In the Nadir

The shadows come in the early afternoon at this time of the year, and the sun’s angle drops them across the landscape in low sweeps, and the light begins to fall away. The sun does not linger, but blinks out at the edge of the world, and we are in the deep. I listen to “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” and its plaintive hopefulness, the longing of centuries, comes down through the haunting music and the words. Sometimes I think have more common with the ancients than I have realized; I feel a nearly primal fear at the going of the light.

In my class on The Moral Thinking of Bonhoeffer, we are into the book Letters and Papers from Prison, and it is my turn to present a response to the reading for the week. It is a morning class, and we are back after Thanksgiving week, a little hazy after the holiday. I read Bonhoeffer’s words: “Never before in human history have there been a people for whom every available alternative seemed equally intolerable.” I pause, a space that seems necessary. My classmates and I look at each other across the room. It is a small class and that has allowed us a particular depth of discussion and exchange. We have challenged each other and ourselves as the weeks have gone on; I don’t think we ever leave a class session without knowing that something critical is at stake. As I leave the class, I am unable to forget other words Bonhoeffer wrote: “We thought we could make our way with reason and justice and when both failed….” And I think, well, if reason and justice fail…I mean, I believe in reason and justice. But how do I believe in them? As matters of faith? For even now, I see that reason and justice do fail, and fail repeatedly.  Not always. But often enough.  It is not a comforting conclusion.

My Bonhoeffer class is cross-pollinating with my Christian Ethics class this semester; and I find that I love the discussions and the challenges they bring. And I realize, finally, the key reason why I am pursuing this kind of education: it is an education that takes seriously the role of love in human affairs. Not love in an easy, sentimental way, but love as it has been passed to us in our wisdom and faith traditions; not love merely as textbook theories, but love in actual lives lived. Love that calls us somewhere. It will call some of us to parishes and prisons and hospitals, to teaching and preaching; it will call some of us out into the streets. 

Before I leave school for the day, I stop to buy a book that my professor has just published. It is called Burning Center, Porous Borders. That night I open it up and read: “Once upon a time Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said, “Abba, as much as I am able I practice a small rule, all the little fasts, some prayer and meditation, and remain quiet, and as much as possible I keep my thoughts clean. What else should I do?” Then the old monastic stood up and stretched out his hands toward heaven, and his fingers became like ten torches of flame. And he said, “Why not be completely turned into fire?”

“Yes, ‘why not be completely turned into fire?” my professor writes. “But what shall we do to be on fire?” What shall we do? The year has reached its nadir. The sun drops below the earth. Justice and reason might fail. Love, St. Paul said, never fails. Do I believe this? Yes. I believe it because there is a community who believes it and who has believed it for thousands of years. At times, it seems that we are crazy to believe it, but I wonder: wouldn’t we be crazy not to?

I fall asleep thinking of fire. I dream that I am holding a camel on a leash; the camel is pulling me west. Not towards a star in the east, but to California. (Okay, it’s a dream. And what Minnesotan doesn’t dream of California? ) I do not know that I will awaken to find out that my dog, my friend and companion of many walks and meditations under the stars, has died during the night. I do not know this yet, but when I do awaken, this community of seminary friends will be there, and they will comfort me.

Burning Center, Porous Border, by Eleazar Fernandez

The story of Abba Joseph is cited in Chittister, The Fire in These Ashes

- Kathryn Price, MA student