God's Tears II

A couple of days ago, a conversation led me to reflect on rain as the tears of God. A friend said that his mother had told him the rain is God's tears.

I took the approach of God weeping over the pain we inflict on each other - the ways we hurt one another - the damage we do. The ways we treat each other certainly grieves God sorely. Indeed, it seems that God could weep eternally over ways we violate God's children. Sorrow, pain, grief, rage, all produce tears.

In response to my reflection, my friend Grace posed a simple question: "Are there ever tears of joy?"

I suspect that the events I was dealing with last week narrowed my vision and limited my thinking. Many things touch our hearts, minds, spirits, souls. The beauty of the world may make us weep. The wonder of love may cause us to cry. Amazing grace, incredible courage, profound sacrifice, all may elicit tears.

Tears of joy? Absolutely. Every day. Thanks be to God.

See you along the Trail.

Inertia or love?

Never did he leave,
steadfast he remained;
question haunts her still:
inertia or love?

16 August 2011
Shire on the Hudson

Love wins?

Love wins.
Love always wins.

Do the people
watching their friends perish,
wasting away from hunger,
leaving their children by roadside
   unable to carry them,
deciding who will eat
   and who will die,
on the Horn of Africa
experience that affirmation?


12 August 2011
Cleveland Heights, OH 44121

Living without love

Waiting in line to buy
junk food I did not need,
I was more than a bit befuddled to hear
the young clerk wonder:
"Would you rather have
love or money?"
It seemed a most out-of-place
inappropriate query to pose to
an absolute stranger who only wanted
a candy bar filled with sugar and calories
that would do me no good.
As I stood searching for
a response that seemed witty -
or someone germane -
or at least not totally inane,
she spoke again.
"'Would you rather have
love or money?'
That's what she asked.
And I said:
money!
Love is too stressful."
My disorientation deepened.
Who was this mysterious woman
who posed to my clerk the question?
And what was going on?
Was she expecting a response from me?
From the guy stacking the shelves?
From someone I failed to see?
Was she practicing a soliloquy:
preparing to audition for some part
that might forever transform her life?
I'll never know.
Silently I took my change
and stepped toward the door,
but on the way,
a thought - unsaid, but still recalled,
filled my spirit, mind, heart:
love brings stress; it's never easy--
commitment, compromise, costs.
But what of the stress,
and what of the costs,
and what of the loss,
of the utter, empty barrenness
of living without love?

2 August 2011
Gate B-19, MDW

Baseball in Grand Central

Dark hair curls appear from underneath the Yankees cap
pulled tightly down on his head.
He stares at a point beyond the escalator as
his left hand cradles his gloved right hand.
Tensed, ready,
he sees not the crowd but
watches and waits.
For a long fly ball?
A long departed ghost?
A long lost love?

27 July 2011
Shire on the Hudson

You were there

It is a day I remember not that well;
a day of death, a day of loss.
I stumbled along in grief and shock.
Barely knowing then what I said or did;
now less will come to mind.
While memories fail,
raw feelings return and tear my soul.
Yet of that fear-filled painful day,
one thing I gratefully recall:
you were there,
you were there through it all.

9 July 2011
Greeley, CO, Estes Park, CO 

The next wave

Without warning,
memories bubble to the surface,
absent faces loom before me,
grief crashes remorselessly into my heart,
rips at my spirit,
reopens unhealed wounds,
provides painful reminders:
words regretted as they passed my lips,
unsaid words forever rued,
deeds neglected,
love denied.
Shortcomings, missteps,
failures, and betrayals
wash through my memory,
flood my mind.
Tears flow freely
as I slowly,
painfully
rebuild my defenses
until the next wave,
until the next wave.

10 June 2011
Shire on the Hudson

Children of the colonized

No water runs,

no electricity flows

to the shacks

made of

cardboard, wood,

tarpaper, tin,

and whatever other material

lies at hand,

within which,

midst hunger and pain,

violence and want

on what was once

their ancestors’ land,

the children of the colonized

continue

and

suffer

and

die

and

love.

9 September 2001

Isla de Sal, Cape Verde Islands

There's always room

Yes. It is 3:25 in the blessed A.M.

I just finished watching Hotel Rwanda. I am tired. My great end of the church aches, really aches.

But for some reason, I put the movie on around 1:00ish and once it started, it simply seemed wrong to stop. I had to watch, even though I have seen it many times. I had to watch.

I had to watch for those people who perished and for those people who were wounded in body, mind, and spirit and who bear still their wounds.

I had to watch for those few people who tried to sound the alarm, for those few people who acted to protect, and for those people whose number is legion  (and I am among them) who failed. Failed to act or acknowledge or even watch as the horror unfolded. Those people who lived the words of the film crew within the film: I think if people see this footage they'll say, "oh my God that's horrible," and then go on eating their dinners.

For the killed and maimed, the killers and maimers, for the ones who ignored and the ones who were ignored, I had to watch. No choice.

In watching, I realized again what an incredible actor Don Cheadle is. He is gfted, gifted, gifted. But this is also a story and a role that clearly moves Cheadle. Paul Rusesabagina may be An Ordinary Man (his own book title), but he is an incredible character to play. Cheadle knows that plays accordingly.

Other characters are poorly developed.  I knew that. I recognized it again. The actresses and actors who play many of the roles are not given much to work with. But they carry on and Cheadle/Rusesabagina carries the movie.

The story of the events at the Hôtel des Mille Collines in Kigali during those days of hell is an incredibly powerful story, an intensely poignant story, an excruciatingly painful story. It is story filled with evil acts and international indifference and banal inaction. It is a story of common decency that becomes uncommon courage. Even though I know the outline well, it is a story that grips me every time I watch.

