The Redemption Project - Forever

On our walk last night on an abnormally warm March evening, Leanne asked me what I thought about Forever.

Earlier in the week, we'd watched the limited series "Forever" on Prime during dinner. It was an enjoyable show, and I'd recommend it if you're looking for something to pass the time on these safe-at-home days. It's well written, well cast, and is difficult to describe without giving too much away.

The show's title, I think, is ironic. At its heart, it explores how we often, in the midst of our mortal lives, act like we have forever to do and say the things that matter. We don't reach out in love; because, we seem to think that there will be time for that later. We let moments slip past; because, we believe there will always be others.

My interpretation is likely colored, as so many things are right now, by this virus. As the numbers of cases and deaths increase, it's hard not to be reminded that none of has as many days as we wish. Nothing here is forever.

Perhaps it was the show, perhaps the moment, but I turned to my wife who has been a part of my life for almost twenty years now and told her that I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the moments I've wasted: petty fights I've let ruin evenings, times I was distracted rather than present, all those times I've acted as though I would have a thousand years to wake up and fall asleep beside her.

I will, before the weekend is out, forget again. Maybe my mind, as some sort of primal defense, has to keep forgetting that all the things in this world are finite. COVID-19 may pass by our home, but something else will find us. Time continues to tick, and more and more I realize that we are beginning to leave youth behind.

But I hope for the grace of remembering that she and I are, like all of you, mortals whose lives are so short in the vast expanse of interstellar time. The sun, in its days, barely registers that we were here. For our Earth, we were here for just a moment. And moments, really, are all we have.

In the time it's taken me to write this, someone's loved one has passed from this life to the next. They no longer have the luxury of the illusion of forever, not this side of Heaven. There are, for them, no more chances, no more mornings to say and do the unsaid and undone.

I can't tell you every detail of our walk last night; because I still don't accept how finite our lives are. I did not cherish the setting sun, and how the wind brushed through Leanne's hair. I did not give all her words the attention they deserved. I did not think how much I will miss them someday.

So, tonight, I will try again.

The Redemption Project - Equinox

Amidst all the news, all that continues to change with every passing moment, I almost missed that equinox occurred this past Thursday. In a normal reality, I might have given more notice to such an early spring.

Equinox is that moment when the sun, to those on the equator, lies directly overhead at noon. The length of day and night, for most of us, isn't really equal on that day. But, it's a marker. It's the moment we're halfway between the solstices—the moment when the days or nights are longest.

Vernal or spring equinox marks the moment that light begins to overcome the shadows. Ever since December, the sun has remained in the sky just a little longer. Slowly, the light of day has been dispelling the darkness. On Thursday, it once again won its annual battle and began to dominate the night. The shadows, with each sunrise, are further dispelled.

In June, the shadows regain their foothold and start to push back. Then, after the autumnal equinox in the fall, the tide turns, and night overtakes the light. Come December, our days are filled, mostly, with shadows and the light that shines is weak, dim.

Despite the early blooms on the trees, it feels closer to December than June. While the sun shines in the sky longer each day, the shadows appear to be growing. The pandemic continues. Each day brings new cases, new measures, new concerns. Libraries, museums, playhouses, even churches all sit dark, shuttered to stop the spread of this plague.

Here, in the midst of Lent, it feels a lot more like Advent—a time when we are waiting and longing for light.

It will come, eventually. That's the hope to which I hold, the same hope that feeds me through the many advents of life. Unfortunately, life does not ride the regular orbits of planets. There is no calendar to which we can point. And in the uncertainty, I begin to feel the fear that the shadows may never be dispelled.

We are told that when Christ was crucified, the sky turned dark at midday. In this tragic moment, the horror that's been inside humanity since primitive times became reality: darkness had won. Light had lost the battle. Despite the signs of spring all around, winter's solstice had come. But, this time, it seemed, there would be no dawn when light turned the tide.

Outside, it's a gray, damp, and cold day. Through the still-bare limbs of crepe myrtles and trees, I see brown grass that has not yet begun to green or grow. The sun cannot seem to break the clouds these past days, leaving us in a dull shadow that covers the day until darkness falls. It seems that night is winning and perhaps might, as in the Good Friday story, even conquer noonday.

But that is not the whole story. The shadows reign for a time, but dawn comes.

And so does spring.

The Redemption Project - Liminal Space (Reprise)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about liminal space, a place in-between where things seem uncertain. I struggled with that particular post, and in the days that have followed, something about it didn’t feel right. I was honest, but not really touching what the term meant in this time and place in my life.

Now, I know why.

In this moment, we have all found ourselves in this middle-space. We have been tossed into this realm where everything we knew is now in question, and the future is unclear, uncertain. In ways emotionally and physically, we’ve found ourselves in the wilderness, left to wander and wonder how long, O Lord, how long.

As I pen these words, I’m still moving around out in the world. The company I work for has not yet closed its campus, and I’m expected to be there physically. By the time you read this, that situation may have changed. Things are in such flux that I find I have no idea if the Adult Christian Education curriculum we started on Sunday will be something we return to before Easter. Will there even be a service come Palm Sunday, or will, out of caution, we cancel and encourage everyone to worship at home?

The biggest struggle, as I noted a couple of weeks ago, with this wilderness-space is finding an answer to the question of what should I do? Where, in this time, this place does my passion and the world’s need intersect? What, when the problem seems so big, so overwhelming, can I possibly do? What sort of action brings redemption into a situation like this?

