Easter in the bunker

Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. (John 20:6-7)

I would have picked up the grave cloths, held them in my hands, savored their texture, stroked my cheek with the fabric and breathed in the fragrance of the soul they’d held. Anything … just to feel his presence.

I can imagine it, but imagination quickly transports me 33 years into the past and a place thousands of miles away, a concrete bunker on the edge of a civil war.

In the back, squatting on the dirt floor, a mother fingered the dirty rags in which she’d wrapped her child, a little girl. The child was starving, dying, beyond help even if medical help had been near, which it wasn’t.

I think of her every year as imagine how tenderly Jesus’ friends wrapped him in death. I watch their hands and soon see this mother tugging at the filthy bands of cloth around her child, covering her, keeping watch, a death watch, which would end with the child laid beneath soil of a troubled land where this scene was playing out hundreds of times every day.

I know. The image is too sad for today, or so I was informed in no uncertain terms the one time I told the story on an Easter morning.

But each year, the hands of Jesus’ friends and the hands of this mother blend and merge in the sacred, unpredictable ways of memory where meaning is made and the Spirit does her best work.

Only now, this year, I imagine holding Jesus’ grave cloths to my cheek and am transported across 33 years to the back corner of that bunker, where I pick up the filthy strips of once-white cotton laying in the dirt, abandoned, cast off.

And at this, I know that for which I hope: to feel his risen presence, the presence I felt that decades old day when I prayed for that child through tears and marked her with the sign of the cross, hoping with all my might that the Resurrection is real for the whole suffering world … and especially for that little girl … and the mother who wrapped her in bands of love … the two of us, held in one hope.

No one needed to tell me ‘Christ is risen’ that day. He was right there.

David L. Miller

Of Mary and Pete Hegseth

 

There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. (John 12:2-3)

‘Where are you?’ An inner voice says. ‘What do you see?’

With that, I am invited into my senses, freed from my busy mind’s need to make meaning of words.

The scene comes alive not only in sight but in the aromatic oil of anointing, a healing fragrance rising, floating, drifting across the room, filling my senses.

For a moment, I am there in the splendid silence as Mary rises and brushes back her hair, perfumed now with precious nard, having wiped Jesus’ feet.

More fragrant, still, is the loving reverence that moved her blessed act, throwing aside all utilitarian concerns about how much it cost and how it could have sold and the money give to the poor.

Moved to her knees, all that mattered was loving the Love that unleashed love’s gracious flow from the depth of her heart, a fountain of life to which she gave no resistance, allowing herself to be carried away, as totally given to God’s loving purpose as the soul whom she anointed.

We should all be so free, for she is a portrait of human fulfillment, love’s completion in a human soul at least for this one moment. Seeing her, I witness what my soul most wants and surely needs.

Tragically, I also feel the discordant debasement of Christian faith and witness among those, such as our nation’s chest-thumping Secretary of War, who invoke the name of Jesus to bless the ‘lethality’ of violence upon ‘those who deserve no mercy.’

How, I wonder, again and again. How can anyone employ the name of Jesus to bless the very opposite of that which Jesus sought to awaken in every human heart? And how can those who worship and believe Jesus is the merciful heart of God for all people not shout their objections to such obvious sacrilege, the desecration of the name of Jesus?

I have no convincing answer, only an invitation to watch Mary shake out her hair as the fragrance of love fills the air.

David L. Miller

My brother’s heart

You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die … than to have the whole nation destroyed.’ … So from that day on they planned to put him to death. Jesus therefore no longer walked about openly … but went from there to a town called Ephraim in the region near the wilderness; and he remained there with the disciples. (John 11:51, 53-54)

Sometimes, it doesn’t take much to know the beauty of another’s heart; just a moment, a look, a glance, the touch of a hand can tell you everything you really need to know. And so it is here.

As cynical hearts conspire to kill him, Jesus retires to the countryside to be with friends.

Scripture doesn’t tell us what he did there, only that a few days later he returned to the place of danger to make his final witness to the Love which constituted his soul, the Love that consumed him and resulted in an excruciating death at the hands of his enemies.

I have long believed that we either know Jesus as a human being, a human soul, or we do not know him at all. His flesh and blood, his humanity, as weak and vulnerable as our own, is the vehicle of the divine heart in whom he abides and who abides in him.

Seeing and feeling his humanity moves me to fall in love with him again and again.

It happens every Holy Week. In Jesus’ words, in his bearing, I feel and know the beauty of a passionate, loving, sad and wounded heart, a truly human soul.

And I know him as my brother one more time.

I try to imagine what happened as he shared bread and table, wine and worry with his friends, away from the conspiracies that would congeal to destroy him.

There likely would have been anxious laughter and furrowed brows amid memories of all they’d shared along the dusty roads and tiny towns that welcomed or despised them.

Together, they had known the ecstasy of a joy beyond any they’d ever known, the grace of being with him. The beauty of his words and the wonder of his power awakened hopes for which they had no words.

