Youth

You keep my eyelids from closing. I am so troubled that I cannot speak. 

I consider the days of old, and remember the years long ago. 

I commune with my heart in the night; I meditate and search my spirit:

 ‘Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable?

 Has his steadfast love ceased forever?

Are his promises at an end for all time?’ 

                                             -Psalm 77: 4-7

Centuries before the troubles of our day, there were those who (like the Psalmist here) anguished about the loss of an easier time in their lives. They felt abandoned by God; for how else could they find themselves in such a harsh landscape, one where perhaps coarseness stood in the place of decency, violence in the place of tolerance, and cruelty where compassion once had been the norm? This human longing in darkness for the return of a brighter world is something we might well understand and even share today.

I think the phrase “the sweet innocence of youth” is one that captures the vast distance we travel in time to arrive at a more jaded phase of life, to reach the place where we take sober stock of the world as it is, and lament what’s been lost. We can relate to the “sweetness” of earlier times, of course, only if we’re fortunate to have experienced a childhood worth every bit of the nostalgia: golden, carefree hours playing with friends; meals lovingly served when we got hungry; comforting embraces when we cried; and loving tuck-in’s at night; maybe even with a story to soften sleep.

It’s only as we age that we see there is so much more to life than “sweet innocence.” We compete for resources, unconvinced by abundance. We come to fear and distrust those we were once happy to play with and accept. As the years pass, we, each in our own unique way, come to experience chaos and confusion, anger and resentment, tragedy and loss, the hell of life’s demons around us, and the hell of the demons within. Where is the God who smiled on us in that simpler and happier youth?

In this Lenten season, it’s a question that makes me see just how painful a mystery lies at the heart of the Incarnation. To contemplate confining God to this human form and condition, to place the Creator of All in a cell like ours, in which through all of history humans have left the innocence of childhood behind to commit unimaginable atrocities against one another, and do so even to this very day… what a prison sentence for the Divine! And so It seems an almost cruel demand of faith to acknowledge that our God, in Christ, walked—and walks—as we do. Not just through the early pastures of innocent youth, but through the bloody fields where we still prove capable of violence and the killing of the innocent. Where we still bomb hospitals, and separate children from parents in the name of nationhood. Where some now even wave the flag in gleeful allegiance to the principle that “might makes right.”

But aging here in the gloom of the cell, we’re saved by a Light. Jesus held it high when he entered. And, thanks be to God, it’s nothing less than the Light that shone at the start of all Creation, that shines freshly in the newborn. It’s the Light of God’s unconditional love for each and every one of us, sinner and saint. A Light seemingly dimmed as the child becomes an adult, but in truth never to be overcome by humanity’s dark side, or by any other version of darkness found in the Cosmos. It illumines the corners of the cell where humility and love still thrive, and where the child’s joy of simply being alive survives amidst hardship. It shines in the corners where love conquers fear, every time. The corners where acknowledging and facing our weaknesses will lead to redemptive strength, every time. The corners where nonviolent opposition for the cause of Justice prevails in the end, every time. 

When it’s time for me, and for each of us, to follow the Christ Light out through the exit door of this brief and tiny cell, may we leave words on the walls where we slept that can lead future children into dreams of peace. Here lived someone whom the darkness did not overcome. Here lived someone who brought the Light into a dark corner when the chance came. Here lived someone who never forgot the reasons for a child’s celebration of life, and never lost faith in God’s call to be an Easter person in a Good Friday world.

Musical Reflection - King of Glory, King of Peace - George Herbert, Choir of All Saints, Beverly Hills

In these time-bound shadows that can seem so oppressive, dear God, may the Season of Lent remind us of who we truly are, heirs to generations of faith, followers in the footsteps of Christ, and your beloved sons and daughters whose destiny is to walk in the Divine Light, that which no darkness shall overcome. Amen.

Youth