Love Rescues


Dear Eugene,

Yesterday I talked about sex and violence and the Bible and just left it at that.  I intended good shock value, but I suppose I didn't get even an obliging scoff out of you, my dear seasoned pastor?

There is this very ambitious recent movie, in it there is this very thoughtful passage of dialogue:

K: How can you tell the difference? Can you tell if something really happened?
Dr. Ana Stelline: They all think it’s about more detail. But that’s not how memory works. We recall with our feelings. Anything real should be a mess.

Anything real should be a mess when we recall it.  Do you believe that?

I love reading the Tanakh, or what Christians call the Old Testament, but that is not always the case.

Growing up in church I found the Old Testament stories grew older, triter, and staler with every retelling.  To a sterilized mind the number of stories suitable for kids cannot be more than what my fingers can count anyway; not even a Dickens can keep extending such a weekly expiry date in perpetuity.

My memory of Sunday School stories is for their edifying, instructive value, how neat things get resolved to draw line on sand and beckon me to the right side, how tidily human affair can be wrapped up with the right kind of moral strings, how unambiguous a final word about things and people can be spoken when just by reading it we are already implicating ourselves to have grabbed the right end of the stick.

Then literature led me back to the Bible, I can't even say by a circular route but more like a discombobulated celestial clockwork, my mess of a mind and heart pulled and plunged into the mess of history--His-Story.  That was when I first knew I wasn't having or doing a religion here, but facing a Person, an Author who didn't dictate His words for the little human authors to write neat stories for Sunday School kids, but gave His Word and took the plunge with me.  With us.

I remember a story you like to tell:

 "She came to see me at the recommendation of a friend. She had been troubled for years, seeing psychiatrists seriatim and not getting any better. The consultation had been arranged on the telephone so that when she walked into my study it was a first meeting. Her opening statement was, 'Well, I guess you want to know all about my sex life – that's what they always want to know.' I answered, 'If that is what you want to talk about I'll listen. What I would really be interested in finding out about, though, is your prayer life.'

 She didn't think I was serious, but I was. I was interested in the details of her prayer life for the same reason that her psychiatrists had been interested in the details of her sex life – to find out how she handled intimate relationships."

Then you said, "I like to tell the story because it juxtaposes two things that crisscross constantly in pastoral work: sexuality and prayer. And it juxtaposes them in such a way as to show that they are both aspects of a single, created thing: a capacity for intimacy."

I asked my son and daughter, who lead worship in more than one church, is there a problem when we don't sing like the Psalmists when we sing in church?

You know what is the most derogatory remark a person can make about a religion, a supposedly transcending belief?

That it is neat.

A neat mess, Alex

Comments

  1. KartiniMay 18, 2018 at 12:39 AM

    Dear Eugene,

    “We recall with our feelings. Anything real should be a mess.”

    This evening, after 10 hrs of work, of all the delightful places where one could immerse in the romanticism of Spring, I found myself at the most peculiar site: the cemetery. No one within my familial or social circle had died. Instead, I was inspired by my best friend to go there as a creative self experiment in search of peace.

    If real life is messy & violent, then its archenemy, death, ironically conveys an aura of serenity to the despairing soul at this memorial. A pair of tree trunks emerged from sacred ground in growing friendship. Leaves & petals adorned angelic statues like a bride’s veil. A few visitors lingered at a remote headstone partly tucked in by floral carpets. On granites, generational lives were condensed into names & dates.

    As I walked among the dead, I sensed a conflicted spirit on this tremulous Spring evening. There is nothing “neat” about the living memorializing the dead at the cemetery. When life collides with death, nothing about this finale is “tidily… wrapped up with the right kind of moral strings”. In our course of reality towards the margin, we are confronted daily by self-destructive desires & inclinations that prioritize anything but peace. We yearn to connect yet remain disconnected. We pursue truths but speak white lies. We crave for love while indulging in lust. Our capacity for intimacy, whether in sexuality or prayer, is compromised & consequently buried in our graveyard of hearts. Living becomes dying - until we acknowledge our messy lives of real contraindications.

    With the arrival of twilight, I was compelled towards “(re)collecting” the singular reason for my existence among the living & the dead at the cemetery. At the end of my messy, violent & “backbreaking gathering” in this life, what would my epitaph look like?

    Then I remembered our conversation earlier this week about the final conclusion in Ecclesiastes: "Fear God & obey His commands, for this is everyone’s duty.”

    Rescued by love, K












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