IMPRINT 2

What a glorious February day this is! Wednesday morning Bible study has lifted me yet again from last night's melancholy thoughts, disappointing friends, whathaveyou.

The Lectionary this week is a favorite passage. Isaiah 40: 21-23

Isaiah talks about our powerlessness in bringing forth his message to us in the face of trial and death:  "28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the end of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings life eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."

This passage has sustained me in times of my most pressing fear- when they told me I had multiple sclerosis at age 30.  All I could think of was that  my uncle died of the disease at age 52.

The Gospel passage this week is Mark 1:29-39.

Jesus and his followers went to Simon's and Andrew's house.  Jesus not only healed Simon's mother-in-law who rose to serve them food, but he healed and cast out many demons while the whole town gathered to watch by the door. 

Demons?  What to make of them?  The Middle Ages did much to give them deformed bodies, horns and claws.  That's not how I picture 'demon'.  I have them, you have them, everyone has demons.  The word demon has the same root as division, re: cleaving, scarring. A meditation on this:

We explain that we have a charred heart. 

This, we  toss out cavalier, off hand

As though it would dismiss all responsibility

We keep our demons well!

How we feed them, hold them close

Let them define us!

Then comes time to lift up our eyes and see

 The char for what it is

Black flakes, raw flesh oozing

Slow welling, inexorable

Like tears drop on drop on drop.

Have we not known; have we not heard?

God would take up scalpel

Weighty shining steel, magnificently sharp

And with flashing strokes excise

The dead of our demon wounds,

The black dropping away, bit by ugly stinking bit;

Open wide the heart to course diastolic, systolic

Strong, purest life, strength renewed

To mount on wings like eagles.

Imprints. Some very harmful to us. But many imprints we are blessed with.  Loved ones speak to us in places and things.  Not long ago like a prayer I saw my mother who died last year.  She came close, with no expression on her face but what I would call peace.  Her image was opaque.  Her message was 'It is well with me.'  Though she spoke not a word. And I wasn't to try to touch her. She had to leave.

She and other loved ones who have died have left an imprint felt by me at odd times.  Here an old quilt, there a candle mold, there a piece of homespun, an old hand sickle, a child's desk and little chairs my grandfather made for me when I was a toddler, here reading family history.  And the dearly departed are suddenly there in the room with me.  And in my dreams.

Mark is witness to the Message.  I hold this witness of the Gospel as the only true Good News. For me it is all religion: We live forever, for all eternity. Others may call it something else. Or simply not think about it at all.  You must know that through the Grace of God which is God, the Son and the Holy Spirit, I see everything else. I'm in a strange loop indeed.

From the previous piece I passed to you from Dave Davis:

An Interview with Douglas R. Hofstadter, following ''I am a Strange Loop''

On soul:
"The point is, whenever one talks about what life is, from the inside, one gets very close to what religion itself is all about. It therefore shouldn't be too big a surprise that I appropriated a religion-flavored word to talk about a deep mystery that is so close to the very core of religion." As my friend Dave Davis wrote "... I do find useful the notion, articulated by Douglas Hofstadter in his book I Am A Strange Loop, that the "souls" (essentially, consciousness and its expressions) of others close to us, these souls are to some degree 'imprinted' on us, and that in our role as survivors after the loss of a loved one, through our memories and that imprint , we can instantiate a form of their survival. Like a recording of the sounds in a song, imprinted on a vinyl record-- it is a valid impression of its source, although it is not the source itself."

I would add that those living also leave their imprint on us.  But that perhaps will be another blog.

God bless and keep you all.