Who will take care of us?

Today, in a very vocal Cambridge meeting for worship, I was struggling to listen to all that was said, as important work was being done inside me. I walked into meeting in tears...I'd had a hard morning and ended up losing my composure. I was feeling a little bit despairing. I thought...I've got the medications, I've got the doctors, and I'm doing the work, but there are still broken parts of me that I can't get ahold of. Sometime my hurts come alive and take over, and I'm left feeling very helpless. I wrote about this in an older blog post, where I admitted my struggles with depression and anxiety.

On Friday night, I went to see Peterson perform. At one point in the performance, he takes on the persona of an sweet, goofy, enlightened minister with an adorable English accent, who talks about Jesus weeping at the grave of Lazarus, and of the pain we go through when our Omnipotent God won't fix what we need fixed, won't save who we need saved, won't cure the one who desperately needs to be cured. I was distracted by phonecalls from an irate housemate in the middle of this most moving section, but what I did manage to see lodged somewhere deep in my heart. I missed half of the end of that scene, but the preacher was saying something about how we can help one another rise, how we can cure one another.

A few days ago, I read a powerful post from Nancy, a blogger I'd somehow missed for a long time. She spoke of envisioning God not as Father, as Deus Omnipotens, but as a helpless baby:

Do you hear what I hear? I now confess to a heresy. I don’t hear a still, small voice. I don’t hear the Word. I don’t hear the Almighty. I don’t, as Annie Dillard suggests, have any inclination to wear a helmet to Meeting for fear of the forces let loose from the universe.

I hear a cry, like a baby.

I first heard that cry on the eve of first Gulf War. Canadian soldiers were heading to war for the first time since World War II. A huge multifaith group had gathered in our city—some 200 Hindus, Catholics, Muslims, Bahais, Evangelicals—all in the same room, all in agony. We sat in silence, with some rising to sing, some to chant, some to pray with beads, to weep, to return to silence. I heard it then, the cry of a baby, helpless, abandoned, forgotten.

"…a child, a child,
Shivers in the cold,
Let us bring him silver and gold…"

...

God is so in need of our protection. We have the task of keeping God alive among us, feeding God, helping God to grow. It’s the reverse of the old image: now it’s we who carry God through hard times, so that it’s our footprints in the sand.

Otherwise, I’m afraid God might die.

My first response was a split second of awe as I realized the truth of what she had just said. Immediately on the tail of that awe was terror. I closed the browser. I closed my eyes. I didn't want to think of it. I thought I'd let go of most of my old preconceptions of God but apparently somewhere inside me I was still clinging to the idea of a warrior God. The God who with his brawn could swoop down and save me. Deliver me. The God who could do anything.

I sat in meeting today and thought about asking God for healing. Asking God to swoop down and remove the wounds in my soul. As Friends rose in meeting and spoke of pain, of chemical weapons, of torture, of sorrow, of forgiveness, of guilt, of all the brokenness of the world, I remembered my childhood sorrow when my prayers for relief went unanswered. Why didn't the all-powerful God use some of his Power to take away all the pain that I witnessed and felt? He was all-knowing, so it's not that he didn't know of the pain. He was all-loving, so it's not that he didn't care about the pain. He was all-merciful, so certainly he must know that the innocent should not suffer. He was omnipresent, so it wasn't that he was busy somewhere else...

I sat in meeting and I thought about that. I thought about the all-poweful God. And I thought about the helpless infant God.

Again, I recoiled from the baby. If God needs me to take care of him, I thought,

then who will take care of me?

I felt small and still and cold inside. I thought of the old standard I used to sing in a piano bar in New York, my feminist concience always smarting a bit as I'd form each co-dependent word...

There’s a somebody I’m longing to see
I hope that he, turns out to be
Someone who’ll watch over me

I’m a little lamb who’s lost in the wood
I know I could, could always be good
To one who’ll watch over me...

I smiled to myself a little bit. But really...

Who have I in heaven but Thee?

I thought of Jesus, speaking to Peter:

"Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?"

He said to him "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you."

He said to him, "Feed my lambs."

A second time he said to him, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?"

He said to him "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you."

He said to him, "Tend my sheep."

He said to him a third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me?

Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?"

And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you."

Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep."

I read the passage over and over. I thought of the old chestnut "He has no hands but thine" and I know that I try to remember that in terms of my own behaviour. I work hard to become God's hands, to do what I can of God's work, to relieve what suffering I can in God's name. I looked around the meeting house at the people who were praying, at the ones who were fidgeting, at the ones who had spoken to my condition and the ones who I'd struggled to hear.

A Friend stood. "Between the love and the horror lies our work."

More Friends spoke. About languages, about communication, about becoming the change we want to see in the world.

I thought about a Canadian children's show I used to watch when I was little. The host always ended with a song called "Take Good Care of Each Other".

And once again I was struck still in meeting by a cliche, and I realized that we are what we've got. In almost every case, God's love, God's healing, God's mercy, and God's power are transmitted from one human being to another. I thought of how often I raise my eyes to the sky in search of relief, and turn away from the people in my life who could be agents of God's peace to me.

Oh, where am I going here?

I will lift my eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my salvation.

Yes, of course I will. but I will also lift my eyes to my Friends.

There was something more...but I've gotten distracted. And I think this is where meeting ended as well. But I felt such an urgency. We must turn to each other in love, and learn to trust each other. We are the ministers of God. God is watching over us, and God is taking care of us. But God needs us to do that.

The God in me cares for the God in you?
The God in you cares for the God in me?