My Story as Sacred Story

The Bible is a love story. It tells us how very much we are loved by God – loved, no matter what. My life has been a love story as well. God’s love and grace have been with me through each stage of life – in the good times and the bad times, when I was at peace and joyful, and when I felt lost in the universe. Many times I had my back against the wall and felt that there was no way out. But God always made a window in that wall and pulled me through.

 

My life has been filled with love and forgiveness; it has been a series of recurring cycles of commitment, success, failure and redemption. Through it all, through every cycle, every up and down, there has been a single thread – a thread of covenant – that has been woven through my own story. It is a covenant between God and me – one that I have broken many times; but one in which God has never abandoned me. Rather, God has always pursued me and loved me. I have felt the love experienced by the Israelites, by David, by the prodigal son, by Mary Magdalene, by Peter. I am thankful and pray that, day-by-day, I may follow my love, my God with a loving and open heart.

 

One of my favorite things is to pull down our family albums – all 37 of them – and go through each book slowly and with love. These albums tell the story of my life from infancy through the present. There are really many stories in these books: the story of Wanda, my soul mate, best friend and wife; the stories of Danny, David, Julie and Meg, our children, of Mike and William, our sons-in-law, of Duncan, Harrison, Grayson, Will and Elena, our grandkids. But for me, these books represent my Sacred Story. They, like the Bible, tell a story that speaks of love and grace.

 

The Bible contains many interwoven allegories and metaphors to tell us that we are loved, that God’s grace is ours for the taking, that God’s promise (his covenant) will never be broken. A parent speaks to a child in metaphors that the child’s mind can comprehend. These metaphors get adjusted from the most simple when the child is an infant, to real life ‘that’s how it really is’ facts when the child is an adult. The parent always speaks truth but that truth is presented in a language that, given the intellectual and social development of the child, he or she is capable of grasping. So too is it with the Bible.

 

I think that God speaks to humanity through his revelation in a similar way that a parent speaks to and teaches a child. God uses allegories and metaphors, and reveals them through the lens of a particular historical moment in humanity’s intellectual development; and, further, through the prism of a given culture, which is also in progressive stages of intellectual development.

 

Thus the stories of Creation, Adam and Eve or Abraham, for example: did God really make the world in six days; did our first parents really blow it for all of us and bring death, suffering and pain into our lives by eating an apple, or is God telling us about commitment and faithfulness through an allegory, and at a particular time in human development (3,000 to 5,000 years ago)? Did Abraham really almost murder his beloved son to please God or is God, again, making a point about commitment and faithfulness, i.e., covenant, with an allegory that a culture that was surrounded by pagan sacrifice of first born sons to Baal could mentally grasp?

 

This does not discount that God revealed truth and inspired the writers whom he used as vehicles for recording that truth. But it tells us that God continues to reveal the same truth in progressive stages of history and culture, when humanity’s intellectual development reaches another level of comprehension. That truth is that we are loved. That truth is our collective Sacred Story.

 

If archeologists find some physical proof that Moses really didn’t part the Red Sea, but that such a thick fog settled over the beach between the Israelites and Pharaoh’s army that Moses and his people were able to escape, that doesn’t diminish the truth that God did indeed bring the Israelite’s out of bondage. It doesn’t diminish my truth that God has brought me out of bondage over and over and over again.

 

And if we find out some day that Jesus didn’t magically multiply a few loaves of bread and fishes to feed a multitude of people, but that his goodness and love inspired people in the crowd to generously share the food that they were hoarding, it in no way diminishes who Jesus is and what his redemptive mission on earth was all about – and how each of us is called to live out our own individual Sacred Story.

 

Like everyone else, my story was meant to be. Logically, I don’t see it. There are so many, many people, so many stories, existing today in the present row of the matrix called, ‘alive now, at this instant, snapshot, in time.’ And each column in this endless matrix goes back to somewhere in forever, and will go forward to somewhere in eternity.

 

And so many people are, have been, and will be limited in options, choices, potential. So many people have done awful things. So many, many, many stories: sometimes it’s like thousands of ants. Across, up and down time. How could each and every one, each story, have been meant to be? How can each and every one be personally known and loved and called by name by God? How can so many have dropped by the wayside, through chance or choice, through environment or genetics?

