H,
                            
I remember all those years
ago when it seemed the fire would burn bright forever. I did not see it as a
phase. We had our great Pentecost moment and it seemed like we would spread out
and change the world in utter restlessness and bravado. Of course that did not
happen. Life happens to everyone. Life breaks us all, the great poet said. It is
supposed to, the great wind whispers.
We are not here to build
worlds and create legacies of despair under the creaking weight of self-fulfilment.
The fallen kingdom of self is an act of grace and disappointment is often just
an opportunity to make an adjustment in how we see things and how we live. That
sounds like the discredited science of self-help gurus but sometimes the bitter
medicine of nectar is true. Cliche sometimes hit the spot marked “x”.
The light going dim is
nothing but a learning curve that points to our own humanity. When the Christ
spoke of seed falling on different kinds of surfaces he was mapping the whole
trajectory of our faith. Sometimes we need to hear something once to produce
the fruit and other times we need to hear it over the course of our lives. The flame
is fine as long as it stays on.
And, it never really goes
out. It may seem so. We might give it all up and go follow our own nature to
that logical conclusion but something will be wrong. Once you enter the circle
there will always be the shadow of it in your mind. You will carry it with you
wherever you go. You were re-made this way. You will have to hide it deep down
and cover it with unhappy layer over unhappy layer to make it seemingly silent.
This is an eternal flame, after all.
It will be easier to let it
grow out again. Even in captivity, disgraced and blind and alone, Samson’s hair
started growing again. The moment he chose to touch it again his life regained
focus and purpose in those last violent seconds. Isn’t that a powerful parable
for a fire coming back to life and catching on? The blundering, lustful, disobedient
warrior finally seeing when he had no eyes? The Judge of Israel becoming his
true name in the last moments of his life.
He sits now in the pantheon
of heroes to the life of faith.
We all have our struggles,
drawbacks, flaws, some of them serious, and delusions about who we truly are. Yet
we have these stories, this book, this grace, this faith and these reminders
that the love of God is the true fire in our hearts. We can fail to recognize
it many times but it will never go out. It is better we look at it so we can
live.
And that life, more abundantly.

Amen.