedium of mortality. We are exiled here, we are under sentence of death, we are oppressed, we are weary. Come save us.
And always, in the same cadence that it gives voice to our longing, the carol returns to that same patient reminder: “Rejoice! Rejoice. Immanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.”
So we wait. Thousands of years ago God's people waited in faith for the coming of the promised deliverer, whose arrival we now celebrate from the vantage of a faith rewarded. We also wait for his promised return and the fulfillment of the deliverance that he began when he first arrived. And lastly we wait for him to come more fully into our hearts and change us.
You came into the darkness and you made a difference, Anglicans pray at this time of year. Come into the darkness again.
1.O come, O come, Immanuel, And ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here, Until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. 2. O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free Thine own from Satan's tyranny ; From depths of hell thy people save, And give them victory o'er the grave. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. 3. O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer, Us mortals by thine advent here. Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, And death's dark shadows put to flight. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.
4. O come, Thou Key of David, come And open wide our heav'nly home ; Make safe the way that leads on high, And close the path to misery. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. 5. O come, Adonai, Lord of might, Who to thy tribes, on Sinai's height, In ancient times did give the law In cloud and majesty and awe. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.
It's not obvious from the picture, but I took it a moment ago at Panera Bread on Route 1, where my close, personal friend Tim Nussbaumer and I have spent many an hour laughing together, trying to shock or outrage one another, discussing the news, talking shop about church, and even analyzing passages of Scripture. (Seriously, it gets into heady stuff, from the authorial intent of a 3,000-year-old Middle Eastern shepherd to the theology of race behind the books of Galatians and Hebrews, with the occasional foray into textual criticism, source material, comparative religion and even "Blue's Clues.")
Why this for "lifted?" Because these discussions are among the highest points of my week. I look forward to them like my daughter does to a birthday party. If you can't have such eclectic discussions with a friend over a cup of coffee, you might as well not get out of bed that week.
Also: I am writing again. After years of struggling to write anything worth reading, and feeling my value as a human being shrivel up with it, gras a Die, at last writing is starting to become once more the joy that I have always known it to be.
If the mail carrier ever decides to come through the door and rob us blind, I am confident that our dog, Loki, will raise the alarm and tell us. The same is true if the little yipyip dog across the street ever makes good on its threats to pick the lock on our front door and kill the entire family while we eat. Loki keeps us abreast of the dangers that walk our street, and tells us whenever there is cause for alarm.That's just the kind of dog he is.
As a writer I prefer to show rather than to tell. It's much more compelling storytelling if the reader can run her hands along the rough walls of the oubliette, watch the narrow shaft of light as it scores its way across the stony floor, and feel the encroaching darkness poisoning her own soul, than it is to say "So-and-so was depressed."
But sometimes telling is what is needed. The matter is so urgent, so important, so dreadful or so exciting (or both) that it needs to be shared immediately, and there is no time to feel the weight or measure the strength of each word. The drowning need to be rescued, the birth must be announced, the proclamation of freedom must be shouted from the rooftops.
Show if time allows, but never be afraid to tell when you must. Tell it loud and clear, and leave no room for doubt.
Waiting is inescapable. What control we have is limited to how we wait, patiently or im-. Mostly we want things now, or at least soon; but there's a kind of grace that descends on us at times that allows us to wait with utter serenity and patience for what we want.
It's not because of how much we want it. I'm sure everyone who ever has been, knows or is a child can recount the impatient minutes waiting in line for a rollercoaster, the exasperating days before the end of school; or for that matter, the impatient tedium of waiting for something to be over and done with so we could leave.
Maybe it's the inevitability that makes patience easier. I remember the excitement building for the day I married Beloved Wife; and those heady minutes that grew in intensity until time itself was ablaze with glory as we waited for each of our children to arrive. There was no impatience there, just an excitement and a sense of wonder as the moment drew near.
Set your eyes on the Inevitable. Rejoice in the signs of its approach. Let the wonder build. Even now it is here, in our midst.
Joy is the star that guides the lonely ship upon the sea. It is the hand that holds ours in the whispering darkness, the sure path we walk in the treacherous valley, and that voice that says quietly, "I am here" when all other tongues grow still.
Joy is the spring that bubbles in the desert, the arms that carry us when we're too weary to walk, and the song that revives our flagging spirit.
Joy is the bright sun that wakes us in the morning, and the warm bed that bids us take our rest at day's end.
When all that we have and all that we are is stripped away, joy is what remains.
Repent is one of the big, dramatic words in Christianity; and fortunately is always aimed at other people. It's not that we don't do wrong things ourselves, it's just that there are perfectly good reasons for the things we do that serve as mitigating factors. It's always Those People who are guilty of aiding, abeting or committing truly terrible injustices or systemic wrongs; engaging in immoral or destructive behavior; trafficking in lies; and so on. We're not perfect, but we're better than that, and they need to get over their attitude in criticizing us.