 

Logically, I don’t buy it; yet intuitively, I know it’s true. Somewhere in the big picture it all fits together. There is free will, and at the same time there are overpowering conditions that wipe out true freedom to choose good over evil, love over hate. But God takes it all into account and makes the necessary adjustments. I’m not sure how it works, but Jesus tried to explain in the parable of the prodigal son. And I have been the prodigal son. I have lived it over and over again, as part of my Sacred Story. 

 

God loves unconditionally to the point where someone with less capacity than God for love can never really understand. Looking through the eyes of a son or daughter of God, it really is unfair — grossly unfair. How can the bad son in the story be loved as much as the good son is loved? Where’s the justice? How can the sinner be embraced by God and have a seat at the same table as the saint? Where’s the justice?

 

God’s justice is not our justice. We can only see the kindergarten classroom where the tower of blocks has been knocked down, and the child who worked so hard to build it experiences the loss of ‘everything.’ Our vision cannot see past, present and future all existing together — that is God’s vision, it is his kingdom.

 

So, like everyone else, my Sacred Story was meant to be. My choices have been skewed by circumstances beyond my control, but God adjusts. God just asks us to keep plugging along and not give up on trying to be what Jesus called us, all of us, to be — 100% selflessly in love with God and with each other.

 

For me the word ‘God’ is abstract. I intuitively know that there is a central, knowing, loving personal source of all creation. I use the word ‘God’ but the concept goes beyond language, beyond culture and religion. Carole King wrote a song, Only Love is Real, Everything Else an Illusion. Saint John preached that God is Love. So ‘God’ and ‘Love’ have the same meaning. Whether we call it ‘The Force’, ‘The Tao’, ‘God’, ‘Nature’, ‘Love’, it’s the same essence. And whether we believe that it knows us intellectually with a mind that uses language and constructs like the human mind, or that it knows us in some other way that is beyond the limits of our comprehension – it still knows and loves each and every one of us.

 

In my Sacred Story, I have faith that I’m here to be what I am: a dad, a husband, a grandfather, and a deacon. I’m here to love, and I really do love. I’m not 100% present to others like I wish I were. I have hurt others, others who depended on me. I really and truly am sorry for the people I have wounded. And yet, I think I have grown as a person, as a follower of Jesus, and that, as my story unfolds, I will continue to grow and continue to fall big time. But with the love and grace that has been given me, I will keep trying to love God and others with my whole heart. God adjusts.

 

And it is the same for all of us, I think, within the framework of our own limitations – as long as we don’t give up. I want to believe that ultimately God makes things right and everyone experiences redemption and conversion to God’s love, and is made whole with God. I’m not sure how God balances it out, but I don’t really need to be sure. That’s for God to handle. I just need to keep trying my best to be who I am. I am here to love. God is love. Love is a verb; love is a noun. I am here to be in active motion; to journey towards a timeless constant, the constant that I am comfortable to label ‘God’. I am here to live out my Sacred Story.

 

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NEVER TOO LATE TO GO HOME

 Jesus said, “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. When he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the market place; and to those he said, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you.’ And so they went. Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did the same thing. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why have you been standing here idle all day long?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’ 

 

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last group to the first.’ When those hired about the eleventh hour came, each one received a denarius. When those hired first came, they thought that they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they grumbled at the landowner, saying, ‘These last men have worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the scorching heat of the day.’ But he answered and said to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go, but I wish to give to this last person the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?’ So the last shall be first, and the first last.” 

                                                                        Matthew 20: 1 - 16

                                                                       

If God really loves us unconditionally, then Hell should be an empty place. But if God is truly just, then everyone should ultimately get what’s coming to him or her. So which is it?

 

God’s love and forgiveness for us has no limits — it’s unconditional. He loves us when we do good, and when we do ‘not so good’. He loves the kind and the mean, the generous and the stingy, the saint and the bigot. Jesus calls us to love and forgive each other as God loves and forgives us — without strings.

 

The above Gospel is a parable about God’s generosity and how much he really does love us; how he never shuts off that love, never gives up on us; how he patiently stands in the wings as we go through the hours of our life journey, waiting for the moment when we realize he’s out there — the moment that we turn to him and love him in return; how, with God, it’s never too late. But this Gospel is one of those tough Gospels, like the one about the prodigal son, or about forgiving your neighbor 70 times seven times.

