The Dance of Life

We arrived back home after our memorable time in San Carlos. We are looking at the calendar again to see when we can return.
Tonight, I will be attending a wake service for Auntie Cathy's husband. Last year we buried my Lolo two days before Christmas. If you've lost a loved one, especially around the holidays, you know what a surreal time it can be and how the holidays are never the same.

Below are some thoughts written by Henri Nouwen, who is able to articuate the nuances of brokeness and joy better than any other author or theologian I know. I love his writings because of its simple yet profound impact it has on my capacity to reflect. This is from one of the few books I brought along with me to the Philippines - "The Dance of Life - Weaving Sorrows and Blessings into One Joyful Step."

Some of you may know that my resolution for this past year 2008 was to live a life with more joy. I am not certain if I kept my resolution. I will ask Megumi and get her opinion. But if Nouwen is correct, joy is often most evident in the least expected times and places. After reading this, I more fully understood one of the most perplexing questions I had about Jesus - how can someone who is to be our Joy also be a man of sorrow? Now I think I know.

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Nouwen writes:

In the world about us, a radical distortion is made between joy and sorrow. People tend to say "When you are glad, you cannot be sad, and when you are sad, you cannot be glad." In fact, our contemporary society does everything possible to keep sadness and gladness separated. Sorrow and pain must be kept away at all costs because they are the opposites of the gladness and happiness we desire.

Death, illness, human brokeness...all have to be hidden from our sight because they keep us from the happiness for which we strive. They are obstructions on our way to the goal of life.

The vision offerered by Jesus stands in sharp contrast to this worldly vision. Jesus, shows, both in his teachings and in his life, that true joy often is hidden in the midst of our sorrow, and that the dance of life finds its beginnings in grief. He says: "Unless the grain of wheat dies, it cannot bear fruit...Unless we lose our lives, we cannot find them; unless the Son of Man dies, he cannot send the Spirit." To his two disciples who were dejected after his suffering and death, Jesus says: "You foolish people, so slow to believe all that the prophets have said! Was it not necessary that Christ should suffer and so enter into his glory?

Here is a completely new way of living is revealed. It is the way in which pain can be embraced, not out of desire to suffer, but in the knowledge that something new will be born in the pain. Jesus calls our pains "labor pains." He says: "A woman in childbirth suffers because her time has come; but when she has given birth to the child, she forgets the suffering in her joy that a human being has been born into the world" (John 16:21).

The cross has become the msot powerful symbol of this new vision. The cross is a symbol of death and life, of suffering and of joy, of defeat and of victory. It's the cross that shows us the way.