Time of Transformation

"A Change is Gonna Come"
​
   I was born by the river
   In a little tent
   Oh, and just like the river,
   I've been running 
   Ever since

     ― Sam Cooke, "A Change is Gonna Come"

Lately I've been going through a rough patch trying to hold myself together while the world falls apart, watching the modern meta-crisis unfold.

My friends and family are worried about me.  The other day I was eating dinner with my wife and children and tried to give an inspiring message on something-or-other.  Afterward my wife said to me, "Well, that was depressing."  So I really need to do better at keeping things upbeat! :)

But it seems to me (and I can't be the only one who's noticed) that a rift is growing in the fabric of reality, an existential tear widening (what the scriptures refer to as a time of "sifting"), which is allowing more intense forces to seep through the veil into our world ― both positive and negative.

On my computer monitor I've written myself a post-it note that says, "Make posts fun!"  But here we are.

A few weeks ago a friend reached out and asked if I was okay.  Why haven't I posted anything recently?

I guess it's because I grew up watching the Disney movie Bambi and remember the advice given by Thumper's mom, "If you can't say something nice, say nothing at all."

And so instead of writing I've been listening. 
 
I mean, really listening.  I've been listening with my heart to what is stirring.

I have been communing with clouds, feeling their edges loosen like my mind unraveling in the wind (John 3:8).  As Layman Pascal said, "Spirituality is being a connoisseur of realities.  Spirituality is always balanced on the knife’s edge between breakdown & breakthrough."

I've been holding space with pine trees, praising God amid needles and pinecones, betwixt resin and thorn (2 Cor. 12:7).  I've been staring at the stars, allowing their music to fill me at midnight, gazing at Orion’s Belt and wondering what will be revealed at its unbuckling.
 
   Be still
   and know
   that I AM.

(Psalm 46:10)
 
I've been listening to the anguish of this people, like the ground trembling beneath a calvary's advance, and I shake (Ezek. 38:20).

Into the subtle realms I've been extending my senses like quivering mouse whiskers, feeling the hearts of angels quickening as God draws His breath like light scattering before an eclipse.

Most of all, I have been seeking ways to better show my love to my family and neighbors and to you, searching for the words to tell you how great Thou art, and how beautiful the future will be.

Myrrh Love, Not Less!

   There been times that I thought
   I couldn't last for long
   But now, I think I'm able
   To carry on

     ― Sam Cooke, "A Change is Gonna Come"

​It's easy to celebrate beginnings.  Everyone remembers the gifts the wise men brought at Jesus' birth, and the sound of angel choirs singing.

But who remembers the gifts brought to His burial?  Endings are more complicated.  In my experience they seldom bring the closure we crave.

That's why, for me, more precious by far than the Magi's gold were the spices and oil brought by the women to the tomb in the early morning stillness (Mark 16:1).

Like at his birth, they carried myrrh as an offering, but this time felt different.  This was not the familiar myrrh of Bethlehem, but was the myrrh of hope broken apart, their aloes smelling of defeat.

Where were the angel choirs now?  Where had all the shepherd boys gone, faces aglow with new-star's-light?

Watching the women pass by before daybreak, filled with heaviness, I am grateful they didn't have long to mourn.  I smile at the angel's words that greeted Mary at the tomb, delivered straight-faced and deadpan, "Woman, why weepest thou" (John 20:13)?

This was a relief unlike anything else in creation: the relief of resurrection.

You've felt it, too; we yearn for its full expression.  This Relief is greater than all the grief that has ever poured into our bones and sinews, and it reminds us that this mortality is a divine ruse, a great celestial play that turns out, in fact, to have been written as a comedy (despite the melodrama we bring to it).

Jesus said:

   Blessed are ye 
   that weep now:
   for ye shall laugh.

(Luke 6:21)

And I marvel at the humor of it all, the wicked irony, the way I do when my friends play a prank on me ― for then, filled with relief, I sense the humor behind it all, the laughter that hums beneath and through and between eternal lives, and am glad (Matt. 5:12).

This Ending is Only the Beginning

   It's been a long
   A long time coming, but I know
   A change gon' come
   Oh yes, it will

    ― Sam Cooke, "A Change is Gonna Come"

Truth is never final because it is living.

Living things grow.  Does Truth grow?  Life is one long, beautiful run-on sentence, a never-ending collection of semi-colons punctuated by exclamation marks.

And periods, yes.  A period marks the finishing of a thought, a life.  But periods are only the end of sentences, not the story.

No sentence is final; no life is final.  Every story awaits a sequel.  How can truth be final when God’s works never end and His words never cease (Moses 1:4), when the story goes on?

A tomb is a hyphen pointing to rebirth.  Every stone is an ellipsis waiting to be rolled away.

The testimony of nature shows us the Christ Event was not a one-off, but a Run-Off of living waters in the thaw of an everlasting spring.

This same divine impulse flows through us.  Our spirits thrum towards resurrection and life.  We are all (in the words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) "the fundamental force of cosmic creativity."

In 4.5 billion years, the Milky Way galaxy shall collide with the Andromeda galaxy.  It will create something new, something glorious.  But imagine the destruction of stars and suns, the countless celestial bodies that will explode in order for a new, greater creation to be born.

I plan to be there for the lightshow.

I want to say to those of you who feel their world collapsing ― who have experienced the loss of divorce or death or suicide or joblessness or life-ending illnesses, or whatever shape this night takes ― we have yet paragraphs to write ahead of us, and books to fill, and libraries unborn to live.

   Our story will go on.

Relief is on the way.

Sending you love and light and wishing all things to be well, your friend through it all, Tim