I will have gone through a box a kleenex by the time I'm done writing this
I have been overwhelmed with tears lately. Not at home, but in church. I suppose it has something to do with having gone to the last few masses by myself (not necessarily on purpose, just worked out that way) and not being constantly poked or distracted by shushing the little people, but mostly it is the repeated mentioning of dying and suffering and leaving and then resurrecting. My mind can follow but my emotions shut it all down within seconds. It's not that any of it is new and that the idea of death and the subsequent redemption had not moved me before, it's just that this time it's personal. In a way it had not been before. Oh, and here I go again...
Now when I hear about Jesus crying at Lazarus' tumb or Jesus being scared of death or his friends not wanting him to leave and then the promise that he will be back alive, it touches all kinds of other parts of me. It reminds me of those brain tests they do on people, where they visualize brain activity on a screen while exposing them to different triggers. Blink blink go the lights in this cortex and that cortex. It's as if my whole being goes off blinking like crazy whenever any of the above things are mentioned, I have no way to control it or get myself together because until now I wasn't familiar with their existence.
I didn't realize how much of my faith and my religious experience had been connected to my father. Well, it's not that much of a surprise, my dad was perpetually talking about God and faith. (I believe we were all sick of it most of the time.) But still... it's a little like when I became a mother and realized how many things - down to simple hand gestures - I had picked up from my mom. So when the gospel readings and the hymns come together it's the perfect storm. I can see my dad in the pew, I can hear him sing, and the anger and bitterness I had had about his religious terrorism is vanished as if it never existed. (How is this possible?) And what do they have to sing as the final hymn? "... were you there when they laid him in the tumb?" I was not.
I do believe in resurrection, but I realize now more than ever that I cannot grasp it. I don't understand anything. What does it mean, nobody knows. It's not this life in a new edition. It can't be just spirits and clouds and the smell of roses. It is futile to try to understand it, but it's equally futile to try to stop your mind from going there. I will admit to the occasional doubt... what if it's just wishful thinking? But I know better. I just can't put it all in a coherent... "system". Several things I know for sure:
- We are made in time and so things have to end. Death is natural. Regardless of what some people claim, nobody really wants to live forever - where would it go, we just get older and older? If we stayed younger, it wouldn't work with that whole linear time constraint.
- We all seem to have ideas of the "ideal", the "perfect world", a kind of joy that doesn't end and we can finally stop suffering. That has to come from somewhere, we did not put it in our heads ourselves.
- The idea of eternal life is incomprehensible, but it does go with the above notion. It seems the only possible and right way out of this mess we have on earth. It's the only notion that also gives our mess meaning and can put our minds at ease when we start freaking out about all the things we did wrong and will fail to be by the time life is over.
- The only thing that stays with us after death is love. It's the only thing that won't go away and I'm not talking only about the love we had for the dead, but the love the dead had for us.
And that last thought is probably what puts me over the edge every time. Yes, he died, but he's not gone. Jesus' promise is not a lie. And then my mind goes blank, and I sob like a baby.
Posted at 12:10 PM on April 11, 2009
- The only thing that stays with us after death is love.
Dinka, I agree! The Love of crucified and risen Jesus!
Love.
Thank you for this post.
I'm sorry you've been crying so much when going to church at this time of the year. I think that what you wrote is most beautiful and also very moving, thanks for sharing. One day I will know how you feel, after my own dad dies. I cannot imagine how hard it must be to revisit this during the Easter time church services. That hymn is very moving, I agree. I hope you're feeling better now...