Boulders and Rubble

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

There are rocks in the path ahead. Boulders and rubble. Literally, and yes, even more so, "figuratively." Lots going on today that we cannot get around, shove aside, ignore-and-it-will-go-away. Immovable objects and objectives, imbued with a dreadful lack of objectivity. Harsh, abrasive surfaces, adamantine interiors, often with a deep gash as ugly as sin.

Dark presence that blocks the light, a heaviness that dooms.

Jesus said, "Upon this rock I will build my church...."  But this is not the Rock of Our Foundation we're talking about. There are many worthy Rock Churches across our land, with steeples and pews and ardent worshipers. They know what I mean. Theirs is the "spiritual" Rock that Peter represented—the BedRock of faith we stand upon beyond the shifting sand.

No, the rocks I'm facing are implacable impediments embedded in the psyche of humanity. Rough, gnarly rock. A shapeless boulder that stands in our way—a formidable barrier, a deadly weapon even. This becomes church? Those dark schisms between them that has and them that wants? Or a gathering-up of the chunks of scorn that almost scarred the infamous woman of ill repute, that wretched soul who stood before Jesus? Or the hail of stones that robbed the disciple Steven of his very life? These are missiles from that quarry from which humanity has ever gathered lethal  weaponry. All shapes and sizes, formed of that magma of mankind's dark and dangerous hates and lusts. Rocks and boulders that burst or burrow from the caverns of hell. These, the blasphemies that settle deeper with the broken soul's every shudder.

And into this "mine field," this death trap of varied persuasions and aversions and perversions, comes the Son of God, in sandals. The One Who spoke the violence of wind and waves down to a whimper and a ripple. HE knows what each rock is, what seeded the silica and soil and sealed the ancient strata of violence and vengeance and vanities.

He is His Father's Son; He can speak to the rock. All the ages sealed within will hear. He can strike the rock. And bring forth Water.

We can only whisper the word, the fear, the dread, and point. He will follow our finger.  This too is the beginning of Church. Selah. 

A Marked People

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

The epoch we live in is the Time of God. A time like no other since time began on planet earth. An "overblown" statement? Well, in one sense, yes—these words may be said of any period in the long thread of history. Each era of earth and humanity has/has had its distinct season in the great mosaic of earthlife. Every "time" falls within those margins.

    

But . . . but there is something intangible, and crucially, overwhelmingly tangible about This Day we inhabit. The "what" of it is both simple—and overwhelmingly complex. Starkly put, dwelling on planet earth is becoming increasingly and alarmingly difficult and dangerous. And sad. The complexities—both diverse and similar—are an endless overlap of human and environmental crises. Our home in the universe is under attacks both "extraterrestrial" and people-driven.     

The Time of God? Again, there is no earth-moment that is not eternal in some indefinable sense. But it is becoming ever more obvious that something untamable and yes, largely unnamable is happening, in ways both inter-related and disparate. We are faced with crises that have sprung from uncommon roots—from nature . . . and our untamed nature

We are specifically here, deeply planted and often pruned and hoping to be "productive"—maybe not as much as we wish we were, in the ways we want to be, but in a way that prepares us to encounter and respond to life as it unfolds. We are called to live apace with the Son of God. We are ordained to persevere with Him today in a world that is in turmoil and spinning out of control.

We are inherently here simply because we have a Lodestar within, and if we know that—really, deep-down believe that—it draws us where He wants us to be at a given moment, for His purposes. The magi knew a Lodestar when they saw one, and it led them to a most unpretentious spot that kings and rabbis never knew of.

The Christ-within dwells in small places and enlarges them. He comes to us in our poverty and enriches us. He measures all things by His omnipotent seeing, and steps among us when and where we least expect it.

And so I believe we are indeed called people, and that if we choose, we can be called at any Given moment to step out of our cave, like Elijah (1 Kings 19:11-13), and hear that still, small Voice that called forth creation.

Yes—the world is indeed in turmoil. This is no time to mess around, to spin our wheels, to major in the minors, to waste our lives and our substance on things irrelevant or even peripheral. The very fact of our existing right now is a greater Gift than any of us is prepared for—or even wants. But it is ours, because we said YES to Him. We are here in this struggling world to offer a way through life as opposed to a way out of life.

I am not persuaded that everything I do and touch and want and dream of is eschatological and prophetic and ordained. But this week, a simple thought struck me, powerfully and with immediacy.

This is what I “heard:” “You are a marked people.”

Because we have “heard” and responded to His Call, we who live in this day, by the Grace and Call of God, are a “marked people.” His bloodstain is truly upon us. We are sealed by that stigmata for something quite immediate and pivotal. We are led into His green pastures in order to be prepared for the desert. We are led into the desert in order to discover, to recognize, to evoke the green pastures.

The desert is a step beyond our door. It may even have crept over our own doorsill. We are called to stand intact, broken and mended, in the midst of the world’s, and perhaps our own, rack and ruin, and to become more than solitary soldiers fending off the unseen enemy. We are, all of us, wherever we find ourselves—alone or crowded in or simply connected—called to become a Congregation.

Not a bless-me club, not a holier than thou society. A congregate of stalwart, pliable, tenderized, stubborn souls who have found Truth, and express it by the context of our lives—by the sum total, the momentum and minutia of our days and ways.

We may never see each other, never know each other upon this earth, but we are nonetheless a congregate of marked souls . . . a steady stream of pilgrims, magi, refugees from the dregs of life, following our Lodestar, finding the Rock-firm place where He dwells. If we have found it and lived it well, beyond the cave of our indifference, our fear, our endless distress and distractions, others will come seeking. And live  alongside us. 

~Judith Deem Dupree

Some Likeness Unforeseen: A Poem

This poem was published in living with what remains, a collection of poetry published in 2004 that is available on Amazon here: living with what remains.

Some Likeness Unforeseen

Nature listens--hearing  ever that cell-voice
which breathes its silent syllables
through each tiny universe,

and studies it covertly there, this hidden marrow--
studies its likeness and its endless variance,
with thought of molecule, of phylum
and of husk and fur, of stamen, semen, zygote--
thought coaxing life to rest, to build
and build again some likeness unforeseen.

The elm lifts its solemn face upward,
begging light, breaking light into prisms
with its slanted arms. Does it remember,
cell-bound, how the earth first broke its life
to shimmering replication
from a million broken faces of the sun?

And far beyond these shaggy fields
(these honest homilies of faith), the cougar crouches
low against a rock-bound peak
and paces where his tendons flex to tell him so;

and on beyond, at the stubborn jaw
of this great crouch of land--upon its lip,
between its jagged teeth,
the seaweed swirls and is spit back endlessly;
fish explore it with their great, globed eyes.

All these are likeness, and each, each,
is alone within that whisper which bequeaths them.

Beneath and above it all,
the earth swirls on its great, gray bath of mist,
on, on, and on--containing all--cell-bound
in the splendor and purity of light.

And you and I,
dependents in a breathless universe,
defendants of the heart's internal entropy,
of the way time sucks our cells dry
and draws the circling marrow from our bones . . .

We lay our weary head against our wary soul,
its hidden universe, and beg for rest there--
hearing but a syllable beyond our own,
finding there a Likeness long foreseen.


~Judith Deem Dupree