"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice..."
-Gabriel Garcia Marquez-
Times I was most sure I believed in God over the past month...
1. While eating a raspberry at breakfast
2. The time the communion grape juice ran over my fingers as the piece of bread I dipped absorbed too much juice
3. When I thought I overheard a student saying his middle name was "Emmanuel"
4. When I spoke with confidence to a friend
Reading the above line from One Hundred Years of Solitude, I am drawn in by Marquez's signature magical realism--the present reality of the verb "discover," the familiarity and weight this word carries for Western civilization, the image of ships and men in puffy shirts that it brings to mind, and the cutouts of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria I once glued to a paper plate on Columbus day. Then, that word, discover, put together with something that seems so obvious, ever-present, un-discoverable, elemental--I underlined this line three times in my copy of the book, starred it, and wrote "wow" next to it in the margin. There are dents in the grainy paper above my comment where I tried to write "wow" before ink was coming out of the ball point pen. So I tried to write "wow" twice. I never finished the book, but I have returned to that line several times. I imagine if you took that book off my shelf it would flip open to that page with my scrawled "wow"s.
I believe most and least in God when something about my faith or my experience of God seems to meet reality in a magical way. Sometimes, the magic and the reality seem to unify, creating the prose of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the experience wakes me up to mystery, and I remember the day I embarked to discover ice. I am left like the bucktoothed Pevensey children in the Chronicles of Narnia repeating the name of Aslan with whispery, breathy annunciation. Prayer lingers at the edge of my thoughts and sometimes just becomes a part of my daydreaming. Things will change because I have uttered "in the name of Jesus," and today, I think it means something; I will try and to remember to write this down on a sticky note, and write about it someday. I am one with the universe, attuned to the spiritual, enchanted and in wonder of all the magic the world holds. Pure rationality falls short.
The experience does not always pan out this way.Other times, I am aware that something about what I am doing seems like magic, but the 3rd grade birthday party, quarter out of the ear, trick hat kind of magic. We stand around the communion bread, and this must be a particularly stale batch. Grasping the nub of bread, my fingers slip; God's body is hard to tear. All of us gathered around the table laugh, and when the server begins to mouth his words about the body and blood, I am distracted by his smile all the while focused on the way the stale bread has made me aware that I am dipping a crumb of bread in grape juice. The strands of magic and reality run parallel never to intersect, and I sit on the taught rope below as I try to imagine that the strand above me is more real, more close, and that everyone around me is also grasping at it too. Trying to use my weight against the taught rope, I try to propel myself up to the line above, but I am only made to feel stupid that I believe its there--the magic. Do the people passing me by see me grabbing at air? I long for the shivers, the dumbfounding awe when the lines intersect. Yet, something about what I believe strikes me as a voodoo magic, too ureal, too out there, too arbitrary, too foolish.
The other day someone in my small group referred to a group of Christians as “believers.” I never realized how terrifying that term sounds. Believers: a group of people marching or zombie walking, a huge doomsday cult, also see noun, singular, someone who holds a crystal to their forehead and talks about energy. But then again, I do believe that God impregnated a virgin who gave birth to his Son who lived a totally perfect life and that he died on a cross as an atonement for all of our sins, as in all of us in all of history. I also believe that 3 days later he rose again, and that when I was 3 years old I asked him to climb inside my heart, and that he can hear all the prayers of the world at the same time. I wish I hadn’t written that all out. I think I’ve been avoiding writing that part out. It is easy enough for me to abstractly connect with what seems like Jesus in prayer, but when I write that all out, I feel like a “believer.”
The other day someone in my small group referred to a group of Christians as “believers.” I never realized how terrifying that term sounds. Believers: a group of people marching or zombie walking, a huge doomsday cult, also see noun, singular, someone who holds a crystal to their forehead and talks about energy. But then again, I do believe that God impregnated a virgin who gave birth to his Son who lived a totally perfect life and that he died on a cross as an atonement for all of our sins, as in all of us in all of history. I also believe that 3 days later he rose again, and that when I was 3 years old I asked him to climb inside my heart, and that he can hear all the prayers of the world at the same time. I wish I hadn’t written that all out. I think I’ve been avoiding writing that part out. It is easy enough for me to abstractly connect with what seems like Jesus in prayer, but when I write that all out, I feel like a “believer.”
After all, the holy water comes from the bathroom. Or at least I've seen a collared minister come out of the bathroom with a sort of crystal flask, and he was wiping the excess water droplets off with a paper towel. In that sort of moment, I do not know whether I will feel like the incarnation of God makes sense or whether I will feel like I've been lied to, and everyone else knew it. That depends on the day or the wind or my hormones. But I know that this month, when the grape juice spilled over my thumbnail, I understood that God had covered me with his blood, when Jose's middle name was Emmanuel, I was reminded that the divine is with me, even in the little Hispanic boy with warts bubbling out of his nail beds, and when I ate the raspberry, the little cells of juice burst in my mouth, and I wondered at the improbability of a raspberry and its vibrant red-pink color. Something must be outside of this world looking in, ordaining raspberries.
Lord, help me to discover ice.
