Imaginary Letter from Jesus to Me

An Imaginary Letter from Jesus to Me

When you see how I allow every aspect of creation
the natural freedom and wildness that are its birthright,
then you complain that I don’t intervene enough,
that there isn’t enough direct proof of My presence,

but when I draw close and manifest that presence,
working so deeply in history and in your life
that your soils and mosses cling to My fingers,
then you complain that I’m too controlling, too invasive;
you call Me a bully, even a tyrant.

When I offer you the full pallette of experience
with which to paint your life—
the radiant hues, the dark and heavy tones,
the shades so subtle they’re nearly imperceptible,
then you complain that you’re overwhelmed,
and why couldn’t I have given you a simpler, paint-by-numbers world
with just the five basic Crayola colors?—

but when I am very precise with you,
directing you about particular details—
a touch here, a broad stroke there,

then you complain that you don’t have enough breathing room,
and why won’t I let you do it your way?

When I answer your prayers and get you unstuck,
then you complain that you aren’t worthy,
so that therefore I should remove myself
to a more comfortable distance;
or you complain that others have suffered
or are currently suffering
far more than you,
so why don’t I take everything I’ve given you
and pass it on to them instead;
or you complain that I didn’t help you sooner,
and that by accepting My help when I do give it,
you would be relinquishing your grasp
on that elaborately cross-referenced and multiply-indexed
documentation of the history of pain
you’ve been compiling to hold against Me.

And when in all of this,
I invite you to argue with Me,
to reason with Me, to wrestle with Me ,
not letting Me go
until I bless you and the people you carry in your heart,

then you complain that I’m loading you up
with more responsibility than you can bear, and besides,
you “don’t have time to get that intense with Me.”

You claim that in My eyes,
you can’t seem to do anything right,
that I’m always displeased with you,
that all I ever do with you is
pick, pick, pick,

but the truth is that you have it exactly backwards—
in your eyes, I can’t do anything right;
it’s you who are perpetually displeased with Me;
you are the one who does nothing but
pick, pick, pick.

You cry out to Me for closeness with you,
yet there are a million sharp quills
protruding from your skin.
But because you’re not a porcupine,
these quills aren’t natural to you;
each one causes you pain
which has become so familiar to you
that you experience it as “normal,”
and feel threatened, indignant,
even highly offended at the prospect
of letting it go.

BLESSED IS EVERYONE
WHO IS NOT OFFENDED AT ME.

I can pick out those quills,
but not all at once from a distance
as if with some kind of celestial vacuum-suction device;
I want to do it personally,
with my bare hands,
quill by quill.
I don’t mind getting my fingers bloody
for the love of you—
but you have to give Me permission
instead of trying to convince yourself
that you are a porcupine,
instead of shying away from Me,
instead of crouching down to scuttle into the underbrush
as fast as you possibly can!

You have a distance interpretation distortion.
The overwhelming expanse you perceive around you—
infinities receding into infinities—
that’s not how far away I am from you;
in fact, that’s not distance at all—
it’s the immensity of My mercy.
What you are interpreting as distance
is actually the deepest possible intimacy.

What you experience as claustrophobia
is actually fear of My freedom.
Inside the densest knots of the most intense struggle,
the most confining thought,
the most crushing schedule,
there is nothing but infinite spaciousness,
for I am there.
I am so much nearer than any of your efforts
to locate Me.

So remind yourself every day
that you are not God.
You can wrap this fact around you
like a blanket, like a cloak, like a prayer shawl,
flexible, weightless, and fluid as light.
You were not God at the instant of conception
when your genes and chromosomes began lining up
to do the Electric Slide inside your mother.
You were not God at the event of your birth,
or at any point while you were growing up,
despite any level of commotion you may have caused
or any degree of invisibility you may have managed to achieve.

When nothing much seems to be happening, you are not God.
When too much seems to be happening, you are not God.

You don’t have to sustain or negate
your own existence or anyone else’s,
or hold the world close to you or away from you
with the muscle tension
in your jaw, your neck, your forehead, or your stomach.