 

If we tend to be self righteous, it can offend our sense of fairness and justice. How does the worker who punched in five minutes before closing get the same pay as the one who labored all day long? How does the son who squandered away his father’s money merit a welcome home party while the son who added to his father’s wealth is out working and sweating in the field? How does the thief who was crucified next to Jesus get promised a one-way ticket to paradise after living a life of crime?

 

The underlying question here is: how can God be both the just God revealed by Moses in the Old Testament, and at the same time the unconditionally loving and forgiving God revealed by Jesus in these parables? This dichotomy is the mystery of redemption.

 

Jesus is telling us that God’s justice is not our justice. He is using these parables to teach us a great lesson: that God accepts us back from wherever we’ve been; that he never gives up on us; that with God, it’s never too late to go home.

 

If there really is a geographical place called Hell, I think it must be hard to get there. A person would have to know and feel in the depths of his or her being how very much they were loved by God, and then choose to turn their back and walk away from that love for all eternity. I can’t imagine too many people doing that.

            

God passionately pursues us through the hours of our lives. He waits and waits for the moment that we recognize his love and choose to love him in return. Maybe if we don’t get it right during the work day (the time that we are alive), God meets us at the moment of our death — five minutes before closing, so to speak — and makes us one more offer to still turn to him — an offer we can’t refuse. Maybe heaven is filled with the kinds of people with whom we wouldn’t want to associate. Perhaps when we sit down to our first meal in heaven, we will be stunned to see who else is around the table.

 

Perhaps God’s mercy and generosity extends even beyond the tax collectors and the prostitutes, to the bigots, the drug dealers and the worse villains in history. Wouldn’t that be a shocker!  It would even be worse than seeing those last minute workers in the vineyard getting a full day’s pay. But even God couldn’t possibly be that loving, that forgiving, that merciful — or could he? And could he really expect you and me to be?

 

There is a movie I saw several years ago that deals with this mystery, the mystery of redemption, in a powerful way. It’s called The Bad Lieutenant and it stars Harvey Keitel in the title role. Though the message of this film is forgiveness and redemption, it contains language and scenes that could be offensive. So, I caution the reader that both the edited R version and the uncut NC-17 version should be viewed with discretion.

 

Harvey Keitel plays this depraved New York City police Lieutenant. He’s on the take; uses and sells the drugs he confiscates on the street; cheats on his wife; and abuses the teenage girls he stops for traffic violations — all in all, a thoroughly corrupt and decadent person. He’s a heavy gambler, and into the loan sharks for $120,000 for bets he lost on the World Series. The first hour of the film is used to develop his character as a truly unredeemable human being.

 

Eventually he is called in to investigate a brutal crime: a young nun is viciously beaten and raped by two teenage hoodlums while she prays alone in church. He presses the nun to reveal the identity of the teenagers, but she will not do so. She knows them well from the local high school, but has only compassion for them, for the poverty and hopelessness in which they were raised. She unconditionally forgives and prays for them, and refuses to assist in their arrest.

 

It is through this horrible crime that the bad lieutenant finds redemption.  Moved by the unconditional love and forgiveness exhibited by the nun, and facing death himself at the hands of the loan sharks whom he has no money to pay, he drinks himself into a stupor and passes out alone in the church.

 

When he awakes, and reality sets in, he breaks down weeping on the floor in front of the altar. It is here that he encounters Christ, and begs for forgiveness for the bad things he’s done in his life. He is comforted by Jesus, and unconditionally forgiven. He is redeemed; and through his redemption he is able to understand and to forgive the teenagers.

 

Redemption, like so much of the reality of God, is a mystery. But it’s God’s mystery, not ours.

 

How can God be both loving and just? The answer is that he doesn’t have to be. Love is of God; justice is of the world. If we loved each other the way God calls us to, there would be no need for justice. And if we could feel in the depths of our being, how totally and unconditionally God loves us, there would be no need for anyone to ask for our forgiveness.

 

In the above Gospel, Jesus gives us some really good news — with God, it’s never too late to go home.

