A broken tulip

Thanks for sticking with me. A third day here in the space where we do not love to linger. Here with the pain of betrayal, with the girl who walked fourteen years in iron shoes, considering the cost of a human heart, here with St. Francis who, as  so many other saints, found Christ exactly where we least expect him to be, “Darkness is an unlit wick; it just needs your touch, Beloved, to become a sacred flame. And what sadness in this world could endure if it looked into your eyes?”

“No fire, no fury, just death into life,” sings Audrey Assad. I lived with that song for some time before beginning to understand it.

“Image of the Invisible
In our pain, we feel You near
God of heaven in flesh and bone
By Your wounds, we shall be healed.

Wounded Healer, we give our hearts to you.”

Under the dome of an Orthodox Christ, standing under the icon of the resurrected Christ, Father Gerismos’ voice echoes out to reach me, “When Christ encounters death, he transforms it. This is how he saves us.”

This is how he saves us.

Look. See….

The Lover of Mankind.

We, mankind, tied God up in all our human ropes but His life broke all those ropes and we were left free too, without ropes in our hands and gaping with wide-open mouths at the power in his arms.

He shamed shame. He destroyed destruction. He plundered the plunderer. And he trampled and bound death.

 “He faced shame and transformed it into glory,” writes Diane Langberg.

Love tells me to forgive. Walking with Him means that whatever “they” may tie me into will be broken – in my life, yes, but also in the lives of my attackers. Love is always on the move, always doing good, always using the little we have to feed others, to bring others to life, to bless others.

Love requires that we press into the pain. David Whyte recognized this, “Forgiveness is a heartache and difficult to achieve because strangely, it not only refuses to eliminate the original wound, but actually draws us closer to its source….it is that wounded, branded, un-forgetting part of us that eventually makes forgiveness an act of compassion rather than one of simple forgetting.”

Darkness promises that the pain will be mine – always. Ready to call upon when I need a sharp reminder, or a justification for my behavior. Love tells me firmly that if I give him my pain, he will take it and break it. With the pieces, he will feed my enemies. It will never be mine again. Only scars will remain.

This is His way. When your enemy is hungry, give him food. And if he is thirsty, give him drink. Bless, and do not curse. Pray for those who persecute you… Father, forgive them.

“Arms stretched out not to part the seas
But to open up the grave
Blood poured out not for war, but peace
And to show us God’s own face

Wounded Healer, we give our hearts to you.“

Darkness denies my pain and covers it up. It promises me a pain-free future. Love weeps to see my pain and bandages me gently. Love takes every tiny shard of pain I offer Him and creates something new out of it. Love breathes life into my pain until I can say, “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”

He never offers life outside of pain. He offers to always create life out of pain. Darkness can only twist what God has already given; God is much more powerful. He need only breathe and new things begin.

Handing a situation over to darkness leads to a predictable downward spiral. Handing it over to Love means the mind-blowing mystery of redemption will happen again, in a way I would never have dreamed. Many days I lose the joy of that coming redemption in my confusion of how he works it out.

Maybe, just maybe, faithful joy opens me into life, but faithful pain allows God to open the people around me into life, too. Is this why he not only allows pain in our lives, he seems to invite it?

Darkness offers vengeance. Love offers me to wait until my enemies are transformed into his image. Darkness cannot believe that another human would cause me so much pain. Love believes it. Love also believes I can take that pain and pray with him, “Forgive him, he does not know what he is doing.”

Darkness wants the demolition of myself and all those around me. Love wants the wholeness of myself and all around me. The deeper someone plunges a sword into the heart of a King’s child, the farther they have forced their hand into a heart of love which will not strike back. The deeper they have plunged into the beginnings of their own redemption. 

Wounded Healer, we give our hearts to you.”

Death, into life.

(And what sadness in this world could endure, Beloved, if it looked into your eyes?)

This is the power of the cross.

Image: Woonsook Kim, painting inspired by Lewis’ Till We Have Faces (a beautiful and haunting retelling of Cupid and Psyche’s myth)