Your puny thoughts don’t have to pump iron all night long
in order to ascertain what would have happened
if you’d behaved, thought, or felt differently
on any particular occasion.
You don’t have to fight, flee, freeze, fix, faint, or philosophize.
You don’t have to churn yourself into a small local vortex
in an attempt to speed time up or slow it down.
You can’t leap or fall out of the universe,
or sever yourself from it,
or sequester yourself invulnerably in a niche within it.
You can’t mind-clenchingly believe anything
in order to make it true,
or foot-stampingly disbelieve anything
in order to make it false.

And no matter what resolutions you painstakingly chip
into the stoniest regions of your heart,
certain migratory regions of your life will always remain
uncolonized, raw, chaotic, incomplete, and beyond articulation.
THE POOR YOU WILL HAVE WITH YOU ALWAYS.
Much within you and around you will not be made complete in human time,
so if you have to make a resolution,
resolve to wean yourself from your habit
of refusing to outrageously enjoy God
until you have until you have gotten everything “right.”

The greatest evidence of the mercy of God
is that you are not God.
You can breathe God, but you are not God.
You can eat and drink God,
and offer God as food and drink to others,
but you cannot be God.
In God, you can tread and kick in one place;
you can do the backstroke, the crawl, or the dead man’s float,
but through none of these techniques
will you become God, even briefly.
You can dive down or up or sideways,
but you will not arrive at the end of God.

And while you’re treading or swimming
or floating or diving,
inside every cell of your body,
a billion tiny candles are blazing.
Rejoice! Fear not!
You didn’t light
a single one of them.

Ancient Hymn

As the gardener Christ addressing,

Mary very truth believed;

He the Sower gave his blessing

To the seed her heart received;

Not at first his form confessing,

Soon his voice her soul perceived.

She beheld, as yet not knowing

In the mystical disguise,

Christ, who in her breast was sowing

Deep and heavenly mysteries;

Till his voice, her name bestowing,

Bade her hear and recognise.

She to Jesus for him weepeth;

Of her Lord removed complains;

Jesus in her beast she keepeth;

Jesus seeks, yet still retains;

He that soweth, he that reapeth

All her heart, unknown remains.
Why, kind Jesu, why thus hiding,

When thyself thou wouldst reveal?

Why, in Mary’s heart abiding,

From her love thyself conceal?

Why, true Light in her residing,

Can she not thy radiance feel:

O, how strangely thou eludest

Souls that on thee have believed!

But, eluding, ne’er deludest,

Nor deceiving, nor deceived;

But including, still excludest,

Fully known, yet not perceived.

Glory be to God, and honour,

Who, true paschal sacrifice,

Lamb in death, in strife a Lion,

Did the third day Victor rise,

And the spoils of death, as trophies,

Bore triumphant to the skies.

Office Hymn for St Mary Magdalene; tr. unknown

Seven Paschal Surprises

1. I had not anticipated that the services on Friday and Saturday would not be depressing and guilt-inducing, but rather, joyful in a piercing way—light, clean, not heavy, and certainly not manipulative the way some (not all!!) non-Orthodox Holy Week services can sometimes be.

2. I had not anticipated the complete wonkiness of the Orthodox presentation of time—throughout the week and weekend, matins and vespers seemed to have been reversed, and sometime in the midst of Holy Saturday, all the officiants changed their vestments to white, and the purple Lenten candles were replaced by white Paschal candles—but no, it wasn't actually Easter yet. What was it? Some kind of threshold time? All times seemed to be somehow juxtaposed upon, or embedded in, each other. And apparently, the entire season of Pascha is regarded as whole, a single day, "the day without evening," "the eighth day."

3. I had not expected to find out that hell has its very own lamentation, song, regret, and here it is:

Today hell cries out groaning:
I should not have accepted the Man born of Mary.
He shattered the gates of brass.
As God, He raised the souls that I held captive…

Today, hell cries out groaning:
My dominion has been shattered.
I received a dead man as one of the dead,
but against Him I could not prevail.
From eternity I had ruled the dead,
but behold, He raises all.
Because of Him, I perish.

