Weary

"We live as though we were doomed to die on the morrow, but we build houses as though we were going to live forever in the world." Jerome, Epistolae

Is there no rest for the weary? Like phantoms we move through a surreal haze. Sometimes living is like grasping water. You always end up with less than you anticipated.

Lately it would seem time is more short than it is long. Too many days have been shortened. Memories will not be made, and for the young, faces will fade. Even memories flee if one does not turn the page.

Is there a rest for the people of God? It is an old question but today my eschatology fails to sustain me. This river has about run dry. Thank God for widows, was she not God's form of salvation for Elijah? His well had run dry from words that now haunted him. Florida Scott Maxwell once said, "You need only claim th events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done ... you are fierce with reality." Yet, what does one do when reality becomes unmanagable? Grasping the mystery of Christ requires one embrace the unmanagable. That reality is always larger than oneself. In a world full of consequences it would seem one is so inconsequential. There is a tale to be told. Unfortunately it keeps spiralling, or might I say splintering into many. The strands have become insurmountable. Like some tangled fishing line, beyond repair. Sometimes you just got to cut the line.

It was Dante who said,
"Midway on our life's journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell
about those woods is hard - so tangled and rough..."

I suppose Dante was made of stouter stuff than I for he determines to 'tell what I saw." I have no tale to tell. Only that I have found solace in silence. A silence that is far too rare. This is both encouraging and discouraging. Encouraging in that there is a place of beauty, perhaps rest. Let it be said in the desert silence I heard (even if it was in the distance, that voice calling in the midst of broken canyons, searching you out). Discouraging in that it is rare. Like scattered showers in late summer. They keep falling on somebody elses field.

So, I ask the question for all those lost among the arroys of life, turning to the voice which echoes off canyon walls. "Is there any rest for the weary?" Please don't patronize me. His word reverberates in my strained soul; "Keep the Sabbath." Haven't you been told? "Only losers quit." Sola Gracia, WHB