You Are Mine: A Christmas Reflection

Song of Songs, Marc Chagall

Arise, my beloved, my dove,

my beautiful one, and come!

For see, the winter is past,

the rains are over and gone. . . 

Let me see you, 

let me hear your voice,

for your voice is sweet,

and you are lovely! 

—Song of Songs

For a fleeting moment this morning, I felt you, vast 
and penetrating in your love, smiling broadly 
as if all my sorrows were naught. It was not a mocking 
disregard but a humorous dissolution of all the surfacing 
irritations and disappointments, as if to say:

In my Love, all is well, all is joy, all is peace.

Had you come back to me then?

Had you returned?

Had you stormed my dusty manger so unfit

for one as magnificent as You? 
And yet—you loathe artifice. 
Rather you would lie here with me in the dirt, eking a smile 
out of one so determined to be sad.

(Written at New Camaldoli Hermitage,
Big Sur, 2011)

The Well Runs Dry

 An angels's face is tricky to wear constantly.

—Tori Amos, lyrics from "Purple People"

I don't usually quote popular music when reflecting on ministry, but Ms. Amos' words have come to mind quite a bit these days: too many tragic calls to the ER; too many young people diagnosed with advanced cancer; too many sudden and stunning reversals of fortune; too many worst-days-ever for the people I've been called to care for.

Friends, family, and acquaintances often marvel at my capacity to last even one hour of one day working in a hospital. How do you not get depressed, they ask. I don't know. Call it grace, call it self-defense, call it desensitization. Most times I can manage to hold another's suffering and then let it go as I move on to another situation. Somehow I'm able to accept that (according to the Buddha, at least) life is suffering. I am of the nature to grow old. I am of the nature to have ill health. I am of the nature to die. Still. There are times when this surprising inner reserve and strength fail, and wearing the angel's face (an unspoken expectation of anyone in ministry, I think) becomes tricky indeed. The inner well is dry and I become painfully aware of my own human poverty. To smile takes effort.

At such times, I call to mind certain stories. I think of Elijah and the poor widow (1 Kings 17:8-16) or the feeding of the five thousand (Matthew 14:13-21). In both cases, someone is asked to provide nourishment, and in both cases, the resources on hand are woefully scarce. How can the widow manage to feed Elijah with barely enough food for herself and her son? How can the disciples feed a growing crowd when they have "nothing here but five loaves and two fish"?

From the human perspective, such requests are impossible to fill. You must be kidding me would be (and often is) my response. But as usual God is at work in his mysterious, inscrutable ways, taking the little we have and multiplying it to an abundance beyond our knowing or imagining. I try to remember this when I feel I have nothing left to give. I try to remember to invite God into my poverty, to allow him to increase in my decreased state. Sometimes I just have to accept what I feel and stop rejecting my inner poverty as a problem. Without it, there is no place for God; there is only the paltry finitude of the self.