Today, hell cries out groaning:
My power has been trampled upon.
The Shepherd has been crucified and Adam has been raised.
I have been deprived of those whom I ruled.
Those whom I have swallowed in my strength
I have given up.
He who was crucified has emptied the tomb.
The power of death has been vanquished.

4. I had not expected to experience the sensation of being on a fast-moving train, the Pascha express, that was proceeding with phenomenal power and purpose, whether or not I was personally on or even near its time-table. I felt this most strongly on Saturday night as I got into the car to head to church—I didn't feel ready! There were aspects of Great Lent and Holy Week that I hadn't sufficiently taken in!—Wait, slow down, back up even, pause, let me process some stuff!—but no, the train was on its way, and I was, in some disoriented, stunned sense, aboard, thinking of the bright blur of Turner's famous painting, "Rain, Steam, and Speed." Nor, ultimately, despite my ongoing struggle with various aspects of Orthodoxy, did I have any desire to disembark. And a few hours later, it was as if St. John of Chrystostom's astounding sermon was speaking directly to my condition:

"…If any have laboured long in fasting,
Let him how receive his recompense.
If any have wrought from the first hour,
Let him today receive his just reward.
If any have come at the third hour,
Let him with thankfulness keep the feast.
If any have arrived at the sixth hour,
Let him have no misgivings;
Because he shall in nowise be deprived therefore.
If any have delayed until the ninth hour,
Let him draw near, fearing nothing.
And if any have tarried even until the eleventh hour,
Let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness.
For the Lord, who is jealous of his honour,
Will accept the last even as the first.
He giveth rest unto him who cometh at the eleventh hour,
Even as unto him who hath wrought from the first hour.
And He showeth mercy upon the last,
And careth for the first;
And to the one He giveth,
And upon the other He bestoweth gifts.
And He both accepteth the deeds,
And welcometh the intention,
And honoureth the acts and praises the offering.
Wherefore, enter ye all into the joy of your Lord;
Receive your reward,
Both the first, and likewise the second.
You rich and poor together, hold high festival!
You sober and you heedless, honour the day!
Rejoice today, both you who have fasted
And you who have disregarded the fast.
The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously.
The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.
Enjoy ye all the feast of faith:
Receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness…"

5. To drastically and perhaps confusingly shift to a completely different simile, I had not anticipated the marble-cake-like experience of the Pascha service, which refused to remain "one thing" for me. There were moments of heart-rending glory followed by floods of internal darkness when I was overwhelmed with distressing emotions of sorrow and temptations of envy, rage, insecurity, and a certain degree of desolation. There was also numbness, as if there was just too much beauty and glory to take in, so that I couldn't feel anything at all (perhaps there must be too much in order for there to be enough? Or had my glory calibrator simply cracked in the flood surges of everything going on around me?), as well as physical nausea and dis-ease because of the heat and the necessity of breathing much-re-breathed air. And I was surprised to discover the next day at Paschal Vespers that all the negative feelings and temptations were gone, as if they'd been vaporized. I still wonder why they'd been there, and why they departed.

6. I hadn't expected to not feel tired despite the intensity of the services and the massive loss of sleep on two nights. Not only was I not tired, but I couldn't really nap very well on Saturday and Sunday, though I'd expected to be wiped out. What happened? Did God give me grace in order to surprise me? In something of the same vein, I had not anticipated that finally eating the few things from which I'd abstained during Great Lent would not be a big deal and would not, actually, be all that satisfying.

7. And certainly, I had not anticipated the beauty of aftermath: At 3:30 a.m. or so on Sunday morning, when I left the feast, I went back through the sanctuary, and was amazed to come upon a scene of combined hominess and holiness. The aroma of incense and the weight of glory were still heavy/light in the air, and the room was a wreck—crumbs on the floor, service booklets and candle stubs of various sizes on the few pews, children's jackets, sweaters, blankets, and diaper bags, etc. on the pews and floors—it looked as though a whirlwind had just blown through, and it looked like a living room after a wondrous party, and it looked heaven, all at the same time!

