Loss is a word that will take a lifetime to comprehend. I am at a loss. I understand loss, love, and reaching out to someone who you cannot save.
My father drank himself to death by the time I was 22 years old. I ran head-on into the emotional car crash of loss. My dad was a terror. But he was my dad. I still miss him. Sons never stop longing for a connection with their fathers.
In the same way, I am forced to grapple with the loss of my son. Not dead, just emotionally absent. I can point the blame at anyone. There is plenty of blame to go around, yet no easy answers. Was it the divorce? Or, his broken leg in 3rd grade that changed his confidence into caution? I don’t have any answers.
I ask god for help.
You know how that goes, right?
Even god can’t help. I don’t blame god. (Lowercase G) I might even fear god a bit. I mean, if I let loose with a tirade, will god respond then? Is my own pain fueled by my misunderstanding, my questioning of all things spiritual? God?
Listening? Presiding? Orchestrating? If there’s a god out there, what the fk is he doing? When two opposing teams on a football field are praying for victory, who does god choose? Does god play favorites? And why, is there “fear” related to god?
My Christ-centered friends would tell me something about the early bible. I counter with the flood. “Yes, but, he gave us his son.”
Really? That’s the best you have? And this Original Sin thing, that’s got to go, right? I’m more inclined to appreciate a god of “Original Blessing” than sin. More a god of love than a god of fear.
I am afraid enough. I don’t believe in a deity that appreciates my supplication and fear. I don’t think a human baby is sinful until baptized by the church. I have no idea what the “Holy Communion of Saints” means.
I do know the current Pope made a declaration that challenged all of our beliefs and constructs about god and church and who is right. Who is damned to eternal flames? Hell? Yeah, it’s right here on Earth if you don’t get clear on your ideas of god, sin, sex, love, death, and whatever else keeps you anxious.
Am I going to hell?
I suppose if the god, the GOD with a capital G, is going to strike bad people dead, send them into the boiling lava, then I’m going to be both your bus driver and your tour guide. But, I don’t think that’s how the Universe, with a capital U, works.
There is something aligning us. I do believe that. I can’t describe it to you. I just feel it. I have experiences of grace, blessings, and hope, that come from a sense of alignment with god as I choose to understand him. It’s closer to Carl Jung’s “Collective Unconscious.”
My mom is not waiting for me in heaven.
Yet, I don’t think it’s all over at the end of our human lives. This is probably a hallucination and holdover from my teen years and study and eventual confirmation to the Presbyterian church. It’s said that most people return to their childhood faith when they near death.
My father had no use for the church of his wife and children while he lived in the same house with us. As he was dying of cancer, however, retiring in a golf resort near Lake LBJ, my dad was born again. I have pictures and memories of the glorious afternoon the bishop or priest or someone from Good Sheppard Church came to baptize or confirm my father’s faith. Sad faces all around. The priest tried to be upbeat, but it was a tough crowd. At least my dad’s wife didn’t invite her boyfriend to the celebration of “still living” life.
My dad was so excited when I visited him at Horseshoe Bay. “I want to show you the church. It’s amazing. Looks out over the whole area. The lakes. The view. The singing.” It was a pretty church with an opulent view. They were happy for my dad’s retributional offerings as he scrambled to get right with god. God. Or GOD.
Sorry.
Dear God,
I’d really like to understand why you don’t answer. You don’t make things right in the world. You don’t save a 7-year-old boy from losing his father to alcohol and heart disease. You don’t protect my son, right now, in his oblivious darkness.
I’m here. It’s me, John. I’m asking. I’m praying. I don’t understand or comprehend your greatness, or your lack of response. We’re all watching the shitshow go down, god. What are you doing about it? How did you let the red-hat tyrant be put back in power? Maybe he’s about to be struck down in a shower of sparks rather than a mock assassination attempt. Maybe I’m the one ripe for the lighting, god. I have no idea.
So, as a loyal and miscomprehending subject, I ask, god, what gives?
Here’s what our present-day Pope said a bit ago about you, god.
God is God.
I think he meant that you are greater than our comprehension of you. That the church, even the Catholic Church and the Pope, cannot fathom how loving you are. I’m happy the Jews and the Muslims, and the Native American Indians, and heck, people like me, are going to be invited to this Pope’s party, when it’s all over.
That’s what he meant, right?
There’s a place for us humans, even if we don’t understand Jesus, the New Testament, the flood, the burning bushes. I know I can’t wrap my head around Jesus, god. By the grace of this year’s Pope, I believe I just got a hall pass for heaven.
Anyway, god, thanks for listening. I’m still here, doing my thing. Worshiping by creative expression. I celebrate you god, and the god in all of us, even if I don’t say it correctly or often. We are counting on you, god.
And right this second, we all *really* need your comfort and compassion.
Amen.
