Tuesday, March 5, 2013

This is my world

"You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you. You are a world."

So says my favorite author Frederick Buechner and I think he means the same thing Jesus did when he said, "Take up your cross" which means take up your own life, and everything and everyone in it, and carry on.

Of course no one, not even Jesus himself, can carry it all without help. Jesus stumbled and someone named Simon was told to help him and did.

It's not who you thought would have helped. His friends were all in hiding, denial or scared shitless for their own selves. I think Jesus wondered about this too and by the time he was hanging on the cross that he'd carried he screamed out, "Where the hell is everybody and that includes you God!"

Then he died.

And he took it all with him to that cross, his mother, the most trusted friends, all the fair faced Hosanna singers hung there with him in his heart, his mind and stomach. In the end it was just him alone and his last words said as much. "Where in the hell is everybody?"

In the same way it is our lives that we carry, and sometimes it makes us stumble and on occasion, if we're lucky someone appears to carry it a bit for us because it's too damn much for us to endure sometimes.

The betrayals, the divorces, deaths, unrealized potential and lost opportunities all gash at the beauty of the thing ... this life that we're gifted with. And just like Jesus, every single one of us cry out in pain and hurt, "Where in the hell is everybody?" because everybody ... the ones we loved and believed in with everything inside loved us, those we thought to be better, a few who promised that they would always be there ... were gone.

And we are alone.

When Jesus makes his next appearance, he's mistaken for the gardener. Dirty straw hat and coveralls, dirt under his fingernails make him so unrecognizable to those who loved him still, he has to tell them ... "It's me"  though they all had a hard time believing it. Some eventually came around but a lot never did.

It's that way with us too. At least for me it is. I have a small group who still believe in me though I'm nothing like I was.

He's not the same of course. No one who lives through such things are. He wasn't and we aren't either. The ones who love me do so for who I am and not for what I can do because I can't do much anything like I used to be able to pull off. But there is a peace that I've never had before, a smile that erupts from my heart and not from the affirmation of others. I'm not certain of what's next but I'm not frightened or worried ... it'll work out ... I been through worse.

Flowers are blooming on the back deck, in defiance of a cold spell, promising of this new life. Sarah has ordered a new table and chairs to accommodate us all for dinners, talks and conversations on it. The winter passes away and the days grow longer. This is my world. I've lived through too damn much to get to it.