but the greatest of these is love...

{i know i said i was taking a break this week but the not writing is like not breathing and i just can't hold my breath anymore. you don't mind, do you?}

The rain is falling softly in filmy layers across the black asphalt street where I am sitting in the parked family car, a dull ache growing in my chest like a tumor.

It's quiet here, in the car. I've escaped--albeit briefly--for a moment's respite from the constant state of play-acting, poll-taking, peace-making.

When I was younger I used to believe that there were answers for every question, solutions for every dilemma. I don't believe that anymore.

The best we can hope for, it seems, is to manage the dysfunction: to bail out the boat, bail out the leaky boat. Find a way. Patch the holes. Bind up the slights and spites with contrite hearts and the gentle salve of soft words.

And in all the bailing and failing, the wailing and tattle tale-ing, we stumble across moments of certainty, of clarity and I think--although I'm not sure--that these moments are love.

But still, I must escape to the quiet, to this car parked in the loaminess of this wet darkness and listen. Listen to the sound of falling rain.

Love, perhaps, is our only hope. Our only certainty.

Comments

[Mark S.]

Patch where we can, avoid when we should, realize it is not all of ours to solve, that as you note, above all is Love...and that comes from the God who loves us so dearly He would do anything for us. You are loved and blessed and smart enough to know when to step away and when to stay. I do thank God every day for you and your words here. They seem to happen at just the right time for me.

[Scott Morizot]

I'm not sure I was ever so young that I believed there were answers for every question and solutions for every dilemma. But then, my earliest memory is being thrown across the kitchen, hitting something, and having my left femur break. That colors the lens through which you see the world in ways that are difficult to explain. And that's just one small piece of a very complicated puzzle.

Ultimately, love -- sometimes found in unexpected places, sometimes in the people you would expect -- is why I made it through my formative years as ... intact(?) as I did. And it's always been love that's drawn me toward Christian faith and things other than love that have pushed me away.

Love is our only hope and if God is not love then we have no hope at all.

[Elizabeth Esther]

I had no idea you experienced such an early childhood trauma. Thank you for sharing it with me. I always so enjoy what you share, here.

And you're right...the only reason I still call myself a Christian is because of love. I finally found the God of love and He has won my heart. His love is my only hope.

[Sharon O]

Love IS our only hope but it must be sincere, authentic and real or the dysfunction creeps sneeks back in and strangles us with out us realizing it. Kind of like the frog in a fry pan slowly dying.

[Theresa in Alberta]

I am very glad I stumbled across your website a few months ago :-) I believe there are answers to every question, but many of the answers we will not come to know this side of heaven!

[Staci]

Elizabeth, it is uncanny to me how often it feels like you have crawled inside my heart and you are speaking from that place.

I had this same experience yesterday on Thanksgiving: a desperate need to escape the "celebration" in an effort to contemplate quietly whether there is any basis for celebrating anything.

As we head into the official "Christmas shopping season," I suspect the next few weeks will feel more and more desperate for me. I call this my personal Season of Desperation--desperate to "get through another holiday." I don't want to be this way! But the way holidays are done in this country, with the increasingly frantic pace and to-do list and "placebo joy," have served to obscure what you describe: "moments of certainty and clarity." I want out of it all. The saving grace (what keeps it "real") for many people is the opportunity to gather with families. What do you do when the family gatherings are the part of the holidays you dread the most? I often wish I could hang a sign around my neck that says, "Have your happy holiday, but please leave me alone." Very Scrooge of me, I know.

Didn't mean to ramble, but your post so resonated with me. And, I could really relate to your preface: "not writing is like not breathing."

[JohnP]

Elizabeth, I have really enjoyed your blog. I found it at just the right time as I was working through the aftermath of a very oppressive and dysfunctional religious group. (Yes, I am a Christian -- in fact I am in full-time ministry, which made my experience baffling as I never expected to "fall prey" to such a thing. I guess no one typically looks in the yellow pages to find the nearest cult to join.) I've had to learn some fresh lessons in who I am, what I believe, and what role others play in my life and journey of faith. I have so appreciated your honesty in the journey, and your tenacity in clinging to the God who has clung to you all this time.

