Adam Names The Rain

If you, tonight, stand outside on the path from Howard to the fountain, the snow spins around the Raley spire.  There is no direct, causal relationship between my standing and the snow spinning, but if I'd walked much faster I would have missed it.

This week the Bison theme requires I write about rejoicing.  Sad, because, somehow, it's always easier to sing a dirge.  

Last year was my dirge.  I have the journals to prove it.  I filled them with prayers, mourning, an acute feeling of distance between heaven and earth.  Melodramatic?

I remember standing in the alley behind the GC, looking up at the stars, and thinking come speedily, O Lord.  

There's still mourning; still a lot of pent up, post-adolescent angst churning.  But there was a day of slow-change.

I remember the November rain.  I tucked my journal underneath my sweater, walking briskly.  I sat at a painted-white, metal table under the edge of the library roof.  In angst I began, Mark these cowardly hands.  They seek to build what they have long forgotten, if ever knowing at all...then a pause.  

Then a glance upward.  Wet leaves.  The smell, the sound of rain.  

Yet, I wrote, and so soon, why be so self-preoccupied?

Do you not see, poor soul, how God has sent this rain for such a day?  As you come nearer tears, mark instead wet leaves and this thirst-quenched earth.  Cast your eye upon the squirrels and trees, consider the birds and the thankfulness of this morning, and forget your fleeting insecurities

How fragile your flame, and how fleeting all your mind now seeks to encompass.  It will change with better food, the passing of a tooth-ache.

Cast your eyes up, not in.  Consider the steadfast love that has upheld you, that did not leave you as you were.  Trust.  Keep your mind fixed upon the hope of salvation, and your armor faith and love.

Doubt, by all means, this present course, but do not doubt his faithfulness.

Do not forget your oft repeated cry: "I want to know Christ, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of sharing in his suffering, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain to the resurrection from the dead."

Find your comfort here, in the consideration of Christ, and contemplate so great a love, so tremendous a victory.

This heart will learn to sing.  You will know, man, and so be transformed into His image.  Fear and fret not.  Through his faithfulness he will speak and his words will be of "well done."  For his word will do well in you.

Only faith working through love

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself'

For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself

And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God 

I know little about thankfulness, less about rejoicing.  I have known, however, unspeakable faithfulness.  So I hope in the unconquerable might of Grace.  Grace I have known, and know.  

I write it all here because I don't know how to write it.  Every word, then, is hope.  To write is to understand and clarify, not to conquer.  I create as creation, for words multiply, are fruitful, and fill the earth.  

Adam's charge is naming all he sees, participating in the creative act and, in so doing, coming alongside the Triune movement. 

To name is to offer back to God, in praise, the things given.  It is deep, mysterious.  In the naming, the acknowledgment, is the recognition not of my authority but of divine Grace.  I see, I name, and begin to understand that nothing is from me, but, as a priest, everything moves through me back to God in grateful exaltation.  

I patiently accept what comes, seek to understand it (right faith), and then offer it again to God (prayer).  And this, in some small way, is life.