"The angel rolled away the stone from the tomb not to let a biologically revived but physically entrapped Christ walk out, but to reveal that 'He is not here; for He has risen, as He said.'"

from the Introduction to The Paschal Service by Very Rev. Paul Lazor

"The Difference Between a Theory and a Confrontation"

From Arthur Vogel's book The Power of the Resurrection. Vogel begins the chapter by describing a time when he found that the composition of his Easter sermon seemed especially easy:

"A special inspiration seemed to strike and the flow of thought quickened. When the grip of the inspiration relaxed, I took a step back to see what I had done, secretly feeling quite proud of myself. Then, just as suddenly as the ideas had come, my heart sank. I realized I had not proclaimed the resurrection as I had first thought at all; instead, I had been drawing general conclusions about the way any creature would be related to God regardless of whether or not Jesus had been raised from the dead.

The ease which had suddenly come to my writing had not been inspiration about the resurrection; instead, the ease came because I was no longer writing about the resurrection! I had started out to proclaim the unexpected good news of Jesus Christ's rising from the dead, but I had subtly slipped into drawing predictable conclusions from predictable ideas.

Is anything lost in beginning to talk about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and concluding by talking about the power of God in general terms? Indeed there is, if our consideration is diverted from the life of the historic person Jesus to the deduction of abstract ideas from abstract ideas. In the latter case we deduce conclusions from premises which have no special location in the world; in the former case we are taught something about ourselves because of what happened to a specific person, Jesus of Nazareth. It is the difference between a theory and a confrontation.

At the moment to which I referred in writing my sermon, I also realized how far much of my past preaching had been from the true Christian message. More than that, I realized with new depth how a life could be filled with the attempt to teach about the Christian God and yet be kept from doing so by the very use of the Christian proclamation that Jesus is the Son of God! The heart of the matter is whether Jesus is used as an example of something we know about God without reference to Jesus, or whether Jesus makes God present in such a radically new way that previous ways of knowing God are forever surpassed in him.

As I had begun to develop the importance of the resurrection for our lives in the world, I discovered I had unconsciously begun to substitute the word 'God' for the 'Christ.' This was the escape I had made, the ease I had provided for myself...What I had done, I discovered to my embarrassment, and what I had been doing for much of my life, I discovered to my chagrin, was to dilute Christianity's claims by substituting for the presence of Christ the abstractness of 'God' as an idea. I thereby removed myself from confrontation with the person who rose from the dead, so that he could not question me about my allegiance to him. I was saved from decision.

If the power of the resurrection is related to 'God' without constant reference to God's presence in Christ, the resurrection is easier for us to handle. It then becomes something to think about rather than someone calling to us and asking whether we hear him. That way the resurrection can be explained as a doctrine; it begins and ends in words. As such it will never embarrass us by its demands, but it will also never save us by its power...

To talk about God is easier than to talk about Jesus Christ, for Jesus is too concrete, too demanding, too meaningful. Here we discover the risk we must take in order to receive the power of Christianity, but the excitement of Christianity is discovered at the same time....because it is something that happened--and still happens. Because it is a happening, it is historical. Its truth is found in singular events, not general principles, and its credibility is based on eyewitnesses, not theories.

The lives we live are filled with particularity. No one else is exactly like me. No one else can live my time for me..." And in his book Radical Christianity and the Flesh of Jesus, Vogel says, "We cannot live our full lives in the fleshless world of ideas and geometrical color configurations...We cannot be ourselves in an abstract world...It is too thin...Christianity begins in the flesh, and it begins in the movement of the fleshly life of Jesus...He came not to tell us about God but to take us into the life of God...living with Jesus is the only way to solve the problem of living with Jesus...There is nothing to know of Jesus but the dynamism of his life; the quickening of our lives by his life is his presence with us....Everything is moving, dynamic, spontaneous; nothing is frozen, static, calculated...We can freeze to death while thinking of fire, and we get no real help in our lives from God by merely thinking about God...Christian living does not proceed from thought to action...
If we try never to discuss Jesus or deal with Jesus in less than a truly personal manner, that context will change many of the things we say about him--and many of the things we say we are doing for him..."

God Is Not Like This

Everyone you meet...

This is what one of Kevin Brockmeier's characters understands (from his book The View from the Seventh Layer)

"There was no one alive who did not contribute his share of mystery to the world."