Come Healing



Hi Eugene,

I walked up the mountain yesterday after church, on the day of our Lord's rising.  Knowing you, I am sure you must have done the same.

O gather up the brokenness
And bring it to me now
The fragrance of those promises
You never dared to vow

 The splinters that you carry
The cross you left behind
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind

 And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb

This Cohen song played as I ascended.  It was the first moment in a long time that I was allowed to feel the world's pain.

During the morning's church service, when every single song is about "personal salvation," I felt like by "atonement" we meant For God so hated the world that he killed his only son.

Like how a Dylan song goes, "Nobody feels any pain..."

Behold the gates of mercy
In arbitrary space
And none of us deserving
The cruelty or the grace

 O solitude of longing
Where love has been confined
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind

 O see the darkness yielding
That tore the light apart
Come healing of the reason
Come healing of the heart

Tears finally came out of me when I heard the line And none of us deserving the cruelty or the grace.

I am sure many Christians would say this is bad theology.  We say, of course we deserve the cruelty because we sinned and still do, and of course we do not deserve grace because grace is, even by its very definition, unmerited favor.

But I have yet to meet a Christian who does not whine.  Every whining Christian whines even when he knows the very predicament he's whining about is, in ways big and small, a result of his sinful nature and action.

It goes without saying, despite how we define grace, we all act like God owes us something, our family and friends owe us something, the government owes us something, the world owes us something.

Yet when we hear words of honesty, we all suddenly turn into good theologians.  How could there be healing if there is no honesty?

God's Temple is called a house of prayer, but we have turned it into a bog of lies.

O troubled dust concealing
An undivided love
The heart beneath is teaching
To the broken heart above

 Let the heavens falter
Let the earth proclaim
Come healing of the altar
Come healing of the name

 O longing of the branches
To lift the little bud
O longing of the arteries
To purify the blood

 And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb

Many little buds were lifted on my way up the mountain.

I was one of them.

Yours, Alex

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Word for the Caveman

Image
Dear Eugene, We could imagine when a caveman was chased by a T-Rex, the nature man would naturally cry for help. His shriek would have been a plead no less earnest than ours when we lost control of our vehicle to an evil sheet of ice.  If after years of high education we could in our final moment at least wrap our spinning head around the physics of skating in a ball of metal into our death, the caveman wouldn't have the luxury of comparable enlightenment to come to terms with his demise under the chicken-feet of a leviathan. Who was the caveman crying to?  In whose name was his prayer going to be answered, if at all?  And if he could not even utter an intelligible syllable comprehensible to himself, who was going to speak on his behalf when he was most in need to be spoken for? Now these are the questions I would ask a Christian if I am not one. Not too long ago a pastor tried to warn me about N. T. Wright by saying he's cool with the dude and all, but make ...
Keep reading

One World, This

Image
Dear Eugene, I am sure some would object to what I said yesterday .  Based on the kind of education we are getting, maybe we should all object. Well, science can explain a lover's kiss , one says, We must know this by now.   Things that go on in a lover's head, bring to bear a series of trigger working together and crossing paths to conjure up what finally a poet would pick up the slack to call "romance."  It's simply a release of chemical cocktail that heroin and cocaine too can effectively concoct, just as "obsessive compulsive" in its serotonin-ian nature to give us a long good memory, just as culturally conditioned, almost like a basic human instinct. Who are we (to answer yesterday's question again) to say what actually  "shapes" us?  Science can explain ourselves to us, and does a better job every next morning.  The rest are just tassels on the fringe, perfunctory footnotes to scientific facts--the only truthful account of actua...
Keep reading

Global Freezing

Image
Dear Eugene, "[Jesus'] disciples said, “What are you talking about? With this crowd pushing and jostling you, you’re asking, ‘Who touched me?’ Dozens have touched you!” Possibly the funniest line in the whole Bible, from definitely one of the best short stories I've ever read any where.  If Alice Munro is asked to hand over her Nobel Literature Prize for this piece of " Markan Sandwich ," I think she well might take the bite. Mark's storytelling is savagely succinct, to-the-point; yet every next line opens up a new human universe, with big enough off-screen space to give account to a cosmic tragedy but told like a sit-com.  You could almost hear the rimshot and laugh track right after the zinger. If I am to re-imagine the scene and have the stage-light go off at the right moment, all the characters freeze their action, leaving only a spotlight on the disciple, I can hear his soliloquy going something like this: Who touched you?  Are you serious...
Keep reading