Amen

Hello friends! First poem of the year, and it’s already March (?!) so I guess I’m banking on the better-late-than-never approach. If you’re new, I try to alternate between sharing poetry and sharing reflections from my theology grad school journey. You can see the latest post in that vein here. Thank you for being here!

The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.

- Piranesi, Susanne Clarke

immeasurable beauty
infinite kindness
oh the stories we love
to tell ourselves
yet even they so often
stop short
why should the spires
not touch the heavens?
why should the tunnels
not reach through the core?
why should the waves
not pour over the world's edge
in a veil of light?
why should we
not live forever?
why should love
not be the strongest force?
give me more immeasurable
grant us yet more infinite
even the capacity
to want such
capaciousness
even the desire
to desire yet deeper—
oh golden day
when the tyrants fall
once and for all
oh golden kingdom
where the lost are found
now and forever
oh golden king
who is better
than our wildest imaginings:
let it be
let it be
let it be

I wrote this last spring, in a particularly hard month, when I had this prayer running on endless repeat: Please be everything I believe you to be. Please be better than I think.

It was a rather contradictory prayer—a human prayer. Half of me has a vision of God that’s beautiful and glorious, and half of me sees him as small and mean or else aloof and disinterested, and I was begging for the half with vision to be proved right, and for the half without the vision to catch hold of it.

I was tired of qualified hopes and reasonable expectations and hedging my bets. I was tired of trying to defend God’s no to myself before I even asked him for what I wanted. I was tired of cynicism and skepticism and rationalism. I was tired of being afraid of being disappointed and probably most of all, I was tired of being afraid of God.

And I knew, I knew, he does not promise to spare us anything. I have lived some of the pain of his not-sparing. I knew of that now-and-not-yet kingdom of his and the senselessness that can strike in the not-yet. I was not interested in a theodicy.

What I was interested in was Moses standing before God, saying: Remember the great, audacious, ridiculous promise you made us, the promise we have pinned everything on for hundreds of years. Remember it. Keep it. Be as good as you’ve told us you are. Even though we can’t even actually wrap our minds around what that might mean, be it. Be better, even.

What I was interested in was this quote from Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad Is Untrue, reflecting on his mother fleeing with him and his sister across the world as refugees:

I don’t know how my mom was so unstoppable despite all that stuff happening. I dunno. Maybe it’s anticipation.

Hope.

The anticipation that the God who listens in love will one day speak justice.

The hope that some final fantasy will come to pass that will make everything sad untrue.

Unpainful.

That across rivers of sewage and blood will be a field of yellow flowers blooming. You can get lost there and still be unafraid. No one will chase you off of it. It’s yours. A father who loves you planted it for you. A mother who loves you watered it. And maybe there are other people there, but they are all kind. Or better than that, they are right with each other. They treat each other right.

If you have that, maybe you keep moving forward.

Because, frankly, I’m banking my life on a “final fantasy.” On a new heavens and new earth where there are no more tears or crying or pain, where every child grows up and the wolf and lamb live together. The far green country, the new Narnia, a goodness so beautiful and a healing so complete I cannot begin to imagine it, something that will not just make up for but redeem, re-make, all the horror of life.

In fancy theology terms, I’m banking everything on the eschaton.

I have good reason to think this final fantasy will happen. I’ve seen the shadow of it arc backward through time onto my own life already. I’ve touched the fringes of the robe of the mystery of all that is to come. But it’s, as yet, a rumor, a shadow, the edge of the hem. And sometimes I’m scared. Scared that the reality underpinning everything isn’t as solid as I believe it to be. Scared that the restoration God promises is a sham. Scared that I’ll be ground to dust in the gears of the cosmic plan, or that there isn’t any cosmic plan or Planner at all.

You know, just simple little fears like that. I wish more Christians talked about them, because I don’t think I’m the only one who harbors them.

I’ve kept this post as a draft for a few weeks because I don’t know how to wrap it up. What is my answer to these fears? Not the answer, metaphysically, but my answer—how do I live with them?

And I guess my answer is this poem. I will speak the fears. I will list all that I do not understand and all that I wish I could be sure of.

And then I will repeat all God’s wild, impossible promises back to him and say: Amen, amen, let it be, let it be.

to staying awake—

Aberdeen