Last week the child of dear friends passed away after a year long battle with leukemia.
All this time--from initial diagnosis, to treatment, to relapse, and on--I've struggled with my blogging. My friends and their dear sweet boy were always in my heart and mind as I wrote words about God. And with every post I experienced this horrible disconnect.
What is theology beside the graveside of a child?
All this "God talk"--the theorizing, the arguments we have in the comments section--it all seems so...small. And pointless.
I receive a great deal of comfort from this space and I know many of you have found this place to be full of camaraderie and encouragement. I hope it will continue to be in the years to come. But for today, I'd like to express, with a poem, the deep dissatisfaction I experience in writing about God in a world full of pain.
The thoughts I had standing beside the graveside of that bright little boy...
This is the end of theology.
The end of speaking
words into the air,
pretending that these syllables
gave us traction
and marked our progress.
Looking back,
we never moved.
There was only a babel filling
the intervals between our suffering.
Hastily constructed sandcastles
between the tides of sorrow and time.
Our sentences will continue
adding to the chorus of life
of crickets, wolves, and the birds of springtime.
The sounds and calls we make
to know we are not alone.
But this place will remind
with the deep ache of memory
that all doctrine has been reduced
to the singularities and wreckage of faith--
Only silence.
Only tears.
Only love.
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