Silence

Silence.

Silence.

A sheering, deafening silence. Deep silence, one so deep so as to sub-scend (opposite of transcend) to an unimaginable place below an African-American spiritual depiction of a God who is “so low you can’t get under Him!”

Silence. More than the absence of cries, laughter, shouts, more than mere outer noise, more than the still of objects moving about, more than the silencing of James Weldon’s Johnson’s “God’s Trombones” blasting through “a hundred midnights, ” more than St. John of the Cross’ “Dark Night of the Soul,”Silence.

Silence. Numb. Nihilistic. Anomie. Soul anarchy. Silence.

Jesus is dead!

Jesus is dead. He died yesterday. He actually, really died, Dead! A hard death, an embarrassing, insulting, demeaning, excruciating, death on a cross with thieves and political prisoners. The joyful noise of hope becomes silent. Hope had been an ever-growing companion. Inclusivity, welcome to the marginalized, touching the untouchable, becoming the homeless, confounding the religious scholars and religious police, even converting many of them, but now Jesus, “the dancer” is dead!

Silence.

Silence? Maybe it’s not bad after all. We left our families, our livelihoods, our friends to follow Jesus. Maybe we can just go back home? Is it possible? Maybe we can just go back to status quo, don’t rock the boat, keep people in their box, it”s hard to think that you can touch everyone anyway. Maybe this silence is better.

But it aches. It truly, really aches so badly that the silence is deafening. It’s loud inside, it’s so loud inside!

In this vacuum, in this crater in my soul on this Saturday, there just must be something else. He just can’t be dead! Dead? Can death do this?

Silence.

Somewhere below the silence is a sound. Somewhere above the silence, there is a sound. I can’t hear it, I can’t even feel it, but somehow, somewhere, sometime, I know it’s there, challenging the silence.

Sound!

Photo credit: callmetim/flickr