It came unexpectedly
much quicker and quieter than I was prepared for –
the black hole, the dark night
the freefall - round and round,
over and over - no ground beneath my feet
no sense to it all.
Instead of the usual certitude
doubts filled my mind
and nothing but loneliness filled every cell of my body.
Nothing was real.
Nothing was settled.
Nothing was true.
Nothing was holy.
There was no friend to walk with me,
no one coming on a white horse to rescue me,
just the senseless freefall into black nothingness.
I didn’t realize it was Gethsemane.
This was too black to be a holy place,
too empty to be so full,
too senseless to compare with His dark night.
“He began to be grieved and agitated.”
Sorrow-full,
sadness filling every pore,
a sense of loss,
regret,
disappointment,
hopelessness
finality.
And the olive sits under the weight of the press -
for how long?
For me, it was five years.
An eternity separated from my God,
lost as lost can be,
the fairy tale over,
nothing left but the falling, the darkness, the void.
Is there any oil?
Who knew half the weight of the olive is oil.
There is oil,
but sometimes it takes a long time to press an olive.
As I painted this morning, I thought of a number of friends who seem to be going through a "pressing" of their own; they are in freefall. My prayers are for you this morning. No one knows when it's coming, no one knows how they'll respond to the pressing, and no one knows when the darn thing will ever end. It feels so good to feel the earth press beneath your feet as the freefall begins coming to an end. My prayer is that you'll just hang on until you land. There will be arms to catch you.
No comments:
Post a Comment