THERE'S NOTHING i CAN DO
and there was a moment last night where my heart was struck- i bolted from the dinner table, i panicked...i was negating emotion all day...and then i returned to my room where the news was waiting. he is dead. he has breathed his last and in that last breath heard the cry of Psalm 139.

my professor is dead

i sit in silence

i sit in silence with friends...i suck the air into my lungs and there is nothing i can do

silence

remembering makes me angry- there was a life taken today

i dismiss my friends, i read poetry, i grab a candle and holden evening prayer book because that reminds me of my community...and my lonely voice rings forth in Miller Chapel.

In the stars that grace the darkness, in the blazing sun of dawn,
in the light of peace and wisdom, we can hear your quiet song.
Love that fills the night with wonder, love that warms the weary soul,
Love that bursts all chains asunder, set us free and make us whole

I return to my room and take the time to reflect on the emotions of this week...

And as I now am thrust into Sunday morning, thrust into standing before the church and representing Princeton Seminary...i am well aware that the woman standing before the congregation this day is a woman whose life stands interconnected with the sufferings of humanity...in full realization that there is nothing she can do that the cross has not already done.


and there settles an unexpected peace.
it is as unexpected as the fiasco of the cross in our lives

it is a peace that speaks through the scorch of suffering

A life is sucked from this earth

my soul sits splintered,
by the word of the cross

and yet in this pain I cannot deny the disturbance of peace
the glory of my soul invaded by the interrupting freedom to be restless in death


at 12:30pm yesterday he was taken...amber's soul continues to touch mine in her words...i heard the tears of jon as he listened to me cry and fumble over what to say...i heard amber's voice on the other line...oh my brothers and sisters...may joanna's heart be held up in prayer...

And in your presence we surrender. We surrender to what we know. We surrender to ourselves. As the night sets in, as the darkness draws near- all that is me is terminated. The cross abides. And as the chaos of humanity continues to persist in it’s clanging gongs and symbols...the cross abides. And as the very breath we attempt is refused to our bodies...the cross abides. We surrender to the cross.

O that I may never sit well with death!
For foolish is he who looks on death
And supposes that he ought to do
This or that. Let me live
In the struggles and the tormenting firey hell
Of my own confusion!

The Benediction

It is now my turn, my child. It is my turn to sit with the callings of your troubled heart and send you out into the world. You are our gift to the 21st century. And with the words of my mother, I am reminded of the love I come from, and the love with which I am sent into the world...I return to my community this weekend...I leave from one home and go to the home of my sufferings...
And I continue to reflect:

I sat next to you. Your silver coffee canister sitting off to the side of your papers and pen. An air of silence settled upon our hearts, as we averted our gazes. Your eyes beckoned to us- look up and see the cross. My head lifts, my eyes meet yours as a tear rolls down my cheek. Your tears pour forth from the windows of your soul. We breathe in, we breathe out. We sit at your feet, we sit at the foot of the cross. We sit, we hold white flags high to disease. We surrender to ourselves, we see you. What can I do? What can I do? The glory tries again. It seeps into my pores as the air into my lungs. Yet all the answers I can utter are in vain. They are in glory. Help me to despair, O God.

What can I do for you now? Now you stand and stare death in the face. You have unfinished work, you have thriving love, you have seven students at your feet. To breathe the words back to you that you once spoke to me. To speak to you in the way that you taught me to speak. This is what I must do.

She sings my heart

I took some time today. I took some time to be silent...to sleep. I was still and I knew that you were God. And yet when I awoke the reality of the pain remained fresh. I woke to the patterns of life, I woke to the burden of sufferings...I woke to the abiding presence of the cross.
The community at Princeton Theological Seminary has amazed me. Students gathering with me to pray, to cry, to listen. Students who just met me, who don't know me...students taking time to ask...studnets simply smiling at me, looking at me and not needing to ask. As I long for my community at Valpo, I am held up in love and prayer by my community at PTS...

