It only happens when everything is striped away. It only occurs when I am desolate, abandoned to my exile, standing past the event horizon of my existential void. It comes to pass that the stone is rolled away.
The night slips from the sky, fading, but I imagine it sliding down the arc of your Earth, easing around the curve of your heavens to find another home. Dawn arrives pale and new, and the rain is falling, always falling it seems when I need it most, when your renewal, your baptism is the only solace that will satisfy me. When this young Atlas cannot convince herself to shrug, then it is only your tears that rescue me, that flood my world, allow me to sink joyously, to watch my burdens bob away on the currents of your eternity.
It is always darkest before the dawn.
“Why are you hiding?”
I am crying in your arms. I am sobbing, that kind of sorrow that wracks the body and numbs the mind. That kind of pounding, screaming anger that is only expressed in a woman’s tears or a warrior’s cry. I want to take hold of the darkness like a cloak and rip it away from you. I want you and your family to be bathed in the light. I want nothing but love to surround you. But the stone stays there. The stone stays. I want to make it all better. But I can’t. And it gets worse. And the stone stays.
That which killed Him only made us stronger.
“I want to believe, Lord.”
I think of how many times
I have fallen
through the heavens
Lord, to your embrace.
I think I know
only your love.
I think I know only
your love endures.
I think I know
you.
Standing in the rain in Mazatlan on Easter morning, I close my eyes and it is hard for me to imagine what it must have been like for that cluster of apostles, hiding and afraid, having watched the body of Christ perish on the cross. Knowing the stone that was rolled into place, sealing Him away from them. It is hard for me to understand them. Hard to imagine not rising up, fighting back, shouting out...
When I see the Southern Cross
for the first time, for this time
I understand why I came this way.
And the truth I'm running from
is so small. And your promise is
as big as the coming day.
Sweet Lord, my Christ, harbor, companion, confidant, and co-conspirator. My friend. You are everywhere. You are with me and everyone I love. You fill a space made just for you inside my heart and silence my tongue with a smile when stupidity surrounds me. My judge. My God. My first dawn light.
I can imagine you, so easily, too easily, as that man, that man of flesh and blood, and barely past thirty years... that human being cast into bone and muscle and knowing your path even as it unfolds before you.
“Lift this from me, if you can.”
I am crying against your shoulder. Strong as my father’s was, though your hair is shorter, your voice deeper. Not strong enough to carry the burdens despite what you whisper to me. You are so brave. And then you stop. You push me away two inches, you look in my eyes. You touch your chest. “I don’t need the light upon me, E.J., I have the light inside me.” And in that blackness before your dawn... your dawn that seems years away... you are rising up, fighting back, shouting out....
I'm walking toward tomorrow
with my feet firmly in today.
And your love is my anchor
tied with a silver chain.
I have this temple
with stained glass windows shining.
This body is all I can offer
but she finds music in your name.
Our Atlas and savior. The roaring lamb and final sacrifice. The light you cast by walking your path still shines within us. We struggle through the darkness toward that unknown dawn but with you within us we find your bravery -- warrior and wiseman – and today we celebrate your life, everlasting, which allows us to live.
E.J.
