Atonement
Autumn, last year
God struggles with God’s self
I sit in the eye of this God storm
The flood waters rise to baptize by drowning
and God’s super hurricane force breath blows everything down
Electrical fire from the sky, thundering bombs, an avalanche of fire down the holy mountain that is the sky
just a day in the life of a planet that slowly becomes uninhabitable for humans
I sit in God’s eye with my eyes closed, in the darkness of my ignorance, as the wind bangs on the windows, as if the macrocosmos is trying to crash into my microcosmos.
You hide my soul in the cleft of a rock and cover me there with your hand.
My hands reach up toward the ceiling and the heavens, toward everything that is out of reach, reaching out to the out of reach
This is the posture used in religious icons, the iconic posture of prayer or of an infant who wants to be lifted up and held by the protector provider
Grasping the ungraspable spirit, as if you could hold your breath in your hands, but your breath escapes to the unlimited and leaves you gasping, not grasping
You can’t help it. Your brain stem demands that you breathe and perform the rituals of staying alive.
How ultimate can one be,
if the Absolute is absolutely out of reach by definition, and ungraspable?
Evening of the same day.
I had just clocked out when you called
You are in a truck going up and down hills in Alabama
and the signal was off and on but I hear the gist of it —
lesions, biopsy, mri, pet scan, waiting to hear from the doctor again
I think you said you don’t want the treatment
It’s in the Lord’s hands
Heaven looks beautiful in Alabama
You’re beside me, you say
Fading in and out
I’m beside you
What should I do?
I get on the boat
The harbor is full of fog
I email this prayer/thought to myself, to you, God, and everyone
It’s raining when I get off the boat at the Battery
I try to keep my phone dry as I take a picture of the Statue, a gray vertical in the gray fog and message it to you
To you, God, everyone, and myself.
Liberty to the captives.
Talk to you later.
Past family gatherings were spoiled by political arguments, so now when they get together for a wedding or a funeral, they try not to talk about politics.
I post my opinions on my blog — newcleanblog.blogspot.com — and on social media. They already know what I think.
After Betty was diagnosed with cancer she and I stopped arguing about Trump.
September 15, this year
Betty is dying in Alabama and I need to decide whether to go there this week or next week.
She called and sounded like her breathing was more labored than before. She had a scary dream about being abducted by an intruder who took her to “an undisclosed location” in Sheri’s words. She had my second niece tell me about the dream. The abductor poured a liquid on her and was going to light a match.
They interpreted this as the work of an evil medicine man they know. Some of her Seminole friends seek to protect her from the evil medicine. I did not say what my first thought was. If she is under the influence of a bad medicine man, it’s the Alabama “prophet and preacher” she now follows.
Who will protect her from being conned by a fake prophet who supports Trump and who says that I am doing Satan’s work by being involved in a church that is woke and pro-choice and welcomes queer folk.
I had a fantasy, briefly, of flying down to Warrior and confronting the fake prophet and casting out his demons, or something.
But I think the dream is about death and fear of death and the fire of cremation.
I send a link to the second chapter of Jonah, the prayer, to Betty and my nieces. I read it as a prayer for deliverance from fear of death.
I tell them that it is good medicine and I suggest they read Jonah’s prayer out loud:
“I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.”
I thought of this passage because it would soon be the Day of Atonement and the book of Jonah is traditionally read on that day.
Jonah is the reluctant prophet who was called to reach out to a nation that had lost its way. The story is about the possibility of such a nation undergoing a collective change of heart and mind and the power and promise of divine grace. Jonah doesn’t want to deliver this prophetic message of liberation and flees in the opposite direction in a boat, but God sends a storm. Jonah is blamed because of his disobedience to God and is tossed overboard and swallowed by a fish.
Maybe Jonah came to mind because of my own reluctance to go to Alabama where I might meet their preacher and cause trouble. My youngest niece had created a scene in their church, disrupting the service when they claimed public schools were trying to change the gender of children and so forth. She is a public school teacher and her two kids are students. She spoke out, gave the preacher the finger, and walked out. I applaud her. Betty told me she was proud of her daughter’s independence.
If I went to see my sister, I would also want to confront the preacher and tell the congregation what I think. Is this really the time for that? Betty is on her death bed and I think she’s scared and I wanted to send her Jonah’s prayer about overcoming fear of death.
“The waters closed in over me;
the deep surrounded me;
weeds were wrapped around my head
at the roots of the mountains.
I went down to the land
whose bars closed upon me forever;
yet you brought up my life from the Pit.”
Meanwhile, a powerful storm was approaching Florida and the night before hurricane Milton hit I had my own terrifying dream. I fall into infinite space, infinite nothing, and I’m fall into this pit for eternity until I panic and pull myself out and wake myself up, terrified.
I lay in bed and think about think about my dream for a while.
Isn’t infinity a mental construction? Isn’t limitation also a mental construction?
Anyway, I’m not ready to surrender to the void. I have to continue to live for a while longer. I go back to sleep.
The phone wakes me up.
My sister’s name is on the screen.
Betty Luckey.
It’s my niece Libby calling from Alabama. She says Betty is in an emergency room for stomach pains.
Mom isn’t expected to live through the night, Libby says.
I’m not surprised because I just dreamed about this.
Libby asks me if I have anything to say to Betty, because she can hear me on the speaker phone.
I think I hear Betty breathing.
I tell my sister that I love her and I know she loves me. I tell Libby I love her too. I tell them I love all of them and that is all I have to say because love is infinite.
My nephew was in Florida sitting out the hurricane that had now reached the Eastern coast. I call him in the morning after the storm has passed. I’m relieved I get through. He hasn’t heard any updates about Betty. They got through the storm OK. Their power went out and came back on. We don’t sleep, he says. Two tornadoes touched down within a hundred yards of his son’s house and killed some people.
We talked while I walked to work. I said it would be strange to be in a hurricane while waiting to hear how his mother was doing. We didn’t talk about the election.
Betty made it through the night and through the next night. My nieces kept me informed by text messages. There is a tear in Betty’s GI tract and they are waiting to see if she’ll have surgery and also waiting for the doctor to OK pain medication. I don’t really know what’s going on. I know she’s in terrible pain.
Saturday afternoon while I’m at the store I get a text message. I go outside to be on a group call with my sister. The whole family is listening in. Betty is heavily sedated, but they think she can hear me. I’m talking to her and her children and I repeat what I said two nights ago about love being infinite.
“We will not die, we will be changed,” I add.
I’m quoting ancient wisdom literature. I know this is vague and probably doesn’t assure us of what we want to know, which is that some things don’t change.
But life is change and love is infinite, as if I know what I’m talking about. And as if infinite anything never scared me.
This last call with my sister happens to be the Day of Atonement.
That night a final phone call awakens me from the deepest pit of deep sleep.
My sister has gone to heaven and is with the ancestors.
Jesus
Betty is gone
posted by newcleanwars at 6:47 AM
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