Underneath all this, were their nagging doubts about whether they’d ever really understood him, little knowing that all the beauty they’d known and felt in him would soon be dashed to dust.

But there was one more thing. A current of love flowed in and through, among and under everything they heard and said and felt together.

No one would have asked to know the source of that living stream. For, they all knew. They all knew my brother’s heart, however little they understood him.

Who Jesus is, the heart of his humanity and the glory of his divinity, often appears most dramatically in contrast to the reactions he stirred in those who opposed him.

His opponents conspired to kill him because it was pragmatic, expedient, the best thing to do to eliminate a problem.

While they plotted, Jesus withdrew to be with friends he loved, loving them to the end, even as he prepared for his ultimate witness to the gracious heart of the Father.

One side plans a legal murder, while Jesus unveils the Love that cannot be defeated by hatred or destroyed by its enemies.

In the end, they killed him, never understanding or imagining the beauty of my brother’s heart. But of course, that wasn’t the end. The end is life. The end is love. The end is communion with the heart for whom we most long.

David L. Miller

Morning dove

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. (Philippians 4:4)

There is nothing we want and need more than joy amid the rampant cynicism and conflicts of our age. And there is no end to the ways human souls seek and fail to find it or that marketers try to sell it.

But it cannot be bought or earned. Nor do our successes guarantee it.

Joy can only be received as a gift. Fortunately, we live in the atmosphere of a Great Giver. Or so I find as I sit my weary self in the rocking chair by the window on this pale gray morning.

‘I hear you little bird,’ I say, as a dove coos outside the window. ‘Good morning. Let’s you and me enjoy the gift.’

The gift is this … one day … into which I and my friend in the locust tree have awakened. One more day neither of us created, requested or did anything to deserve. It just is, given, flowing from yesterday into tomorrow and the imponderable beyond, a river of life whose mysterious Source we cannot see or conceive.

Each of us has been granted a share of the life of the One who is Life, given our unique shape and form and way of being: me, a human soul straining to touch and name the Immaculate Generosity who has given us this day, while my friendly dove, much wiser, simply sits and sings the joy of the morning.

I should just sit and listen. I might learn something valuable about where joy is found.

But no, I turn from joy’s song, calling me home, to the weary news of the world where the wisdom of the dove is as lost to the accomplished and powerful as it is to me. There is no consolation there, no peace, just the noisy clamor of clashing wills.  

When will I ever, finally learn? Joy is right here, right now, as I wake, alive to the gift of life from life’s unimaginable, unspeakably generous Source.

It flows through my veins and courses through my heart. It surges in my hope as I study rose stems for fresh buds of spring. It shines in my eyes as I crane my neck to see geese and cranes plying the sky to their summer home. It sings in my laughter as I eat pizza with my beloved and wake to the goodness of loving and being loved.

In all of it, I feel and know Life is in me and I am in Life, which is to say I am in the Love God is—the Love who is endless generosity, the Love who seeks us every waking moment, the Love whose pleasure is giving life to me and the dove, hoping we just might learn to sing.

Knowing oneself in this Love is the joy for which the heart longs. And as the dove knows, when it comes to entering this joy, singing is much more effective than thinking.

David L. Miller

Found in him

I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him. (Philippians 3:8-9a)

The image is crude and old, perhaps even childish. I hesitate to describe it, since it exposes how simpleminded and unsophisticated I can be.

I intuit the image as much as see it. It first appeared in my mind’s eye as an icon, a vision (?) … decades ago. I see or sense Christ, the outline of his body. I cannot see his face or features, just his arms slightly spread, and I am inside the image, enveloped in him.

I can call it to mind and feel almost nothing. But times come, like today, when it appears or simply awakens, and I see and feel and know myself inside him, enclosed, surrounded, safe within, my whole being bathed in a love that dissolves every anger, every anxiety and every memory that assails my heart. And I have a lot of those.

‘You are my freedom,’ I pray, during the blessed time of awakening, ‘my only real freedom.’

For I cannot chase away the disparate memories that conspire and converge in the night to accuse me of all the ways I have failed to be the human soul I wanted to be, the soul I hoped and once imagined I might become.

My mind is too weak to fight them off, and my heart is too honest to pretend it doesn’t matter.

Funny, isn’t it, how countless wonderful things can happen to you, and thousands of gracious words can cross your lips to bless friends and family and even strangers in decades of living. Often as not, these get filed in the dusty, disordered bottom drawer of memory.

But miniscule details from decades old moments of foolishness and vanity appear in lurid detail—impulsive, stupid things I have done and said trying to look better than I am, thoughtless anger and selfishness, ancient slights and rejections, the feeling that I have never really fit in anywhere and have likely been unqualified for pretty much every job I ever had, although I eventually figured out most of them.

But perhaps this is only my experience. Perhaps there’s only a few of us whose hyperactive memories point an accusing finger when desolating clouds descend on the heart. But I don’t think so. I suspect I have a lot of company.

