Coming Home
Sweet breath of sunset and shadows starved,
Sing for me a moment and remember her.
Sigh for me and show me her hues and lost
Colors, like so much gold in the sand.
Walk and let your legs grow weary with mine
Along the passages of the earth; pass along
With this, my memory, and tell me where
She's wandered into the pale.
Hold me in this stillness, this breathless
Place, where warmth fades into frost
And I reach for her hand before I
Realize she's gone and silence laughs at me.
Tell me where heaven went, where God
Promised He'd wait for me, before
Hell came to me in the form of
What she once was, but now, no more.
Can you remember her laugh? Can you
Remember how to forget? Teach me
To forget the day's hours so dreams
May haunt this holiness.
It was a Tuesday, and flowers in your hair
Told me Spring would come, but now
The colors melt into tears and run down
The memories of where I loved you.
Can we wait? The sun comes
For me, but my eyes will
No longer open, for the moon's
Run away with our dawn.
The branches crack the sky
Above me, fingers reaching
To heavens I forget
As snow blinds the light.
There is no one here.
She's gone for now.
Come back tomorrow,
And bring her to us.
I gasp and close my
Pain against false
Hope and reach
Once more.
Then shadows
Fade into
Sun rises;
I see.
Glancing
Back
Towards
My love,
As she
Reaches
Back
For me.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Augustine and My 'Not-Goodness'
Not long ago I came across a section in St. Augustine’s Confessions that discussed the nature of the human will. During his time the Platonic notions of willing the good represented the rational opposite of the irrational desires to will the not good, or the evil. Augustine, never one to settle with a simple answer to a complex problem, began thinking on what leads a person to will what is evil. Did an outside force influence the weak minds of humanity? Can one blame the spiritual realm for the sins of the material realm? Regardless of why one sins, Augustine accepted the thought that one still must will what is evil for there to be evil.
That is until Augustine began paying attention to his own thought life. Because of his past, largely spent womanizing and enraptured with lustful struggles, Augustine would experience bouts of lust, where thoughts from his past assaulted his mind. As these thoughts came, Augustine recognized that he did not will these thoughts to come. They arose without his will and afflicted him without his desire for them to do so. Nevertheless, they were his own thoughts, coming from no other source than his own fallen past. From this he concluded that something inherent in human nature naturally tended toward the evil. The matter of sin was not a simple problem of irrational desires.
What does this mean for our own lives? Augustine’s thoughts on this issue later developed into his concepts of original sin and inherent depravity, ideas still with us today almost two thousand years later. Secular society would have us believe that we are really good, even if it is deep down. Some churches would likely argue the same on our behalf. Despite what Fox News and CNN would have us believe, the world is largely populated by good people. The evils of the world are results from radical extremes on the fringes. With these radical images of evil from mainstream media and twenty-four hour news coverage, however, America has fallen into a pit of comparative morality.
I certainly cannot nor will not try to speak for the hearts of almost three hundred million North Americans, but are we a good people? Forget the news, forget the murders and atrocities, rapists and shootings. Are we good when no one is looking? At midnight, in the early morning, in our cars, in our minds, in our thoughts, in our secret desires, in our darkest secrets, are you and am I, a good person? My gut instinct, my knee-jerk response, is a deafening, “No.” I am not a good person. Without even attempting to explain the theological framework for what is good in the first place, namely God, I know I am not good. And for Augustine, whatever is not good, is evil. Therefore, I am evil. That’s not exactly a word we toss around lightly, I know. Evil is reserved for the ‘crazies,’ the demons, and anybody else besides us.
Augustine is not concerned about those others; he is concerned about himself and what God knows about him. If anyone knows our secrets, it is God. Therefore we have the cry of the tax collector, tearing our clothes and begging forgiveness while the Pharisees thank God they are not like us and those others, those ‘evil’ people. I am not good. Therefore, I am evil. Only in the recognition of that evil, however, can one repent. This is Gospel. God cannot forgive the unrepentant; it is illogical. If we are a people certain of our own righteousness, we will not receive the righteousness of Christ. To speak of the Gospel any other way makes the Gift of salvation just one more bauble for the well behaved brat on Christmas morning.
That is until Augustine began paying attention to his own thought life. Because of his past, largely spent womanizing and enraptured with lustful struggles, Augustine would experience bouts of lust, where thoughts from his past assaulted his mind. As these thoughts came, Augustine recognized that he did not will these thoughts to come. They arose without his will and afflicted him without his desire for them to do so. Nevertheless, they were his own thoughts, coming from no other source than his own fallen past. From this he concluded that something inherent in human nature naturally tended toward the evil. The matter of sin was not a simple problem of irrational desires.
What does this mean for our own lives? Augustine’s thoughts on this issue later developed into his concepts of original sin and inherent depravity, ideas still with us today almost two thousand years later. Secular society would have us believe that we are really good, even if it is deep down. Some churches would likely argue the same on our behalf. Despite what Fox News and CNN would have us believe, the world is largely populated by good people. The evils of the world are results from radical extremes on the fringes. With these radical images of evil from mainstream media and twenty-four hour news coverage, however, America has fallen into a pit of comparative morality.
I certainly cannot nor will not try to speak for the hearts of almost three hundred million North Americans, but are we a good people? Forget the news, forget the murders and atrocities, rapists and shootings. Are we good when no one is looking? At midnight, in the early morning, in our cars, in our minds, in our thoughts, in our secret desires, in our darkest secrets, are you and am I, a good person? My gut instinct, my knee-jerk response, is a deafening, “No.” I am not a good person. Without even attempting to explain the theological framework for what is good in the first place, namely God, I know I am not good. And for Augustine, whatever is not good, is evil. Therefore, I am evil. That’s not exactly a word we toss around lightly, I know. Evil is reserved for the ‘crazies,’ the demons, and anybody else besides us.
