I believe a true and deep understanding of love, the source of which is God, has the power to transform and heal even the most broken lives. Perhaps seeking healing and transformation any other way will always fall short and add to the accumulation of guilt, shame, and hopelessness. Yet, how can I see or experience this love when my vision is obscured by the clamor of my own self-seeking and endless attempts at shielding myself from pain? I must be willing to go down to the depths of pain, suffering, and self-denial to recognize the Christ who is already there, who indeed has shown me the way. I must not equate the love of God with the gratification of my self-serving desires. This God in Christ has expressed love in a far greater and eternal way through becoming flesh and suffering all possible indignities, losses, cravings, and pain (physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional). He crushed all of these elements of death and then rose up into eternal and glorious life. He offers that to me. And he does this by going with me, not just sending me into the abyss. "Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me.Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me" (Psalm 23:4).

There is no greater love, only cheap imitations. There is no other way to be free from the bondage of addiction, lies, delusions, and disappointments. There is no other gospel. 

Theodicy...

I often think about evil and suffering in the world. It's hard not to if you have a pulse and pay any attention to the news. Most people don't even have to listen to the news; there is enough fodder in their own lives to prompt such musings. I also hear people who teach about healing ministry say things like, "God wants everyone to be healed," and I ponder the credulity of that assertion. While I believe the statement on one level, and I respect and learn from those who teach healing ministry, something inside me jerks back when I hear it. If God wants everyone to be healed, why isn't everyone healed? The answer I give myself is that everyone will eventually be healed in the afterlife, but is that all there is to it? We live in an exquisite world without a doubt, but it is a world that also seeps pain and suffering--a fallen, broken world. To think that God wants everyone to be healed and eventually will accomplish this has not satisfied my quest for meaning in this brokenness.

Peter Kreeft, in chapter 27 of Bread and Wine, penetrates beyond questions of how a good God can allow evil and suffering in the world and turns the lens on the character of this God. In contrast to an aloof, unaffected God (like Buddah), one who is disconnected from the tortured existence of his creatures, this God in Jesus Christ descended to our depths, entered our suffering spaces and gave the gift of himself. In an ironic twist, Jesus outwitted Satan  by voluntarily taking the death penalty for our sin and our suffering with the promise that by his wounds we would be healed. Does this just refer to soul salvation and healing in the afterlife? Not so says Kreeft, who contends that Jesus took our blows on the cross and descended into all of our hells.  Indeed, even when he doesn't heal our wounds in the present, "he comes into them and is broken, like bread, and we are nourished." And, "since we are his body, we too are the bread that is broken for others."

Everything belongs, according to Richard Rohr, in a book by that title, because God can hold everything. We can't, but he can. That gives me the freedom to embrace brokenness as so much more than a curse of living in this world. In brokenness, we are invited to be in Christ, because he has come to be in us and in all of our suffering. Maybe this is what Paul had in mind when he said, "that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death" (Phil. 3:10, ESV). I can do this because he became like me first.

Daily Office Lenten Reading
Hebrews 2:11-18
       
        ". . . Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested."

Did He sometimes feel like time was crawling and that He would never get to do the work of ministry?

Did He sometimes feel like time was speeding toward his ruin and destruction?

Did He sometimes wonder if He was actually hearing the voice of His Father or just operating out of some fancied construct?

Did He sometimes wonder why He didn't hear the voice of His Father more often or feel alone when He didn't hear the voice of His Father at all?

Did He sometimes strain under the injustices of life?

Was He sometimes tempted to doubt the goodness of His Father?

Did He sometimes feel impotent in the face of society's power structures?

Did He sometimes feel like His Father was not listening to Him, didn't hear the cry of His heart, or worse yet, heard but then turned apathetically away?

Did those 40 days in the wilderness seem interminable, and did He sometimes wonder if He wouldn't survive them?

