Fierce women

 

Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. (John 13:1)

It’s always the women, or so it seems; always the women who love most fiercely. It was on display again in a Texas classroom, as with a holy cohort of women whose silent witness reaches from their graves, again and again, to bless me with their beauty.

Irma Garcia died on the floor of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, her arms embracing children whom she taught and loved until her final breath. She loved them and loved them to the end. If there is anything holier, I know not of it.

The image sears itself on the heart, and if the Spirit is gracious to us we shall never be able to remove it. For she reveals the Love with which we are loved, and the love to which every human soul is called on our lifelong project of becoming truly human.

Hers was the fierce love of those blessed to know nothing else fully satisfies or is truly worthy of our souls. Blessed is she.

And blessed, too, are so many others whose names I never knew but whom, I pray, greeted Ms. Garcia at heaven’s gate, welcoming her into that great cloud of witnesses who had absolutely no doubt of life’s truest purpose. These are fierce women of whom I heard and witnessed with my own eyes, women who denied themselves food amid civil war and massive starvation to save their families in places like Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan.

They carried their children out of harm’s way until they dropped on dirt paths unable to go any further, hoping, praying someone would pick up their posterity and lead their little ones to places where gentle hands would receive them.

Such souls are always closer than we imagine. “I love you both fiercely,” my precious daughter, Rachel, often texts at the close of her messages to her mother and me. I don’t doubt it. She has been ferocious since toddlerhood, and her passion for all her loves is known by any blessed to know her. And why not, she is the daughter of Dixie, who has managed to love me for more than five decades in spite of myself.

They are two of so many who live in our hearts, women whose love is like that of the women who stood by our Lord Jesus at the cross when others fled, women who were the first at the tomb to care for his broken body, women who were first to bear witness to the wonder that Love has an answer to every death we shall ever die, fierce women whose love incarnates the One who is Love Incarnate.

David L. Miller

God, save us all

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. (John 15:9)

I have no desire to write today, but here I am. And I have no illusion that I have anything worth saying, but I come back here because something or someone within says, Write! So I do, hoping somewhere amid the writing I will find something within me—or something within will find me—and calm the restless sea of emotion that drags me into its depths.

I cannot escape the image of bullets tumbling and tearing through the bodies of nine and 10 year-olds in a Texas school because I have seen dead children killed in civil war and others simply left to die by the roadside. And I have looked into the vacant eyes of teens who saw schoolmates shot dead, realizing that they didn’t see me; their eyes were fixed on scenes they could not erase.

Nor can I escape the heaviness of hearing my own mother’s pain. Nearly 93, her body is worn down and wearing out so that there is little anyone can do to still the pain that some days chains her to her chair. The hunger to get-up-and-go, which drove her fast-forward all her life, torments and agitates her heart because she can no longer do what was once like breathing. Deep within, she feels not past 90 but someone much younger, someone who wants to tend her flowers, run the food pantry and be on every other committee at church.

My mother and the horror of a Texas grade school would seem to have nothing in common, except the obstinate reality of human suffering that sooner or later renders us mute and helpless, knowing there is nothing we can say or do that will make any difference.

Any attempt to make easy meaning of the suffering of aging—to say nothing of the unspeakable grief over the mutilated bodies of children—is sacrilege.  Our words cannot ease the pain, relieve the sadness or still the bitter wrongness of it all.

We are left to despair ... or to the faith that there is yet a Love that can redeem all that is not loving, all that is bitter and sad, mute and gray.

Confused, sad and angry, possessing neither answers nor any words to still my heart, I urge myself to cling to the Love I have known who knows me, who knows my mother, who knows those Texas children and even the tortured soul who ripped open the hearts of all who love them.

God save them all, I pray. Somehow. God save us all, especially from ourselves.

Days to come will bring thoughts and prayers, glib words and heartfelt sorrow. The futility of our tawdry politics will disgust and further divide the country. Hands will be wrung, ideologies will collide, and children will lay flowers at a school house door. Again.

But redemption, at least as much as human efforts afford, will be known only in the embrace of those undeterred by bitter tears, souls unafraid to step into the breach and stand speechless alongside inconsolable hearts.

Redemption comes the only way it ever can, by finding a way to translate suffering into love.

So we abide in love, or do our best trying, for that is where the One who is Love meets us ... and redemption begins.

David L. Miller