I remember walking snowbanked corridors, the way the wind whipped rapidly from one compass point to another, one moment stinging the left side of my face, the next moment the right. The most unbearable was when it sprayed snow into my coat collar. It was so cold. But there was Christmas, there was magic.
Here, it is so hot. I am writing this beneath my fan, Abigail sleeping (finally) next to me. Today she discovered power naps. Twenty minutes of sleep in the morning, twenty in the afternoon and yet she’s been going strong, all smiles and wiggles and what I like to think are kisses and not her simply biting me or slobbering all over me.
I am out of magic. I used it to get here. Abigail is made of fairy dust
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Once upon a time, life was words written on a page. Life was stuffed chairs and blankets and cups of fine jasmine tea that Lia bought from a tiny, low-ceilinged corner-shop in Villach, Austria. I remember the store was near a skating rink.
Life was whispered conversations in coffee shops. We stood transfixed before paintings 800 years old like the artists knew what we wanted to know. I think they did. The artists, the architects, the playwrights, spoke of suffering. They suffered for what they loved, because they loved. That’s why I went. It was to press my ear to the paving stones and discover how to live.
I searched.
And I found.
I found a diamond.
It is brighter than I imagined a diamond could be. It is also harder.
It is love.
And love is sacrifice.
And sacrifice is death.
But take heart, because death in this realm—death of desires, of time, of health, of money—is life in another realm.
The days of just plain dreaming are over. The days of doing are upon me.
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Confronting suffering is uncomfortable, whether your own or someone else’s. Rembrandt painted his suffering in a self-portrait. He’d lost his young wife and children years before, to conditions that are easily curable with access to modern medical care. In the portrait, he looks grieved, untimely ancient. But the way his one eye is squinted slightly makes it look like he’s asking a question: “What about you? What are you going to do about it?”*
As Americans (or as anyone from a developed country) we always say, “I know I am so blessed.” I would read, or see something on the news, or go on a mission trip, and say the same. Running water and electricity 24/7 give us the freedom to do many things, whether work or play. But we tend to look at the material difference between us and the nations. What we don’t necessarily see is the way poverty changes the human spirit, changes the trajectory of life. In poverty, sometimes no matter how hard you try, there is no way out, your whole life long.
Imagine that. Imagine what it does to you. As Americans, we are taught in first grade that there’s a way out when they tell us we can be anything we want to be when we grow up. And you know what? Within reason, we can. Maybe we can’t be exactly what we want to be, and that hurts sometimes, but we can get the life we want outside of work.
We need to leverage that. Leverage our power for those living in poverty, leverage our suffering to help others who are suffering. Sometimes it’s our suffering that is our power. Rembrandt knew that, I think. Jesus most certainly knew that.
Christians, wake up from the American dream and love your neighbor—the one next door and the one in the next country.
I might be out of magic. My dreamy days of playing sleuth in cathedrals may be over. But I have found the meaning of life, the power of love and suffering.
Lord give me the grace and strength to live as I am called every day.
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*Painting analysis inspired by an art history teacher of mine, Dr. John Barber. Fall 2014.
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