Thank you, Oh most vulnerable Savior, that because you were tested by what you suffered, you are able to help us who are being tested. Help, we pray, for we have no other hope but you alone. 

In my youth I would wonder how someone could pray multiple hours a day or "without ceasing" because I thought prayer was talking to God. I think contemplative prayer answers that question. As I have been reading my spiritual guides over the past two years, I have been learning to understand prayer as so much broader than what is typically assumed. Richard Rohr tells of a prayer learned from a Jewish rabbi that involves simply breathing in yah and out weh. Breathing God in and out. Listening for God, experiencing God in each moment. What a riveting concept and a practical way to abide in Christ and let Him abide in me. God is as necessary to me as breathing air. He is as present as the air I breathe. 

Eleven days. That's how long I have been metaphorically "sitting" here in Ohio feeling like time is crawling because events are unfolding languidly like a movie in slow motion, the film blurringly stretched. Jordan's crash has been exceptionally painful and the way back has been fraught with warring in his soul, not the "quick fix" of the last hospitalization eight years ago. The vigorous attempt to find the right medicine regime, the arduous search for a new residential placement, the agony of crushing his dreams and accomplishments, the outraged response of challenging my guardianship--these are all in a swirl of emotion and thought (both rational and irrational) and Jordan's own version of alternate facts. (It's interesting how he mirrors the world.)

Though experiences like this are shatteringly painful, I always find myself on a deep spiritual journey through them. It is as if I walk through these circumstances on two different plains, like Bilbo walking toward his destiny, sometimes keenly and sometimes vaguely aware of a dimension of reality in addendum to the tangible "in the flesh" reality. I find at times that the disappointments which occur during these struggles tend to drive me deeper toward understanding and connecting with truth and love. My soul is cultivated and enlarged in ways that I can't always describe, but that I hope produces a more thoughtful, more compassionate, more hospitable me, one with paradoxically more gravitas and more joyful celebration.

So here I am waiting, watching, working--hoping and praying for a positive outcome for Jordan, and, at the same time, watching and hoping for the refinement of my own being. So I search--search for God, search for meaning, search for signs of growth--like a terrier sniffing under every bush. Sometimes my search is rewarded, like this morning when I picked up Richard Rohr's book, Falling Upward, A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. I'm reading a chapter about the tragic sense of life, "the 'tragic' natural world," and came upon a passage that blazed with light. Rohr says that, "In the spiritual life, and now in science, we learn much more by honoring and learning from the exceptions than by just imposing our previous certain rules to make everything fit. You can see perhaps what Jesus and Paul both meant by telling us to honor 'the least of the brothers and sisters' (Matthew 25:40; I Corinthians 12:22-25) and to 'clothe them with the greatest care.' It is those creatures and those humans who are on the edge of what we have defined as normal, proper, or good who often have the most to teach us. They tend to reveal the shadow and mysterious side of things...The exceptions keep us humble and searching, and not rushing toward resolution to allay our anxiety." (italics mine) Wow! Jordan keeps me experiencing humility, searching for truth, grasping for ways to love, trusting when I can't see deliverance, and willing to live with tensions and mystery. I can't line up all my thoughts, all the facts, all the events and circumstances into a tidy line or logical progression. I have to live with the grief and loss that forever accompany this son of mine. However, Rohr reminds me that "Jesus had no trouble with the exceptions," and his love and grace sweep us all up and are enough to deliver us into his presence.

As a teacher, I approach each day hoping that what occurs in the classroom will be profitable for students. Once in a while, the experience in the classroom is riveting, even life-changing. It was one of those treasured moments in my ABE/GED classroom today. I'm getting more and more ESL students, and today the room was half American-born (all people of color) and half immigrants. Our lesson was divided between a writing assignment using the week's vocabulary words and practice summarizing short reading passages. Feeling the frustration and sadness of the current news reports of African Americans shot by police, I decided to give students an opportunity to use their vocabulary words from this week to write about a conflict that they had experienced either in the workplace or with some authority figure. The vocabulary list included the following words: biased, annoyance, deplete, anxiety, and dispense. I had a hunch that some of the students would resonate with this assignment and have no trouble using these words. According to my prediction, students were readily able to write about their personal experiences using the vocabulary, and one student, in particular, recorded an experience of glaring injustice in an encounter with law enforcement. I believe this assignment primed the pump of their minds for what was to happen next.

