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Face to face to faceMonday, April 10, 2017
From Isaiah 42 Just for a moment those thoughts choke me. No oxygen. I can't breathe. My head is so light, and I start to fall, but my friend catches me and tenderly lays me down in the dust. He puts his shawl over my face. He sits down beside me and holds my hand. I can breathe again, and under my eyelids a faint mist fades and rises above me. I remember the verse from Genesis and feel my personal darkness swirling over the face of the deep. Except this is not darkness, this is bright. Beneath that cloth my friend shared with me, I open up my eyes. I hear him say, "Come, Holy Spirit." And the world around me starts to dance ... Shamelessly, I stole today's devotion title from Paul Young, who wrote The Shack. Paul has not rushed to claim his fame, but it's catching up with him. Published in 2007, his book sold a million copies in twelve months. Now there's a movie. These days he regularly teams up with Richard Rohr and Cynthia Bourgeault, as he did last week. As Holy Week begins, Paul has some great stuff to say about the Trinity: "When I'm in the middle of devastation and loss, I need a God who knows how to be with ...Yes, I believe in One God, but this One God is a relationship of Three Persons, who have forever been in the great dance of face-to-face-to-face ... This is the grand celebration of relationship, in which all creation is created." In The Shack, Paul's Abba is "an all-consuming fire of relentless affection, wrapped in the person of a large, African woman." Jesus and the Holy Spirit accompany her "in a divine dance full of life and light and music and laughter and joy and wonder and submission and goodness." They invite me in to dance with them. It takes me time to catch on to all of this. I've been steeped in religion and theology; my hard-earned ideas and words tend to precede and shape my experience. I think; therefore I am ... But my thoughts jumble up in the Jerusalem dust. Jesus and his followers turned and went around the corner, and I am falling straight into some wrinkle in time. All my boundaries fail me. Under my friend's shawl, I'm more excited than I have been in years. Jesus is much more than he appears to be. In these stories, Lord, you are so alive! You breathe in and out, and your heart beats like mine, and I find myself following you to see what happens next. What else is there to do? Nothing matters more. The sun will come up soon, and then tonight the moon, it's nearly full. There's a time to be born and a time to die, a time to mourn and a time to dance. Here we are, Lord. Dance with me! |
I'm not mistaking this, this ringing voice in my ears. "Sandel, take off your shoes. Your Father's passin'." What do you mean? That was a man named Jesus. The words well up but then catch in my throat.