2024-06-19 A Meditation on the Second Birth

“7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you.” (2 Cor 4:7-12 ESV)

The hindrances, the nagging pains, the belittling judgments, so much will be set right on the last day, and moreover, no last day is our final life’s chapter: we believe in a Tomorrowland, a Hereafter: God will create for us, and in love of us, love for us, a situation, an abode maddeningly “correct”, with a beguiling quality about it, that it resists any assessment by human terms, any measurement or qualification; other than this, that it is exactly Right for we in our own little-understood style of life and manner of being.

We would never dream up some of the things He has in store for us. They are qualified on a Tomorrowscope that seems a little meager perhaps if we like to accumulate or to assess with numbers, or to admire the Beauty of a thing; and all these mystical things have their mystical variant, and are close to the Truth; but the main idea is that we can—in prayer, in that great Pattern, Habit, in both senses of the word—draw Near to a Readiness and a Courage that is otherworldly.

We cease, in some of our habituated worries or training wheels, those things we rather hold onto and those things we rather frighten to do without. And all this is ours to Own, not because we are greedy for a More and a Better, but because the reality is already knocking at our door, that God is doing a thing in this generation that would stop the ears of so many critics and pundits. But, too that: we know however our own mystical Course of Behavior is simply to Hear, to Serve, to be Dutiful… and when that apes us, or gets our other half, our worldly half, we carry on, not discouraged, not hindered by looming guilt or frustration, but turning those half-spoken curse words, or rather—better—those stammering things hardly understood, into a Course of Action that writes itself, that guides by Heavenly signposts, that gives to us Mother’s Nurture amidst the bombs falling all around… and we, we those Sons of our Father’s Nurture do question our own decisions past, but also Rejoice to know it is a Divine Fellowship and Fraternity, Sorority, All-comers variety, of mystical dance and Routine and Welcome.

So to that Pain, that Nagging that will not cease, or rather that we frighten at the thought of seeing come to naught, all of it is a Rebirth mandated Here and Now, a clean and luscious or rather smooth sailing birth partum and way; it is heavensent elision, whirlwind Sagacity and Appropriateness, right words for right-minded spirits who Love and Long For that first breath of Tomorrow’s parties, tomorrows Air, tomorrow’s deep reassurance—in the trenches, in the barber’s chair of our priestly confessions made—of a Beginning even better than the last, and unhindered, not doubting, not lagging, but Capable for each one of us.