 |
| Saints Cosmas and Damian |
The cold rain is coming down on small town Bluffton, Indiana, but I’m inside sitting on my papasan chair, wondering where my cat, Pancake, has gone off to, listening to Handel’s Messiah, staring out the window at the wet and waving English ivy which is illuminated by a small outdoor lamp, feeling slightly hungry but not enough to eat, on this 2nd day of Advent anno Domini 2016 (that exhausts the extent of my Latin). And since it’s day 2, that means this is Ironic Advent MediCATION #2. That’s right, we’re still on schedule.
With regard to this mediCATION thing: I earned my degree from the Dr. Mario School of Medicine, which means that in Ironic Advent MediCATION #1, I broke the law when I said that Advent might have something to teach us about waiting. I can’t very well go around prescribing drugs for people with impatient-itis or performing an I-want-it-now-ectomy. Well, not legally, anyhow - that’s right - welcome to Anarchy Hospital. We’re a Kingdom of God kinda people and we don’t care much for them voting types. We accept cash, gold, and bitcoin, but we really love trade-ins. You give us a little time, and we’ll give you a little wisdom, the best we can muster. All our meds are supplied by the best healer pilgrim this planet’s ever seen, and let me tell you something about him: he’s in no rush to fix anyone’s problems.
If waiting isn’t your strong suit, let me lay a quote on you from a co-founder of Anarchy Hospital, Leo Tolstoy, “All really great things are happening in slow and inconspicuous ways.” That’s how healing works. Come to think of it, that’s also how growth works. In fact, probably the only thing that doesn’t work that way is destruction. Bulldozers and bombs make quick work of homes. Ice cream melts in the sun in minutes or seconds. But healing, that takes time. And the greatest healing takes a loooooong time. Ironic, huh?
Then there’s Saints Cosmas and Damian, twin brothers and skilled physicians who freely treated anyone in need, man or animal. There are men like Steven Seagal and Danny Trejo who are paid to kill. They are called mercenaries. Cosmas and Damian healed for no charge at all, and they are remembered as the Unmercenaries (Unmercenaries! What a name! A couple of ironic healer pilgrims, no doubt).
While writing this Ironic Advent MediCATION, I received word that a former classmate and younger brother of an old friend died this morning of an accidental overdose on a prescription medication. You could call that ironic, you could call it tragic. I was going to share a Robert Frost poem with you and talk a little bit about our culture’s obsession with novelty, but it will have to wait for later. I did not know Tate Willey well, but his brother and I spent a lot of time together as teenagers, guitar jam sessions and whatnot. I was fortunate enough to see Tate recently, about a year or two ago and he was very sweet and kind. It is haunting to think that this young man, in his mid 20s, at the time of our brief reunion, had not even 24 months left to his life.
1 Corinthians 15:26 tells us that death is the last enemy to be destroyed. I don't know if that means it's already happened, if it's happening now, or if it's going to happen. Whenever, the fact is, we are waiting. We are waiting, O Healer Pilgrim. On this 2nd day of Advent, we are waiting. Generation after generation, we are waiting. Each day that I see my mother, fearful, dying from anorexia, and thin as those Jewish families in the old Holocaust pictures, I am reminded that this is a bleak and demonic world, that those “Love Trumps Hate” protesters have no idea what they’re talking about. Love doesn’t trump hate, and life doesn’t trump death. ...Maybe one day it will, maybe even now in tiny ways, like a flower growing up through a highway or a healer pilgrim coming back from the dead, but that doesn’t make the bypass any less real or the death and sickness of the people we love any lighter for anyone to bear. No matter what you believe about life after death, death is real and sometimes slow and it always has consequences. Could be that the best we can do is stare it in the face and live like Unmercenary Saints.
With regard to this mediCATION thing: I earned my degree from the Dr. Mario School of Medicine, which means that in Ironic Advent MediCATION #1, I broke the law when I said that Advent might have something to teach us about waiting. I can’t very well go around prescribing drugs for people with impatient-itis or performing an I-want-it-now-ectomy. Well, not legally, anyhow - that’s right - welcome to Anarchy Hospital. We’re a Kingdom of God kinda people and we don’t care much for them voting types. We accept cash, gold, and bitcoin, but we really love trade-ins. You give us a little time, and we’ll give you a little wisdom, the best we can muster. All our meds are supplied by the best healer pilgrim this planet’s ever seen, and let me tell you something about him: he’s in no rush to fix anyone’s problems.
If waiting isn’t your strong suit, let me lay a quote on you from a co-founder of Anarchy Hospital, Leo Tolstoy, “All really great things are happening in slow and inconspicuous ways.” That’s how healing works. Come to think of it, that’s also how growth works. In fact, probably the only thing that doesn’t work that way is destruction. Bulldozers and bombs make quick work of homes. Ice cream melts in the sun in minutes or seconds. But healing, that takes time. And the greatest healing takes a loooooong time. Ironic, huh?
Then there’s Saints Cosmas and Damian, twin brothers and skilled physicians who freely treated anyone in need, man or animal. There are men like Steven Seagal and Danny Trejo who are paid to kill. They are called mercenaries. Cosmas and Damian healed for no charge at all, and they are remembered as the Unmercenaries (Unmercenaries! What a name! A couple of ironic healer pilgrims, no doubt).
***
While writing this Ironic Advent MediCATION, I received word that a former classmate and younger brother of an old friend died this morning of an accidental overdose on a prescription medication. You could call that ironic, you could call it tragic. I was going to share a Robert Frost poem with you and talk a little bit about our culture’s obsession with novelty, but it will have to wait for later. I did not know Tate Willey well, but his brother and I spent a lot of time together as teenagers, guitar jam sessions and whatnot. I was fortunate enough to see Tate recently, about a year or two ago and he was very sweet and kind. It is haunting to think that this young man, in his mid 20s, at the time of our brief reunion, had not even 24 months left to his life.
1 Corinthians 15:26 tells us that death is the last enemy to be destroyed. I don't know if that means it's already happened, if it's happening now, or if it's going to happen. Whenever, the fact is, we are waiting. We are waiting, O Healer Pilgrim. On this 2nd day of Advent, we are waiting. Generation after generation, we are waiting. Each day that I see my mother, fearful, dying from anorexia, and thin as those Jewish families in the old Holocaust pictures, I am reminded that this is a bleak and demonic world, that those “Love Trumps Hate” protesters have no idea what they’re talking about. Love doesn’t trump hate, and life doesn’t trump death. ...Maybe one day it will, maybe even now in tiny ways, like a flower growing up through a highway or a healer pilgrim coming back from the dead, but that doesn’t make the bypass any less real or the death and sickness of the people we love any lighter for anyone to bear. No matter what you believe about life after death, death is real and sometimes slow and it always has consequences. Could be that the best we can do is stare it in the face and live like Unmercenary Saints.
***
I've been holding on to a short, bitter reflection about anorexia. I might clean it up a bit and try and breathe a little Ironic Advent redemption into it and post it as a MediCATION. Or I might not. You'll have to wait and see.
No comments:
Post a Comment