your faith has made you whole

The people called for Blind Bartimaeus,

and, unhelped, he stumbled his way to Jesus.

"Teacher," he asked, "would you

restore the sight I so sorely miss?

O exalted Son of David,

This you have promised.

My father has spoken of your famed

ancestry, of the God who has done

no small manner of miracles.

Might I bear witness to the same?"

"Your faith has healed you," Jesus replied,

"Go and see. My robes, you see, ,

will soon turn to red, my face will become ashen,

and you must behold this glory.

See the color of the blood poured from my side,

the dark red shades of my mercy,

the way my patient hand will crumple around

those nails, the way my loving eyes will

narrow at the thorns in my skull,

the shape of my mouth as I choke on

the spiteful gift of bitter vinegar.

Go and see. Your faith has healed you."

Restored to wholeness, fullness, sight,

Bartimaeus looked upon his Lord,

this merciful young man,

and followed him to Golgotha,

understanding carefully the way he would

henceforth be called to walk.

Shadowlands

I can't seem to escape dear old Jack. I'm enrolled in a Lewis seminar for this semester, and so far I've read Surprised By Joy and A Grief Observed; the latter is a heartbreaker of a read. Would that my reflections on death and dying were as poignant and lyrical, and that I would have loved someone so deeply and truly by the end of all things. That, of course, is another theme for another post. On the other side, my Great Conversations class (for which I am only a TA) was required to both read The Four Loves and watch Shadowlands, the film about Lewis' coming to know and marry Joy Davidman Gresham, a woman very much Lewis' complement in arenas romantic, intellectual and spiritual. Lewis' longing for a world beyond this one, beyond the Shadowlands, as he called earth, was ever more clear in his relationship with Joy; "You are the truest person I have ever known," he tells her as she lies helpless on her hospital bed, suffering through the pain of cancer. And though he admits that his incessant seeking after the next world, the real world, has ever consumed his entire being, he carefully reminds Joy that he only started living after he met her. I'm eager to call theirs the poster of anti-romance, a relationship that almost works backwards, and yet I'm keenly aware of the influence each had on the other even when love followed marriage. Their rapport and sparring is inspiring, as is their honesty and mutual longing for the real life, for Heaven as it is both imagined and left to God's creative prowess.

George Knightley does it perfectly...

“I cannot make speeches, Emma:”- [Mr. Knightley] soon resumed; and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing.-”If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. …”


Emma, Volume III Chapter XIII

Love.

The blue in your eyes fades as
clouds offer their stomachs,
pitying the dry flowers and the
gardeners who’ve grown tired of
watering cans and shade.
Would that I could replace it with
the sea’s cerulean, but that is
in the sky you cannot see,
and I can only hold your hand,
not turn your head.

Deus Absconditus

God was in the water that day
Pickin' through the roots and stones
Trippin' over sunken logs
Tryin' not to make his presence known
God was in the water that day
Wadin' in careful steps
Bubbles rising from His feet
Comin' up from the muddy depths

-Randall Bramblett