Church for the Throwaways: When Love Sears Itself

Prose.

Let us gather together, dearly Beloved—Body of Christ, unified by the eternal, shared longing and God-centered love focused upon the Beloved: the Author of our salvation, the Manifested of all perceived and unperceived reality, the breath before a breath was born, the thought before thoughts were given leave to form.

We come before You in humility as communal dust, openly admitting our finitude before the endless depths of Your Eternity. We come not as worthy, but unworthy—and unable to stay away all the same. We come with a shared, communal longing for authentic worship, absent of sophistry.

You deliver. Yeshua, You saw our huddled forms perched on that cross so long ago—cowering and heaping dust upon our form of dust—and You said Yes.

You said, I will die for these, and with a smile, no doubt.

“You are brazen, Beloved,” said Dust.

“I Am That I Am,” He said with a smile.

“How dare You make me fall for You all over again while You died!” I recall proclaiming.

“It is done,” You smiled then—again—before You compassionately laid down Your breath for us.

I remember weeping outside Your tomb, where they laid You. I wept and wept over the stone till surely it must have been worn down a little. No? I wept as I waited. I waited as I fasted, my soul and being yearning for Your promised form.

You spoke enigmatically, with mystery wrapped in silence. I remember being wooed by You then. You rang true. You rang Love. We did not understand then, as we do not now, that You were telling us to be at peace and wait—because no grave was ever made strong enough to contain the purity of Your manifested Love.

I wept like a fool. I call myself a fool now, because then it was all weeping and wailing for Your physical form. We felt the absence immediately.

What we did not understand was that You had to go first, so that we could take the next steps into eternity after You—forming an almost stairway to heaven with our very lives. We were meant to be an unbroken pathway straight to unity with You and the Father.

The funny part is that all this time later, I only now understand: You had to don invisibility so that we could translate our physical, in-person love of You into eternal seeking and longing for You spiritually. You did everything You did because You loved the Father and us so much that You had to show us and hold our hands—to teach us to worship the Unseen Father through You, becoming unseen, and us seeking Him through the lens of You.

It is all so beautiful to me now, Beloved. Even the tears. Even after all this time. I still recall the times we walked and talked. After many seasons lived and reflected upon, I pick out these memories. They seem like little hidden treasures You left for all of us, Your children, to find along the way of Life.

I see the mothers as fathers and the fathers as mothers. I see the formed unformed, and the clay molded by skilled hands. I see devices that souls invest their lives in—and after it all, Beloved, I still see Your unmistakable hand as fingerprints upon the eternal nature of Love and merciful Compassion.

It is to me now as then a sweet aroma, Beloved—the tang of Your sweat amidst the heat of the day, when we toiled beneath that sun.

I see You smiling still when I close my eyes and place a hand upon my breast. You burned Yourself into me in the summer sun with a simple, unguarded smile—hoe in hand. Such a beautiful, achingly radiant soul.

I long to lay my head upon Your chest once more.

I love You.

Dust