...again, for the first time

Can I, will I forget how Love was born
and  burned its way into my heart: 
unasked, unforced, unearned:
to die, to live, and not alone for me.
---Jaroslav J. Vajda, 1986

I'm guilty. Every once in a while, when I hear a certain story start up, the tale winding out of a certain mouth, I'll think, "Not again. How many times do I have to sit through this same old tired yarn?" Folks may say, "Stop me if you've heard this..." but they don't really mean it. People like telling their stories, and as a culture we may be gradually returning to finding value in the stories of everyday people. Programs such as StoryCorps, and radio shows/podcasts like The Moth and Talking History promote the valuing and sharing of oral history and story as both cultural record and art form. And of course, not so many centuries ago, stories were the way cultural histories and beliefs were passed from generation to generation.

Do we ever have that been there, done that thought about the stories of our faith? "Nah, I've heard that 'Baby in a manger' story before; just gonna skip the service this Christmas." "Ehh, I know how that Jesus story turns out; no need to show up for Good Friday and Easter." Well, strictly speaking, we do know how those stories go --- we've heard them plenty of times. And we may, once in a while, even have a 'not again' feeling about those stories. We could say them in our sleep. We could set them to rhyme. We could draw pictures of them. We could sing songs about them. Chances are, we may have done some of that.

Here's the thing, though.

This Love? This new-born Love that seeps into our souls without us having to quest for it, to earn it, to wrest it away from anyone else? We will forget. 

We will forget. 

And so, we go to church, and we listen to the stories, again, for the first time. And the story is new. And it is old. And we will remember. And we will forget.

We will forget.

And we will listen again. Because in the repeating, we are made new. Every single time.

...rip down the curtains

When it was midday, dark overtook the land for hours.
At the next watch, Jesus cried out,
"My God, 
have even 
you
forsaken me?"
Then with a loud breath,
Jesus breathed his last.
And the curtain of the temple, 
the one dividing the Holy of Holies,
was ripped apart,
top to bottom.
---Mark 15:33-38 (para. laca)

The veil of the Temple was man's best effort to keep God and people separate from each other. It protected the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant, the supposed residing place of God's spirit, from contact with any of God's people, save for one priest, one day per year. God was, almost literally, kept in a box, behind a curtain, too holy and remote to be involved in the lives of God's people.

On God's Friday, with Jesus' submission to the powers that called for his death, that veil was torn in two from top to bottom, not  as if by human hands. Jesus, then, was God's best hope for tearing down forever the barrier between God's realm and ours, between God's existence and ours, between God's heart and ours. Jesus' 3:00 Friday was God once and for all refusing to be contained by human hands, or by boundaries human minds create.

It was time to rip down the curtains.