2024-07-21 A Meditation on the Party
“23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. Sons and Heirs” (Gal 3:23-4:1 ESV)
Trying our best to keep the party going, it is no shame to call deeds Epochal: to think on Christian lines is to offend so much, so much that it is true would be ours if only the time was invested to make the friendship, to reassure the paranoid, to help the unevangelized or motionally-challenged. To heal. To remind. To reassure. To get up to something… together.
To think on Christian lines is to realize any one of many simple gestures “in the faith” are what got our Christ crucified. We give thanks for each day; that none are so far offended by our faith as to spell the end of the Mutuality, the Together mentality, the Hopeful cohort; that is, that friendships are real. But so, too, the Void, a void we cannot breach, we cannot address even with patience, we cannot Patronize as the works of a gentler or younger, less experienced set.
People recognize the suggestibility of each of us, that hardest among all lots in life, is to be “normal” and “presentable” when treated as a scoundrel. Yet this is no excuse-factory. It is rather our Calling to hold down the fort, to be kosher even though expected to be livid. To work alongside another living, breathing soul is to Warm Up to a fellowship Divine: it is to recall just how broken is our world, and to feel that Brokenness as a Genuine Threat to our very peaceful existence; it is to absolve in order of importance first those whom we by nature detest or shirk from. It is to do things… theoretically, even if not always pragmatically.
To fight together is to know day’s end when we finally let those pestering knocks at the door have their total effect: yes, Christ is honored, and if my shame is front-and-center, no matter how much excuses can be made, it is a remnant or spot on His garment. Yet we do our scrubbings and washings in Total Faith that He is not forgotten around the doctrine of All-Things Forgiveness.
We work for Someone High and Lifted Up; in the appearance of no headship in our lives, others swooped in, thinking to do a good deed. Others… with no fancy technique or learned wise council, but others Tempted and Hurried-Up by a weird absence of shame, a weird obsessed Mentalism that thinks all things are licensed if only they are in Opposition. This is where the Work of a together-cohort was supposed to Begin: it is where the Exploration of a Newfound shared Mentalism was meant to Correct, Confirm, Corral, and Cajole unto bright beginnings, new tomorrow, Blessed Belonging and Fruit. Yet like all things too convenient or simple in our understandings, we cannot patronize away the Sin: there are Final Decisions we each of us have made, and these Decisions will be our traveling-partners. To change course after some stages are passed, is tantamount to Madness: it will never happen. Right? Never happen?
No sweat, because we have the comfy chair and little breathing room; we are not two homeless beggars judiciously making the life in proximity “work”. We are not thinking enough about the Other, each having her or his own little sphere or street corner or church. Some duties are learnt in the school of life, that our retreat, our remove, our absence, may be costing others their Rights to Life, their Ticket to the Party.
And yet, too, we are aghast at False Introductions, false First Impressions, false humors or gestures, that are not, after all, a personal Message to Us, but are simply throw-away conversation or first endeavors. We are faulted not for being more obsessed with the breakdown, but for being less obsessed: our incommunicado friends male and female both, are the frontline of a shared war on some measures where, though no speaking is transpiring, a knock is felt at the door: do you promise Respect, Gentleness, Sympathy. Or are we to retreat in mock horror and accusation? Better to be incommunicado than to be rude or impolite. Better to let the dungeons persist, the demons own, the horizons of learning go unexplored, right?