1. On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings—oh, happy chance!—
I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest.

2. In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, disguised—oh, happy chance!—
In darkness and in concealment, My house being now at rest.

3. In the happy night, In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught, Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart.

4. This light guided me More surely than the light of noonday
To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me— A place where none appeared.

5. Oh, night that guided me, Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved!

6. Upon my flowery breast, Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him, And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

7. The breeze blew from the turret As I parted his locks;
With his gentle hand he wounded my neck And caused all my senses to be suspended.

8. I remained, lost in oblivion; My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself, Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.

I don’t mean straighten-your-collar messy or fix-you-hair messy but someone-just-threw-up-on-themselves messy. I had a brief conversation with a friend today and it reminded me of this. I say reminded because if you live near a dump long enough you lose the sense of the smell – so it is with people. We are messy but sometimes we forget until we meet someone who’s mess has spilled out on themselves.

Some of us are better at hiding their messes than others, white-washed tombs and all, but tombs every one nevertheless.

Our messes can drive us apart. This is no surprise. Still, I have been thinking about the Church (Big C body) and our various struggles with the messiness of lives . Some messes seem easier to manage than others…I would say the easiest messes to handle are the ones that are unseen…

When our messes puke out all over us and invariably on others, we and the Church often struggle.

The example that came up in conversation this afternoon was when the AIDS epidemic emerged. Many, including but not limited to the Church, struggled with how to respond. There were fears that a response other than condemnation of a particular lifestyle would seem to condone said lifestyle. There were fears that compassion would be misconstrued as approval. Ultimately the fear was that love might be misconstrued as…love.

So it took a long time as people withered, suffered and died before many of us stumbled upon a novel idea – when we are confronted by suffering perhaps all we need to do is comfort. Be there. To enter into the lives of the dying, embrace them, pray for them, and…love them without thought of what they believe our motives might be because ultimately other people’s thoughts are other people’s and we really have no authority over them but we do have authority over our own and how we act upon them.

I say this because I see a lot of messy, suffering people in our community (and other communities, and countries, and the world) that we may be struggling to draw close to. They have thrown up on themselves and our instinct is to stay away and keep the myth of clean. We fear perhaps that embracing might be perceived as approval when sometimes an embrace is simply an embrace.

John 9:1-7 says:

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

The question the disciples ask is archetypal – “Who’s fault is this man’s mess?” Our desire is to find cause in order to lay blame. The blind, lame, diseased, and obviously broken people in Christ’s time were the untouchables. Their affliction was their own fault or the fault of one close to them – translation – they deserve their pain, let them live in it.

Christ wanders into the midst of this thinking and in response simply says this is a God-given opportunity to love. To be light. To be my presence in the world.

Now before you get all freaked out at the possibility that God blinded a man so that God might then heal him, understand that each and every one of us is afflicted. Each of us is blind. Each of us is diseased in someway. Translation – every person we encounter is an opportunity to be Christ, to heal and ultimately to genuinely love. Not simply the easy ones to love with their messes well covered.

From the unparalleled Sermon on the Mount we hear our Lord speak directly to us and say:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighborand hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” – Matthew 5:43-48

This is about us…you and I friend – the Church.  :-)

Seek out the sick and dying as one in the palliative care ward at a hospital who gets out of their bed and wanders across the hall to their neighbour simply in order to hold their hand. Do not expect the untouchables to come to you, into your space, for they have been conditioned over the years to stay away and keep their disease to themselves.

No, we must enter the charnel houses where the skeletal remains of our dying brethren live and bring the purifying flames of peace, grace and compassion. We must enter the house of the dead, breathe in the pestilence and breathe out love. In this way there is light in dark places of the world and we lose sight of the mess on others and ourselves and begin to see the spark of the divine, the image of God.

This is sanctification. This is salvation. This is Christ.

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

It is Flag Day as I write this and I am thinking about identity. What is it? What is yours? What is mine? These are human questions and in some ways uniquely Canadian questions as well. What is the Canadian identity? Whatever the answer it has eluded us since Confederation.

I raise these questions because increasingly it seems to me that the question of identity is getting smaller and smaller to the point where it is losing the very thing it seeks – freedom and uniqueness.

Let me explain – a giant California redwood is a beautiful majestic tree. The closer we get however the more likely we are to lose sight of the big picture. If one takes the atomic components that make up a redwood and smashes them in a particle accelerator to their constituent sub-atomic parts we get something profound in its simplicity but we have lost the unique majesty of the whole.

