Irrepressible lights

Matthew 5

Jesus doesn't lecture.  I suppose that goes along with the understatement.  (I once read an interview with a poet who called the Sermon on the Mount "one jazzy number," and while I was initially bugged by that patronizing I'll admit that it is captivating for its brevity and punch.)  He doesn't directly state we need to have these qualities; he simply states that those who do have them gain the greatest blessings available.  They are another version of "you reap what you sow."  In other vocabulary they are called karma.  I'll focus on two of them.

The meek will inherit the earth - What does this mean exactly?  I think it means that in the end, the very end, the real end, they win.  They inherit everything worth anything, what lasts forever.  And, really, if you do any kind of reading, you already trust this.  It is codified in nearly every classic storyline.  The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Les Miserables, Vanity Fair, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol (possibly all of Dickens writings), Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, Siddhartha just to name a few.  It isn't that bad things don't happen, or even that they don't die in the end, but that, once all of the dust settles, they are what shines, what gives the whole story meaning.

And children's literature is rife with meek characters, probably because they are the only personalities with whom children can truly relate.  Winnie the Pooh, Frog and Toad, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlotte's Web, Narnia, The Velveteen Rabbit, The Ugly Duckling all celebrate meekness.  Whether it is in day to day silliness or overcoming some kind of peril, that innate goodness and humility is what sees us through to the final page and what gives those characters luster and their readers lasting hope.

The thing with these promises (that those who are like A receive A in return) is that they are generally unseen and, for a large part, delayed.  To believe in them in the first place, one would have to be meek.

The pure in heart will see God -

I met Diana at a church activity for single adults when I was 19. It was some kind of awful dinner/dance, and she was sitting at a table with a girl from my high school (a girl who'd always made me cringe with her nasally whine).  The girl introduced her and then, as soon as she thought Diana wasn't listening, made it clear that she only brought her because her mom had promised Diana's mom and oh yeah, she has a brain tumor, that's why she's kind of wacko.

I liked Diana from the get-go.  Turned out she loved black and white movies and had a mad crush on all the leading men (though her favorite was Cary Grant while mine was Jimmy Stewart).  She easily erupted in a fit of giggles and said whatever popped into her head.  While she was less than steady on her feet at times and occasionally carried herself as if something were about to come unhinged, she was more fun than anyone there, and pretty soon we were palling around.  Her nephew found old photographs of movie stars, and we went to the nearest copy center to xerox our favorites, then framed them.  Her copy of Cary Grant sat for years just above the kitchen sink so she could see him every time she got a drink of water.

We went to my first opera together, me in a wine-colored velvet dress I'd splurged on in a boutique in Bozeman, Montana and Diana in a lemon yellow satin number with flowers.  Her mother took a picture of us in front of their mantle before we left.  Arms around each other and smiling. Diana and her mother lived exotically to someone who lived a simple small-town life.  Once they invited me over for dinner and we ate homemade waffles with ice cream on top.  They even had family property: a cluster of cabins on the lakefront of Bear Lake, outfitted with the softest beds, full kitchens, and every kind of entertainment imaginable.  One night,  we sat around the table wearing funny hats and dipped the fleshy ends of a steamed artichoke in melted butter.  It was the first time I'd ever eaten artichoke, and I don't think it's ever tasted as good as it did that night. And I still have a picture of us in front of the lilac bush that grew beside the cabins.

With all the fun we had, there was a slow unraveling that started happening.

One night we went to a concert at the university.  As campuses are, the concert hall was on one end and public parking on the other.  Because of traffic, I had to park across the street, and we hurried across and up Old Main Hill to get there in time.  Either the concert went too late or we'd been sitting in cramped seats too long or the flock of people exiting with us was unnerving for her, but getting Diana back to the car was an ordeal.  Her legs wouldn't work right.  They jerked out from underneath her as if they weren't her legs at all, as if she were a puppet and the puppeteer was having fun with her strings.  I had to brace her against myself, with my arm around her, and by the time we reached the road, I wasn't sure if we could make it. As soon as the crosswalk light turned, we stepped out. On our left was a stream of headlights waving off into the darkness.  In my memory, they are like pearls floating in a vast black.  And I felt as if we were crossing a bridge of sorts, rickety and long and hemmed in by distant but irrepressible lights.  

When we finally made it to the car, I was exhausted, and by the time I got home, deeply rattled.  Outside all of the silliness and laughter, it was the first time I'd realized that something was really wrong with Diana.

A handful of years later when I was living in a different city, her mom called and asked me if I could watch Diana while she attended a funeral.  I knew her health had started to collapse, but I was unprepared for the person I found.  I awkwardly changed her diaper at my apartment while praying that my roommates wouldn't walk in.  I'd planned to get a chocolate shake and chat, but she barely talked and couldn't hold the shake, spilling it all over my seatbelt and passenger seat.  I used all the napkins wiping down the front of her shirt.  I don't think she even knew it was me. Later, we sat at my kitchen table, and she lay her head down and laughed a long time at nothing.

I don’t know what qualifies a pure heart, couldn't give a definition, but I know that part of it has to do with keeping your eyes open.  Maybe it means we are looking for God, everywhere.  In the wake of all the dailiness and in those difficult moments when a hard reality can no longer be held at bay and in the slow death of what we love.  And maybe it is the pure in heart that keep their eyes open, so that they see him not only when he shows up with all the angels of heaven but that they saw him there all along, in all of the confusion and unfairness.  

I'm not saying I did then.  It was a lonely afternoon and a hard one.  But I could have.  Because in the times I've seen her since then, I've felt something I don't feel around anyone else but my own children.  A kind of ache. A pull.  A feeling that something utterly holy is there, in front of me, if I just have the right eyes to see.