i have to start with a quote from someone else's writing:
"that strange unknowing. like when the sun goes down beautiful and you worry you'll never see it again. but you know you will. but you wish you knew with your eyes."
-jbr
i've been in this season of uncertainty...for months now...trying to figure out what's "next".
a few weeks ago someone was talking about the "border lands" between various countries...it's land something like a few kilometers wide that belongs to neither country, it just sits in between. some people will leave one country with no money or visa to get into the next country over, so they hang out in the border land and wait. there are markets and things, and people wait, trying to find a way into the new country.
when i heard that i thought, "well that's me to a T." i left one land and its comforts and customs, but hadn't crossed into a new land. and it's well and good to know you're in the border land, but what you really want to know is how to get out.
anyway. i've been a bit stuck. sort of twiddling my thumbs and waiting for this miraculous moment when i would be set free from the confusion and frustration and bits of pain and sadness still attached to that old country and its memories...in a million little ways i've just been waiting for that blink-of-an-eye moment where everything changes.
not
happening.
but sometimes, i think, you have to get up before the sun, sometimes you have to sing praises when the only other words you know are questions. you have to start living a little bit like you're already somewhere else.
sometimes you have to pretend it's spring and the flowers are blooming when it's winter and they're only just trying and that you're wearing a sun dress when you're wearing a coat and scarf and that the sun is shining when it's night and that no one's there but you and God when the truth is there are a few people walking by awkwardly pretending that they don't see you dancing when there's no music playing
in the dark
in the cold
in a coat and scarf.
sometimes you have to close your eyes and know that the sun will come up, with no better proof than the fact that it came up the day before.
i have to end with another set of borrowed words. found by me in a book by david crowder, heard by him on the radio, it's excerpts from a conversation these two people are having about spirituals (slave songs):
"Mr. Carter: I think that the sorrow [the slaves felt] became the entrance, the open door, into a whole new world of experience. The slaves could not experience the normal world...they were whipped, and they had chains, and they found the secret door to take them into that world where the tears are wiped away.
Ms. Tippett: But the tears are cried first, aren't they?
Mr. Carter: Yeah.
Ms. Tippett: You know, you talked about the secret power of these songs. And I think so much of what we're learning now...is how important it is to embrace suffering in life in order to move forward. And maybe they did not have a choice.
Mr. Carter: No, they didn't.
Ms. Tippett: But it's almost like there's healing in that moment even though it doesn't take the pain away, you know?
...You know, it's a religious idea that there is a better life after this one, right? It's a piece of doctrine. But there is something so miraculous happening when you are listening to this music or singing it. You know, for that moment, you're actually transported to that better life, right?
Mr. Carter: Yeah.
Ms. Tippett: I mean, you're singing, "Soon I will be done," but I think in singing that song, you can go through another day of this misery, right?
Mr. Carter: Exactly.
Ms. Tippett: It makes you strong for a little while. It's almost like the eternal becomes part of the present.
Mr. Carter: I think that's it.
Ms. Tippett: It's amazing.
Mr. Carter: I think that is it. It's like you get into the stream of that living water and there's no past, present, and future. It's just right now, and right now everything is all right."
so here i am: knowing it doesn't end here, but waiting to see it with my eyes
No comments:
Post a Comment