But that’s the hopelessness of the wilderness isn’t it? It’s why the Evil One tempted Jesus with these grand actions: turn stones to bread, perform some grand spectacle, rule the world. Inside this space, nothing but godlike action seems enough.

Jesus' mission, however, consisted of small things. Sure, he could have healed every sick person, gave sight to all the blind, and stood proud beside a mountain of discarded crutches. Instead, he only touched a few. He could have ended famines by making the stones at our feet food. Instead, he made enough for breakfast after a long night’s fishing.

Here, in the wilderness, those actions don't seem very big. They don't seem as world-changing as the moment demands. But weren't they? All those little things, they mattered. They altered reality. Not in the immediate, dramatic way the temptations offered, but like ripples in a pond that traveled, gathering energy and speed to become a wave. A wave that was fed by other ripples, those made by those who followed, and those who followed them.

This in-between moment in which we find ourselves is not forever, though, it can seem endless right now. Forty days, let's remember, are a measurement of time beyond time. And in these days, like those before, it's likely the smallest things that will bring us nearer to the moment that follows.

A moment like the dawn. 

The Redemption Project - Luna

The other night, the light already turned out, I crawled into bed. I'd already put my glasses in the nightstand; so, the moon, shining directly on my pillow, was a blurry, white orb through the window. Grabbing my glasses, the image resolved into a beautiful circle of snow, reflecting the light of the sun.

There are only two or three times in a year the moon's arc and our bedtime coincide to give me a view such as this. And, unless I am exhausted, I always take a moment to lie there, take notice of the light reflected from some two-hundred and twenty thousand miles away. Light that, having traveled from the sun to reflect off the lunar surface, is almost ten minutes old.

The moon has been around for four-and-a-half billion years. It likely formed from the debris left when a Mars-sized planetoid slammed into our young Earth. Time and gravity allowed the dust and molecules trapped in our orbit to accrete into the orbiting body that lights most our nights. Like many things above us, it will be here for a long, long time. As the years pass, it's orbit will grow larger, and it will sit farther away from our home. It will likely perish when our planet does, millions of years from now when the sun is in its death throes.

Every human I encountered during this past week, and will today, formed in a much less dramatic fashion than our moon. They've been around for far less time and will be gone in, as the Psalmist says, seventy years or, with strength, perhaps eighty. None of them, from the grocery store to work to the walls of my home, were anywhere near the distance Luna sits from my bedroom window.

Yet, they are just as unique. As our moon looks nothing like the other moons in our solar system, neither did anyone around me look like another. As the history of our satellite differs greatly from those of Jupiter or Saturn, so do the histories of each and every friend, acquaintance, and stranger.

And each person whose arc intersected with my own, like the moon in its phases, differed in the amount of light they reflected. Depending upon the day or week, they may have glowed brightly or been hidden in shadow.

Sitting here now, I can't tell you about their light, shadow, or position. Unlike the shining celestial body that shone through my window the other night, I didn't give their light, their presence half the attention. Those two or three minutes I looked out at the moonlight from my bed probably equaled the time I spent noticing all those who came within my orbit. Imagine the beauty I missed. What opportunities did I miss to see the divine light they allowed to shine through, to see and pray for those deep in shadow?

And as a satellite in their sky, I wonder, did I reflect more shadow than light?

The Redemption Project - The Mire

Lent calls us to confession. We're supposed to look deep, set aside our denials, and speak aloud the things we've been hiding from ourselves and from others. I have been forced to admit just how hard it has been to see God's loving work of redemption in the world lately. And that has led me to confront and confess what I have been denying.

Somewhere in the rainy weeks of February a hole opened up, and I slipped into it. Perhaps if I'd been more self-aware, I'd have recognized the slide and been able to dig in my heels to halt my descent. But this was not one of those times of healthy awareness. So, I tumbled down into the mire all the time denying that I'd fallen.

Depression is, for me, a deep hole with a muddy bottom that swallows my footsteps, forcing me to spend two or three times the normal effort to get through the day. That mire coats my skin, dulling all feeling with its cold dampness, leaving me numb. And its walls block almost all of the sun and sky. Yet, I have spent weeks denying the mire, the numbness, and the dark.

Saying it, confessing it as I've done this week and am doing now is not a miracle cure. Admitting it does not move God to lift me out of the pit to stand and celebrate on solid ground. No, even writing these words, I'm still in the same place, wondering how long it will take to climb back out. But, at least, I'm now being honest about where I am.

And where is that? It's a place of dull colors, of winter-dead trees that seem far from spring. It's a pit where I'm so very tired most of the time my focus is simply on doing what needs to be done and praying that nothing out of the ordinary happens.

It is a place where redemption is almost impossible to see.

Oh, it's out there, I know. There are a million small acts, minor kindnesses that are changing this old world of ours. But, through the mire that covers my face, I can barely see it. The world seems as dark and forgotten as this place in which I've found myself. Because, what is also within this muck are the hands of despair. It reaches out, grasping me, and pulling me deeper. And its grip is hard to shake off.

What keeps my head above the mire are the small strings to which I cling: that this will, in time, pass, that the words of all the echoing voices are lies, and that naming this place is the most powerful thing I can do. Because my words can carry over these high walls. They can speak the truth of my confession.

And they can tell someone that they are not alone.