One of the practices to which I have long been hoping to commit is writing, daily. Thus, my most prioritized practice during Lent will be to write, to put on paper or a screen or hell i'll settle for a napkin- the scribblings of my mind. With Natalie Goldberg staring down at me from the top shelf everyday I might as well get on with it. Why? Lots of reasons, but for today, this:
"Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist – the real truth of who we are: several pounds overweight, the gray, cold street outside, the Christmas tinsel in the showcase, the Jewish writer in the orange booth across from her blond friend who has black children. We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop these details from continuing.” - Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg
Today is Ash Wednesday, and though I was unable to make it to the service tonight because I was playing Reverend Mommy with my almost walking, but not yet, so i'm screaming because i'm frustrated toddler, I am determined to follow through with my goal.
Today, I was reading an article and the topic of "missing someone" was briefly mentioned, and I started thinking about the first time I really missed my wife, Shannon. First of all, to miss someone you really have to be separate from them, right? Well, for the first several years of our shared life together we didn't spend 1 night apart! And, when we did, for various work trips or family things, we'd talk every night, and carry on as if we were sleeping under the same moon. It wasn't until at least 3 years later that I went to Germany for an extended stay during the summer, and had the opportunity to REALLY long for her presence, her touch, her smell...just her.
There's something mysterious about missing someone, isn't there? An emotion that elicits a physiological response, like a yearning deep down in your gut or a throbbing sensation back in your throat and sometimes and almost sensational warm and fuzzy all over feeling- with prickly hairs standing up and all. And, in a strange way, it's as if missing her, for me, was almost as satisfactory as seeing her, again... I said almost.
Ash Wednesday is, of course, a time that we think about death and life-our mortality, and often spend time thinking about, missing our loved ones who have died. This kind of missing is different, though. I mean, I know that for those of us for whom the afterlife is an anticipated reality we are supposed to be hopeful about seeing and being reunited with these friends and family members, but there is just something different about longing for someone, in this life, whom you know will never return. It is often void of the warm-fuzzy buzz, but elicits and all new response that is deeply and equally as mystifying and unsettling at times, sad and even burdensome. And It's as if our grief is somewhat guilted by the very notion that our faith, if pure enough, should sustain us through this sad longing, bereaving, missing...
It is like Saudade. "Saudade is a Galician and Portuguese word that has no direct English translation, but was once described as "the love that remains" after someone is gone. It describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing may never return. It is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. It can be described as an emptiness, like someone or something that should be there in a particular moment is missing, and the individual feels this absence. It brings sad and happy feelings all together, sadness for missing and happiness for having experienced the feeling." [1]
On this day we turn our thoughts towards the wilderness and to the man who was led into a place of dry bones, without food, without water...with just this kind of aching dependency, longing for life again, for connection, for hope that maybe things would turn out differently... Knowing how the story ends, though, sorry for the spoiler, we can, instead, see this Jesus journey through the eyes of the hopeful wanderer who was led through the desert with saudade as his guide. Longing for the world he would soon leave behind love would usher him into baptismal waters once again. Whether a full understanding of future events or not, his steps followed the hollows of the night where darkness seeks to bring death, but where Hope rises with the bright morning sunlit sky.
I think he probably spent those days consumed with thoughts about his own mortality, dancing in the rain though no moisture filled the air, curling up like a babe under a cave whose shelter never reached the sky, and drinking from the well so deep that even the water forgot to fall. It is true that his footsteps spoke the language of hope and have given us a gift-when faced with indeterminate circumstances that we, too, might choose life. May it be so.
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At least that's what I thought about today, but tomorrow, hopefully, I will experience the kind of deep, pure faith that is sure, and be cosmically reminded that it can lift us into an altogether new reality where mortality is an un-feared possibility and dust an inviting decorum for our souls. Until then...
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