And as I have been longing for Valpo, longing for the place where I can link into those students who walked with me...who cried with me...who sought truth with me...I have re-discovered Amber. Entering into the blogging world again today has brought me to the gift of her words. She sings my heart. She rose early so many mornings last fall, she has seen the lines on Dr. Truemper's face, she has heard his words...felt the hot tears roll down her cheek as we struggled together in the darkness...I cry out to those other members of my class. Anton I think especially of you as you travel far from here...facing new beginnings, pervading questions, seeking to aid humanity in the shadows of your doubt and in the knowledge of the sufferings of Dr. Truemper. O my partners in glory and my fellow failures! You are each present with me in my thoughts, in this fiasco. May we hold each other in love and prayer...in the shadows of suffering. May the peace of Christ be with you all...

Crux enim fiasco est

I sat once in your office. It was a rainy afternoon and the outcry of glory engulfed the very cavity of my heart as I longed to hold on to anything that was of and in me. I surrounded my mind with images found in glances around your space, noticing book titles, pictures, pens, sticky notes, and the lines on your face. Those lines that bore witness to a soul un-settled, a soul stirred at the very core of existence by the fiasco of the cross. A soul crying out to seven students who gathered weekly to enter into the darkness. To enter into the darkness of you. To enter into the darkness of cancer. Of the cells rapidly multiplying and overtaking your physical being. The cells that threatened invincibility. The cells that threatened our time together. The cells that threatened your work. The cells that threatened your family. The cells that could single-handedly rip you from all that we know. And there was your eyes. I asked my question, fumbling over my words, always so full of questions and no answers...and as I continued to struggle to hold on to something in my life- something that made sense- something that mattered, something that I could do, someone I could be, answers to my questions, answers to my questions, answers to my questions...your loving gaze fixed upon my eyes and as your soul stood tormented before me you spoke of the cross, the chaos, the darkness of calvary, the crucified Christ, the fiasco... and there in the shadows of the cross you stood, standing only in the hope that God loves you for Christ’s sake and will never let you go. And there I sat- healthy, young, vibrant, confused, seeking, searching, trying, failing. What then? What then shall I do? At the foot of the cross is all despair, loss, suffering, fear, anxiety, anger, depression, hate, deception, lies, a hellish reality that I cannot control. And there in that moment, you wrote it down. You wrote it, the sparkle in your eye, you handed it to me. And I looked down at the word: Freedom. It pierced like a knife. The only freedom of this life is the freedom of the suffering and death on the cross. And in that suffering and death I am set free. Free to be part of Christ’s body. Free to be in doubt, pain, fear, hate, anger, anxiety, depression, deception, lies, loss, the hellish reality that God loves me for Christ’s sake and will never let me go. The only hope. The only freedom. The only reality: failure. I fail to understand and as I fail to understand I am swept up by the cross, contained only in its fiasco, as a part of Christ’s body. In Christ I am free.

Here I am

Perhaps it's the daunting task of attempting to work through the cross. Perhaps it's the inadequacy I sense in myself. Whatever the case I sit at my desk, and... now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened(e.e. cummings).
So it is at this time, almost at the mid point of my first semester at seminary, that I choose to continue in this exploration of the cross, of human suffering, of that which ties humanity together.
My professor is dying.
My professor, who walked through the idea of human suffering, the cross, the exploration of the cancer that runs ravenous throughout his body...my professor. My professor who looked at my questioning tear-filled eyes as I tried to wrestle with the sufferings of his soul- to make sense of the injustice of death, to try and hold on to something, anything I could do to understand...my mentor. In the caverns of his eyes were fear and pain and love and care...my elder.
And in the face of death I ask who is more adequate than I to explore the daunting cross? Who is more adequate than the whole of the human race...who suffers together...to live in the shadow of the cross, embraced by the only hope that there we are not alone?
Therefore, I continue to grieve, to remember, to reflect...and yet to begin the exploration of this thin tradition, the theologia crucis, the theological lens that the cross provides. As the water fills his lungs and threatens to wash away his life, I am reminded of the waters of my baptism- calling me to live in Christ, in the cross. We stand together in the shadows of death and life.
I will continue to submit pieces of my memories at Valparaiso University, scraps of a recent past, glimpses of moments with my professor...of moments that tied me to my community. They are raw, they are fresh, they cry out to the hope of the cross...the hope that God loves me for Christ's sake, and will never let me go.