Never lose sight of Him. Promise me.

These words returned to me yesterday, as I completed the first story-arc of a writing that happened to me this month, all 38 single-spaced pages. The words were spoken in my imagination, in the voice of Ed, an impish Irish mystic, recovered alcoholic, and Hospice patient I visited four times in the autumn of 1998. In the period of one month, I fell in love with him, in his crusty devotion, with his wife and family, with the Jesus he knew and trusted so very well. The journal came back into my life 14 years after I had begun it. By then, I was a weary theological professor reading my own words about these visits, this gentle Irish soul, not remembering the details of any of it.

I had grieved his death so very much, so very hard, unable to imagine that visiting with him four times could have such an overwhelming impact on my entire being, my life and sense of calling. When I perused the journal, the March morning in 2012, before my first writing class at Women Writing for (a) Change, I found my handwriting and words so very foreign. Who had I been then? What was I writing about? I had forgotten I had started this journal of “the communion of saints” in my life, Ed being the first one to receive journal-writing attention. The only one, really, though I began another entry upon the conclusion of work with my supervisor, Paula Jeanne Teague. That entry still had the fingerprints of Ed, however, so the journal was really only about this overwhelming entrance of an Irish soul into my own soul.

My then-counselor, Nancy, must have invited me to write Ed a letter of good-bye, for the final entry about him in that journal. She seemed to think I was “holding onto the dead,” and needed to let him go in some ritual fashion. She was probably right. At the very least, her invitation gave me the gift of this journal entry, November 19, 1998. This gift of these words in my own hand, from my deepest Self, unknown to me in full then, but for a glimpse. Never lose sight of Him. Promise me. Ed/I was urging me to never lose sight of Jesus, to promise M/myself I would never relinquish him. And today, I return to a deeply embodied awareness that that promise has been kept, if not by me alone. I have kept it, but I have also been held every step of the way to be kept as well.

Such is the reality of faith for any human soul. We never do what we can do, become who we fully are, alone. It may feel like it, many times, of course, but I guess I’m writing here to say to whomever will listen, ultimately, we are never alone. Ever. As long as there is energy coursing in our biological being, it connects us soul and body to all living things. Mind and spirit may require shaping, practice, training to connect in awareness or consciousness to others, but in soul and body, we are never alone. In my own faith tradition’s language, He is Risen.

Oddly, I learned how to step back into this wisdom in a triumvirate of two rabbis and a spiritual doula. A woman came into my life, in God’s impeccable timing, much like a comet streaks across the sky, with brilliant stars. The signposts were so clearly of abundant Intent, or the breadcrumbs so very obvious to a body-soul finally trained to taste and see. I called her my spiritual doula, to get the S.D. into our correspondence and shared awareness. She’s right to resist formalization of these things of Spirit with some-such title like “spiritual director”; I’m right to honor her and her overwhelming, gracious gift to me, to this holy work in the world, with a little bit of an impish title. And now we both know the need in her that met the need in me, two companions called together along this way, for whatever else God will shape in us in the time to come.

The writing that happened returned me to the words of a ‘crazy rabbi friend’ as well, when I wrote him a brief note on Easter 2008. I had awoken to the image of his face, along with that of a lama Garchen Rinpoche, with no idea what “He is Risen” meant anymore. The dream suggested I was to ask them, that they would know. Irwin graced me with a thoughtful, impassioned Teaching, wrestling with this unknowing moment alongside me, within me. In his words, he returned me "to the sheer force of Jesus."

And then just last week, five years after that Easter 2008, I sat in table fellowship with another rabbi-friend, just as crazy but in his own gentling, self-effacing way. We were discussing our upcoming trip to Israel together in which we would share leadership with three others, for a group of 34 students. I confessed my skepticism that this trip to “the land where Jesus walked” would have such Jesus-connotations for me. “I’ve never had this burning desire to walk where Jesus walked,” I said. “I’ve not had much access to Jesus or God language for a long time, actually, which is not to say I’m not devoted to God in Jesus.  I’ve just seen and now sensed in my body such woundedness at the intersections, the peripheries with others, other traditions. I’ve not had a physical need for this pilgrimage-to-Holy-Land thing. So much violence in the name of Jesus,” I concluded. My friend’s face clouded over a bit, seeming sad. “But your tradition has offered such good too. You can’t let it go,” he said. Pleaded, even. I was startled, and something in me shifted. “Well, you’re probably right,” I confessed. “Way seems to be opening for me to say Jesus’ name again with a sense that it actually connects to Someone real.” We raised our shotglasses and had another cracker with lox, leaving it at that.

Never lose sight of Him. Promise me. These words brought such tears to my eyes yesterday. In my travels and covenantal immersion with so many companions, rooted in so many different traditions—or none at all—had I lost sight of my Teacher, my Beloved, Jesus? This one we in the church call the Anointed? The Messiah? True to form, for me, yes and no. J 

One of my “go-to” scriptural stories/texts has always been that of the Emmaus Road, Luke 24. Not only did it undergird the work of my theological mentor, James Loder, but it has structured my understanding of seeing Jesus--and losing sight of him--on the risked roads of a living faith tradition. Loder mirrored for the world a “transformational logic” that rests within this story-text. I have always experienced it as Jesus’ way of making himself known, seen, and then unseen, until he returns to stand among them, you, us, again. Returning to the text, I’m amused to see that the two disciples ran from Emmaus back to Jerusalem, and Jesus returns to them there, saying “Peace be with you.” So I could say this text mirrors Jesus’ way of making himself known, seen, and then unseen, “until we are all together in Jerusalem.” Perhaps this is becoming a pilgrimage story after all.

But this way of understanding Jesus’ way in the text, in my own life, means that I lose sight of him all the time, when he vanishes to go to the next place “on the way.” I’ve learned to trust that I will find him again, or be found, as it may be more accurate to say. But I lose sight of Jesus all the time AND I’ve never lost sight of him. It seems impossible for me to do so, actually. The woman who used to be my spiritual director has often quipped to me, “Always the Bride, never the bridesmaid,” which makes me shy and a bit bashful, though seen and held. In moments of deepest, belly-fear, I lament and grieve my loss of him, this sense that I cannot address Jesus directly anymore, that I don’t feel him like I used to, that he’s not really there. And I understand when others, outsiders, bring languages of psychology and other-traditional language to talk about "the experience of Jesus in human minds, consciousness, awareness." That this "rising" of Jesus in Christian tradition is a psychological-cosmic evolution thing. I get that, but it's not the language for me. There's this seemingly un-rootable both/and conviction of awareness-evolution AND historical-physical reality of resurrection in my mind, my body, my blood, my bones. Apparently, I can't be or believe otherwise, even when I try, when I grieve, when I lament such clear absence. Just when I’ve about mustered all I know how, He is Risen. He comes back in such clarity, such Voice, such unabashed hold on me that I get shy and bashful all over again. A blushing Bride, my friend would say. 

And my dream of long ago? That fidelity to Jesus needs to begin to include the discernment with others like a lama and a rabbi, sings its truths all over again. Faith in the future will not be like faith in the past. It’s never been that way and it still is not. Faith in the future requires the mirroring of fidelity from outsiders of every tradition, deeply rooted in their own. Discovered again and again, on resisted pilgrimages, in the messiness of the mundane that is so incredibly extraordinary we mostly miss seeing it. Seeing each other. And for me, seeing Him. 

Or Her, as I know Her most these days. I don’t think Jesus would mind being seen in drag.

So, next year, Jerusalem.