An Effective Word

Sorrow is so woven through us, so much a part of our souls, of at least any understanding of our souls that we are able to attain, that every experience is dyed with its color. This is why, even in moments of joy, part of that joy is the seams of ore that are our sorrow. They burn darkly and beautifully in the midst of joy, and they make joy the complete experience that it is. But they still burn.

From “My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer” by Christian Wiman

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Dear Alex,

Sorrow burns, darkly and beautifully, Christian Wiman tells us. He knows, his cancer burning within him.

On this eve of New Year, our experiences and expenses of old are flamed in flesh: how we have lived in this passing year burns and spurns lives. I feel the scorch of joy, the grieving ash. Cancer has her countdown too.

What is God doing now? And how can we join Him?

I thought of these 2 burning questions while roaming in the library yesterday. On windows, the December rain pelted as sparks of fury.

The biggest quest in life is going to burn you up most deliciously.

Counting up to the New Year, we broil in the chill and promise of starlights - here, now to burn up darkly, beautifully.

Yours, Kate

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Dear Kate,

You wrote your piece 5 days ago, but I am responding only now, well into a new year, 3 days already used up, for good or bad, willy-nilly.

You again picked a quote from Wiman, the same book.  I take that as you being impressed.  As to me I am transfixed by the language and took it in small bites and chewed them over, days on end.  I don't need to hope for the slim volume to never end: it doesn't.  Wiman's words are living, and they will live over and over in me, insofar as my life regenerates, even in its often wicked and surely dying ways.

Bad language, I can't stand it.  I am too old to pretend I can.  I'd protest more vociferously now.  A week before this past Christmas I got into a big and really rather ridiculous argument with my son, over what I called the often navel-gazing language of contemporary Christian music.  It's as if I intended on picking a fight because no one cares to pick any.  "Here is a man who would not take it anymore."

I want to write more but I must leave this keyboard now.  I've been working really hard at my new job and now have this neck pain, nothing serious but it could get worse if I don't pay attention to the protest.  The ergonomics of our body, the shape of our soul, "how intolerable bright the morning is where we who are alive and remain, walk lifted up, carried forward by an effective word."

Happy New Year.

Yours, Alex