I was in a Holiday Inn at five in the morning after twenty-four hours of vomiting every twenty minutes. I was slumped on the floor, holding the space of a rib that had been removed there three weeks earlier.
And my wife—in anger, in panic, in desperation—called out,
“Where is God?”
And from some unknown place in me, through my pale slouched form,
I uttered, “Here….Right here.”
The Book of Awakening:
Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have
by Mark Nepo (April 22, 2012)
It has been that sort of week. A friend wrote asking for prayers following the senseless act that left her brother-in-law dead and her sister and nephew fighting for their lives. This was no random act of violence. The bat-wielding intruder was their son. A few days later, my friend had a post on her Facebook page questioning a quotation about the unconditional loving nature of God, and asking how God’s love could be true in this case. My heart has held these questions this week: for her, for me, and for all humans trying to make sense of senseless acts.
Perhaps that is the key. Perhaps we cannot make sense of senseless acts because they are senseless. We are left with the tender, open, wrenching, emotions that cannot be soothed by thinking. These moments leave us with the choice to be with them or to try to escape. In some twisted way, that desperate desire to escape inner pain may have been behind the drug use that snuffed out the light of clear thinking in the young man now in jail for murdering his father.
With grace, our own actions of escape will never be that extreme, but our ability to sit in the fire of our deepest pain without wounding others is something it can take a lifetime to cultivate.
I have invited others to join me in praying for my friend and for her family. When confronted with the senseless, sometimes we respond asking “Where is God?” but, with grace, from some unknown place in us, may we each utter simply, “Here….Right here.”