 

 

http://www.deaconlex.blogspot.com

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Readers of this blog might enjoy these books by Deacon Lex. Both are available on Amazon.com:

 

Just to Follow My Friend: Experiencing God’s Presence in Everyday Life

http://www.amazon.com/Just-Follow-My-Friend-Experiencing/dp/1456360728/

 

 

The Gospel of You, The Gospel of Me: Making Christ Present in Everyday Life

 

http://www.amazon.com/Gospel-You-Me-Present-Everyday/dp/1517176077/

 

 

Synchronicity as the Work of the Holy Spirit: Jungian Insights for Spiritual Direction and Pastoral Ministry

http://www.amazon.com/Synchronicity-Work-Holy-Spirit-Spiritual/dp/1463518781/

Trinity: The Unbroken Cycle of God’s Love

When God made you and me God embraced us like a mother would bundle up a beloved child to go out into the cold for the very first time. And like a parent might slip a little identification note into a child’s pocket, just in case he or she should get lost, God put a little piece of Godself inside of each of us. That little piece of God is our immortal soul - it is the presence of Christ within us. Life is the journey of our soul back home to God.

‘God’ is a word that we use to describe an indefinable reality. Because our minds and bodies operate in time and space, we are only comfortable thinking and speaking with intellectual constructs. We make our Creator into our own image and likeness. We paint pictures, cut stained-glass images, and sing songs about a transcendent reality that cannot be packaged into the limited box of human understanding.

But what the intellect struggles to grasp, the soul already knows. I intuitively know that there is a central, loving, and personal source of all creation. I know this because God embraced me before I was born.  

In the New Testament Saint John tells us that, “God is Love.” Back in the 1970s, Carole King wrote a song entitled: ‘OnlyLove is Real, Everything Else An Illusion’. For me this song speaks of God. 

God is love, a pure love that permeates the universe; a love that draws us home. We Christians use an intellectual construct in attempting to describe the dynamic of that pure Love. That construct is the Trinity. 

The Benedictine theologian Kilian McDonnell gave us a model he calls the Trinitarian Cycle of Life. Father McDonnell uses this analogy to describe the underlying Trinitarian dynamic that flows throughout the universe. In this dynamic God as Father reaches through God as Son and in God as Holy Spirit to touch and transform the world and the church and to lead us back home.

We are part of that dynamic. God sent each of us into life to be a conduit of God’s love; to help that love permeate our world. The Trinity is the unbroken cycle of God’s love. 

On Trinity Sunday, and everyday, let us remember and rejoice, really rejoice, that we are part of that cycle.

Resurrection

For many years I had deeply believed that we are each destined to be with God for all eternity. That regardless of the circumstances of our life or our death, and even in our darkest moment of brokenness, God embraces us and finds a way, either in this life or the next, to heal us and bring us home. No soul is ever lost.

But in the early years of my ministry as a deacon, I witnessed a lot of pain and suffering. There were suicides, a murder and lives destroyed and taken by drugs. And I began to struggle with doubts that the individual soul can survive tragedy and untimely death, and be reconciled and reunited with God - at peace for all eternity. Then one day, almost 25 years ago, I experienced something very powerful. So powerful that it erased those doubts. This powerful experience involved a dream I had shortly after the death of a friend named ‘Fox’.

Fox was a 45 year-old homeless man who lived for nine years at the George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal. He had lost a leg and survived each day by spinning his wheelchair in and out of traffic and up and down subway ramps, begging for loose change.

I first met Fox early one Sunday morning while I was bringing coffee and sandwiches to homeless people living alongside the bus terminal in Washington Heights. I spotted a man bundled up in a blanket and asleep in a big cardboard box. I tapped on the box, introduced myself and offered him some coffee. He thanked me and I asked his name. He said, “Fox.”

Two weeks later I was bringing breakfast to the same place and saw him again. He was sleeping and I gently woke him by calling his name, “Fox, Fox.” He woke up, smiled and said in amazement, “You remembered my name.”

Over the years Fox had become a dear friend to me, my family and to many members of our parish Outreach Team. We would often see him on Sunday mornings as we distributed food and clothing around the terminal. I would see him on weekday mornings as I went to work, and often brought him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from home.

Sometimes after a long day at work I would drag myself up the subway ramp leading into the bus terminal. Fox would see me and say he was worried about me because I looked so tired. This man who had so little was worried about me who had so much.

One day, as I was on the bus entering the terminal, I spotted Fox’s wheelchair vacant except for one single rose left on the seat. I inquired at the terminal police office and learned that Fox had died in the streets near the terminal of an apparent drug overdose. With the help of the NYPD detectives from the neighborhood precinct, I was able to locate Fox’s body at the City Morgue at Bellevue where it had been for a month, an unidentified casualty of the streets. His body had been scheduled for cremation a few days prior to my arrival, and the coroner was baffled as to why it was still there - as if it were waiting for something or someone.

