Parable: A mother loses her newborn child to death–that looming silhouette named Quietus. The mother went to every medicine man to resurrect her dead child, which she carried wrapped in white linen, but nothing nor anyone could. She heard of a powerful healer in the mountains days away from the village. Determined in her grief, she met the healer in his mountain abode. He agreed to resurrect the child if she could first bring him a handful of grain from the home of a family that has not experienced the pain of loss, grief or misfortune.
The bereaved mother eagerly searched in every home, speaking with the family as they told of their loss, grief and misfortunes. She found no home that escaped those life pains. With a new clarity after achingly aquatinted with her community’s heartbreaking stories, she dug a grave. Laying her linen wrapped child into the earth, she let go of the body for the first time.
My point: Sometimes God surprises you.
Sometimes you expect God to be historical and abstract, sitting regal outside of time; dependable when it comes to philosophy or theoretics. You believe this until tragedy strikes. In a unpredicted moment you desire God as an instant solution to the local problems of your heart. It may seem disappointing to lose that God, the little ‘g’ kind of God. You may mourn and spiral into bitterness. But I promise you this: everyone has or everyone will.
Like the mother of the dead child who found consoling within the community through the bonding of shared grief, so will you. Some lessons we learn only in exile, like Daniel and his lions. God is in places you thought he couldn’t be. In Babylon or in grief, in a stuffy church or in the shadows of cities, or even in death. God surprised her.
Like Rami and Mazen when they found their mortal bond in their shared trauma. They found love in the eyes of their national enemy. God surprised them.
Because God isn’t the solutions to our minor-in-comparison problems.
But He is the love that gets us through it, heals us in it, and gives meaning to it.
Because in the communal sharing of pain God is manifest.
And now we can begin to have hope again.
Is it true, O God, that those who mourn loved, and will love again?
that your keen love is more powerful than death?
that your avid love resurrects our souls?
Is it true, O God, that you dynamic intimacy stands in the gap of loneliness and pain?
not revolution or semantic redecoration?
not the free market or communism?
Yes, you obliterate prejudice; you decimate it utterly.
You cause it to become invisible, indistinct.
Yes, you blot out ‘impossible’ and ‘unchangeable’.
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Continued on 11/09/11
Continued from: Chapter 2.3: lâ ilâha illâ allâh – 'A New Midwife'
Chapter 2.2: lâ ilâha illâ allâh – 'The Miscarriage'
Chapter 2.1: lâ ilâha illâ allâh
Chapter 1 : Allah-hoo Akbar
Still reading.
Posted by: BenJaMunPrime | Monday, November 07, 2011 at 01:40 PM