BEING WITH ‘I AM’
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
March 24, 2019
I came
across a marvelous poem this week in, of all places, the St. John’s University
alumni magazine. It was embedded within
an article that was written by a man named Gabriel Flynn whom I do not
know. The article was a tribute to his
father, who has been an actor, poet, writer, and now a person living with
advancing dementia in a senior care facility in St. Paul. Judging from the year of his graduation, John
Flynn must be about 75 years old. The
poem that John wrote is titled “Daily Diminishment,” and he authored it 4 years
ago.
Here it is:
“Live like
there’s no tomorrow
Die like
there is. Fill what’s left
with prayer
and poetry, the love
of children
and boxer dogs.
The essence
of life is death
Poetry is a
tug of war with death.
Both win.”
This is
obviously a man who understands what is required to stand in the breach of Holy
Mystery, without clever words of explanation for why things happen as they
do. Only poetry—which can hold all kind
of apparently contradictory things together at the same time—only poetry is up
to the task. Or, perhaps, parables
too. There’s a reason why Jesus used
them so often to teach.
Jesus came
into our world to tell us about God, not to unfold the rational logic for the
unfolding of time and events. He came to
confront us with Holy Mystery, by the way he spoke and by the way he lived. He introduced us to God. When people of faith speak of “Mystery” we
are not speaking primarily about puzzles and conundrums and seemingly
unsolvable predicaments. We are, rather,
speaking about realities so deep, so eternal, so far beyond our powers to
capture in words and formulas and images that we are left simply to stand in
the midst of it all—in relative silence—sometimes in ecstasy and sometimes in
excruciating pain and confusion. That’s
often a very hard thing.
In today’s first
reading the book of Exodus, Moses encounters Holy Mystery in conversing with
God himself. He quite understandable
wants to figure out the physics of that burning bush. How can something be on fire, he wonders,
without being consumed?
It’s not a
bad question, but it is not a question that recognized that he’s dealing with
God here, who will not be reduced to strict definition or scientific
demonstration. One has to have the
capacity for living in and with Holy Mystery if one is to follow after God…the
real one. Moses take off your shoes. As St. Augustine once observed—and I’m
paraphrasing him here—if what you think you have hold of can be mapped out with
a logical description, it’s not God.
And that’s
really the whole point of this first reading. Moses continues by requesting to know God’s name, so that he can share
it with others who ask. But in the
bible, to know someone’s name is to presume to have some sort of control over
that person, somehow to have figured that person out.
And that’s
precisely what God will not permit. God
very much wishes to be known by the people he loves, known by his gracious acts
toward them/us in the world, but God is not capable of being domesticated by
our poor powers of manipulation. Surely
God’s answer to Moses’ question, “My name is ‘I AM’”—surely that was as
frustrating to him as it still seems to us today. What kind of clarity comes with that?
And yes,
that’s the point. We get to be near God,
and to accompany God through every moment of life—and death—but we don’t get to
solve the Holy Mystery that God is. Again, sometimes that realization brings happiness, other times it
brings agony. And the agony is never
more intense than in moments of suffering that threaten to seem absurd—when
mosques blow up in New Zealand, when floods sweep away people’s homes and farms,
when planes crash into the ground, when tornados and hurricanes and tsunamis
devastate lives and landscape, when cancer shows up, when chronic disability
comes into our home—like John Flynn’s dementia. When all we want is a simple answer for the heartbreak of evil, and we
can’t find it.
A great part
of what true faith demands of us, as it did of Jesus, as it did of Moses, and
as it ever has and ever will of disciples, is the wonderful—awful requirement
to accompany “I AM,” to be embraced by Holy Mystery/God without having figured
out that Mystery. “Lord,” they asked, “Why were those Galilean pilgrims killed
by Pontius Pilate just for making sacrifice at the temple? Why did that tower fall on innocent people in
Siloam?” It seems that we deserve
answers that we don’t get. What’s the
point of being faithful in the face of so much suffering that can seem so
arbitrary and unjust? We want to figure
it out. Jesus’ response can seem maddeningly
insufficient: “I know,” he says, “I know, but stay with me. Focus on bearing fruit here and now, until
the day that all is made clear.” That is
discipline of this holy season of Lent. To love and trust the Mystery that we cannot fully understand, but whom
we know. “I AM” is here, through it
all. Poetry helps.
“Live like
there’s no tomorrow
Die like
there is. Fill what’s left
with prayer
and poetry, the love
of children
and boxer dogs.
The essence
of life is death
Poetry is a
tug of war with death.
Both win.”
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