Do we live now in an age in which the search for authority figures to help us thrive happens in a world almost too swiftly changing to read?
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The Holy Bible, frankly, remains my own best source of truth, imaginative or factual. It has been around for centuries, and has many writers and multiple ideas, and many translations, revisions. It starts: “In the beginning……” and I hold my breath. Do I want a version of truth or do I want a vision of possible truth? Or am I just too old at 87 and a retired Episcopal priest? My husband loves me but he has all the same quests and questions, as do my relatives and colleagues. Tears blur my eyes and, yes, clutch at my heart.
Without reason or thought, the prophet Ezekiel comes vividly to my mind. I’ve always loved those elderly, aka ageless, prophets who speak with fierce authority. I imagine an ancient old guy in flowing robes who stands in the wind and rants. He’s a lunatic everyone says, and yet crowds gather, just to see, in case. . .
Ezekiel talks about a valley of bones, brittle, dry and useless in death. But this prophet remained sure that all these dry bones would suddenly spring into life. I listen into the silence of my imagination. I stand up and grab my walker, walk about the room, look out the window. Everywhere there is no one. Suddenly the ranting of the prophet tells their bones to live. Is he also talking to my osteoporotic old bones?
It doesn’t matter. I’m crying. I feel my elbows, my knuckles, wrists, fingers, on down to my ankles, feet and toes. I’m too old to kneel but I do kneel anyway, right down in front of my home altar table. I’m facing an aging crucifix. Jesus is on a cross, just hanging there like a jerk, one hand gone, the other limp. Nevertheless, Ezekiel’s words ring loud, screeching. My tears fall, until I sob. Save me.
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Years ago when I went regularly on silent retreats at Mercy Center, I would visit their chapel late at night. I would kneel there, pour out my heart-prayers, and stare up at a large non-traditional crucifix created over twenty years ago by Sister of Mercy, Mary Daly. Instead of the drooping crucified dead body of Jesus, there is a huge and beautiful rose. How lovely, and loving, and beautiful.
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Time shifts and I’m back at my computer. I glance upward and there, taped to the wall, my own version of that crucified rose—thorns of my own life’s journey and all my hopes in one image with one message: I am a rose. You are too. We two rise.