If you have time, I have something you might be interested in reading, a story about God's love and the broken places in our lives. I'm including it as my website link.

Know that your journey is precious to God, and is also making a difference in the lives of many others. Thanks for letting us journey with you.

[Tara Meghan]

How simple we promised ourselves life would be, and how gracefully we were going to live it! We had no idea how messy it is, trying to live in love.

I really need my quiet time in the car. Every time I go to do an errand alone, I sit in the store parking lot and listen to at least two songs on the radio before I get out. :-)

[Tara Meghan]

Agreed. :-) And hello from BC, neighbour!

[Scott Morizot]

Well, it's not exactly the sort of thing that's contextually appropriate very often in discussions, so it doesn't tend to come up very often. ;) When speaking of managing dysfunction, of ceasing to see the world through a lens that expects answers and solutions, and of the central necessity of love through the messiness of life, it seemed appropriate. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

And again, that's just one small piece. My life, good and bad, has often been the sort of "interesting" more often associated with Chinese curses. Some of that I had some control over or even caused. Some of it I didn't. I've done the best I could to give my children more "boring" childhoods.

The ground I've found is God's unfailing and unyielding love. As the Orthodox say in most liturgies, "He is a good God who loves mankind." It's not love balanced against justice. Mercy fighting against wrath. God is love. It's an unequivocal statement of his unchanging nature and the fullness of the glory of that love is revealed on the Cross. He loved us to the uttermost. If a particular strand of modern Christianity feels a need to qualify or compass that love in any way, that always sets off alarm bells for me. I understand the desire. Uncompromising love is a scary thing. However, nothing less suffices.

God's love is my only hope, but love demands a response. The question is never how much or whether God loves me. The question is always, "Do I love God?" I'm struck by St. Silouan's perspective that the measure of our love for God is our love for our enemies. God gives us grace, which is to say that God gives us himself, so that we can be healed and so that we can love truly. We have to become love too. Some days I want that. Most days it would be more accurate to say that I want to want it.

I suppose in the end it is true that, "All you need is love."

[Craig]

Elizabeth E

The rain, the shiny street, the loaminess of wet darkness – all poetic.

And you are irrefutably right. The love in which we live, and move, and have our being, is the only hope, the only certainty. Even though we travel with an uncertain gate, love is certain, Our Lord is certain.

Thank you.

God Bless

[Scott Morizot]

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” – Ernest Hemingway

[handsfull]

Hi Elizabeth, love your blog!
I have my own escape story... and have only made it this far by His love and grace. I found this poem by Brian Hupperts on the net a while ago, and it seemed to say what I wanted to. Warning - it takes a bit of space!

Shards
Broken pieces
Fragments
Potshards
The clay-stained hands
Of a master potter
Gathered them together
Unearthing what had been discarded
Forgotten in potters' fields
False starts
Unworkable clay
Each flawed pot a shattered dream
Broken up
Ground down
Returned to dust
Save for the leftover shards
Fractured pieces
Left to bake
Forever under the sun
Until the seasons
Wore them back to mere earth
Yet this absurd potter sought out shards -
Shards!
From many potters' fields
Chosen for their foibles
Selected for their flaws
Treasure hunting in the wastelands!
Laying them out gently
In shapes seen only in his mind
How odd to be comfortably fitted into
The fellowship of the broken
And then the glue
And then the lead
Poured in
The burning giving way to binding
The formless finding unexpected form
Scraps of baked earth
Assembled anew
Pieced together pieces
Suddenly transformed
Every flaw made beautiful
The broken made whole
Shards scored like music
In the Master's mosaic
Redemptive works of grace
Displayed in the great hall of God
Isaiah 61 v 3 'To give them beauty for ashes'