Hidden in Plain Sight

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in …
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

From Leonard Cohen's Anthem


The wallpaper on my Mac is a rotating series of photos I've uploaded over the past few years, so I frequently stop what I'm doing to stare at the images scrolling through.  Most faces are smiling - open, even, like sunlight - with eyes squinted and teeth bared in unadulterated joy; others are pensive, thoughtful, filled with contented Mona Lisa mystery.  These are the shots that elicit my own feelings of gratitude, the ones that assure me of future promise, of hope - the ones most likely to tease my insecurities out into the open, to pat them on the back and whisper that maybe, just maybe, I did okay as their mom. A few, though - the ones of the yellow-haired boy at twelve, fourteen, or sixteen, even - cannot be so easily celebrated.  His eyes, flat and dull like a 1920s penny, stare out of his haunted face - a look not altogether dissimilar to photos snapped of Holocaust survivors or of Russian orphans, or war refugees.  It's impossible to read into those faces anything but the despair of a thousand betrayals, and yet this is the entirety of his face. My son's face. Eyes, mouth, cheeks, nose - all are caught up into that one word: Despair.  The war that rages in his soul plays itself out on the landscape of his lifeless eyes, and, sadly,  that is the thing.  How had I let that colorless portrait escape me?  

As Richard Rohr says, we cannot see what we are not ready to see, especially those things which are hidden in plain sight.  

And yet, Jesus asks the blind beggar, who is both blind and beggar, What do you want me to do for you?  And this man says, simply, I want my sight restored.  Because, at one time, he could see.

But once he sees again, it will all look different.

The Smoking Gun

When I was four years old at play in the sandbox, a neighbor's rooster the size of a small goat flogged me, knocking me flat on my back to the ground.  I remember very little of this other than a wild flurry of feathers and claws and beak atop my face - and someone screaming.  Maybe the scream was mine, although I think I was too paralyzed to make much of any kind of sound - too paralyzed to make any kind of movement.  So I lay there and waited for a rescue, unaware that my bottom lip and chin were victims of those massive claws digging in with the tenacity of fish hooks.  A short while later a loud pop was followed by an explosion of feathers, releasing me to put my chubby fingers up to my face to probe the now throbbing gashes that would go on to be stitched and, later, leave permanent trails.  It was years before I understood the danger in that split-second decision my father was forced to make as he stood way up at the house - years before I had children of my own to remind me that sometimes - many times - we parents are simply flying blind (or, if you prefer, relying on faith).  Most days, to be honest, there's not much difference.

My tow-headed boy's words were out.  He was out.  The rooster was back, but this time, I was the parent flying blind.  This time,  I had a decision to make that was nothing short of putting a bullet in a monster.  If my aim were off by just a hair, then the consequences could be disastrous.  He might be left bleeding, blind, scarred for life - or worse.  It dawned on me then that I needed to move in close and fast, to cross the room that had at once become no less than the Grand Canyon of chasms, to make that leap and not look down.

This was not a fine time for paralysis.  Feathers were going to fly.

Moving toward my son, smoking gun in hand, I crossed the room - not tentatively but decisively, not gingerly but with a boldness that came from some unknown (to me) place. I'd put a bullet in a monster - before it could jump him, before it could slice away the tender flesh and leave a gaping wound.  It was a split-second, flying blind decision.  It was all I knew to do, and it had to be enough.

Wrapping him in my arms, I welcomed his weeping against me.  Wrapping him in my arms, I shushed him, clucking like a mother hen as she gathers her chicks close to her body.  Wrapping him in my arms, I tried to swallow down the lump that had formed in my throat - a lump that I was certain was born of the dust fragments of my shattered heart.  

Once that dust settled, once that clearing began, once I was able to get the lay of the land - and with that rooster dead and gone - I would see that his coming out broke my heart wide open so that more of God could get in. 

But this day, it was enough to cling to one another in that haze, to fly blind without knowing where to land ... and to wait.

Moving Towards the Middle

With Jesus, we find the power to hold the pain of life until it transforms us. 

- Fr. Richard Rohr



I needed a plan.  I needed a way to get control of this thing - to get on top of it, to make it submit, to make it cry uncle and relent,  Okay!  Okay!  You win!  Because the only thing worse than not having control is the realization that you never had it. 

The words had been spoken.

I couldn't put the genie back in the bottle, 
the toothpaste back in the tube, 
the bullet back in the gun.

The words had been spoken.  

Fear came fast to the surface, blowing bubbles like a swimmer as she empties her lungs of the last bit of air that has served her well below but will fail her now. 

The words had been spoken.  

No longer was this simply a question that raced like Flo Jo around and around the edges of my brain until it grew tired and retreated into the locker room for a time.  No longer was Denial my partner in crime, because it had been detained and arrested and carried off in handcuffs in the back of a squad car.  Fat lot of good you did me, Denial.  Fat lot of good.  You simply delayed the inevitable.

Yes, the words had been spoken - had pierced the lie and lanced the festering sore in hopes of a remedy, yet I was still blind to their efficacy. 

It would be a while, still.