Realisations and revelations - Easter Saturday space: avoiding bleak, barren reality

Realisations and revelations - Easter Saturday space: avoiding bleak, barren reality

We dialogue, my grieving friends and I. In conversations built on long established trust and safe conversations and revelations. In writings arising in depthed-meaning, and seeking after understanding and language to describe the indescribable, the unimaginable and the unspoken. 

This journey in grieving throws up all kinds of images, questions, metaphors, unimaginable realisations and revelations.

Brokenness ... descent (into hell/Sheol) Is it real? ... Or is there a divine version of brokenness which somehow is qualitatively different from human brokenness? Is brokenness entry into darkness, or simply a step to a new wholeness? Is it Marks’ cry of dereliction ... or Johns cry of triumph? Or is the triumph, the recovery of light, only possible because of the dereliction? Is it possible IN the darkness? 

This piece is triggered in those conversations, questions and meditations ...

In the dark place I sit
Not willingly
For like those long drawn out twilights
It crept up on me

Sometimes,
the darkness lifts
like the gentle arrival of dawn

It is not that there is not real darkness ...
an Arctic summer kind of greyness 
where the light is dimmed 
but never extinguished.

Spiritually
it is akin to enduring Good Friday darkness
while watching over ones shoulder 
to the comfort and conviction 
of Easter Sunday’s dawn release.

Mysteriously come, 
and just as mysteriously gone
it is a cycle that is almost ordinary,
Not inconsequential ...
just not too far from normal!
It rises in my heart and mind ...
and in my spirit!

Or so it seems!

And so the exhortations have been ... 
personally:
“Buck up, things could be worse!”
“Light awaits at the end of the tunnel!”

And spiritually ...
“We are resurrection people!”
“Light has already overcome your darkness!”
“Have stronger/more faith/trust!”
After all It IS completed, 
fulfilled,
accomplished!
Jesus said so ... from the cross, no less!                                                       (Gospel of John 19.30)

But ...
there are other darknesses ...

Bleak
suddenly overwhelming
crushing dreams
snuffing out imagination
any sense of future
seemingly endless 

No shades of greying here,
but like the solitary confinement cell at Port Arthur
behind a closed and locked door ... 
ears attuned ... yet only utter silence
eyes adjusted ...yet only total darkness ... 
no chance to endure 
all hope crushed, 
sanity lost ...

Resurrection light ... unimaginable!
Resurrection life ... untenable!

Where, then, is faith?
In this space am I a faith-Zombie?
A witness only to failure to trust, 
no longer witnessing 
to my own renewed 
and resurrected humanity in Christ?

Some would have me believe that!

Some have politely hinted such!

Others, just said it out aloud!

Once,
that diminished me, 
added greater burdens, 
bound me more strongly into that darkness 
and condemned me to my despair.

The darkness was a frightful place
a dwelling place for demons
a habitation in the shape of ???

But there is another Scripture
closer to the still raw memories
speaking out of imminence of that darkness, 
loss of hope, 
crushed dreams, 
and loss of everything meaningful 
and loving!

There is a time between that crucified hope 
and the renewal of unexpected light ...
There is an unrequited darkness 
in which the dream-crushed 
and living-dead exist ... 
That light and sound proofed darkness  
is from the blotted out sun on Good Friday 
until light’s early dawning 
at the garden gravesite
that first Easter Day!

Expected? ... Absolutely not!

Shocking? ... Definitely!

Frightening? … Terrifying!

And so, 
for us living-in-the-light-of-resurrection believers ... 
our enthusiasm 
and self-centred delight in the light “overcoming the darkness” ... 
becomes a denial of a life-space reality 
where many dwell.

For us ... the many ...
in families, 
communities,
congregations ... 
nations …
Easter Saturday is a real space, 
a dwelling place for genuine, 
desperate people
who long for light, 
who do not know 
or cannot imagine 
what life in light might even be like.

Yet there is hope …
when that darkness is recognised 
and acknowledged
There is comfort …
when my/their reality is named, 
authenticated
and not denied 
simplified,
or its power to dominate minimised 
by some kind of reductionist cover-up 
in the name of true trust 
and ‘real’ faithfulness.

And perhaps ...
that simple acknowledgement, 
that affirmation of reality 
without judgement 
is, itself, 
a kind of light!

“The people who walk in darkness ... on them the light shines ...”                                   (The Prophet Isaiah 9)

It is hearing in the depths ...
in the total silence
and unimaginable darkness ...
a whisper ... “Do not be afraid, it is I!”
In the darkness ...
In the silence ...
With me, 
with you, 
with everyone who is here ...

And another name for that, 
surely ... 
is Gospel ...
Good News!                                                                                                                                          ©️ amf20200124

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