We began reading a passage about ninjas, and the first paragraph was about the origin of the word ninja. The article claimed that the word originated from a Chinese word and gave the reasoning behind the theory. We had almost finished reading the paragraph when one of the ESL students said, "That's not true." This particular student, like most of my ESL students, is very quiet and studious and rarely initiates discussion. All eyes were on this student as we queried her about her ardent assertion. As it turned out, this student is from Japan and could read the supposed Chinese word, and verified that it was a Japanese word instead. (The article was in error; the word ninja actually comes from a Japanese word, not a Chinese word.) It was as if Pandora's Box had been opened as conversation erupted about assumptions and misunderstandings and biases. In the course of the discussion, we discovered that our group consisted of one student from Ethiopia, one from the Gambia, and two from Afghanistan, in addition to the one from Japan. Questions and responses were flying around the room, and students were expressing amazement at their own lack of knowledge and understanding about others. We talked about religion (Islam, in particular), beliefs, power structures, stereotypes, prejudice (bias--there's that vocabulary word), and profiling. And I was not leading the discussion; the students were. Each of my very quiet and reserved ESL students enthusiastically engaged in conversation with my American-born students who were humbly admitting their erroneous and stereotypical assumptions about the students' countries of origin and cultures. Empathy and a feeling of connectedness, even an awareness of our need for one another, emerged. The goodwill in the room was palpable. I believe students left the classroom feeling empowered in their ability to learn, grow, express themselves, and connect with people from very different backgrounds. It was a good day.

For the second time in recent weeks, I awoke from a dream that tapped the deep well of sadness about the life we left in Ohio. It amazes me at how long it is taking me to heal and "move on" here in Savannah. Maybe this is partly because we have no sense of certainty or longevity about this place. It seems that there is nothing to sink our roots into, roots that have so frequently been torn up and transplanted. Whatever the reasons, grief still stalks me. I actually awoke with tears streaming down my face a few weeks ago; a dream about returning to Cedarville for a visit squeezed pain in the recesses of my heart. Today I awoke from a dream about returning to Kenton Ridge and asking to teach for a quarter. The people and the place and the energy of a new school year beginning are vivid in my mind, as well as the feeling of belonging. These dreams start my day with a sorrow that transcends my rational thought.

It was in this state that I opened the Daily Office and began reading the opening hymn, "Be Still My Soul."

Be still, my soul; the Lord is on thy side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul; thy best, thy heavenly, Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul; thy God doth undertake
To guide the future as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence, let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul; the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.

Be still, my soul, though dearest friends depart
And all is darkened in the vale of tears;
Then shalt thou better know His love, His heart,
Who comes to soothe thy sorrows and thy fears.
Be still, my soul; thy Jesus can repay
From His own fulness all He takes away.

Be still, my soul; the hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord,
When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul; when change and tears are past,
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

(Katharina Amalia Dorothea von Schlegel, 1697-1768)

  

I dwelled so long on these words that time fled, and I was unable to complete the office reading. These words became my spiritual sustenance today. "Leave to thy God to order and provide, In every change, He faithful will remain...thy God doth undertake to guide the future as He has the past...though dearest friends depart...Then shalt thou better know His love, His heart...thy Jesus can repay from His own fulness all He takes away...the hour is hastening on when we shall be forever with the Lord, when disappointment, grief, and fear are gone...when change and tears are past, all safe and blessed we shall meet at last."

I praise God that the words of this old hymn have reached across the centuries to provide hope, comfort, and encouragement to me.