2024-06-22 A Meditation on the Abyss

“19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (Heb 10:19-25 ESV)

Shouting into what quickly becomes an abyss, shouting and exercising plain Right to Speak, all the world can feel like it is going off its rockers, us asked suddenly to salute a New Doctrine, a Blaspheming Judgment, that says the party must not go on: that says, see the storm clouds as they are arising; that says, narrow and circumspect shall be your leash and tether going forward. For, it is in the soldier’s kit the fact of Influencing the Conversation: the soldier us heave-ho’ing against a “Time’s up”, “Okay, gee whiz, now that we’re here”, concession made by those who are not themselves Inspired; who cause us to resurrect a long-superceded doctrine, “Oh yeah, people still believe that stuff!”. People are still stuck in their unevangelized little bungalows, their attempts at controlling the outcome as of yet so far from hearing what Christianity rightly taught does emphasize: that we are not the masters of our own fate, but that the One who is, is a lover of souls, a Grand Planner and Edifice for our strange predictive, anticipatory Knee Bent, which knee bent does cause something to murmur words of approval up there somewhere, perhaps. Or perhaps it simply reminds we ourselves that time is (a) of the essence, and (b) ours to Own.

We are owners of this season, even though crashing into the scene is a Strange Doctrine and many shall be those swept up… those falling into the earth as its bowels open up (Numbers 16:32), or whom a Phinehas prophetically called out (Numbers 25:11). Avenue One is our Hope, Avenue Two is our Fear, and these alternate; we are not masters of our own rational thought; we are susceptible both to fright and to blase acquiescence. We are susceptible to Good Things when, looking outward, we have ridden on a wave invisible called Peace. That Peace we own, harassed and beleaguered though we be by exhaustion, by an end to all eager mania, by things brought to our attention when we are at the end of our own measure of patience.

But all this: to prove the Day is sincere in its Availability and Peace Offering, the basic way of Listening even to what is utterly wrought in some ill experience of trauma. We listen, we have peace and we have understanding, we are all called to be that Presence whom some mockingly call “Jesus” but whom we know is still needed even amidst that wish to punish the blasphemy, to pray over—we prefer—the idolatry or mockery. All these things so that we can Rise Up, United and Genius to see in each other a spark mesmerizing and beautiful, life, the Call to Go On, and especially as the dungeons of life beckon, to push back just a bit with a message of Hope. Tomorrow’s Hope, tomorrow’s parties, learned on the parents’ knee, on the speech or television Event, in the highways and byways, the untold Gift of people who lean on each other, who lean in and make a genuine difference, who know the end of the panicky spirit, because to remain steadfast under trial shows the deeper things we all through the infamous deeds, were hiding from: our less fabulous selves, our basic over-the-top intelligence that self-persecutes, rather than being the blessing it should be.