Mute and Blind

We are, say the saints, to see suffering as both the just consequence of our personal sins, and the boundless mercy of our God who in his compassion and love for us, seeks our healing and transformation. Such difficult measures are needed, we are told, because the disease runs very, very deep and the wounds are widespread.

I have been, I think it not an exaggeration to say, subjected to something like this surgery not only in these recent weeks, but in this past year. I have seen what might well have been our economic destruction up close—only to have experienced the providential rescue wrought by our Lord. A rescue, of course, not accomplished without hard and relentless labor on our part. A rescue not accomplished apart from the outstretched hands of our community. A rescue not accomplished without painful separation from my wife and children. But nonetheless effected where my labors in themselves, such dislocation in itself, would and could accomplish nothing of significance. Providence is no less miraculous for being providential. Grace is no less grace for permeating hard and tear-filled labor.

But there come those moments of testing wherein one seemingly has no more strength left to struggle. Whereas before there was at least some energy, be it anger, be it grief, be it dauntless hope, that could spark intermittent moments of fierce wrestling, there can come those moments when the blows have been landed on one’s chest, and there is nothing there by which one can try to deflect the blow, or even to flee. One sees the encroaching fist of circumstance flying towards one’s heart, and one can just mutely watch in something like, but not yet, resignation.

I am not spiritually astute or wise enough to know there if there is a real difference or only an apparent one, between resignation and the inability to resist. One might be fatalistic, the other fatal. Or then again, one might be done with a view to hope, the other with really no view at all. Blindness comes in different colors.

So, it seems, does death. There is the death of sterility, with the white tiled walls, the white gowns and the white lights. There is the death of greyness, with the surprise, the shock and the sudden loss, which overclouds the sun and one’s sight with mist. There are many deaths. One of them is the red death, the death of blood and pulsing hearts and warmth, where the life that was called forth does not, in some inarticulable and unfathomable way, last long enough. There is a sorrow there, an ache for him whom one expected, but who will remain unknown. There is a sorrow there for her who graced but a flash in an aeon of time, and remained ever beyond embrace. How does one sorrow for this kind of death, this theft of an invisible life? How does one stop the love which stood ready with open and expectant arms, only to enfold the wind?

One loses many things in a life. One can lose one’s family. One can lose one’s home. One can lose one’s capacity to adequately provide for one’s family. But incomes can be restored. Homes can be regained. Families can reconcile. So how does one find the life that did not have the strength to arrive? How does one embrace a mystery? Indeed, how can one let go of it?

This is a father’s lament, and incomplete. But it is all I have. I do not enfold this mystery within myself. I stand outside uncomprehending the incomprehensible. I am dumb and blind. Nor do I think this muteness is prayer. I do not think this empty blindness is an offering. But perhaps the Merciful One can see this empty silence and transform it into an offering of prayer. I cannot do it.