With the kindness of our local funeral parlor and the generosity of our Carmelite priests, I was able to bring Fox’s body to Tenafly to be buried with dignity. Father Kurt, our pastor at the time, celebrated a memorial Mass and 35 adults and young people from the Parish Outreach Team were present. Fox’s body is buried there in Mount Carmel Cemetery.

An Episcopal Church near the bus terminal permitted me to hold a memorial service for Fox and to invite all the homeless men and women who knew him. I posted invitations on telephone polls in the streets around the terminal. At the service, one of Fox’s friends shared an emotional eulogy. He told us how ‘Brother Fox’ had given his friends courage and inspiration to take responsibility for building a better life for themselves; how he had been a loving, caring friend; and how much he was loved.

Several months after Fox’s death I had an amazing dream. I was walking in a beautiful sunlit meadow and heard someone calling my name. In the distance I saw Fox waving to me from his wheelchair. He had a blanket over his lap.

As I got closer I heard him shouting, “Lex, Lex, come here. I got something I want to show you!” As I approached Fox pulled the blanket off his lap, stood up and danced around with joy. He had two legs and he was whole. I woke up with the most wonderful, peaceful, joyful feeling I have ever experienced.

I believe Fox really came to me in that dream to thank me and to give me a gift. It was the gift of showing me how much he was loved by God, and the knowledge that despite the circumstances of his death, God had healed Fox, made him whole and welcomed him home. And maybe it was the Holy Spirit’s way of telling me, through Fox, that everything I had believed is really true: we are each destined to be home with God for all eternity – there are no exceptions.

Be at peace if there is a loved one in your life who left this world under tragic or untimely circumstances; left without the chance to say goodbye. For even in our darkest moment of brokenness, our loving God heals us and makes us whole. Just like he did for my friend Fox. And one day we will be together again.

                                                                                                            With love, Deacon Lex

We Are All Called To Be Good Shepherds

“The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want . . . He makes me to lie down in green pastures: he leads me beside still waters . . . he anoints my head with oil . . .”

                                                                                                 Psalm 23: 1 - 5

In preparing for this reflection I researched what it meant to be a good shepherd way back in the time of Jesus. I came away from my research with a great respect for shepherds. Sheep are innocent and lovable creatures, but without a good shepherd they are totally defenseless. They are at the mercy of wild animals, storms and robbers.

The vocation of being a shepherd was something very special. They were sometimes called to risk their own lives to protect their sheep. In the book of Samuel in the Old Testament, King David, as a young shepherd boy, fought off a bear and a lion to protect the family flock. To be a good shepherd was to be a loving and courageous human being.

In my ministry as a hospital chaplain for our brothers and sisters suffering with anxiety, depression and addiction, I often reflect on Psalm 23. In it the Psalm writer, who we believe to be King David, proclaims, “The Lord is my shepherd.” I always focus on one line in particular: “He anoints my head with oil.”I explain how in ancient times, and even still today, shepherds rub oil on the heads of their sheep to give them peace and comfort. 

This is necessary because when a large number of sheep are gathered together, these little microscopic insects, these little gnats, are attracted by the smell of wool. They buzz around the heads and torment these poor sheep, these creatures helpless to swat them away. The shepherd anoints the head of each sheep and rubs in this special oil. The fragrance repels and drives away the insects leaving the sheep in peace. 

I explain to my hospital friends that we are like those sheep. Only instead of insects buzzing around us, we sometimes are plagued by negative thoughts that buzz inside our heads. They are the anxieties and guilt and anger, the obsessions and compulsions that we carry. They can lead us into depression or addiction, into loneliness and self-alienation.

But just like those good Mediterranean shepherds who anoint the heads of their sheep, our loving God anoints our human heads – he anoints us with the oil of his unconditional love and forgiveness; he anoints us to free us from the thoughts that torment us.

Jesus is our Good Shepherd. But that’s not the end of the story. We are called to be more than helpless, passive sheep. We are each called to be active good shepherds as well. 

As we continue our journey through this Easter season,let us resolve to be good shepherds for all our sisters and brothers – without exception;and to anoint them with the oil of our love and compassion, our forgiveness and inclusion.

