Grief: the Prayer of Impermanence.

Because of the Logos, when Rabbouni lives within us: our bodies are the only place infinite divinity dies.  We turned our eyes to the mountains in hope of help.  It turned out that the mountains were inside us. Waiting for the redeemer made us prudent, taught us how to help ourselves until we realized the redeemer had moved inside as well.  Eventually, as Job did, we see God in our own flesh: we have a whole body worth of trauma to face, an entire psychological maze full of dark turns to befriend.  Open ears reveal that silence has a message: the stones preach in the absence of gospel-loosened tongues.  Science says that the limbic system has a message: as trauma surfaces and heals, the body preaches.  The story of salvation, and the story of your own deep healing are One.  [bxA]

Because of the Logos, when Rabbouni dies within us: grieving the ego is prayer, and prayer is grieving the ego.  The ego is a self-protective device, wielded compulsively at first, and we will learn to use it deliberately before the end.  But non-self is the seamless wedding garment.  That means confronting ego's limitations, and then giving it up.  We become like Christ: not in his miracles, but in his compassion.  Not in his mountaintop transfigurations, but in his valleys of self-emptying.  Like it or not, we are similar to each other in our grief, not our ecstasies.  This means we find Christ in the tables we flip, the tears we cry alone, the crosses we shut up and carry.  Like Christ, we hand all things, even our own divinization, over to the Father.  This isn't to eschew celebration, either.  Unmet basic human needs are rough.  Love, hunger, sin and death are all places of deep solitude. To find others in that space is an immensely quiet, completely palpable joy.  When the character of joy broadens to include our life's sorrowful elements, we find others, and what was once difficult becomes celebration.

Because of the Logos, when Rabbouni rises within us: we let go of the defensive emotions of rage and resentment and blame, with all their feigned pomp and permanence and we embrace the humble and impermanent emotions of anger, sadness, depression.  Life and death are one: and each incarnation is one dark night after another.  For me, so far, the weird reality of my own incarnation has been, as scripture calls it "a prison not made of iron."  But I'm taking pages from Joseph's book, trying to turn my confinement into an opportunity.  And eventually, like the apostles, we are so occupied with singing hymns to God that our chains fall off and every cell in our bodies opens to grant our release.

Because of the Logos, when Rabbouni ascends within us: we have enough distance on our own chaos to choose which voices we speak with.  With practice, I can be the equanimous father, watching as all that's still childish in me faces what it's afraid of.  I can turn my spirit's attention to listen to my own repressed anguish instead of ignoring it.  I can become the compassionate Son who find the bits of myself that I've marginalized or lost.  Becoming reacquainted with bits of ourselves is inevitable.  Doing shadow-work to face our own capacity--sometimes our craving--for chaos is absolutely pivotal.  Rage and evil and the demonic are out there, they're possibilities, as problematic if I am averse to them as if I'm drawn to them. So the point is just to pay conscious attention to them.  The spirit within will guide my interaction with them.  As long as I don't cling to the spiritual or material phenomenon I'm experiencing, as long as I remember that I'm not my ego, impermanence itself will keep me safe.  

Because of the Logos, everything hidden will come to light, and everything revealed will pass away.  And so will I.  St. Paul said "love never ends" and I believe he's right.  We're here to let all the clinging, all the attachment and attraction and aversion wear off of the way we love.  We're here to turn our wounded attention away from what's morbid or shiny, to be impelled by the Spirit to attend to reality.  And why?  I suppose because we're wired to find calm, and whatever doesn't produce serenity rightly produces anxiety.  Handled rightly, the twists and turns of our anxious little egos become the route of return.  There is light at the end of the tunnel, and in its light the Cross, the Tomb, and Hell itself will prove to have been heaven the whole time.