Friday 25 March 2016

On Tenebrae: Darkness

Tenebrae means darkness. Light by light is extinguished in this service, the first of Holy Saturday, as Jeremiah predicts ruined cities, violated women, starving children. How long will ye blaspheme mine honour? cries the Lord.
            Many years ago, I heard the prophecy of a student cadet: In the wars of the future, there will be no such thing as a civilian. The war will be everywhere.The German army, shooting thousands of civilians, women and children on the Eastern Front in WW II, appealed to the government: You are destroying our young men.
            The Nazis then trained specialists to see to these killings, persons specially corrupted for that work, as is happening today.
            What did the Lord say to those at the foot of the cross? They know not what they do. But their officer was not completely corrupted. He saw, and said: Truly this was an innocent man.

Wednesday 2 March 2016

On Vanishing

Today I had a dismaying event; I accidentally deleted all the pictures on a digital camera. There were some good shots there, too. I wouldn’t think I’m the only person ever to do this, so I have to chalk it up to experience. But I can see those lost images in my mind’s eye.
            Fortunately, last night I was at a lecture on Rilke. Rilke, like Dante, saw that loss creates memory. Now my pictures vanished into complete nothingness, and nobody but me will ever see them. You can’t remember the present, because it’s still in progress. The past must then be loss, even if only lost time.
            There were other losses and vanishings. A child knocked on my door in tears to tell me her dog had died. A woman spontaneously said her young niece had just suddenly died. And it happened to be the anniversary of a tragic family death that travels with me as a faithful guest present or hidden: a vanishing.
            Deaths flow through the underground channels of our memories, where vanished things go. Consciously or no, they remain as companions. God also is present in the underground channels. Here in Lent, we prepare to meet the death that refused to vanish.