"Ailred, I know hours well enough," I said. "Stick a twig into the soil and watch the shadow turn. Or take old Wear out there. Let him rise another inch or two, and either we'll grow gills or shipwreck sure. That's hours for you. It's inch by inch and hour by hour to death. It's hours gone and hours still to go. No puzzle there. A child can count it out. But what is time itself, dear friend? What is the sea where hours past hours still to pass, but all of them instead was? Is there no time yet to come that's not here now?"
... "You speak of time, Godric," Ailred said. His cough for once was gone. "Time is a storm. Times past and times to come, they heave and flow and leap their hands like Wear. Hours are clouds that change their shapes before your eyes. A dragon fades into a maiden's scarf. A monkey's grin becomes an angry fist. But beyond time's storm and clouds there's timelessness. Godric, the Lord of Heaven changes not, and even when our view's most dark, he's there above us fair and golden as the sun." And so it is.
"God's never gone, my gentle, ailing Ailred said. "It's only men go blind."
- Godric, Frederick Buechner
"It is too bad we know Jesus' stories so well, or think we do. We have read them so often and heard them expanded in so many sermons that we have all but lost the capacity for hearing them, even let alone for hearing what they are really about..."
"The worst of it, of course, is the way we think we know what Jesus' stories mean. Heaven knows people like me who ought to know better have explained the life out of them often enough, have tried so hard to pound the point that, more often than, all you can hear is the pounding..."
"Is the point of Jesus' stories that they point to the truth about you and me and our stories? We are the ones who have been mugged, and we are also the ones who pass by, pretending we don't notice. Hard as it is to believe, maybe every once in a while we are even the ones who pay an arm or a leg to help..."
"Either life is without meaning, or life doesn't mean a damn thing. You pay your money and you take your choice. Only never take your choice too easily, of course. Never assume that becasue you have taken it one way today, you might not take it another way tomorrow."
"One choice is this: it is to choose to believe that the truth of our story is continued in Jesus' story, which is a love story. Jesus' story is the truth about who we are and who the God is who Jesus says loves us. It is the truth about where we are going and how we are going to get there, if we get there at all, and what are we going to find if we finally do. Only for once, let us not betray the richness and depth and mystery of that truth by trying to explain it.
Let us instead tell a story that is the story about every one of us."
- Secrets in the Dark, Frederick Buechner
Over the past few days I have felt under attack by doubts. God is obviously at work around me with the shower crew move pending, the worship team, and playing games with the guys in the dorm. I just don't feel close to Him right now and seeing the negative activity around me and the constant complaining makes it difficult for me to see God's hand in it all.
I have been reading a chapter of Frederick Buechner's collection of sermons, Secrets in the Dark, each night. His messages are always bittersweet, recgnition of our own failings mixed with the hope of love and life with our Lord. To know that I'm not the only one who goes through mind games with myself to confuse my deepest beliefs is a consolation.
I will be sticking it out and pursuing a deeper relationship. The environment around me doesn't help, but I deal with it. With God's help.