We cannot free ourselves from this bondage, nor can we will our way to freedom. Only Love casts out this demon. Only Love silences every other voice but its own.

And Love constantly beckons us to come home, to see and find ourselves enveloped within the body of Love he is. For Christ, his love is our home, and his body contains and holds all of us and all creation, all that is … is in him, held in him, encompassed, surrounded.

This is what I see when some experience of beauty or love or grace or joy or even a child’s smile awakens the image, and I see myself there, in Christ, along with everything else.

Would that we all might find ourselves in him, that loving freedom might come.

David L. Miller

For Rachel B

And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:7-8)

The phone rings, and we are immediately cast into the depths of ultimate mystery, the final passage from what we know to what is unknowable.

This time it is not our phone, but that of another family member whose step-mother lies in the shadowy suspension between life and death, which is neither, lingering over the threshold of forever, tethered by a slender thread.

For what shall we hope? And what to pray? Can life have another day? Or …?

Thrust back upon ourselves, human resources are insufficient companions in the waiting rooms of life and death. Our questions are not much help either.

We have no ultimate explanation for the undeniable fact of our existence at this time and place on this lone oasis of life in the cosmic darkness. Nor have we a solution to the woeful awareness that we each must die.

But perhaps the unfathomable reality of our living and dying is not a question to be answered or a problem to be solved. Perhaps it is a mystery best embraced with a companion who promises to meet us in the darkness of paths untrodden and perils unknown.

It is exactly this that Christ promises and invites us to trust.

Most often, we meet him … or he us … when we quit fighting what is and allow ourselves to descend into the midst of questions we cannot answer, problems we cannot solve and hurts we cannot heal.

Somewhere in the darkness of ourselves or in the compassion of a face known or unknown, we hear the silent whisper of the Voice who says, ‘even here, even this, even now.

‘There is nowhere I will not go for you, no depth to which I will not descend, no place my love will not find you, no depth of hell can keep you from me.’

Only this, only the One who has descended into death for Love’s own sake, allows us to lovingly embrace the mystery of our life and of our sadness, grieving and dying with hope.

For Christ has descended into the utmost depths of bitter suffering and death, embracing the glory and despair of human existence, taking all of it and all we are into himself, joining our mortality to his reality.

His triumphant love, risen, exalted from the lowest of the low to be Lord of heaven and earth, life and death, speaks the final word over our lives and all history.

And that word is love, the Love who says, ‘There is no place so dark, no death so final that my love will not find you and my life cannot fill you.’

So, do not fear. Lift up your head and be strong. You are not alone. We live, together, in a universe where Love holds sway.

David L. Miller

Love’s completion

 I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. … And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight. (Philippians 1:6,9)

‘It’s early,’ I whisper into an unseasonably warm February sky.

The fluty trill of a Sandhill Crane is unmistakable. I expect them in these woods in mid-March, not now.

Standing still, I scan the sky and wait for an answering call that doesn’t come. He must be lonely, I think. They usually travel in flocks of hundreds and thousands.

Hiking on, a mile deeper into the woods, I hear the call again. Flying low against the crystal blue dome, two cranes make their way northwest toward nesting grounds a thousand miles hence or even more.

They will mate and birth the next generation, some of which I may see come fall when they make their way south once more, marking the seasons as they have for tens of thousands of years—and will, long after my face has faded into forgetfulness.

Grateful for their promise of Spring, their call is yet a wistful reminder that time marches on. There will be a season when my legs will no longer carry me to this blessed place to watch them, often as not through these tears of joy which come for reasons beyond my understanding.

Except for love, of course. For surely this is the reason I come out here, hoping to feel the irresistible surge of love the Holy One awakens in my heart, filling me whole until I cry the two most essential words of life.

Thank you.

And for the time of such awakening, I am almost as alive as the cranes. Almost.

In their flight, the Love Who Is wakes the joy and beauty of love lying within the secret depths of my (and every) soul, our truest identity. But this is just one of myriad sacramental moments the Loving Mystery employs to draw us a millimeter closer to Love’s completion. There seems to be nothing God will not use, even our faults, perhaps especially our faults.

I have miles to go on this walk. My legs will grow heavy before the 10 miles are done. But I keep on in the mud, knowing there is a smile waiting for me at home, a smile that stops shoppers in the produce section or the women’s department or at checkout counters because something about her radiates a kindness for which human hearts long.

One more sacrament of divine grace, working out Love’s completion, not just in my soul but in others, too.

Christ plays in ten thousand places and shines in so many more, most certainly in her smile.

But God help me, she, too, will pass into yesterday and the very thought of that kills me. After all these decades together, I cannot imagine a world where that smile is lost, an unspeakable tragedy, a poorer world, indeed.

But even this sobering awareness of our mortality moves gratitude for every moment shared, for every good gift received, for every gentle grace that ever awakened my heart to love the life I have been given.

And even more: To love the love God is … drawing us ever onward toward love’s completion.

David L. Miller