Brokenness is our best state, our highest goal, that which we cannot outgrow and that to which we will always travel toward.
I want to say things to my family and to anyone who may need to hear, but the words do not get past my own chest. To my parents, brothers, nieces and nephews, inlaws, cousins, aunts and uncles, and coworkers - everything is broken.
Things are alright until they are not. We take for granted the good times when things go easily while a multitude of other illnesses bubble within. We do not deal with problems. Things fester. Pride. Things break. We mend them partly. They break again. We do not see the signs of our demise. If we do, we blame other things. The world must change to our will, run our way, or we won’t have it. We’d rather lose people and break vows than face ourselves.
Other people have their part to play in breaking things apart, yes, tearing them apart, surely, but we believe so little in the Gospel - our minds are so little conformed - that we cannot recognize the kind of breaking that is supposed to lead us to humility and so we treat the breaking as a sign to quit or just blow up. So, we quit. Or blow up. Or, we live with the debilitating disease of bitterness and resentment.
The heat of anger always lasts longer than the moments of heart-bending, humble service to one another. We make the Gospel a lie and corrupt the culture all around us, little by little. We do that - those who say they are Believers. (This current culture is our fault to a large degree.)
It seems that brokenness is our highest truth.
Everything we do is broken. Trying to get along with our spouse fails. It takes so much constant effort from two willful people. I am the worst husband.
A descent, a bow, a lowing of ourselves must happen if we are to be saved. It is unpleasant for those of us too connected to this life. It is terribly uncomfortable, but we must bend, even if it feels like we are dying, like we should not be the ones to give in, give up. Even if all the voices of days past rise like mustard gas in our minds to remind us of all the times we were run over, when we were weak or acted not powerfully enough, when we did not aggressively hold our opinions, when we should have fought back, and how the forceful, aggressive ones get what they want in this world.
I bow.
I make the descent onto the dusty, gritty, dry ground of humility and find impressions, scuffs and scrapes of someone there before me. I find knee and hand prints, footprints, the remnants of a stick fire.
Somehow this makes it better. Not the knowledge that someone else has suffered and therefore proves the point that this is our lot, our true self, our highest human truth, our inescapable center of gravity, but that I am not alone.
Being broken and alone is far worse. Broken together somehow spreads out the despair so as to relieve the pain from a single point. The pain isn’t as sharp.
When, through the workings of the mysterious cosmic tide, the retreating water reveals a seashell of truth that it was Christ who made the scuffs, the scrapes, the prints, and the stick fire, I am broken again. This time not like the split, cupped mud of a desert, but like banks that could not contain a flood.
Perhaps the whole business of thousands - thousands - of years of animal sacrifice was just a way to show us ourselves. One animal free, holding a knife while the other, bound, bleats against the unstoppable, too-slow slice of a blade.
I am the one bound, inevitably broken.
I am trapped and confused. Highly stressed. Despair widens my eyes.
I am the one free, pulsating with a choice.
I hold the knife.
Throat or ropes.
I hold the knife.
When I realize that Christ is who he said he is, I become genuinely converted. My relationship to reality changes.
Before, the confused and broken man slit the throat of the innocent, freeing his mind for a while, but now, the new man must kill the old.
He must rise and kill the old. Do violence unto himself. This realization is the descent into humility.
Have you ever been unable to look into a mirror for weeks? I have. You know how it feels to look into the eyes of a problem that you didn’t deal with years ago when you knew you should? Were we trying to be kind? Understanding? Or were we pressing our own will? It was a little weedy back then, but now the entire field is abandoned.
And now, we are different people. Ensconced. So much must change, and we just can’t see that happening.
We err. We isolate. We fall.
Here, at the dusty bottom, the evidence of scuffs and scrapes are not only evidence of prayer, but of what true prayer actually is: warfare.
True prayer is warfare till the last breath.
I thank God for the remains of the stick fire, for it was Jesus who gathered sticks on a Galilean shore and made a fire for broken, beleaguered, fishermen. There was more to the story. There was a next chapter. There may have been terrible pain and bad choices, but the story doesn’t end there. Change is hard. It feels like something is dying, like we are fish flopping around in the bottom of a hot, metal boat. Gasping. Lost. Confused. Trapped. Powerless. Alone. Broken.
If you’ve made a mistake, it’s ok. Return and confess and become free. Your life depends on it. Be genuinely converted. The Resurrection happened. Christ is still alive, and he has been to the real bottom. He will help the broken, but resists the proud. Life is not do it yourself. Things can be made well.
“I myself am all infirmity, misery. God is my strength. This conviction is my highest wisdom, making me blessed." +St John of Kronstadt
WHAT STOOD OUT IN SCRIPTURE
I have been sad lately, and I really can’t read much from the bible when I’m sad except the Psalms. This psalm shows a man who knows sadness as well. You don’t write this unless you have been there. A cry to God, stretched out in the dust. Not profound. Simple brokenness.
