Kevin Kling is one of my favorite storytellers. He's really
funny, and he tells the truth. He wrote a prose-poem, Tickled Pink, which I
heard him read in an interview a few months ago. The first half
goes like this:
"At times in our pink innocence, we lie fallow,
composting waiting to grow. And other times we rush headlong like so many of
our ancestors. But rush headlong or lie fallow, it doesn't matter. One day
you'll round a corner, your path is shifted. In a blink, something is missing.
It's stolen, misplaced, it's gone. Your heart, a memory, a limb, a promise, a
person. Your innocence is gone, and now your journey has changed. Your path, as
though channeled through a spectrum, is refracted, and has left you pointed in
a new direction. Some won't approve. Some will want the other you. And some
will cry that you've left it all. But what has happened, has happened, and
cannot be undone...."
Recently I attended church with a congregation I'd
worshiped with a few years ago. People were glad to see me, and a fist-full of
them remarked on this contribution I'd made, or that class I'd taught, or this
service thing I'd done when we had all been together. There was a general mood
of nostalgia and reminiscing, hugs and hand shaking. None of these good people
had any idea that they were talking to a Rebecca they had never met before.
In my evolutionary biology class we've been discussing
phylogeny, which is, more or less, the
study of the diversification of species. Species get mapped out in
bifurcating trees indicating descendent relationships to understand an
evolutionary timeline. It's a complicated process that gets both easier and
more difficult with genetic analysis. Sometimes a mutation in a gene will swap
out one little nucleotide for another one (an A for a G, a C for a T), changing
the genetic expression just so. Then, generations later, it might flip back
again. It seems like the flip back to the old code would simply return the
organism to its former state, and we could call it a homologous expression, but
that's not the way it works. Once the genome has changed, it's changed.
Even if it reverts to the original sequence, it's new. The phylogenetic
progression is unique. The genetic "experience" has left its own tracks
in the snow, and homology is a thing of the past.
"...We pay for our laughter. We pay to weep. Knowledge is
not cheap...."
Quite some time ago, years ago now, God and I had a series of
conversations about some really important things. I felt directed, and I acted
on those directions. Working to keep the polestar in my eye I persisted on my
journey, and felt continued guidance along the way. Things often got messy, and
painful, but I felt...I don't know what I felt...There were these slices of
hope, like sunlight through fence boards, that seemed to say, "I love you,
kid. Keep at it. You're going to be OK. You're doing the right thing."
And then, just over a year ago, I rounded a corner.
Suddenly my journey had changed. Like an earthquake
shaking books off shelves and smashing figurines onto the floor, a series of
difficult events left me standing and staring at the relics of my life,
scattered and broken. I was confused, and in a lot of pain. The aftershocks of
that pain rippled through my Rebecca house and ripped walls from their joints.
The ceiling fell in, and I was sure no one had survived. But knowing in whom I
had trusted, and like Peter sinking into the storm I cried out, "Lord!
Save me!" But He didn't come. There was no hand to pull me out of the
stormy sea. I was alone.
After Christ's
crucifixion his friends put him in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb then hurried off
to observe the sabbath. They did what they were supposed to do. Their actions
were consistent with what friends and devout worshippers would and should have
done. After the sabbath some of the women returned to the tomb to finish the
embalming that had to be put off for the sabbath... but he wasn't there. He was
gone. And none of it made any sense. The angels told the women that He wasn't
there, that He had risen. But what does that even mean? Nobody had risen
themselves from the dead before. All they knew is that he had been there, and
now he wasn't. And Mary wept. I've thought a lot about Mary over the last
several months. I've wondered, why did Mary weep? Maybe because she'd been
there since the beginning, she'd seen the work her Lord had done, and she
grieved the loss of the community and kingdom. Maybe because she was confused.
He had said he would not leave them comfortless, but how can that be if he's
gone? He raised her brother from the dead, why didn't he save himself on the
cross? Maybe she cried because she simply missed her friend. Jesus was the
Messiah, for sure, but he was also just her friend. And now he was dead. And
someone had stolen his body. And the other women had run away. I would have
cried, too. I wonder, how long did Mary sit alone in an abandoned tomb and cry?
The scriptures don't say. But Mary sat alone, in an empty tomb, with an utterly broken heart, with
all questions and no answers, and she cried.
Eventually the "gardener" showed up and
revealed himself as Jesus, the Christ. Mary was comforted, and at least some of
her questions were answered.
But
what do you do when The Gardener doesn't come? What do you do when there's no
comfort and all questions?
"...To survive we must return to our senses, touch, taste,
smell, sight, sound. We must let our spirit guide us, our spirit that lives in
breath. With each breath we inhale, we exhale. We inspire, we expire. Every breath
has a possibility of a laugh, a cry, a story, a song. Every conversation is an
exchange of spirit, the words flowing bitter or sweet over the tongue. Every
scar is a monument to a battle survived...."
I've
been studying Buddhist meditation and mindfulness, and as a result have been
meditating almost every day for a month now. As I've been consistent with it I
find myself incrementally returning to my senses. I'm working hard to pay more
attention to touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound, to ground myself in this
physical world. I'm trying to pay attention to which breaths contain laughter,
which contain cries, and which are stories and songs. As I become more aware I
find myself more able to have both bitter and sweet conversations, and
feel deeply grateful when people choose to share their breaths and scars with
me. My Rebecca house is still all rubble, but I begin to be able to survey the
damage without judgement.
"...Now when you're born into loss, you grow from it. But
when you experience loss later in life, you grow toward it. A slow move to an
embrace, an embrace that leaves you holding tight the beauty wrapped in the
grotesque, an embrace that becomes a dance, a new dance, a dance of pink."
I still don't understand anything. I don't know why God left me
to figure this mess out on my own. I still don't know how to rebuild my Rebecca
house. In fact, it's taken me all of the last year to dig out the faulty
foundation (I guess it wasn't seismically sound after all). All I can say is
that I see things differently than I did before.
Now, I see pink.
