Winter meditation Perhaps your story is not mine

Winter meditation Perhaps your story is not mine That would not surprise me in the least. Our stories are all, in many ways, uniquely our own. But in my world, Winter does not mean wonderland. Christmas is about Christ, and not the usual nonsense, but Christ still commonly gets overshadowed, even in this holy season for me. We had a Christmas planned five years ago; that is before our daughter died. Not much celebrating then. Mom travelled from Florida to Belgium two years ago, 86 years young, only to break her neck on our stairs. She is fine now and a reasonably sprightly 88, but Christmas had to move over. I hope you donʼt think that I am saying this to be self-indulgent. I mention it for two reasons only. First, I have been a follower of Jesus-a Christian, for very nearly 37 years. I have found that struggling is not a dish, served cold, only to new or immature believers. Second, I mention it because many, many, many people this season have more on their plate than me. I find myself, once again, amidst the festivities this year, beset with grief; this time from the death of one of my favourite people (my aunt), illnesses among old friends, fractured relations with other old friends; and all of this is amplified by the mid-winter gloom of Northern Europe and struggling, far too long, with an acutely uncertain future in ministry. I am 55 and this is, I am reliably told, part of the naturally bitter fruit associated with mid-life crisis. I guess I donʼt want it all rationalised, as though placing me in a file drawer labeled, “victims of middle age” is helpful. It is just a difficult time; not the first, but tough nonetheless. We, my wife Cheryl and I, are having to deal with our feelings, our perceptions and our faith. So many questions. What do you do with the ʻdownsʼ in life? Do you follow Fred Astaireʼs advice: “Pick yourself up; Dust yourself off; Start all over again”? Is the tunnel you find yourself in a bad or sinful place-someplace to be avoided or ashamed of? How do we and unhappiness or restlessness relate? When Hebrews 4, in the Bible, tells us that “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God”, why do I feel left out? How do I deal with life as it comes right now? These are questions I ask, but I am reasonably sure that I am not the only one asking them. What about you? The absence and presence of the living God I happened upon an old volume, sitting on the shelf, of poetry by George Herbert, the seventeenth century minister in the Church of England. His is the poetry for, if not of, the depressed faithful. The following are a few poems that spoke most clearly to me: 1 Whither, Oh, whither art thou fled, ! My Lord, my Love? My searches are my daily bread; 1 All of the verse and accompanying notes for each poem copied here are taken from George Herbert, The Country Parson, The Temple The Classics of Western Spirituality. Edited with an introduction by John N. Wall. (New York: Paulist Press, 1981). ! Yet never prove. My knees pierce thʼ earth, mine eyes the sky; ! And yet the sphere And centre both to me deny ! That thou art there. Yet can I mark how starts above ! Simper2 and shine, As if to meet thee they did know, ! While I decay. Where is my God? what hidden place ! Conceals thee still? What covert dare eclipse thy face? ! Is it thy will? Since then my grief must be as large, ! As is thy space, Thy distance from me; see my charge;3 ! Lord, see my case. Oh take these bars, these lengths away; ! Turn, and restore me: Be not Almighty, let me say, ! Against, but for me. For as thy absence doth excel ! All distance known: So doth thy nearness bear the bell, 4 ! Making two one. The shattering physical or material struggle with life is always overshadowed by what goes on in the interior of the head and heart. We believers know that for sure because it is not the “sound and fury” of life that hurts nearly so much as the silence. It is the seemingly mute God; the God on holiday away in the tropics while our tears seem our only companions. Who is this one who hides himself from me; the one who turns up the TV to drown out my voice? He said he loves me. He does-doesnʼt he? Temper and panic rise like mercury in a thermometer. The louder the dissonance in my life, the quieter he becomes, like a bedouin rider disappearing over a bleak horizon. The he is gone. But, he isnʼt. There is a memory, a longing, an urging that calls me back to him. The absence may produce deposits of bitterness and despairfor a while, but I have to leave them by the wayside as I take up the hunt. He cannot be, my life cannot be-gone. He is-and I must find him. Broken in pieces all asunder, ! ! Lord, hunt me not, ! ! A thing forgot, 2 Twinkle 3 Burden 4 Take precedence. Once a poor creature, now a wonder, ! A wonder torturʼd in the space ! Betwixt this world and that of grace. My thoughts are all a case of knives, ! ! Wounding my heart ! ! With scatterʼd smart, As watʼring pots give flowers their lives, ! Nothing their fury can control, ! While they do wound and prick my soul. All my attendants 5 are at strife, ! ! Quitting their place ! ! Unto my face: Nothing performs the task of life: ! The elements are let loose to fight, ! And while I live, try out their