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30 de Octubre 2008
it is only prodigal eisegesis, i know.
if some of this seems familiar it is because of the entry titled rcl. but i'm finding that things have changed quite a bit since then.
on the prodigal son:
It isn't that I hate this parable. I just think it is really messy because it is about a family, and the texts we read around it were about families too which just makes things even messier.
Don't take this the wrong way but I can't shake the feeling that the father in the story told himself his son was dead because that was what he really wanted.
I am like that. I think movement away from me is about death.
I tell myself the man I loved so much is dead because I don't know what to do with his absence. I guess I'm just not afraid enough of death to avoid really pretending hard. I assume the mourning is easier if I assume his departure will be final.
But I want him back almost every day. Every day I want to go back to the places we loved. Everyday I put my head to the chest of God and listen for the sound of his feet thumping, coming closer to me, so I won't have to move my own feet closer to his.
At one point it seemed he was returning. One morning I turned toward the horizon and a grey figure in the distance finally moved a little closer. The waves of heat obscured the vertical line and I saw, as he moved closer, that he was on his knees the way ancient pilgrims approach a sacred place.
And I, like a fool, was hopinghopinghoping. Like a drunkard, I was stumbling in my excitement, I was slurring and ultimately misunderstood over and over again as I called his name. I was wrong; I just don't know what I was wrong about. I don't know if it was him who came home, or if it was a shattered version, a broken, shoeless, torn apart . When my questions met his ears, they landed. But when I asked, "what do you do with what happened to us? He answered, "I don't know" over and over again. And it was beautiful to me, I had waited so long to hear his voice. But perhaps he was disappointed that I had ignored his apology in favor of festivities. Perhaps he was all too aware that home would never be home again no matter how he repented, how he turned, how close he came to me. Perhaps I thwarted his repentance by silencing him, by hoping or settling for this lovely ghost of him. The celebration was bittersweet.
I don't know that I was ever close enough to him to call his homecoming a return. Was this ever his home? I never made it a home for him; I gave him the little I had and told him it was all I had to give. I made him believe that there was a portion for him but kept the largest share for myself. I know I let him go.
And while he was gone I kept quiet, kept my distance and waited because that is all I could do. It seemed possible to turn toward from far away, to let him fly and hope he would return, to repent secretly. But the place where I waited wasn't home. It wasn't home to him when he was here, it wasn't home to me when he was gone, and it isn't home now that I can lie and tell myself he came back.
It is a maddening dance around the characters in this parable, but not for the usual reasons. I never come close enough to trample toes, I never come close enough to understand the way we (the parable, the runaways and I) have been choreographed like this.
So how do I know I want him and all his mess back here? Why do I think I want him back? And in the moments when I am running to him, why do I want to throw my arms around him so badly?
I can't get it out of my head that Nouwen says there are "invitations to come higher up and closer by." And I issue them, but only haphazardly. From emotional light years away, I poke and prod the distant man I once loved, hoping he will wake with a start and reach for me.
They say keep your friends close and your enemies closer. They say you don't get to choose your enemies. In the studio where I learned combination after combination at the barre and on the floor, I rarely chose my dance partner--I learned how to connect time, connect steps, how to extend and stretch my limbs or turn my head properly toward my partners. I learned to present openly, from the heart, from the center, toward the audience. But to really connect with the partner was a leap toward expression, drama and emotional connectivity reserved for those who, appropriately, were prepared to bleed to be en pointe or even simply en releve, but to turn into their partner nonetheless higher than the rest of us.
Those were the dancers who had learned to spot: to focus their eyes on one small thing while the rest of their body turned again and again in a beautiful flurry of repentance. And their partners stood behind them almost the whole time, head high, not quite touching but not so distant. Proudly making the angles with his body, like arrows directing the gaze of the audience to his partner's show of strength and beauty. And when it was his turn to spin, he did so with a righteous anger, kicking higher than she might and leaping so his core, his proud chest seemed to be thrown about from the force of his heart beating. He could force all his weight to rise as he spun on one straight supporting leg, the other leg twisted in anguish, en dedans but cutting the air between himself and her, madly, lovingly. Finally he would land silently, leather to wood, chest heaving under the strain and present himself to her. Not like a ghost but like a dream.
The father Nouwen wants to be hopes to dance like this but the Mac (from The Shack)-like father simply cannot do this step. He kept his hatred so close; he forgot to focus on the spot of grief for his daughter, lost his balance, never completed the turn, and instead found himself hoping for the opportunity to shoot the murderer, his only partner in this bloody dance, right between the eyes. I understand. I often take a loaded gun when I make the trek home or wherever God hoped we'd meet.
That is the way of the worst fathers I know--the enemies I keep closest. Skip over the relationship you were unable to maintain and aim high enough so the bullet, all your hopes and fears will hit hard and maim, possibly kill what it is you hate. Focus on what you hate, rather than the reason you hate it.
It is so complex because this way it is infinitely easy to accidentally punish those who stay close. You make those closest to you into slaves, you forget to show them love enough, to celebrate their loyalty, and they will never learn to enjoy your presence.
These kinds of fathers are like Mac: expecting God will be whoever is needed in the moment the relationships falter, in the moment the car crashes, in the minute you take the first step off the marked trail, in the time it takes for the gun to fire. They never rise into the dance. God becomes like a first responder. It is as if God is about the business of blotting the blood from our mother's lips, cleaning up the messes made by rage, instead of interrupting greed, addiction and self-hatred.
I guess I don't think the father in the parable is much like God at all. I think the father in the parable is just like me. I think Mac's Poppa is not enough like my papa and yet too much like Nouwen's fatherly inclinations in his last chapters.
I think I want the parable father to take a good look around his home and wonder why his son ran away. I want him to stand in the middle of the house falling down around his ears. I want him to feel like Mac upon returning to the scene of his daughter's death.
I want Nouwen to understand that I want him to father me but I know he won't--
not perfectly. I want him to imagine I am dead because he let me go, because fathers always let go and I want him to foolishly chase the ghost of me each day because even when I do return it won't be anything like it was, it won't be better and it might be worse. It may not be like I returned at all because I didn't want to come back--I had no other choice. And I don't think the kingdom of God is like a family forced to reconcile or starve to death.
When I unravel the riddle this way I want Nouwen to use the jealousy and self-hatred conjured by his reading of the elder son. I want him to see the father in the painting repenting and, the way Mac (simpleton that he was) turned out in the end, wise to the fact that we can never go home again, that our loved ones will never come home again, not really, and maybe the father in the parable was doing right to hope his son might never return.
I know the parable is probably about hopeful reunion and joyful repentance, about unconditional acceptance and other good stuff but tonight I just can't read it that way and though I feel guilty about all this self-indulgent mess I've made of it, I think that is just going to have to be okay for now. God knows what it means even if I don't.
help yourself | By crymytinyflood | 5:20 PM
Comments
what if the father tells you to forget the past. "fuck it" because you can't do anything about it. don't let it ruin you because it hasn't ruined him. except all you see in is eyes is ruin, and saddness, and lonliness and bullshit. why would you run back. for a party? for a fattened calf? and then what? become a slave like the older brother who 'has everything' the father owns...but does he feel that way? hell no, he feels abandoned and alone and confused by all the fuss. this parable sucks.
Posted by: N at 30 de Octubre 2008 a las 06:53 PM
