Through the Glass Darkly

Christmas Morning - Henrico, Virginia 2024: (Photo- Chris Rhoden)

Dear Friend,

These days, I'm finding the right words hard to find. No. Not quite that. It isn't that I cannot find words. There are plenty of words, and they are not hiding from me. They are scattered everywhere and seem desperate to get my attention.

But they don't quite seem to fit together as I intend them to fit. Whenever I gather two or more up in my arms, just as I offer them to someone, almost anyone really, the words seem to transform themselves into sharp blades or white-hot pokers. I'd ask you how well you recognize this phenomenon, but I don't dare. Even that question feels like it might be assaultive, loaded, whether I intend it to be or not, and, of course, I do not. What if you do recognize it? What if you do not? I fear that you might think I’m suggesting you should (or should not) even by asking the question. There is no should here. Just a question that I am a little afraid to ask.

I cannot find the quote, but I seem to recall Carl Rogers, having said:

There is no such thing as a value-free question.

The fear of how my words might hurt others is paralyzing. On Wednesday Kathryn and I met with a group of friends to discuss other things, and landed on this very topic at some point. Each of the people there seemed to understand how fear can paralyze us, even when we are trying to be kind and compassionate, and it seems to be exactly then that fear screams the loudest. When we are playing defense and more concerned about not hurting another than simply and freely loving them. I wonder if this is not precisely when fear often awakens and whispers to us, “I’ve got you. I’ll take it from here.” And we trust fear. At least I often do. This feels common to me.

Common or not, I cannot remember a time when my words seemed quite this dangerous. When they seemed so loaded that any words I might dare to type had such potential to cut and to burn - even, and especially - those I love the very most. Even silence is becoming a problem.

It's fair, I think, to ask if my words are doing as much harm as I think they are. Fair to wonder how much is my imagination, or how much is my remembering some old pattern from a past that I mistakenly thought-hoped I had left behind, had almost forgotten about, a memory of a pattern that seems to return each morning, egged on by fear, demanding attention again and again.

One of the thoughts that often wakes me recently is this:

When I see the world darkly, is it because the world, is, in fact, dark (and it often may, indeed, be dark), or because the glass through which I view it has become so clouded by mood or memory that very little light gets in? I’m beginning to wonder how much I conflate mood, memory, my hopes and my fears, and the world, itself.

“It’s okay. Write bravely,” you will say.

And sure, I think you’re right, but I’m less certain that writing bravely and writing out loud are the same thing. In fact, I wonder if writing out loud is often violent. It insinuates my own sense of bravery onto people who might hear my bravery differently - as betrayal or rejection - and perhaps they are also right.

---

I am painting with far too broad a brush. Let’s get specific. We are talking about surrender, yet again, and wondering aloud what that might mean today and in the coming days, and wondering how my surrender might affect others. With labs and scans, this has the potential to be a pivotal week - and surrender might (or might not) be at the core of the way forward, and perhaps we have discussed this before, but what surrender looks like, in real life, can be difficult to make out. Can’t it?

And I am very interested in real life.

---

You have told me, in the past, that you weary of God-talk, and on one hand, I want to honor that. And I wonder if you were not echoing what my old friend, Kathleen Norris, shared with me this morning. Is this what you were getting at?

When God-talk is speech that is not of this world, it is a false language. In a religion that celebrates the Incarnation - the joining together of the human and the divine - a spiritualized jargon that does not ground itself in the five senses should be anathema.

On the other hand, I wonder, if it’s possible for any words to be anything other than God-talk. If God is, as I believe God to be, the maker of all things - then to speak of anything must be to speak of God, indeed, must be God-talk, in some sense. But it’s tricky, isn’t it? Later, Norris writes:

As with most human endeavors, … the sermon and other religious speech is a matter of maintaining a proper tension between the mundane and the holy, the vernacular and the exalted, the personal and the collective.

Here is a curious thing to me. The word mundane seems to have grown out of the idea that we needed a way to describe that which is distinctly not spiritual (and therefore bad). The very point seems to have been to differentiate the material world of our five senses (the mundane) from that which is strictly spiritual (and therefore, somehow good or at least better.) But, as Norris suggests, wouldn’t the incarnation lay this false dichotomy to rest, hopefully once and for all? Yet, I still often hear this type of talk in the Church, and it seems to me to hint at gnosticism - at least in the way that Paul Kingsnorth defines gnosticism, in his essay, Matter Matters (and the entire thing is worth a listen or a read):

‘Gnosticism’ here is the assumption that matter is inherently evil. A human being is a spirit which wants to return to God - who is also a spirit - but is trapped in flesh and in the crudities of the material world. Escaping from matter and returning to the world of spirit is the task of a life.

