I wrote this one sometime last week. I'm still not happy with it, but I thought I would throw it out there anyway. As I learned this morning at Mass and earlier this week over lunch with a new friend, some of our journeys are long and winding roads...not always the best plan, but we learn from the winding roads, too. Then our sweet Jesus straightens them out.
If you read ahead, may the Lord create clarity in all my cloudy thinkings.
"Draw me into your footsteps, let us run.
The king has brought me into his rooms;
you will be our joy and our gladness.
We shall praise your love more than wine;
How right it is to love you." Song of Songs 1:4
Three times in my life, I have experienced perfect love. Or at least recognized it when it was given. The first time was on a Saturday night during my first Emmaus Walk back in 1997. I stared down at my placemat, which was covered in tiny, penny-a-piece trinkets, each holding a little piece of paper that had some scripture verse and the names of women and men who wanted me to know that I was loved by God and by them. I stared at these little gestures of affection and my stone cold heart began to crack. Wait a minute, I thought, they don't know me...how can they dare say such a thing? I know me and I am definitely NOT love-able.
Rather than make a scene, I ran off into the bathroom and locked myself in a stall. Sweet Rev. Char Cowan, with whom I already had several interesting conversations, stood on the other side of the locked door, calling my name.
From my little hiding place, I called out, "I want to go home. NOW!" And she listened gently to my request. "Please stay Cindy. At least for a few more hours. I promise it will all be alright."
But she didn't realize how painful it is for a human being, for whom love was nonexistent or misunderstood, to have something like real love given to her. For this love is one that cuts deep. It demands vulnerability to receive. It is both attractive and terrifying. It is free but it has a price. The price is that is changes who you thought you were into something new. And there is no going back from it.
I've been told that when we are young, our brains are so creative that they protect us from some kinds of truths so that we can survive...war...or a death...or other things. Then, when our brains think it is safe, it lets us feel stuff we were once too young to feel. We now had enough gray cells to understand and adapt differently. Only it still has to be a conscious choice. We decide if we want to grow out of childish things or into something something completely new.
So I stood locked in a bathroom stall, crying like a baby and begging to go home. I did not want to change. I did not want to accept love on any level. My brain told me that people used the word in unkind ways. Love was dangerous. I didn't want to entertain the possibility that it could also be something very, very good.
But sweet Char talked me into staying. And the shortest version of that story is that, if love can transform a robot like me into a human being, it must be pretty good stuff and I wanted to help others who may have been as wounded by life as me to live a better life in Christ. So I went to seminary. (One thread of a very nonlinear story)
I thought I was done. I thought I'd gotten a full dose. What I had received was beyond my dreams and I felt so very blessed. I was high on God.
Then came one of my first Dark Nights. If it is all about love, well then, why aren't people being loving. Seminary was great and scary and challenging, but church work was...something different. Not bad, perhaps, but because of the transformation in my own life, I expected that church work would be like that...every day a Saturday night locked in a bathroom stall that ended up in a kind of resurrection. And of course, it wasn't. I got lost, very lost.
Then, after a few years of weeping, love found its way into my heart again. Fr. Henry told me (in his sermon) to come down off the mountain. The theory of love is a great thing, but now that you have knowledge, Cindy, you must learn to live it. In the mess of creation is great beauty; you must now move what is in your head into your heart.
And God told me, one dark night, as I sat on the floor of the chapel (at St. Mark's)weeping tears against a brick wall, and begging God to explain to me why I continued this struggle to live in two worlds: the Methodist Church and the Catholic Church...and I sat on the floor, exhausted from crying, thinking I had no tears in me left to cry, I demanded of God why I always seemed to end up here. "Why do I always end up here? Why are my tears saved for here?" Then I heard God's voice telling me "Cindy, here is where you love me best." And my shoulders relaxed and my salty tears became suddenly sweet. "Oh..." He was right.
I found my second dose of pure love on/in preparation for the ACTS retreat. At least, I was aware of being loved there. This was a different love. Just as beautiful as the first but different. This love was a reconciling love. This love was the kind of love that healed. My first dose of real love broke my heart. This second dose began to heal it. My proud nature was being tamed by women and men who understood the nature of a wild animal who had to learn to fend for herself in all things that mattered. I begged for forgiveness from my great pride, which had protected me from certain death in years past but was now killing me. And God forgave my sins.
Now I am in such a different place. I took a lot of words to get here, but yesterday made me aware again of how far I still have to go. As great as the love of God is growing inside me, I still have so many broken places. Still bits of stone shield things that I think I cannot survive without keeping. But it became clear again to me yesterday, that I do not need these things anymore. They are in the way of a greater love that God has made available to me....and quite truthfully, to us all.
Some of you have gotten here ahead of me. I am glad you found your way home. Some of you are walking by my side, just as scared and excited about what might happen next. But there are too many people I know, who are still protecting their hearts of stone.
I have finally learned that love is a good thing. I have learned that love is much greater than loving our husbands or wives or our children or our friends. Those loves are good loves, but they still have strings attached to them. Those are great things that we will eventually have to let go of. They are transitory, and sometimes so unpredictable. Good but not perfect.
And there is perfect love. With God. The glorious irrational. Faithful: steadfast, predictable Compassionate:mercy and grace-filled Selfless: giving Unceasing: without bounds Also relentless: pursuing us to the end of time Demanding: requires that we give ALL of ourselves over to it Jealous: will not share our love for God with the love of any other thing.
So, perhaps poorly written, but perhaps a beginning of something that could make sense someday, I offer to you this day the prayer/declaration of the Beloved to her Great One True Love that is God:
Draw me into your footsteps, let me run!
For God has brought me into His rooms
He will be my joy and gladness
I will praise Your Love more than wine,
How right it is to love You.
I pray now that God will clear the cobwebs that might still be in the words I have written. I am on a tremendous journey. A great adventure. Today, this is my Captain's Log. It might make sense, it might now. It is all still such a blur in my head...but it is a very good blur...of something so good and perfect, if I can just get you to think about going there too, well then it was worth writing.
To those of you with brave hearts, take the risk, let Him in...
Love, Cindy
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