Ocean Vast
Here is Love vast as the ocean, loving kindness as the flood,
when the Prince of life our ransom, shed for us His precious blood.
Who His Love will not remember? Who can cease to sing His praise?
He will never be forgotten throughout heaven’s eternal days.
On the mount of crucifixion fountains opened deep and wide.
Through the flood gates of God’s mercy, flowed a vast and gracious tide.
Grace and love like mighty rivers poured incessant from above,
Heaven’s peace and perfect justice kissed a guilty world in love.
It is the last week of December. The tsunami struck four days ago. Right now 70,000 people are dead. Tommorow that number will grow. Soon disease will set in and more will follow into gaping graves. And I? I am making this piece of art. I am humming this song– unbidden it echoes in the hallowed out space that seems to have become my mind.
What kind of riddle is this? That in the face of untold suffering I would make something of such pastel beauty, such genteel softness? That in the face of destruction wrought by water and wave; I would find such a wet metaphor on my tongue?
I told a friend recently that I still believe God is real. I still believe that God is active. My friend said that he belived in God too, he just wasn’t so convinced that God was actually doing anything these days. Another friend belives in God…but only enough to be angry at him. I relate to both of these friends these days. It seems foolish for an intelligent person to believe otherwise.
And yet….
And yet I do and I cannot shake it. This irrational believe– God is here, God is active, “he rules the world with grace and truth” –it wells up in me,much like those victorian fountains, those watercolored waves curling to shore on some idillic sea. My rationality, my graduate school self cannot, keep this belief from rising up to the forefront of my mind, molded by scientific method though it may be. It is born and breastfed in some primitative place of knowing. It is an absurd rising force which cannot be contained. Hope. Heart’scry.
After our first child was stillborn, a friend wrote a poem for the birth of our second – for our daughter Eden. The last lines of it come again to me now, moist again in this barren time. “And the river is here, and the river is come…a wellspring flows out of Eden.” Like a divining rod, my mind finds these bits of memory– an old hymn, lines from a poem much pressed between pages of an infant’s book. Where does that seeking and finding come from?
I have been reading book after book lately about the Black Plague, the Great Depression. I haven’t chosen these books willingly. They have come to me in airports and in the emptying racks of closing bookshops. They rise to the top of paper sacks set by the curbside. Our artists, ever the prophets among us, have sensed that we will need to remember these parts of our human story. They have been preparing us for tragedy, for heartache – reminding us that the wheel of time goes on, that this too shall pass.
Tommorow and today, in the face of death there will be births. Children will come into this world, damp and salty, smelling of seaweed and blood. The waves, once confused and deadly will return to the warp and wane of the tidal charts, and the beaches will reappear ‘newborn and salted.’ One day, where trees have been uprooted, where crops have drowned, new growth will appear. And people, the poor and the third world and those with more sorrow than a western mind can imagine, these people will teach us about hope, about faith, about the eternal presence and healing power of light and dark, of ebb and flow, of death and birth.
Maybe that is why the soul seeks out hope, refuses to submit the idea of the Divine to the rigours of reason. Because the wheel turns, and the dawn comes, and there has yet to be a time – even in plague, even in poverty, even in all the ages that the sea has sounded – there has never b een a time when birth ended, when life stopped, when the tides ceased to turn.
Here is love vast as the ocean. Kiss this world with love.
And who can know the mind of God? Like you, I don’t know how God works in the world–I only know God does work in the world. And we pick up the pieces and move on…
How beautifully written. I resonate with what you say and also trust in God in these days, but wonder at my own inability to know how to even pray in this situation–it is so overwhelming.
Hi Rachelle,
I don’t know why, but I can’t mourn for the tsunami victims. It was the same after the 9/11 tragedy, and whatever the last giant earthquake was and the Chechnya schoolhouse stand-off. Like you, I’ve been reading books about death, mass tragedies. I finished a book about the 1918 flu pandemic a few days ago and I’ve been ruminating on reading “And The Band Played On” about the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. I’ve been looking up death statistics on the net.
My hyper-cynical side reminds me that hundreds of thousands of people die every day from things much less dramatic than tsunamis. I get disgusted thinking that Americans only get galvanized to help when you can catch our attention long enough. The tsunami seems to have done that. I start thinking it’s all just a marketing hook that groups like the Red Cross and World Vision can use to exploit us, as they play upon our pampered, overfed guilt and succeed in getting us to make a donation.
Thank you for being a conduit to let God’s care and compassion reach through you and into the world. I’m so glad you’re out there. Shine on sister.
Karen
Rachelle,
Your way with words is a gift. thanks for sharing.
Karen,
You know, some things hit me and others don’t. The AIDS-in-Africa numbers floor me. The Sudan refguees floor me. Chechyna didn’t impact me at all, and I didn’t even bat an eye when 30,000 died in the Iranian earthquake a year ago this Christmas. I’m sure a lot of this has to do with east/west muslim/christian stuff and how the media covers it. I’m just trying to respond when prompted (the good ole’ Muse!), and I guess, with friends in a number of the countries hit by the tsunami, and all the kids getting swallowed by the waves, this one hit me.
My cynical side does wonder about relief agencies though, and how much they will try to ride this wave for as many donations as possible as long as possible. Of course they will need the money, and I’ll send money. But I used to work in development at a nonprofit and I know they’ll also milk the situation for all they can (side projects included.)
One of the things that has struck me about the black plague books, and the death toll in various international situations is this sense of “turn turn turn.” We always think it’s the end of the world, yet the pages of history turn on and over and things keep going. I guess I’m tyring to get that…trying to let that sink into my understanding and into my mental puzzle of God, and time, and life and death — trying to find my place in this very large story, and realizing it’s very small place after all.
Just musing,
Your pal,
Rachelle
p.s. good luck winning the bitch slap fest over at your place. Rage on! http://haluzasoffullerton.typepad.com/raw_faith/2004/12/theres_blood_in.html
Hey Rachelle,
Do you ever catch Barbara Crafton’s daily meditations at the Geranium Farm? I heard some resonance for some reason, although you are writing about very different things here. Here’s a link from today’s:
http://geraniumfarm.org/dailyemo.cfm?Emo=403
Thanks. Your writing (and the conversation) are much food for thought.