again...

again:  You know when you get a word stuck in your head?  Like when you hear a really good word that you want to look up in the dictionary later so you can find out exactly how and when to use it because it just sounds so smart?  Or when random foreign language class factoids emerge from the recesses of your mind and you can’t stop repeating them behind your thoughts and conversations?  I’ve had “again” stuck in my head for days and weeks and approaching months.  Yes, it is an odd word to spend so much time thinking about it.  But lately it seems to jump off every page and catches my ear in every conversation.  And if it’s possible to have a favorite word, again is mine.

By definition, it means:  “another time, once more; returning to a previous position or condition; in addition to what has already been mentioned.”  I’m not an etymologist by any means, but a little research led to me to the German root entgegen which means something like “against, in opposition to; returning.”

I think our whole story is about again.

Again is every dusk hoping for another dawn. Again is the frozen ground of winter hoping for spring’s thaw. Again is the seed buried in the soil hoping to bear fruit. Again is the blank white page hoping for words. Again is the hollow lines of the music score hoping for melodies. Again is the painter’s canvas hoping for color.

Again is shattered relationships hoping for reconciliation. Again is the barren womb hoping for creation.  Again is the lungs’ hoping for another breath. Again is the rumbling stomach hoping for food.  Again is violence hoping for peace.  Again is the empty tomb birthing life.  Again is the aching heart hoping for love.  Again is the ailing body hoping to dance.  Again is the impossible hope of life after death.  Again is the hope of resurrection after crucifixion.  Again is the broken body and shed blood hoping for the Kingdom come.  Again is the church.

Again is about hope.  Again is about imagination.  Again is looking the world in the face, into the eyes of those most helpless and hopeless and seeing something new.  It is about “once more” entering into the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.  It is about “returning to our previous position or condition” as homo adorans—created as priests to received the gifts of God and return them to him, again and again.  And “in addition” to that work which has already been completed, there is an eschatological imagination drawing us into hope.  It occurs “against, in opposition to” the narratives and stories and liturgies of this world.  It is a “returning” to the cross, the empty tomb.  Again emerges from that which was, moving toward that which may be.  What was does not guarantee what might be, but hopes for it.  Hope comes from, or rather through, that which was.  Again is the in between, the already and almost and not yet.

the church:  Theologically, I think the church happens as again.  The church is not a building, nor is it the individuals in that building congregating for personal devotions together.  The church is the work these people do together.  The question, then, might not be “what is the church,” or “who is the church,” but “how is the church.”  The church is that community which sees and knows and proclaims how God is working the work of again in the world.  Their proclamation is the liturgy of the Eucharist, and the Eucharist is all about again-ing.  Again and again and again we come to the table.  Again and again and again we eat the bread and drink the wine.  Again and again and again we pray for the Kingdom to come.  Again and again and again we walk away from the table and out into the world to be consumed—to be martyred—as the bread and wine, body and blood of Christ.  Again and again and again we return to the table.  And again and again and again once more the bread and wine bring life.  Again and again and again they see and know and proclaim the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.

I need, we need, the church to be about again-ing.  The church tells us our story when we forget, and because of our fallen nature, we are always forgetting and always needing to hear it again.  It is the work of the church to remind us of who we are, where we are from.  It is the work of the church to cast the vision of where we are going and imagine how we might get there.  Because all of this happens in the liturgy of the Eucharist, it the work of the church to continue baking bread and pressing wine and washing the dishes at the end of the day.  The church, then, is not limited to a weekly service or to the task of saving souls.  No, the church is about the most basic and mundane moments of life.  It is about our bodies and our food, our homes and families and friends and strangers.  It is about where we shop and how we spend our time.  In all of these, the church creates a new language and vocabulary, a new palette with which we understand and speak and imagine the life of these lived moments.  Again and again and again the story of the church pulls these bits and pieces of our lives back into the open and spacious body of Christ.  As we are His, they too are His.  The Eucharist becomes a new center of gravity holding together all that which might otherwise spin out into fragmented space.

leaving and going:  In these last weeks and months, again has become one of the most honest and gut-wrenching prayers I can pray.  As my college graduation loomed on the horizon and my future seemed so uncertain for so many months, fear become paralyzing and anxiety suffocating.  And then as plans began to fall into place, from the reality of immanent goodbyes with undetermined hellos a deep sadness and sorrow settled into my heart.  My last weeks became a tangled mess of celebrating and grieving.  Everything to celebrate was cause to grieve and everything to grieve was only cause to grieve because of how celebration worthy it was.  Memories and stories and friendships and places all became sources of tears…and it became more and more difficult to differentiate the happy and sad tears.

I think that memories are a really, truly beautiful gift and I am so grateful for the memories of the last four years.  But I’m also finding that sometimes walking through memories can be a little like walking through a cemetery—I’m looking for life where there once was life but where there isn’t any anymore.  Maybe that’s a weird illustration, but I know I’m fighting the temptation of getting stuck in those memories, clinging to the past and grasping for the present and being satisfied with a headstone that doesn’t have room for new stories.  But I’m learning that while these memories tell us beautiful stories, they are only valuable in how they move us into the future.

So I’m learning to pray again.  I’m trying to move from leaving to going.  Those two are surprisingly different and I know that it will take some time.  I’m trying remember and grieve and celebrate and dream, all at the same time.  I am trusting that this is not an ending, but a beginning.  I know that if I really truly believe in the giftedness of these last four years, I have to continue seeking the kind of community and life and love and hope that I have found there.  I've had in my head two images for the last several months...one is of my palms bleeding, but the wounds are the little crescent moons of my own fingernails from clutching so tightly to so many things; the other is of my palms bleeding but with the marks of the nails of the cross...learning to let go has been harder than I'd anticipated, so I just keep praying again—accepting the gifts I have been given and with open hands surrendering them again and again.  And I am hopeful that there are good, good things to come again and again and again.  

My hope and prayer is that I would take all that I have learned and shared and experienced this year living together with the beautiful girls of 1^st West and the incredible women of the Adams staff, and do this again.  I’m praying that the patience and honesty and vulnerability and humility I have begun to learn would not stop here, but that I would continue to grow in these and live them again and again.  I’m praying that the laughter and joy and fun I have had with so many dear, dear friends would continue to bring life again and again.  I’m praying that all that I have begun to learn in classes and in chapels and in conversations would not be forgotten, but that I would keep learning them again and again.  I’m praying that the ways my thinking has been pushed and challenged would happen again and again.  I’m praying that I would remember God’s faithful provision in all my fears and anxieties and find peace in that truth again and again.  I’m praying that I would continue to tell the stories of these years again and again not only because they bring laughter and tears, but because woven throughout all of them is the story of what God is doing in His kingdom.  I think I’ve seen some moments of what that looks like with my sisters and brothers, and I pray that we would always fight to see them again and again.  I'm praying that I would continue to know and see and live the rhythms of the church as it agains.

And I'm praying that even thought I won’t be living this new season with those I love most, that because we really are held together by God's good grace that we will keep living this story together and apart again and again.