Lenten Questions, No. 9: on the usefulness of the Cross

Q: What changed with the Cross?

Nothing has changed in the world. The sun rises hot, the winds blow. Little people die little deaths. Storms blow in from the abysmal sea. Tempest, headache. The smog of hades, the king in tattered yellow haunts, lost Carcosa, no mask! No mask! Honesty is schizophrenia.

What changed with the Cross?

Today is the same as Good Friday, and every day, in the dusty thorn, outside the gate, outside the gate, and somewhere the leaves of Paradise whisper in the breeze, and I long for the completed days, the fullness of light, the healing leaves, the coolness of the evening walk of the Triune Friend, the Person of Infinity, Beauty of Distance, Difference of Peace.

What changed with the Cross?

They still die, the young, the innocent, the poor and the marginal, the people of the land. They are still consumed by the machines of cold advantage. There was an evening, I remember, when the leaves sang, when the trees whispered the same song of the surf, and the creatures I named were friends, and she and I walked in perfection, becoming likeness, and His smile radiant beyond the sun. How we walked in the gloaming breezes, the greenness of our dawn, when breathed the hills and the springs joined the stars, bejeweling the earth.

Gone, gone, broken and down, darkened my soul cannot carry them, I have become stooped and frail, closed, autistic, gone, torn away the sense of my friends, the fellowship with the small, I cannot carry them, I cannot save them, I cannot bring them, I cannot bring her, I cannot save her, I cannot save me, and them, and all the days until Good Friday.

What changed with the Cross?

They die, they grieve, they the poor, and the benighted rich, the blinded by the god of this age, who has not done so well with welfare, with healthcare, with environmental protection and wealth redistribution, with his campaign promises and Miltonian romantic revolution, the damn fool and liar, angel that he is.

What changed with the Cross?

What was the world like on Saturday morning? In the twentieth century, more blood was shed in the name of freedom and democracy than any other, and there was no religious crusade. They starved, they wasted in plague and disaster. The children cried and whimpered in the hungry night, swollen with bilharzia, kwashiorkor, flies congregating, church for Beelzebub. Globalization will help them, the hungry children, will it not? GATT, WTO, UNICEF, EU? The fancy internet, while we trumpet our transgressive libertinism? We are so chic, so dressed, so like the cows of Bashan. So painted, so plastic, so sung to, so entertained, so coddled, so swathed and anointed, so protected from the news that the powers are coming, are speaking, are uttering, so stoned.

What changed with the Cross?

He comes, once again in the afternoon, once again asking where, where are you in the leaves, in the thicket, in the shadows. Hearing nothing, but the murmurs of shades, He climbs the Tree, like Zaccheus, and He is lifted up, lifted up, outside the gate, outside the gate, so that He will draw all men, like the sign of Moses in the Wilderness of Sin. He is the first to obey, to fulfill, the first to be, the first to love, the first to save, the past, the present, time past in time present and all the possible days, the Ancient of Days.

He comes again, in the Good Friday afternoon, let down by the first Adam, failure and sinner. I didn’t show up either. Neither did you.

A: You live in a mirror. Step out. Use the Cross to break the glass. You know, where it says, “In Case of Emergency.” Break the glass. You are not in wonderland.