As I’ve thought about coming back to this, it’s occurred to me repeatedly how unfortunately fitting, how ironic, how sickly sadistically portentous it was to have launched off in the direction I did.
If only I’d known.
God knew.
Isn’t that what we say? Isn’t that what we believe? If it were a different kind of thing, we’d call it a joke. But to call it that–it being what it is–might make it sound like God’s a cruel bastard.
Maybe it is a joke. I don’t think I think that God’s a cruel bastard.
But consider that the Father is fatherless and the Son, well, they always wondered about Him, didn’t they? And, if you’re a believer, you’d have to say His Daddy wasn’t the man His mama married, wouldn’t you? I’m just sayin’.
As for the cruel part, again, ultimately I don’t believe He is. At least not most of the time. Sometimes I wonder. Maybe there’s a part of me that always wonders. It would be dishonest (and maybe a little melodramatic) to say that it’s what I believe; but it’s equally dishonest to deny that I often–especially lately–feel it.
O me of little faith.
Joel 
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Sun - 2007/08/05 at 20:51
joelmw
For those who don’t know, the major event that defines this season of my life is that my beautiful and beloved wife died unexpectedly on February 12. As I said, it’s a defining moment–so I’ll be talking about it more as I engage this blogging thing . . . but what I wrote doesn’t make as much sense if you don’t know and I don’t think it fits well anywhere in the text, so here it is.
Thu - 2007/08/09 at 07:07
brianbeattie
I have read and reread your post over the past several days, and confess I still don’t have any idea what to say that might have a chance of helping, but I can see the pain in your words, and here’s what I’m praying for you:
Loving God,
I ask that You would meet Joel where he is. As he mourns, Father, please comfort him according to your Word.
In Jesus’ name.
I trust God to know how to take my inadequate words and do something real.
OH, and this is kind of nagging in my craw, don’t know if this makes any sense at all, but here goes: Sometimes, the glory is in the scar.
How weird is that?
Thu - 2008/03/20 at 23:00
Jonathan Reuel
Into the breach we run, stumbling, battered, glorious. Into the neck-deep withering waste from the mountain snow melting, carrying earth and debris. Into the sludge and slums and ghettos of our own minds and memories. Into the the clanging, slurping stain of battle and abandonment.
We are his mystery, we are the marks on his back, the spit in the face. We are the demon carriers, the cackling arsonists, those who pretended to love but fell again.
Jesus is the great cataclysm, the earth fire, the storm of stars and letters and kingfishers. We are not what we were before we entered the breach. We see and have seen what we were. We have hated love and loved hate. Christ himself has taken our violence, he holds us and we grind into him with the thorns of our doubt and despair. But he is not overcome, he not insufficient, he has not even begun to love (from ourside this is true, not really true in the outside of ourselves real realness, rung beyond time).
I dare you fight your way through Jesus. I dare you to wrestle him to the ground. I dare you to come out of yourself again, word by word, second by second, inch by inch, until the love of Christ so steals and seeps and whispers and caresses and confronts and careens and sings and swims around, into, up, down, to, through and from the cells of your being that you again are a child.
How many years did it take Picasso to be able to paint like a child?
How many words will it take for you to say I trust you, I belive, I am yours?
It doesn’t matter how many it takes, it’s worth all of them and more.
Mon - 2008/03/24 at 11:08
joelmw
Amen to you both. And thanks.