Psalm 142
O Lord, hear my prayer, give ear unto my supplication in Thy truth; hearken unto me in Thy righteousness. And enter not into judgement with Thy servant, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified. For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath humbled my life down to the earth. He hath sat me in darkness as those that have been long dead, and my spirit within me is become despondent; within me my heart is troubled. I remembered days of old, I meditated on all Thy works, I pondered on the creations of Thy hands. I stretched forth my hands unto Thee; my soul thirsteth after Thee like a waterless land. Quickly hear me, O Lord; my spirit hath fainted away. Turn not Thy face away from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit. Cause me to hear Thy mercy in the morning; for in Thee have I put my hope. Cause me to know, O Lord, the way wherein I should walk; for unto Thee have I lifted up my soul. Rescue me from mine enemies, O Lord; unto Thee have I fled for refuge. Teach me to do Thy will, for Thou art my God. Thy good Spirit shall lead me in the land of uprightness; for Thy name's sake, O Lord, shalt Thou quicken me. In Thy righteousness shalt Thou bring my soul out of affliction, and in Thy mercy shalt Thou utterly destroy mine enemies. And Thou shalt cut off all them that afflict my soul, for I am Thy servant.
CELEBRITY INPUT
Nick Cave is a celebrity musician. I don’t know him or his work. I only know that he writes back to people from time to time and speaks clearly. Below is a reply to a question that is directly related to this post.
Rebecca, it appears you are stuck in the middle of your life, shocked by loss, sad for the world, and not knowing who you are. I have spoken about this many times, but I experienced a similar spiritual reckoning when my son died, although the more I think about it, the more I see that the spider cracks of change were already spreading through my life. Back then, I was a half-formed thing waiting to be shattered in order to be remade. You seem to be in that place now - where you are presented with the opportunity to become a human being.
Our humanness is not given to us. Instead, it requires our participation in its construction and realisation, which often comes about through collapse or calamity. We rummage through the chaos of our inner worlds, through our multitude of selves, to discover what we are, what we wish to be, and our authentic relationship with the world. This process requires a kind of winnowing of those selves and the dispensing of any that are no longer of service to the work of becoming fully human. We must separate the wheat from the chaff. This is a necessary but painful form of spiritual renovation - to discard those ancient and destructive versions of oneself and become an actual person, unique among other people. We must do this lest we be frozen in a stasis of the soul. It seems, Rebecca, that this unkind moment you are inhabiting is the stunned intake of breath before the work and the winnowing begins. I wish you the best in this most essential endeavour.
- - From Nick Cave’s newsletter, The Red Hand Files
NEWS
News.
There is so much news.
It is all brokenness.
I’ll revisit this section next time.
ART
From THIS SITE - click to read the article, which is quoted below.
“If they put up [a sculpture of] Hitler with a Torah scroll they would immediately respond,” he told the Walla news site, according to The Times of Israel.”
We will never see Muhammad on a flying pig. Another reminder of how our weaknesses add up to infect the larger culture. (I admit that I do not know the context of this work, only that other Christianity is never off limits. So be it.)
T-SHIRT
New this month is a design based off a shirt I saw in middle-school, or sometime before high school. It was in one of those handouts that students would get with books and other stuff offered as a part of a reading program, I think. I tried to find the shirt, but could not, so I remade something similar. Click the picture to see the varieties.
Isaiah 53
Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?
2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
PATRISTICS
John of Kronstadt, “My Life In Christ”
Believe then, that God sees you, as you are sure that your father or anyone else standing face to face with you sees you, with this difference, that the Heavenly Father sees all that is in you, what you are all of, all creatures. He sees angels, saints, us sinners, animals, all at once, just as the sun illuminates everyone at once, although the eyes of the Lord are ten times brighter than the sun [Sirach. 23:27]. A living representation of the Lord before your face is a source of peace and joy for the soul. Doubt in His presence produces confusion, sorrow and distress. Heartfelt prayer is a source of peace of heart, but heartless, superficial, inattentive prayer produces wounding of the heart.
Remember, there is a great cloud of witnesses who have gone through terrible things, who gave up worldly wealth, did not seek the favor of the culture of the time, who gave their all to Christ. Read about their lives. We are not alone. Learn to really pray, and pray always - upon waking, eating, speaking, working, resting, and all times between. This world is not our home.
A PARTING GIFT
Listen to the famous poet Wendell Berry read his work. It is only about 90 seconds. Listen to what he says and apply it to your life.
How to Be a Poet
(to remind myself)
i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.
ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.