And every time, I come a way with something new.

Tonight (this morning?) my learning came at the end of the movie when Cheadle/Rusesabagina makes the observation: There's always room.

There's always room. Are the words factual? Did Rusesabagina say that as his family made their way toward Tanzania? Maybe. Maybe not. It really does not matter. Because they are true.

There's always room. They expressed the truth that came to guide Rusesabagina's life as he opened the hotel to people fleeing death. Seeing others as sisters and brothers - he could do nothing else but find a way, create a way where there was no way - make room when there appeared to be no room.

There's always room. They express the truth that guided rescuers during the Holocaust and during times of slaughter and genocide before and since.

There's always room. They express the truth that could change our lives if we can open ourselves to let them do so.

There's always room. Are they about hospitality? Certainly. But they point directly to the awareness that we are made for each other. That we are not made to butcher and exclude and deny one another -  physically, emotionally, spiritually, or in any way. That Love has created us to love and that in loving our true humanity (broken and wounded as we are) is revealed and lived and reveled in.

There's always room. What would it look like to live those words, really live those words - in our homes, our neighborhood, our churches, our places of work, our country, around the world?

It would be challenging. It would be hard. It would be frightening. Difficult. Costly. Painful.

But it also might lead to hope and peace and justice and joy and life, abundant life.

There's always room. May it be so for me. Ever more, every day, may it be so for me.

‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’ Mark 9:37

See you along the Trail.

And in the end

And in the end
God gives a song.
When death has come,
and pain aches deep,
it's all we have,
it is enough.
For in the end,
God gives a song.

And in the end,
God gives us hope.
When all seems lost,
despair runs high,
it's all we have,
it is enough,
For in the end,
God gives us hope.

And in the end,
God gives us love,
when hate reigns strong,
when fear looms large,
it's all we have,
it is enough.
For in the end,
God gives us love.

And in the end,
God gives justice.
When systems wound,
exclude, exploit,
it's all we have,
it is enough.
For in the end,
God gives justice.

And in the end,
God gives us peace,
when wars rage hot,
violence strikes,
it's all we have,
it is enough.
For in the end,
God gives us peace.

And in the end,
God gives us Christ,
when all is done,
and all is said,
Christ's all we have,
Christ is enough.
Give thanks to God,
God gives us Christ.

25 May 2011
Jet Blue 868
KIN - JFK

That one tear

"They are for my wife."

My lack of languages other haunts me when I travel. Other people know multiple languages. I carry only English - and that not well - plus some Sesame Street Spanish. A smattering of high school French,  limited in vocabulary, atrocious in pronunciation, travels with me.

"They are for my wife."

Despite my language limits I do remember enough French to know that is what he said.

We were on the number 5 bus headed from Grand-Sacconex to the Church of Scotland in Geneva.

He, well he must have been going to see his wife.

Tufts of white-gray hair poked out from beneath his gray hat. He wore a gray-checked suit. The bright flowers wrapped in tissue and cellophane and clutched tightly in his age-spotted left hand offered a striking contrast to the pervasive grayness.

He slid across the bench to sit by the window and with a gesture of his free hand offered the vacated seat beside him. "Merci," I said as I declined. He shrugged and turned to look out the window, lost in thought.

A woman entered at the next stop and took the seat. She spoke, complimenting the beauty of the flowers, or so I presume because of his answer.

He did not make eye contact as he responded with a simple phrase that I could understand. "They are for my wife."

His seat-mate tried to make conversation with him. He replied in monosyllables, his gaze remained fixed outside the bus although it was clear he looked not to see but to retreat, remember, reflect.

At one point she asked me a question. Having no idea what she had asked, I turned to those dim recesses where reside what remains of four years of French reside to find the appropriate response. "Je ne sais pas." Feelings of incompetence and arrogance washing over me, I looked away.

When she left the bus, a couple stops later, he did not repeat his offer of the seat, but continued to stare out the window.

Then I saw it. In the corner of his right eye. A tear. One solitary tear. 

At that moment, the bus pulled to a stop across from a medical facility and he began to move, struggling to cross the bench and keep his grip on the flowers. I moved to offer to hold them, but saw the tear again and thought better. I took his elbow.

He stood up, straightened his shoulders, and exited the bus.

And I was left to wonder about the memories, the pain, the grief, the love contained in that one tear.

See you along the Trail.

Geneva
Bus 5
8 May 2011
Mother's Day

Charley

He's grown some. He's a bit bigger now. This was taken long ago - the day he came to live with us.

He is Sean and Eric's dog - their first dog. Eric and Sean picked him thoughtfully and carefully, working so well together. They loved him well. They love him still.

When Sean and Eric left home for work and school, my brother and his family adopted Charley. We met in a park and shared a meal. Then they said, "Come Charley," and he walked off with them and climbed into their car as though he had known them forever. My heart twinged when Charley never looked back and happily went off with Paul and Cindy, Billy, Greg, and Tommy. And well he should have gone - for they love him - he has found a good second home.

Yet he remembers us - always remembers us - always remembers Eric - always remember Sean - always remembers Tricia. You can tell in his eyes and in the excited way he greets us whenever we see him - which is, not as often as we might like, but often.

Now Charley ails. Seriously ails. An older bigger dog (did I mention that he grew and that the picture is from long ago) he faces health challenges. But come what may, he is loved and he is receiving good care and he will receive good care. And I am grateful to my brother and his family.

As I ponder what may be, tears well in my eyes. I bite my bottom lip to hold them back and memories flood over me. A smile dances in my heart and gently crosses my lips - a smile for Charley - for my sons - for my family - for love that never dies.