right. Oh help, my God! let not their plot ! ! Kill them and me, ! ! And also thee, Who art my life: dissolve the knot, ! As the sun scatters by his light ! All the rebellions of the night. Then shall those powers, which work for grief, ! ! Enter thy pay, ! ! And day by day Labour thy praise, and my relief; ! With care and courage building me, ! Till I reach heavʼn, and much more thee.6 Struggling with life, whether I provoke painful consequences or just experience them, is an affliction that tears at my mind and heart. It is a journey down into a tunnel that moves away from any natural source of light. It is a collapse, a rout. At its worst, it seems an attack from all sides. I am like the Romans at Cannae 7 and my circumstances are a predatory Hannibal. I can see annihilation looming. All my allies have deserted the field. I am alone-almost. There is only the one still small voice and it is with the last bit of energy I have left that I turn to it and cry out. It is this act, however, that saves me from destruction. It is this act of focus that for the moment at least drives Hannibal and his warriors into the background, fixing me on God alone, the only light in my darkness. Ah my dear angry Lord, Since thou dost love, yet strike; Cast down, yet help afford; 5 Mental and physical faculties. 6 Herbert, “Affliction” IV 208. 7 Battle fought between Rome and Carthage, led by its famous general Hannibal, in Southern Italy in 216 BC. Outmanoeuvred and hemmed in by the Carthaginians, the Romans left 60,000 dead on the field. Sure I will do the like. I will complain, yet praise; I will bewail, approve: And all my sour-sweet days I will lament, and love.8 There are times in my life when the ocean seems like a sheet of glass; when the sky is clear and the breeze is at my back. Everything works and God wears a smile; but not always. Sometimes, like this time, life is parabolic. It shifts around and I see how precarious my life really is. God, in these circumstances, can be a Dickensian villainletting no good deed go unpunished. Well, almost, but not quite. Just as his favour seems to go faster than it came; so my own emotions ride the wave rising up and crashing down. I feel like the crew of the Andrea Gail in The Perfect Storm, holding on and riding the 80 foot swells. The only thing I can say for myself, like Herbert in his poem, is that my own last word toward God is still “love.” Resurrection redux I started this meditation in December. It is now February. The nights are still long and Winter has been unusually severe. We have travelled recently on both sides of the Atlantic, leaving the snow in one place only to find it again wherever we landed. My wife and I, however, like the Narnia children, are beginning to see early signs of Spring in our lives. Just as Edmund saw patches of green grow and patches of snow diminish in the midst of eternal Winter, we too see life emerging from our own cold, white blanket of hopelessness. The reasons are probably the same. The closer Edmund got to the great king Aslan, the better he experienced life as he was meant to. 9 Our struggling has done two great things for us. First, it has helped us experience again, first-hand, the creator of life, and more to the point, our lives. We can see Jesus, our Aslan, beginning to break the ice. Second, for the first time in a while, we are beginning to see hope come to life again. You know that hope is alive for real when the picture of a future with God is more compelling than the beautiful memories of the past. Not that you have to “rob Peter to pay Paul.” What we experienced before the gloom descended was a beautiful thing, not an illusion of one. Beauty cannot be trapped in time like Spanish doubloons on a sinking treasure galleon. It is what God is. And because it is, we experience it whenever we are with him. The closer we get to Aslan, the better we experience Spring. I think that the Winter freeze in my brain is also thawing. I can see now that the grip of a beautiful past can act as a powerful whirlpool, always drawing us back into its captivating, lifeless embrace. Of course, it wasnʼt lifeless; it couldnʼt have been because God had been there. The point I tend to miss in the reverie is that past tense: “had been.” God had been there, but God is alive-he is on the move-he is a dancer light on his feet. My life is found with him; not amid the relics or the dead, like 8 Herbert, “Bitter-Sweet” 297. 9 C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (New York: HarperCollins, 1950) 120f. a loyal dog laying by his dead master, but following the living God who is always blazing a new trail for me. He has moved on and he beckons me to move on too. Looking back, I can see that I would never have moved on. When the sun creeps up on a cold morning, it can be so hard to shed the warm blankets, plant your feet on the hard bare floor and get on with the new day. Sometimes God, the best of parents, has to compel us to get on with new things. He loves me enough to break the grip of things, even of my cherished memories, so that I can live with him in a better world. Maybe I am just different or just too stubborn, but that seems to be the only way. Spring is coming and we can see which way to head. Happy at last. ©Bill Nikides 2010