Ahem.
"Repentance" means turning around, and changing course. That's a difficult thing to do when our forward momentum is as great as it often is; because the things that we most need to repent of are so deeply embedded in our culture that we often don't grasp how complicit we are in what our society does. A man may repent of taking his wife for granted for the sake of watching football but never realize his deeper indifference to women's dignity because it is so entrenched in his culture; or he may repent of personal acts of bigory but never grasp how unequally society continues to treat African Americans 150 years after emancipation -- and may bristle at suggestions that things are as bad as all that. And so the ship barrels steadily toward the rocks and toward ruin because the sin remains unrepented of.
Repentance comes with difficulty for an individual, and is virtually impossible for a society -- one of the reasons Justice walks among us, arguing for those who have been wronged and urging us to listen, so that the twins Redemption and Renewal can be born.
"Endure" seems like such an onerous word. It's like an extra weight in your backpack that you have to carry or a steep hill that you have to race up. "Persevere" sounds so much better. So does "triumph," or "overcome."
"Endure" it is. It's not the end result, but it is the effort that makes that result possible. We may beat depression, recover from an illness, break free of loneliness, and even bounce back from personal and professional setbacks, but first we have to endure them. Even when it's over, you know it's not — not really. Grendel always returns to Heorot, or his mother does. They may be around the next corner, or coming up from behind, but sooner or later we see them, and we must endure them once again. And we may never see some monsters, like poverty or oppression, vanquished in our lifetimes.
It's easier to endure when there's an end in sight; and easier by far when someone has your back. Getting a phone call from a friend with a listening ear, receiving an invite to share a cup of coffee, or sometimes just someone recognizing that you're broken and staying with you a while, can make all the difference between endurance and giving up.
The Christian faith not only asserts that God runs at our side and fights the monsters with us, it also exhorts us to be there for others when they're on their own. Run with them. Protect their flanks. There's no load so heavy that it can't be lightened when others help to carry it.
When I was a child, justice came every Saturday morning, guaranteed by giants like Batman, Superman and Green Lantern. The Legion of Doom would attempt its evil, and for a moment it would have its day in the sun, but the Superfriends would stop them. The heroes always won. That was justice.
I'm older now, and I realize that evil doesn't usually come with names like Lex Luthor or Grodd. It usually doesn't carry a badge or hold office. Most often it's unremarkable and when it doesn't sound pleasant like "Work hard and you'll succeed!" (meaning: if you don't succeed, it's because you didn't try hard enough), it's so subtle that we don't even realize it's there, like a shadow. (Just look how hard it is to grasp the significance that all our big superheroes are white, and how many are independently wealthy, geniuses, or both, rather than working-class stiffs or people of color.)
Justice is so much harder to attain when we can't even agree what the injustice is, much less how to correct it. Sometimes justice seems like a tree at the start of the winter, barren and lifeless.
Humanity once groaned beneath the weight of the world, and they cried and reached out to God for relief. To their surprise, Justice took their hand and stood among them. The day that happened, the world began to begin anew.
Equity is something I think we all strive for in this crazy messed-up world. We're rightly appalled when people are systematically denied their rights, whether it be the right to safe water and the protection of sacred lands, or the right to life and liberty. Even worse when the law takes the side of the mighty and torments demonstrators, or cannot convict a cop caught on video shooting someone in the back and planting evidence.
The time is out of joint, O cursed spite!
In Advent I see the coming of one born to set it right, and I see his presence and agency in the people who work to see that equity established under the law and throughout society.
If asking is polite and to question is to challenge something, then inquiring means you're in for the long haul. No pat answers will suffice, and no brushoffs will work. Anyone can answer a question. Real wisdom is shown in the questions that we ask.
It takes time and patience, both to frame the question properly and to understand the answer in all its nuance -- not just for how it settles the old inquiry, but for the new lines of inquiry that it will launch upon the seas of wonder.
Knowledge and understanding are not something we gain; they are journeys we take, oceans we will sail all our lives and hopefully long afterward. The odyssey changes us in ways we can never appreciate at the time, but it's always worth it.
Love is a mystery to me. It is longer-lasting and more durable than desire, and yet desire can overthrow it. It can be fiercely loyal between friends, and full of quarreling between sisters. It is as gentle as a father as he holds his child. and yet again it is terrible to behold in all its glory if someone ever dares to threaten that child.
Love can be reckless and throw caution to the wind, and it can be a lifeline. Love looks at our deepest shames and our blackest secrets without a word of reproach, without flinching and without judging. When morality makes us ashamed and pushes us away because we don't measure up, love draws closer and makes our shame its own.
Love never gives us the matches to burn the world down, but when we do, love will still be standing amid the ashes. On that day, all it will say is, "I'm here, and I love you," and hold us as we cry.