Augustine is not concerned about those others; he is concerned about himself and what God knows about him. If anyone knows our secrets, it is God. Therefore we have the cry of the tax collector, tearing our clothes and begging forgiveness while the Pharisees thank God they are not like us and those others, those ‘evil’ people. I am not good. Therefore, I am evil. Only in the recognition of that evil, however, can one repent. This is Gospel. God cannot forgive the unrepentant; it is illogical. If we are a people certain of our own righteousness, we will not receive the righteousness of Christ. To speak of the Gospel any other way makes the Gift of salvation just one more bauble for the well behaved brat on Christmas morning.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The Body and Blood...All Over the Floor
With my increasing interest in the Anglican tradition I’ve been blessed to experience the Eucharist in a variety of settings. A few weeks ago, during Morning Prayer in the Div. School’s chapel, we celebrated the Feast Day for St. Michael the Archangel (also known as Michaelmas). The priest blessed the Cup of our Lord then smoothly turned and offered it to her assistant right before the chalice lurched and a couple ounces of wine splashed across the floor. Now less than a year ago this would have meant very little to me. Perhaps I would have felt pity or shame on behalf of those administering the sacrament, or God forbid even found it funny. This particular morning of September 29, however, I did not laugh.
The blood-red wine made scattered streaks across the cool, Duke-furnished stone of our Goodson Chapel. The robes of the priest and of her attendant bore similar stains, as if dropped from some gaping wound. My eyes widened as the drink poured out in front of us all, gathered round the altar of God’s grace. Even as the smell of fermented grapes reached my nose I already knew that I was not looking at wine poured over so much brick. My breath stopped, my head felt light, and if I could remember correctly I would wager I even experienced a bit of a cold sweat. “The Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.” The words of the priest came down on me; the wine had been hastily cleaned and no longer marred the clean stone, but the robes still bore the stains.
We try to keep it neat; the wine rests peacefully in a glistening chalice and the bread sits silently on so many plates upon the altar. We call it the Blood and the Body, we treat them both with reverence, we experience something during their consumption, and then we go on with our lives as if we never came close to the Crucifixion. But when that wine splashed across the floor, I felt like I was finally seeing the Blood of our Savior. The same Blood that was not kept in aesthetic cups or in the bellies of well-fed Americans, but torn from the body of our redeemer with whips, thorns, fists, and rods. It flowed along the ground of the governor’s palace, marked a trail up the Via Dolorosa, before flowing over a spear and mingling with water as it fell over a Roman soldier who became the first to experience the Cup of our Salvation.
Now what in me, a Baptist boy who always thought of the Lord’s Supper as anything but the literal Body and Blood, came to witness the Eucharist as something much more significant to the life of the Church? I’ve spent a lot of time on that question, and to be quite honest…I have no clue. I think that is the point. I am not supposed to know; in an age where mysteries only exist on the History Channel and the only unknowns are what we forget to look up on Wikipedia, God refuses to be completely known. In fact, it is an impossibility to know God. This too does not sit well for a well trained Baptist who learned early on about how one can know God through the Incarnation, through Jesus Christ. Yet while I believe God knows me and I know God, there remains an eternity to discover the rest of the God I know. So in the meantime, I shall sit quietly in my pew and wonder how the Blood of a Crucified God still grips me
as we faithfully consume loaves of wheat bread and $10 bottles of wine for the remembrance of our Lord. Such things are the mystery. Such mystery is the Gospel.
The blood-red wine made scattered streaks across the cool, Duke-furnished stone of our Goodson Chapel. The robes of the priest and of her attendant bore similar stains, as if dropped from some gaping wound. My eyes widened as the drink poured out in front of us all, gathered round the altar of God’s grace. Even as the smell of fermented grapes reached my nose I already knew that I was not looking at wine poured over so much brick. My breath stopped, my head felt light, and if I could remember correctly I would wager I even experienced a bit of a cold sweat. “The Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.” The words of the priest came down on me; the wine had been hastily cleaned and no longer marred the clean stone, but the robes still bore the stains.
We try to keep it neat; the wine rests peacefully in a glistening chalice and the bread sits silently on so many plates upon the altar. We call it the Blood and the Body, we treat them both with reverence, we experience something during their consumption, and then we go on with our lives as if we never came close to the Crucifixion. But when that wine splashed across the floor, I felt like I was finally seeing the Blood of our Savior. The same Blood that was not kept in aesthetic cups or in the bellies of well-fed Americans, but torn from the body of our redeemer with whips, thorns, fists, and rods. It flowed along the ground of the governor’s palace, marked a trail up the Via Dolorosa, before flowing over a spear and mingling with water as it fell over a Roman soldier who became the first to experience the Cup of our Salvation.
Now what in me, a Baptist boy who always thought of the Lord’s Supper as anything but the literal Body and Blood, came to witness the Eucharist as something much more significant to the life of the Church? I’ve spent a lot of time on that question, and to be quite honest…I have no clue. I think that is the point. I am not supposed to know; in an age where mysteries only exist on the History Channel and the only unknowns are what we forget to look up on Wikipedia, God refuses to be completely known. In fact, it is an impossibility to know God. This too does not sit well for a well trained Baptist who learned early on about how one can know God through the Incarnation, through Jesus Christ. Yet while I believe God knows me and I know God, there remains an eternity to discover the rest of the God I know. So in the meantime, I shall sit quietly in my pew and wonder how the Blood of a Crucified God still grips me
as we faithfully consume loaves of wheat bread and $10 bottles of wine for the remembrance of our Lord. Such things are the mystery. Such mystery is the Gospel.
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