The dust is settling all around us. There are offices darkened, there are faces missing. There is a rumble of anger, and fear on the wind. And there is a choice at our feet, one that will not wait, one that must be faced, as the dust settles.
In my other life I worked for a software company, a damn good software company. One faced once with the same horrible choices my seminary's Dean made this week. In the aftermath of that decision, we had two choices. We could complain, we could lament what had come before, we could curse our boss for those we lost, or we could survive.
We chose to live. For over a year an office full of highly skilled software engineers not only designed, built, and tested complicated software; but we pushed mop buckets, cleaned toilets, and washed counters. We came together as a team, we did the work that needed to be done, because the alternative was to turn the lights out and go home. It would have been easy to place blame, it would have been easy to second guess agonizing decisions, but none of those things would have accomplished our mission. None of those things would have made the company, and people, we loved succeed. So I mopped floors, I cleaned a locker room, I vacuumed my own office, and I got to keep the people I cared about.
My seminary has suffered a blow. Not an unexpected one, nearly every other seminary in the nation has walked this road before us, but a blow none-the-less. We have lost people we love deeply, people who had become such a part of our lives we don't fully recognize the landscape without them. But we too face a choice. In many ways it is the same choice my friends and I faced all those years ago in an office conference room.
We can choose to come together as a community to resume the march forward, or we can choose to sit down in the dust and the ashes and hurl curses. If we choose the later we will have failed not only ourselves, and those who would come after us, but we will have failed the friends and colleagues we have lost. For they were not just employees. They are fellow believers in the vision of this place. They have each poured their blood, sweat, and tears into building a future for us here.
We have indeed lost much, we have been forced to offer a sacrifice of love we never imagined. But they have given more, that this place, and its mission, might go on. Our hearts are broken, our safe haven has been violated. We are angry, and sad, and we are confused. But we have a choice. We have the same choice Mary made when she went to the tomb instead of sitting scared in an upper room. We have the same choice a bunch of men and women made when they finally came to understand the depth of the sacrifice their beloved Friend had made for them, and for the world.
Yes, we will still mourn. That will not end in a day, or a week, or a month. We will continue to feel the loss of each each empty desk. There are voices I will listen for, and not hear again in this place. But I choose to go on. I choose to fight for what came before, that it is not forgotten to the emptiness of time. I choose to ensure the sacrifice of hearts and hands is not in vain.
The choice is ours. We can each, and as a whole, be the hands and feet, the hearts and minds, that snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. We can be the feet on the mountaintop proclaiming a new day. We can build a future our friends and colleagues will be proud of, or we can scatter like chaff on the wind.
We are not all right, but we will be. If we choose life, if we choose passion, if we choose to enter the midnight struggle with God that will not end until we are reborn into something new. If we choose to become something more, to become the bridges that span the gaps.
What shall we choose?
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Choice
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Words
A dawn without light.
Light has always been an icon for me. Not just the absence of darkness, but the presence of light. The heavy rays of summer dawn falling across an altar cloth, the thin valiant winter beams crawling across the floor, the tired evening rays kissing raindrops on petals and leaves. Light has character, texture, and shape. This morning it has absence. Dawn broke not so much as an invasion of light sweeping through the ranks of a restless night, than as a shamed lover sneaking in and hoping not to be seen.
The darkness lifted, the dawn came at its absence. The buildings in the Austin skyline simply ceased to be dark shapes. Their brick and granite sides, not painted by the brush of warm fall sunshine breaking over the eager hills. Instead they simply were, their cover of night lifted, the day begun whether this weary world was ready or not.
And we are not ready. Those of us perched on this little hill, waiting for light. Sitting vigil with those we love, waiting for the fraction that will reshape us. I imagine Easter morning broke like this for Mary, her arms heavy with spice jars and linen cloths, her feet heavy with things much more weighty. I doubt she saw the glory of the dawn that had already come. I doubt her heart could see God's hand painting a new day across the world, because her heart was breaking.
The dawn of our Easter will be longer, for a community broken and mourning the moment between the absence of night, and the coming of the light will not be hours. It will be days, or weeks, or months before we look up and cry Rabboni! with all our hearts.
Mary's ability to see did not change what already was, though for her it was not yet. Our heavy hearts do not change it either. The dawn has come, but for those who mourn we stand at the mouth of the tomb, we live in the "not yet."
For those who mourn, peace.
For those who weep, comfort.
For those who stand, strength.
For those who fall, my hand.
May we be for each other, a gardner, a friend, may we bring to each other, His light.
(Please keep all at the Seminary of the Southwest in your prayers this day as 12 of our community loose their jobs.)
