Window

Window

    The Lord came into your history, into the dust of your human-being, barefoot, and bearing his own cross – all the makings, all the markings of this world eaten love. The Lord came into the darkest corners of your heart, beleaguered, hounded; all his life followed, sought, solicited. Cloying magnitudes, oceans of want, world of pain: here the Lord walks, all his life and object – an object of our devotion. We read it not. We read it never, except through lenses of desire. Reconfiguring, re-clothing this stripped and bleeding, cross-hung form. Carved and hammered and reimagined, earned out of our matter again, and again; we gods like potters play.

    But this tired Christ came to seek with a once-whole heart; given whole for all the world. Open knows no way but this, this Lord, born opened and pure of being. Born, this Lord, to drag his own cross through our dust. Christ born and Christ being. Incarnate love, walks and reaches, wants us more than 1000 lives of pure yearning. Into my dark den and hell of myself, here is the one who is. Here is the One of God, the Christ: a breathing mercy, a walking, love. By his touch the world is healed. Untouched Lord, cross-bound, borrowed back, our father opens in the hearts of all, this window, this wide open window; in the calamity, the light shines forth. From wherever I am, there will always be this light. 

    The Lord is setting a window in your heart: see, the curtains are being pulled away, slowly, gently; Christ hands reach out into air that reeks of doubt. Beaten, bartered, broken one, be in this light. God be born here before me, God be in me. I pray passive prayers: steal me, heal me, lead me, fix me…a din of delivering up to God with hands that never let go. And this God who walks, whose hem eludes me, heart, undoes me, he offers this one unspeakable gift: not the “I am” of the Father (“tell them… You must tell them, I will be with your mouth, but you must go, go and tell them that I am has sent you.) No, existence was the garden unfathomed, unsavored. Unlived. For such a short stay. We cannot grasp. Cannot model, cannot be. 

    But this, the son who walked, and who walks, dragging his own cross through human dust, this Lord came, and did and was and is because he believed. I so believe in you, I. so. believe. Your insides will crawl and your heart will drown in its own shame, and your quiet, industrious self-sin, thin and close skin, will begin to undo you, from the inside out. You will forget me. You will forsake me. You will neglect and misunderstand me. Cocks will crowd the morning out, and murmurs rage like thunder. A curtain will tear. Beyond Repair. I know. You will befriend part of me, or fly another part like self-righteous flags. Yes, I know. I know the gutters, the rivers of bile in your own soul that you will never even see. You will not see it because I have stretched out my body over it, and my blood has washed you clean. 

    You will never be with me as I am with you. But oh, am I with you. I am the Lord, who has come all this way to find you. I have lit a lamp and swept the whole house looking for you. My lost coin. Did you think your sin would free you from me? Did you plan to slip by through fingers that have cradled the world? Beaten spirit, sin-ridden heart, be quiet here. Lay your head here, and you will see. The window. The footsteps I left in your earnest dust. All that industry. I will hold your head still in my hands. I will hold your heart. Together. I will love your sin white as new snow, for I am the One. I am the one who believes in you. 


A reflection by Jenny Burk
Photo by Jenny Burk of St. Eustache in Paris