I am carrying a weary body through dark space and existence, which I can barely even fathom.
I am just walking up a hill over campus back to the warm, cluttered existence of my apartment.
I am struck by a realization that God does not exist… where are You, my Jesus, I stretch out my hands. Groping, blindly, in the recesses of my faith, I am trying to sense You, but my amphibious nature impedes its own good: My flesh cannot feel, therefore my heart does not know? I remember Your stories, that believing is seeing, and somehow I wonder tonight what it means to believe. There is a part of my being that seems foreign to me, a part that knows inexplicably and sense what does not exist.
I have been in conversation about heaven, and I think I said it doesn’t exist. Was I reading about Dante’s paradise, contemplating my own lack of land or trying to understand once again just what it is that makes me feel so much like a foreigner here in this world with a never-accomplished task? To say I am destined for a land would be to put words in my Jesus’ mouth that I am fairly sure He didn’t utter or promise me. To say I am going to be in a place might be more realistic… my Bridegroom is off preparing that place. Existence, place? He left this world… but His Spirit resides within and amongst us, giving us place until the Spirit moves us through a thin shadow into other place. I think maybe the shadow is death, but I am not fearing evil in it. I wonder why we need heaven so much: what sort of hope we obtain or what we desire to gain in such a wonderful creation of a place. I want my Jesus in the existential stuff I find myself tied to. Sometimes I tell You that just a wound in the hand would be enough to keep me here forever.
But I look at this existence in the form we have and see nothing but barriers… the image of Jesus is dismembered. My heart must be torn and broken, for maybe in such a time as this, we need to be scattered and broken. But I do not understand, because I want what I have called heaven here and now. Does heaven even exist? I think I have imagined it: where nothing matters as far as place… but where I am assured of obedience to always please my Jesus, perpetual, undivided love between myself and my neighbors. So simple, couldn’t it be had now? I hear for hopes of heaven and in mind picture some tangible reality that could never be here. But if I have made heaven, of course if could be here. But “here” is constrained by my existential boundaries: time, space… heaven must be more. Have I formed a paradise out of the substance of something else or do I just imagine what it musts be, close to Jesus? O Jesus, what are you?
Am I lamenting tonight? These are not the ponderings of a lonely soul or one scorning who You are, but there seem to be two parts of me: there is that inner self that knows You and convinces my hands that they could bleed with Your wounds… wounds obtained by loving. In my mind, I catch glimpses of You face. But the inner knowing is accompanied in step with the outer existence that doesn’t always spiritually sense. Metaphysics is called such because it embodies beyond the stretch of these hands. So I held them out there in the dark, wanting You to touch them, but it isn’t always that You confirm Yourself in existential reality. I guess that is what I need Your people, that broken body for.
I am sacrilegious to picture the Eucharist in this moment, the bread broken, proclaimed Your body, and distributed among the us for us to consume and become. You feed us with transforming love and mercy. But we remain broken where You left us Your cup, not to drink again till Your return. We saw You ghost-like rise and walk through walls.. You were more than our reality and the weight of Your glory sunk through what we knew. So I blessed You and looked for Your feet to kiss and cry over and wipe with my hair. But Your feet are scattered. Or maybe they aren’t, because the Jesus I adore did not remain crucified: there You stand, I think, whole and perfect with Your scars. And I am in love. But I can’t see You yet… I can only imagine how divine You must look.
I am looking, under every piece of existence, for You, at least a reflection. I see before me a pool like a mirror, but You are not in it, I only see myself, and I cry out that there must be more. I lift the mirror, You are hiding from me, I shatter the glass… shards scatter in all directions. The idols of old were always broken, as are those of us in whom You invest your likeness, because we don’t look just like You as much as we want to. And then I wonder why my mind is wandering here again… why do I wonder, in what do I hope… sometimes I don’t care. I just want You Jesus. And sometimes I don’t think You are the way I want You; but from the Spirit You put living in me I know You are better. And I love You even though sometimes I wonder if You exist. Thank you for being patient with my feeble faith.
