a gift

i awoke this morning awash in lethargy and disillusionment; i wondered if i would ever escape this bent-inward-self. i thought about how empty and vain and full of sound and fury my life is--i was consumed especially by my ability to pontificate without end on righteousness and justice and truth and the spiritual journey without actually taking part in the holy struggle--the jihad--to make those things realities. i wondered where i would find the strength to shake off a lifestyle of feeling good about rearranging mental furniture and renovating dusty theologies without setting foot outside my very comfortable little life.

i seem to have come to a sluggish impasse; despite all my railings and incisive indictments of modern consumerism identities and drowsy unincarnate churches theology without praxis, i have built a comfortably smug specialist consumer identity, become a drowsily unincarnate fashionable talking head, and filled myself with the importance of my ideas without feeding or clothing or comforting a single hungry, naked or brokenhearted person this week.

so i lay there, troubled and a little perplexed; where is my salvation? who can resurrect the dead, who can bring my sick soul to health?

i stood up and dealt with the sour milk in the fridge and distinct lack of breakfast cereals (my daily staple) in my larder. i called a few friends and invited one to dinner, to break out of my habitual isolation. and later, as i went walking down the sidewalk--i did one of those leaping-and-kicking-your-feet-together sort of leprechaun things that cool people in musicals do and cool people in real life never do. especially not in the middle of my neighborhood. but i felt like doing it, because being outside always cheers me up, even on (sometimes, especially on) blustery days in late fall. and i figure, if i do it enough, i'll be able to manage tapping my heels together twice midjump, instead of my current quick-clap-and-stumble awkward version.

and as i hung there midair, thinking at the speed of light so as to have great and amazing thought frozen in micromoments of action, i remembered that not three months ago i was walking on crutches. For two months i couldn't go anywhere without an ankle brace on. i would come home from work limping like an old man and grab ice packs out of the freezer. Four weeks ago a grin split my face and i leaped for joy (immediately grimacing in pain) for the boy who once ran three miles in twenty-one minutes could finally managed more than a gimpy one-block jog. and sometime last week i was standing on my damaged right ankle stretching really far when i realized how miraculous it was that i was feeling no pain.

so there i am, hanging midair with panache to make that dude from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers green with envy, thinking, wow. i am also talking about girls (i guess they're women now that i'm officially a long way removed from high school) again with Dan Sahli and laughing carefreely more often and speaking and writing with boldness and confidence that were completely shattered last year. i'm no longer so easily blown and tossed by discouragement and stress, and i make bold plans more often and am dreaming and stowing away cash for the future. i'm a long way from that long December.

the body heals when you give it time--it's processes are slow, almost imperceptible until you look at baby pictures. i went from one foot to 5'11" one quarter-inch at a time, and i went from 135 (my pre-college weight) to 160 one all-you-can-eat cafeteria buffet and one step-carrying-sixty-pounds-and-a-canoe at a time. i shave my head and it grows--not when i'm watching, but behind my back, while i'm asleep. i wake one morning after another, one bowl of cereal at a time, over and over and over and over again, dressing for work and shaving and riding off and riding back and sleeping and waking and doing it all over again. and my body is nourished and wore out and rested and life goes on. the sun comes up. the sun goes down. the seasons pass, and turn around, and come again.

and my ankle heals. and so does my heart. and when i peruse the pictures from Tanzania, and the journal and blog entries from last year, i remember a weekend when i couldn't walk for the pain in my ankle and a week where i didn't talk to anyone for the pain that was in my heart. and last week i rode my bicycle fifty miles and at the end knew such richness of fellowship and joy as blows away the word friend. the ways of salvation are slow wrought, painful, meandering, and mundane. they are accomplished over days and months and years, and even generations. they are always quietly lapping like waves on the shore, and as deep and mysterious and mercurial as the oceans.

so, there i was, midleap, and part of my heart was stilled and awe-filled and at peace. but i landed (with a slight wince--i'm still not full well yet) and even reassured, i hunger still to be more than an idea-monger, words without substance and thought without deed, unformed or misshapen steel. i know my need more than ever to be saved and remade and brought to life. and i know more than ever the forces of death and despair that stalk through the streets of the city of my sojourn, how they strike the rich and the poor and the working-to-get-by alike, forces that i feel bound to see but powerless to resist.

that's when i checked my mail (ok, i took a couple more leaps and made my destination and returned home--but for the sake of narrative, seriously, stop interrupting!) and found a package from home. with great rejoicing i discovered an Advent devotional from my mother, an early Christmas gift, the companion to a Lenten devotional which sustained my soul through difficult times in my Tanzanian spring and ever since.

immediately, i opened and read: in classic Christian form, Bonhoeffer (who knew rather intimately the confines of a prison cell), told of Advent as "a prison cell in which one waits and hopes and does various unessential things...but is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside," while J.B. Phillips warned against indifference, urging vigilance and the donning of work clothes, that we may be about our master's business when he comes to finish setting the world aright.

so now i'm not hungering alone, and my longing is not aimless. my soul is set on pilgrimage this winter season, and it is salvation that my heart is working towards. come and join us; watch and pray--time is short and our need is great.