In our continuing search for identity we spend millions of dollars annually on name brand products like Aeropostale or Hollister which, in the inevitable twist of irony, make us like millions of other consumers. The reverse is also true as certain other “rebels” seek to create a brandless image only to look like so many other “consumer rebels” and the cycle ever continues and narrows.

One penchant we have as identity seekers is the rabid hunt for the label (almost as if it were literally stitched to the back of our necks). Nice neat, increasingly smaller boxes that separate us from the crowd: “I am a (FILL IN THE BLANK)” or increasingly: “You are a (FILL IN THE BLANK)”.

The problem with creating boxes in our search for identity is that boxes have a way of halting growth. Boxes and labels are static while we, as humans, as not…we are always in motion, always changing, always learning, always growing. A box/label tends to limit, halt and sometimes even reverse growth.

This is unfortunate because limiting growth often limits potential – and humans have nearly limitless potential.

Another problem is that labels and boxes are often couched in the form of increasingly clever, over-descriptive language. Words. Words are political – always. Assigning certain labels is always inherently fraught with a taking of power. Some labels are created purely to dehumanize and this has historically led to some brutal atrocities – see the Third Reich or Stalin-era Russia for more details.

The removal of a label or brand can be an exceptionally good thing as when the label of slave is slowly removed and the proper designation of human being is accepted. This is a taking of power in the right sense and direction.

What I am referring to is a labelling that has become so microscopic that all sense of uniqueness and beauty is lost and the label becomes a binding chain.

Labels, when employed, need to be employed cautiously and with an awareness of these things. Anyone seeking to employ labels and brands on humans should be extremely cautious when doing so – especially with children.

The greatest period of change and confusion in a person’s life is childhood through adolescence. These years from zero to 20 (to put it broadly) are critical to what we come to believe is our sense of value and self, and creating categories/boxes/labels for the youngest of us runs the risk of doing the opposite of what well-meaning people may be attempting – becoming a concrete sarcophagus entombing a person rather than freeing them.

No matter who you are, who you think you are or who you have been told you are there is one thing that is absolutely certain – you are a human being with all the dignity that should entail…maybe that is the only identity we need to defend in the end.

- Proverbs 15:13

It seems an appropriate day to speak of a happy heart…after all that is what this day is supposed to be dedicated to. I like this verse from Proverbs because, as Proverbs is wont, it speaks to us of not just the benefit of a thing but the detriment of its absence.

A happy heart = a cheerful face
Heartache = crushed spirit

To speak of happiness and heartache is dangerous ground to tread because the diversity of viewpoints and intense emotions that rise in the discussion.

Few things highlight the deficiency of language more than a discussion of emotions like happy, sad, love, pain and hate.

The words themselves are barely splinters poking above the surface, mere iceberg tips that reveal scant few details of what is running beneath in the deeper waters of our psyche.

When we tell someone we are happy what do we mean? Does that word do the feeling justice? Not even remotely. How about when we tell someone we are not happy? Once again the words do not do justice to what is really going on.

Words. I love words. I make my living with words.

But…

Words alone do not come close to doing emotions justice.

Words are merely invitations to a closer look…to something relational, something communal. If we ignore the invitation we are limited to our own interior lives in attempting to understand the ones around us…in attempting to understand God even.

Someone says something simple like “I am happy” and we would be remiss to hear that as a simple proclamation, moreso when they say “I am not happy”. There is a world of depth and meaning behind the words but to get at it requires true, genuine relationship.

When God says to Peter – “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter is confused. He hears only the words and fails to draw on the depth of the relationship he has with Christ. He gets angry and frustrated because he does not realize the words are mere shadows of the intent.

It is the same for us whether we are reading our Bibles and simply interpret God’s word as though the intent was merely hidden in the dictionary instead of our relationship with God or when we are speaking to one another.

There can be no real understanding of another’s words without the context of genuine, loving relationship…without the relationship the words are merely air and bound to be misunderstood.

On this day and the days ahead take some time to gain a deeper understanding of the people around you…the ones close to you – the words they say to you are mere doors to something far deeper and worthwhile.

eschaton

it is irresistable like a dance club night
the end is a thing that we can shake to 

we are a gathering
in the windy world
fools found and foul fishermen
brought under a lighter yoke

but

there are no shadows
beneath the mid-day Son
the streets are empty of us
as we have become
the called in and contained ones
the out of the world ones
hidden in plain sight
hermeneutically sealed by brick
safe and sound

’til

only the wilderness feels right
to me and mine and more
better to wander lost
than seek safe solace by the Nile
unwary of unknown cost