would I catch flame (a synchroblog with addie zierman)

It wasn’t that long ago that I came to college with my bags packed and my mind full of theology I didn’t understand. I’d grown up in old rhythms: liturgy on Sundays and Eucharist like manna, a provision from heaven I didn’t know how to need. I grew up so desperately hungry for understanding of God that I read more than I could stomach: Catholic books and Eastern Orthodox theology, books with complicated titles. I talked big about ideas with all the confidence of a teenager who learned the word “eschatological” three days ago and wants to use it, wants to fill the world over with what she thinks she knows about God.

I grew up Christian but thought I could grow up as the next C.S. Lewis, write the apology for my generation, tell the world why it was logical and reasonable and rational and right to be what I was. I grew up Christian, learned the habits of prayer and the way that the seasons change in the church – preparation to celebration to growing to Pentecost and again and again how I tried to understand too much about too much, cram heaven into my head while I still didn’t know how to French braid my hair.

That summer of going to college I thought I’d figured out what it meant to be Christian, to live out a life of faithfulness: it meant knowing the answers and complicating them, tracing the shapes of ideas into journals and class discussions and making my heart so safe in the right theology that it might never need to wonder about the presence of the love of God.

I drove up to the dorm and I unloaded my laundry basket of things – a few picture frames, books, notebooks and pens in neat piles, and waited.

I waited that whole year to feel right. I waited to hear God the way the people around me kept hearing Him, the way they closed their eyes in worship and put their hands above their heads to the songs by the bands I didn’t know existed (but I could sing a hymn, and I was proud of that, thinking I’d escape God into the warm and safe arms of the old ornate words and the incense and the icons). I waited for the moments where I would finally understand what falling in love with God felt like, finally make myself read my Bible and have quiet time in the mornings the way, it turned out, youth group taught you. And I hadn’t gone to youth group and I hadn’t played the Chris Tomlin CDs and maybe I hadn’t done much falling in love with God, I thought, as I walked to and from class trying to fit my theology around the worry that I might never catch fire.

But the fire of Pentecost can descend at a moment, like ice, like clear water, like dust that spins you and settles you and unsettles you again. Like Eucharist manna – the provision of mystery, in mystery.

I was in a parking lot, on a Sunday morning, tears tracing the indents my dimples make in my face whenever I move.

Then I was in a still Chapel late at night, the kind of stillness that bends towards a heavenly silence.

Then I was in a blue TV room in Washington DC learning that the very word Jesus was power.

Then, and again and again now – I take what is unto me the very Body and Blood, the mystery provision, and I fall in love with God who teaches my heart how to make room for Him, not the words about Him.

And the fire is small and flickers daily. And the Spirit descends. And I catch flame.

Love,
hilary

I’m linking up with Addie’s synchroblog to celebrate her book release of When We Were on Fire. I can’t wait to read it (because her words are good words, food-to-the-soul words).

to save you

It is too dark for me when I walk inside. I immediately regret that I have come into this stillness, my skirt with its ripped silk lining announcing my arrival with a soft rustle. I can’t see who is in front or behind me. The twelve candles, the twelve flickering, bright disciple-symbols dance and snap to my right. I sink into the hard wood of the pew and wish I was driving home singing to country music.

It is too quiet for me. I can hear every distracting thought rumbling towards my mind – that there is so much work to do when I get home, not enough time, that I’ve eaten not enough or too much, that this or that difficult question has been raised in a conversation with a friend. I shuffle my feet, feel my fingers clutching at the rim of the pew in front of me. The wood is worn smooth from the sweat of prayer and impatience; and I wonder how many hands before me have regretted coming heree, this place where a Spirit hovers over us, protecting, keeping watch.

Tenebrae means darkening shadows, I read, and this service is about the disappearance of the light.

I’m more afraid than I have been in a long time. We stand, think the Lord’s Prayer in silence. I can feel myself close my ribcage, catching my breath over, and over. Tonight, One who was obedient goes up to be offered for me, the disobedient, and I am afraid. I am afraid of Him.

The cantors begin. The notes are not sweet but searing. They land, each one, it seems, closer and closer to my pew. Their voices lament with Jeremiah and I try not to listen, but in the silence nothing else can be heard except these words – O Lord, nothing but these words –

“You will flee, and I will go to be offered up for you.”

Candle after candle is snuffed out. Light after light disappears from the altar, and still it is darker, and still, my soul clings to the idea that perhaps I am not one of these twelve bright, brief flames. Perhaps I am faithful to Him, perhaps I know better, perhaps, perhaps…

“You will flee, Hilary.”

The Spirit whispers. A rib seems to snap, a fleeting, sharp pain in the middle of my chest. No, Lord. It couldn’t be. More candles go out.

And Jesus says again: “You will flee, and I will go to be offered up for you.”

We stand. My heart pounds in my chest, and I am on the run from that voice – I am fleeing from the truth that I have been the first to flee from Him – but there is nowhere to go. Where can I go?

They hide the Christ candle. The sanctuary is finally, utterly dark. Tenebrae means darkening shadows.

A gun sounds behind the altar. A symbol, I know, of earth and heaven torn apart by this death, but I stop breathing and begin to cry.

I sob through the silence. I sob through the slow return of the One candle. I sob and sob, tears in my hair and fogging up my glasses and I am breaking apart, because the same voice that said, “You will flee, Hilary,” has just whispered,

“And so, Hilary, I will tear earth and heaven apart to save you.”

A gun sounds, the Christ candle returns. A gun sounds, I sob and sob and sob, for my flight, for His salvation. I whisper back to Him – O Lord, I need saving. 

He tears heaven and earth apart to save us.

To save me.

I leave the church still in tears.

Love,
hilary