on what i have to say after two months of not saying much

Now that I have been away for nine weeks, which is a not that long time; I mean, six months of displacement is not that long. I had this conversation with my co-worker that I have so little time. I think that I still have that very American impulse to contain within myself all the knowledge of a moment--that I will understand everything, language and culture and all differences all at the same time because I have to know! know! know!

But, the unknown–I think that is where the Word becomes flesh. I think that the Incarnation becomes a part of the act of not-knowing. In all its intercessary distance, the Incarnation passes through the unknown. And, that leap of faith at the bottom of everything, at the end of all knowledge, that jump from known–empirically known and tangibly experienced–to unknown has already been performed.

On Thursday, I attended a teaching session by Bishop Zac Niringye, the passage over which he taught was Romans 5. And, what struck me aside from his hypnotic teaching method and the way I was drawn into it, was that he called the act of salvation an act outside the self. That to be saved is to be in the midst of being saved, that the act of salvation is ongoing, but it has already been done! Christ died once for all–something we, Americans, have buried under a mountain of cliché comprised of song and t-shirt and institutionalized religion–and the act of salvation is about what has been done for you not what you have done.

In that, I recall the prayer of salvation I prayed as a child in the aftermath of a particularly frightening Sunday School lesson about the afterlife; I remember timidly repeating the words of the ABC prayer: Admitting that I was a sinner, Believing that Jesus was who He said He was and that He died for me, and Committing my life to Him in return. And, I think about the oddity of a seven year old committing his life to Christ. When, for a seven-year-old, the passage of a month comprises a considerable amount of his life, I wonder what a lifetime looks like to my former self. I wonder if I imagined myself as an old man, gray-haired and all, making morning prayers when I made a commitment at seven-years-old.

Of course not; it is a foregone conclusion. But, that doesn't discredit that it was the beginning. It was the beginning of the practice of standing in grace, and I with all my wobbling seven-year-old knees began crawling until I could come to a day when as a twenty-two year old, I begin standing. Yes, I live a life of beginnings. And, I require all the intercessary distance of Word become flesh to make a stand into a leap–one that has been taken.

And, these are all the conclusions of one displaced and there, wrapped in the cloth of uncertainty. They mingle with the unknown, and it is the task of all my poetry, prose and daily routine to stand and to leap over great distance.