I’ve been haunted by Salvador Dali’s melting clocks, the vision of time passing as fading, dying, dripping slowly away into seeming nothingness. No end, no conclusion, no resolution, but intermindable useless death. Time, or maybe life, seems to be such, without hope or presence or meaning. Just an ethereal wisp, a foggy blanket, an unknown prison.
I wonder this on a week after Easter. There was this one day, this family reunion of a gathering, old unseen friends suddenly reappearing, recommuning, recommitting. Full congregations of well dressed smiling faces and children in bonnets and shined little boy shoes. We are all the church again, hail, we are here, and the meaning and purpose of this place is resurrected with Jesus, the stones of complacency and busyness and distance rolled away and life be praised.
But then a few days past, and the pews again vacated almost as quickly as the tomb. And now time again drips surrealy by, the days long and drawn slowly forward. I wonder, in the empty quiet of the church, if their experience is the same, if the days pass for them in slow motion, in a distant memory of a place they used to know but now only remember like an old faded picture, a worn and broken trinket of a happiness which may or may not have happened, as they return to what they imagine is real life but fear may only be the other.
There tugs at us a memory of a person we used to be, were meant to be, were once a part of if only in the most remote corner of evolution. If only we could reconnect to that memory, only rewrite ourselves into the story, then there might come to us again a realization of the promise of us. But rather we slip silently under and fade into our lives, death coming not in a moment or an end but slowly, surely, unwittingly, bleakly.
But there is a persistence to Grace, too, a quiet not-quite-real tug at consciences and hearts that is more real than us, and cell by cell and bit by bit and memory by memory it drags us ever-complaining forth. Easter comes in passion and high drama, but the rest of the work of resurrection is slow, sure, holy work. We are becoming what we are, as death fades blackly from us there is revealed the truth underneath.
I wonder this on a week after Easter. There was this one day, this family reunion of a gathering, old unseen friends suddenly reappearing, recommuning, recommitting. Full congregations of well dressed smiling faces and children in bonnets and shined little boy shoes. We are all the church again, hail, we are here, and the meaning and purpose of this place is resurrected with Jesus, the stones of complacency and busyness and distance rolled away and life be praised.
But then a few days past, and the pews again vacated almost as quickly as the tomb. And now time again drips surrealy by, the days long and drawn slowly forward. I wonder, in the empty quiet of the church, if their experience is the same, if the days pass for them in slow motion, in a distant memory of a place they used to know but now only remember like an old faded picture, a worn and broken trinket of a happiness which may or may not have happened, as they return to what they imagine is real life but fear may only be the other.
There tugs at us a memory of a person we used to be, were meant to be, were once a part of if only in the most remote corner of evolution. If only we could reconnect to that memory, only rewrite ourselves into the story, then there might come to us again a realization of the promise of us. But rather we slip silently under and fade into our lives, death coming not in a moment or an end but slowly, surely, unwittingly, bleakly.
But there is a persistence to Grace, too, a quiet not-quite-real tug at consciences and hearts that is more real than us, and cell by cell and bit by bit and memory by memory it drags us ever-complaining forth. Easter comes in passion and high drama, but the rest of the work of resurrection is slow, sure, holy work. We are becoming what we are, as death fades blackly from us there is revealed the truth underneath.
"But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to new life." II Peter 3:8-9
He persists. Alleluia, life persists.
Not many people could connect Easter to Dali. Well done.
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