So when you say you are weary of God-talk, I wonder if you are saying you are weary of my seemingly common failure to maintain the proper tension between the mundane and the holy. And if that is what you are saying, then I am with you, dear friend. If the mundane and the holy cannot coexist in a faith that is built on the foundation of an incarnate God, then what is God-talk that disintegrates the divine from the mundane if not a tiresome, and maybe even fantastical exercise in wishful thinking, or worse, my remaking of God in my own image to justify my own mundane (daily and sensual) choices, and then claiming that I am surrendering my sovereignty to the divine who is completely distinct from the world in which I live and breathe - the one in which He, himself also, literally lived and literally breathed.

When I claim this, I insulate myself from any legitimate criticism or accountability. I mean, if neither God nor I am of this world, and if my ears, and often, mine alone, are tuned to His voice, can you possibly challenge that? How could anyone?

---

(I’m doing it now. Aren’t I?)

Let’s get back to the issue at hand. This week we will have another MRI, and the results, which we do not expect until next week, will almost certainly fall somewhere on the spectrum between - No Evidence of Disease (The doctors have already told us they will never say this to us, as the existence of the original tumor is evidence enough) and the tumor has not responded to treatment (I also believe this unlikely, especially given the absence of any seizures for the last two months.) In my view, the scan is almost certain to live in the gray-in-between, and we may have choices and decisions to make, with real consequences, and not for me alone, but also for those I love.

---

In my practice, I often saw people who were (understandably) terrified of dying, and who clung to life with a grip so tight that it left their fingers aching and bloodied, and left them spiritually, emotionally, and in most ways miserable. Sometimes, but less frequently, it was a loved one who clung to the life of their dying beloved, and who seemed to feel (also, understandably) betrayed by their beloved’s willingness to surrender so willingly to death - by forgoing more treatment - especially when they seemed to be relatively pain-free, and there remained even the smallest hope that treatment might extend their lives together.

And I suppose where one stands on this reflects one’s own life experiences and how much the glass through which a person views death and the world has been muddied by fears and grief and expectations built on their ever-persistent, though fallible, memories.

In truth, this might be where Kathryn and my sons and I find ourselves when we get the results back next week, but it may not be. I do wonder if the surrender might be less about trying to divine cosmic signs that we hope might offer us a clear and stark choice between one path and another, and more about releasing old memories or my darkened sense of the world that I am certainly viewing through a darkened lens.

I sometimes wonder what it might mean to live completely without fear, and to hold the mundane and the divine in the proper tension, and the only way I can conceive of it is to surrender every memory to Christ, rather than (very rationally and) breathlessly clinging to each as if my life depended on my ability to remember everything and to manage my own way. Better I wonder, to begin each day as if born anew - completely fresh and virgin and unencumbered by my lengthening history, and by the increasing weight of my pack of memories.

“How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d”

Alexander Pope - Eloisa to Abelard

Please do not hear me advocating a flagrant refusal to learn from our lives, or an irresponsible refusal to face reality, or the suggestion that we give up and wait around for God to take us, and refuse to love. That is not it at all. But I am increasingly distrustful of the lessons I supposedly learn from my history and my memories, and even less trustful of my ability to perceive reality through my hyper-rational glass windows which may or may not be clear to begin with.

So next week, we will find out what the scan shows and go from there, I think. I hope to remain open to the world as it is, and not clouded by imperfect memories and to listen for and to trust God more than those memories.

Will you pray for us?

Oremus,

Chris

Father,
If it be your will,
Will you accept my memories? The heavy and the light? 
And the memories that do not fit into nice boxes with nice labels?
If it be your will, 
Let me trust you more than what has come before, 
Let me start each day fresh, wanting nothing, and hoping only for you.
Let me continue to hear more and more clearly your voice in each cardinal - each     
       morning, and 
Let me Feel you brush up against my face with each breeze, 
Let me Breathe in the aroma of your Grace in the white stock and the peonies that you 
       sowed and that thrive in the soil of the magic garden of my imagination. 
Let me Taste you in the daily bread and the good wine - broken and poured out in love to those who consent to your love. 
       If it be your will.
Most of all, and if it be your will, let me See your light in the eyes of every stranger.
Until there are no strangers...but only neighbors.
Will you wipe clean the darkened glass?
If it be your will?
Amen