Resurrection

Mary Karr, a writer I devoured this summer like sour candy, sucking on it long enough to make my cheeks ache and then chomping on the last sticky words until I swallowed them, barely pausing to breathe before I reached for another puckery handful, was recently interviewed for the American, a Jesuit magazine. In the interview she talks about seeing God where and when she wants to see Him as opposed to the notion of seeing Him in all things. Much as I love her, and even though I get that sometimes we have to be ready for God to be able to see and hear Him, I disagree with her about not seeing Him everywhere.

Even when I'm not ready to acknowledge or talk with God, I am aware of His presence on earth and in my life. Even in the midst of all the fallout this summer, I still felt Him, but it has been very hard for me to go to church. When i decided to divorce, I attended a new church for the first time, one week after telling my then husband that I just couldn't do it any more. He went with me that day, to the Easter Service at Plymouth Congregational Church, and we heard the pastor speak of being Easter people. He asked the congregation to consider what resurrection was occurring in our lives: what was dying so that we may have new life?

I have thought of that sermon at least once a week since I first heard it, and have listened to it online a few times as well. There was a divinity in the message, a timeliness, a truth and application to my own life that could not have been anything other than God's own presence and voice.

I used to feel stupid talking about my faith. The academic in me, and the intellectual friends I have, have been known to scoff at such open declarations of faith in something many deem intangible. I have had several friends ask me for proof. That sermon, for me, is proof, just as the clacking and singing birds in my trees are proof, just as the sun setting over my yard is proof, just as you, dearest friend, are proof. The resurrection occurring each day in my life is my ability to be born each day in the light of love, to be certain that happiness is my birthright, and to be open to the presence of God in all things.

Descending Theology: The Resurrection, Mary Karr

From the far star points of his pinned extremities,
cold inched in--black ice and blood ink--
till the hung flesh was empty. Lonely in that void
even for pain, he missed his splintered feet,
the human stare buried in his face.
He ached for two hands made of meat
he could reach to the end of.
In the corpse's core, the stone fist of his heart

Began to bang on the stiff chests door,
and breath spilled back into that battered shape. Now
it's your limbs he longs to flow into--
from the sunflower center in your chest
outward--as warm water
shatters at birth, rivering every way.

From Sinners Welcome (HarperCollins, 2006)