Our Bright Abyss


Dear Eugene,

Last night during her birthday dinner my daughter dropped her phone and gave it a good spider-web crack, a split-second tragedy with lasting and irreversible consequence.

My initial response was to look for a new phone (and indeed I did, the easiest thing for this father to do), but finally I decided to put boxing tape over the web and asked her to live with it and find meaning right where it hurts.

"Many girls your age, and I can even so confidently say, a vast majority of human living right now shall wake up to a new morning of old brokenness, yesterday's loss that they--no one--will ever get used to the losing."

Years ago, my daughter's birth-year to be precise, the year of 9/11, Rowan Williams said the following:

"Islam has a wonderful vision of divine majesty, generosity and glory, and its demand for unreserved loving obedience has great nobility.  But it is a faith that cannot readily find room either for the idea that God longs to share his very life, or for the vision of a God who can only win through defeat.  It is not intrinsically a violent faith, but it is one that sets high store by victory.  And it is not able to pray to God in God's own 'voice', to say 'Father' in the Spirit of Jesus."

I get emails and chat-group updates from Christians everyday asking for prayers, for God to win battles for them, to get over brokenness that no one can ever get used to.  Amen, we all have prayers like that.

Pretty much all Facebook posts I see from Christians are about good and beautiful things happening in their life; maybe they're "giving witness" to God's goodness?  There's a place for that too, I suppose, if--only God knows--that's the real purpose.

However, is our brand of Christianity too "one that sets high store by victory"?  Do we live with a "vision of a God who can only win through defeat"?  Is there any "room" in our life for a God who "longs to share his very life" with us?  Is my role as a father one to exercise damage-control, loss repair and recovery, or am I willing to suffer the inconvenience and gratuitous profanity of dwelling in the dust and meet our suffering God there?

Last night I had a dream.

An old man invited me to sit with him in his house and made me a proposal, "Alex, I am old, and blind.  I wonder if you can swap house with me.  You see, my bedroom is on a different floor from my kitchen, and it's getting more challenging for me to move about in my own house.  Your house is different, the layout is convenient and helpful to me."

I looked around and decided, yeah, he's right.  Our houses are probably of similar value, so that's a fair trade.  He smokes (even as he was talking to me), that I don't like.  The house smells of his historical wrong, but I can overcome that, I said to myself.

"Well, I suppose it's fine.  But...well, the only thing is, your kitchen really needs work.  Not that I can't live with it--for before I put in my new kitchen two years ago, my old kitchen was just like yours now.  I don't crave comfort, but I did endure quite a bit of inconvenience to put in my new one, and I am not too sure if I want to go backward..."

"My friend," he replied, "your kitchen is new and beautiful...but...but I can't see it."

How much do we have to lose before we lose ourselves?

How much do we have to lose before we can see God in our losing?

Yours, Alex

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