Caught Between Our Past and Who Knows What

Barry Taylor is an artist, poet, theologian, cultural muser and has become a dear friend the past year or so.  He sits uncomfortably as the associate rector at All Saints Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills California. I say uncomfortably because Barry occupies thought and presence at the outer edges of Christianity, caring little for polishing the relics of orthodoxy while somehow en-living its very intent. He dwells in the hyphenated reality (christian-agnostic-eastern-western-poet-artist-mystic-materialist...)more comfortably than anyone I know. This poem came from a homily where he was reflecting on John 1:29-49.

"There he stood, pointing, pointing

day after day after day

and only sinners came

unwashed to be washed clean

then one day he pointed, hand trembling

gaze fixed on one he saw

pushing us away in his direction

he bid us go, go

and there we stood, wondering, wondering and glancing back and forth and back again we began to walk hesitant, hopeful, eager, afraid we picked up the pace with one last look we saw john turn his back and we were gone, gone

the one before us stopped, stopped

and watched, and watched us approach

caught between our past

and who knows what

then he asked “why?”

we looked at him like children

both of us said “you”

and he said “come, come”

- Mike Mercer

The spiritual path is caught between our past and who knows what's next.  That space of uncertainty, the lack of confidence, our disorientation, the 'not-knowing' is the space where we learn to be human.  Yet our hands grasp for certainty and assurances, the two things that life will not offer and so we are apt to fashion these with our own hands.  Lesser gods that become the gravitational pull of our life. Yet still a Solicitation occurs that will not be extinguished, "go to the limits of your longings...flare up like flame and make big shadows I can move in, let everything happen to you.."(Rilke) There is something irreducible that continues to call us into the depth of our own humanity, longing and life. 

The Impermanence We Are

It seems
Our own impermanence is concealed from us
The trees stand firm, the houses we live in
Are still there, we alone
flow past it all, an exchange of air


Everything conspires to silence us
Partly with shame
Partly with unspeakable hope
                                                     -Rilke, The Second Duino Elegy


When I was writing the last chapter of my dissertation a handful of months ago the last two lines of this poem spoke volumes to me.  It intimated a communion among things that should not be together - yet somehow are.  The women in my study had histories of sever abuse and neglect as children, and then later in life alcohol addiction and abusive adult relationships.  As I attempted to make some sense of their narratives I realized the futility in attempting to parse, separate and to consign into discrete piles their experiences of shame and hope.  Now how these two lived together is a discussion for a whole other time (!) - but it mirrors a reality in my own life.   I grew up within a dominate narrative that divided the world into well ordered piles: faith -fear, gay-straight, sin-righteousness,republican-democrat, moral-immoral. These categories made sense and promised to make sense out of the world -  until I actually lived into the complexities of life.  The categories did not hold.  


It is within the confluence of shame and hope; fear, frailty and faith; fracturedness and longing; dying and breathing that we all find our way. In my faith tradition we all construct our histories between "my god my god why have you forsaken me?" and "Lo, I am with you always".  To attempt to live otherwise seems to be a distortion. Conspired to silence, hoping to sing, hungry to be heard. 


I think that Kierkegaard was getting at this when he said: 


What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful."


It is integral to our own humanity and the communities we are a part of to be open to the formation of our lips but also to create deep space and compassion for our own hollowing and the hollowing of others who lips cannot hold the form.