Bleeding Tears

你說別哭
我說不哭
然後我們都流下了眼淚

 《一次幸福的機會》 

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Dear Kate,

"Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. It's Not Supposed To."  Does this statement surprise you?

I am glad to hear what I wrote to you in the last few days echoed the words of N.T. Wright here.

I talked about explaining as a way to explain things away, for which there is a word succinct and sufficient: idolatry.  Using stuffs, using God, commoditizing solutions including theology.

I talked about rationalism as a way to simultaneously explain everything and nothing, something that even the church has succumbed to, sometimes even more seriously so than their secular counterpart, exponents of ideals elusive and illusive.

I talked about crying, lament, which is not pity, not feeling sorry, especially not self-pity or a bleeding heart held up high for the world to see, but the Spirit “groaning” within us, as we feel the birth pangs of the whole creation.

I talked about a peculiar, poetic tongue to speak the unspeakable, on which a new creation can be given birth.  Prayer.

Up there, today's quote, is the final words of a Mandarin song, an end that never fails to make me cry.  Here are the words:

You say no crying
I say not me
Then comes the tears
Ours

Yours, Alex