River Jordan - Confessions of a Christian Mystic

Abyssus abyssum invocat.

(Deep calls to deep.)

* * *

Which child is my favorite? Well, thats easy to tell. The one whats sick till he is well, the one farthest off till he is home.

Grandmother Estelle,
keeper of the family Bible

M y sons came home from the war. Thats where all good stories should begin. My loves came home again. My priceless treasure, found safe and whole. We are once again together in this sacred life. I sit at my desk this morning, that favorite photo of those sons before me. Thinking this alone should fill me up forever with a gratefulness that knows no end. The prayer that ends all prayers: if you do nothing else but this, deliver my child. What mother among us with empty arms would not take on my every burden to hold her child? But in the midst of blessing, even then, there is sometimes that place where the sky comes to an end.

Next to the photo stands a little statue with arms outstretched. A gift from a friend writing to me that her name was Courage. Youll always have it now in the middle of everything. No matter what.

People thought I had courage when those sons were both deployed, but I did not. I had a strange sustenance that carried me on. Some would call it faith, but I assure you, my faith for the future of all things I hoped for faltered. It was the faith of others that carried me in those days.

I went through a phase where I played Leonard Cohens Hallelujah over and over and over yet again. Ive been broken, and in all the unspoken places. Still, I crawl back to God. I pray he helps me embrace this life completely and be willing to leave it all behind in the same beating of my heart. I think in the end thats what it comes down to. Passionately breaking open at every moment. Clinging to each other every second of each embrace. Being just as hungry to let it all go to stand in that Holy Presence some of us cannot deny.

A divorce this past year from a twenty-year marriage has wiped me clean. I have stared at the page with apprehensionreading the words written a year ago, they seemed foreign. They were funny, yes, in part, but they were missing the gravitas of my current situation. It was as if they had been written from a distant past. I had crossed a deep chasm, not just a year. What goes unseen in heartbreak is a lot.

Its a funny thing, this obstacle at the page. When I am distracted, busy with my grocery lists, my errand runs, here they come. A wild stampede of words, stomping, snorting, demanding, and beautiful. I find my way to the page as soon as time permits and am greeted with my familiar state of staring at the screen. Silence engulfs me. Its as if my muse has been hijacked, held in a frozen, wordless world. I come up empty and full of dread, cold ash dripping from my tongue where fires once leapt. Until I finally realize that it wasnt my words Id lost; Id lost a life. I wouldnt write down the words because the story had changed.

Loss is a part of the human experience, and when it finds us we move from one day into the next as if swimming through shadows. In this I am not alone but one of millions who have loved and lost. Like them, Ive gone on traveling the road, continuing the journey, weathering the storms that have wrecked me. I am a survivor clinging to a ravaged world I cannot leave, because it is not a place. It is the new landscape of my soul riddled with the devastation of hope and silent dreams.

Seasons change, and we change with them. We die from one life only to rise into another. To walk step by slow and steady step, thankfully, into the new day. To experience the miracle that is resurrection.

I have a pathological hunger for God. One I have preferred to sweep behind the curtain that is my sense of humor. To tell stories of my messy moments. To concentrate on my sloppy humanity.

You hold in hand my confessions. They came at the price of revealing what I believe. With the added cost of being vulnerable, exposed. A revelation that pulls back the skin of me. I am raw and open for you to see. Here are the bones of my mistakes, the overworked muscles of my mind. Heres my soulful longing for the divine. These words are my blood to the page. The sacrifice of truth.

These are the cards that God has dealt me. To believe and not come up empty. To speak when silence is my nature. Im older now, and all the bets are in, the bluffs are gone; its time to show my hand. Im holding aces and Im laying them all down.