                                                                                                            With love, Deacon Lex

The Road to Emmaus

“And behold, two of them were going that very day to a village named Emmaus, which was about seven miles from Jerusalem . . . While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself approached and began traveling with them. But their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.”
                                                               Luke 24: 13 – 16

     The road to Emmaus is a seven mile journey from Jerusalem; seven miles along a stony broken highway; seven miles from joy to despair.

     The two companions traveling that road in today’s Gospel were close friends of Jesus. The crucifixion has left them devastated and broken. How could God have allowed this terrible thing to happen to Jesus?

     In the depths of their despair they encounter a mysterious stranger who opens their eyes to reveal the presence of Christ. Their depression vanishes along with the mysterious stranger. They turn themselves around and head back to Jerusalem to proclaim the Gospel. It is they who are resurrected.

     Some of us have traveled that road to Emmaus. Like many of you, I have struggled with the problem of evil in the world: Why does God whom I love and believe loves each of us permit terrible things to go on: wars, pandemics, violence of every kind, homelessness, mental illness, incurable disease, natural disaster?

     But like those two companions in today’s Gospel, I have been blessed. Over and over again my eyes have been opened and I have recognized God in the breaking of the bread of everyday life. I have felt his presence in the chaos and the darkness. And through grace, I have been able to turn myself around, and to head back to Jerusalem with my faith sustained.

     Many years ago I had a powerful Emmaus experience. I had always been a person of faith and hope, but some bad things happened. My friend Vic lost his wife and two of their three children when an electrical fire started while they were asleep. Around the same time the young child Etan Patz disappeared on his way to school in New York City and was never seen again. These two events affected me very deeply. I began to ask, where was God?

     Shortly after this I began commuting to work in New York City. As I saw the many homeless people suffering and sleeping in the streets and subways, my questioning and doubts increased. Then one day something special happened.

     It was a beautiful October morning as I drove down Central Park West. I had been driving in early on Saturday mornings with coffee and sandwiches looking for people who were homeless. I spotted a disheveled young man huddled in a red sweatshirt, sitting on a park bench, rocking back and forth and staring into space. After saying good morning, I offered him some hot coffee, but he didn’t respond.

     Sitting down on the bench, I poured us both some coffee and placed his cup and a few cookies down next to him. He continued to stare into space. Sipping my coffee I carried on a one-way conversation for a while. He began to chatter in nonsense sounds to each squirrel that ran by.

     After a while his fingers inched over to the coffee and he gulped it down as he continued chattering with the squirrels. I finished my second cup of coffee and said good-bye, but he still did not acknowledge my presence. Walking to the curb where my car was parked, I kept thinking how this young man was so badly damaged in mind and body that he probably would not survive the winter.

     Lost in my own sadness, I pulled away from the curb. As I drove down the street I glanced in my rear view mirror. My friend had left his bench and was standing in the street waving good-bye to me.

     My eyes welled up with tears; I realized that what I was seeing in my rear view mirror was Christ. Not that this man was Jesus in disguise, but rather that the Christ within him, in the midst of all his brokenness, was reaching out and connecting to the Christ within me. At that instant my eyes were opened and everything made sense.

     God places a little piece of himself inside of each of us when we are born. That little piece of God is our immortal soul; it is the Christ within us. Life is the journey of our soul back home to its loving Creator. While our time on earth is limited and the journey can be pretty rough, getting home is all that really matters.

     No matter how good we are, how loving, no matter how hard we try, we cannot escape the pain and contradictions of human existence. The symbol of our faith is itself a contradiction: the cross, two opposing beams of wood made from the tree of life, used to torture and destroy life. Yet in the center of the contradiction, we find God in human form.

     But the message of the cross is hope. It tells us that we are not alone, that God is with us in the chaos and the darkness; he is present in the pain, loss and disillusionment; he is there at the center of the contradiction, the center of the cross. And someday, once we are free of the constraints of human existence and the limitations of human understanding, it will all make sense; there will be a happy ending, or more truly, a happy beginning for all eternity.

     It is that mysterious stranger, who dwells in the depths of our being - the Christ within each and every one of us - who resurrects US, like he did for those companions on the road to Emmaus, and makes it possible for us to keep turning ourselves around and heading back to Jerusalem.

                                                 With love, Deacon Lex