"The god of today is a delinquent, a barn-burner, a punk with a pittance of power in a match."-- Annie Dillard, "Holy the Firm"
This is the way it goes with grief. I do not doubt God's presence; I simply have long hours when I view God as a punk-ass traitor.
Eventually, birdsong arrows through the air by my left ear and slings me into gratitude. Or, in my right ear I hear the words of the Sufi sheik Sidi when Rebecca and I visited him a few weeks after Corey's fatal accident. "Why did God take Corey?" I wept, in the dry Northern California afternoon.
"God did not take her," he answered instantly, his weathered face a map of souls. "God does not take people; God allows things to happen."
I don't care. The why doesn't matter. As Corey has plainly admonished me in dreamtime, she can't come back. That is the reality to be grasped, and whenever I try, it stretches my insides like a small rubber diaphram being pulled over an opening that is much too wide. A chasm that, most days, I can't cross over. But in the interest of sanity, and because my bruised heart insists upon battering itself against the bones of my ribcage, I give it all I've got.
My old friend Deb and I have a long check-in, and just when I think I am going to get out of that phone call without having to "go there," she asks point-blank: How are you doing with your grief process?
The answer comes without a thought: Some days it feels like unbearably fresh grief, striking new, the cruel amputation all over again. Other moments, there is a choir of muscular angels inside me. I am not a person who has ever had mood swings, who feels a lot of ups and downs, and so the lack of equilibrium is unnerving. I have to dig down deep to find the stamina to carry it all. As Dan said last night, it is like sending pile drivers deep into the core of the earth to anchor the currents that feel like spiritual warfare.
This is the way it goes with grief. I do not doubt God's presence; I simply have long hours when I view God as a punk-ass traitor.
Eventually, birdsong arrows through the air by my left ear and slings me into gratitude. Or, in my right ear I hear the words of the Sufi sheik Sidi when Rebecca and I visited him a few weeks after Corey's fatal accident. "Why did God take Corey?" I wept, in the dry Northern California afternoon.
"God did not take her," he answered instantly, his weathered face a map of souls. "God does not take people; God allows things to happen."
I don't care. The why doesn't matter. As Corey has plainly admonished me in dreamtime, she can't come back. That is the reality to be grasped, and whenever I try, it stretches my insides like a small rubber diaphram being pulled over an opening that is much too wide. A chasm that, most days, I can't cross over. But in the interest of sanity, and because my bruised heart insists upon battering itself against the bones of my ribcage, I give it all I've got.
My old friend Deb and I have a long check-in, and just when I think I am going to get out of that phone call without having to "go there," she asks point-blank: How are you doing with your grief process?
The answer comes without a thought: Some days it feels like unbearably fresh grief, striking new, the cruel amputation all over again. Other moments, there is a choir of muscular angels inside me. I am not a person who has ever had mood swings, who feels a lot of ups and downs, and so the lack of equilibrium is unnerving. I have to dig down deep to find the stamina to carry it all. As Dan said last night, it is like sending pile drivers deep into the core of the earth to anchor the currents that feel like spiritual warfare.
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