Balancing Act

Cirque du Soleil imitates life.

It has been a long absence and I’ve missed being here. Missed writing. But my life imitated this balancing act I watched a few weekends ago.

A dear friend took me to see Cirque du Soleil’s Echo. The act in between the acts was a balancing act with two artists - I think of them as the box-balancers. They began with a single box, tossing it between them and running around amongst the audience (while people were still gathering and getting seated - those annoying extra tall, late comers with the large bags of popcorn, and very big hairdos and spacious hats who always end up sitting in front of me at shows!)

Anyway, between sets of acrobatics and wonder, the box-balancers showed up again in a variety of ways, at one point losing their pants (vulnerability resonance alert - make truck backing up sound). Their grand moment was the creation of an impossibly high stack of boxes which ultimately all came crashing down.

They began this segment each with a small stack. They tossed boxes between each other … A small stack had boxes tossed on and became a much taller stack. Then a ladder was brought out and one guy climbed the ladder while the other guy, meant to be holding the ladder kept getting distracted: squirrel, eagle, shiny thing, tiny, tiny thing - completely letting go of the ladder leaving the guy on the top to balance by himself. From the ladder, the guy began stacking on top of the stack … balancing, very precariously on this ladder, to the sound of many oohs and aaahs from the audience.

Then, when boxes could no longer be added at the top, they added boxes at the bottom. Making an impossibly tall stack until finally the whole stack of empty boxes came tumbling down.

Emptiness everywhere contained in neat boxes.

There’s always a way to make a stack of emptiness a taller stack of emptiness until there is no longer a way to add any more emptiness. And the whole stack comes tumbling down.

The stage went dark.

Everything was cleared in the darkness preparing for the next ethereal act. 

The images of that stack getting built, taller and taller, until it all fell down kind of describes my life right now. Surrounded by boxes of emptiness. The course of the past ten years has involved a lot of accumulating, stacked, restacked, precariously stacked losses and grief.

This grief feels like a carefully stacked set of empty, taped up boxes … empty of the things they held that I now miss. 

Empty of a whole series of naiive expectations of what I thought ordained ministry and the church would be … naiive understandings which I assumed to be common understandings of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. But you know what they say about assuming … makes an ass of u and me.

I am empty now of assumptions and expectations. This landscape of scattered and tumbled everywhere boxes is safer to negotiate when I set the expectation meter to zero, empty the expectation tank, clear the deck of the Titanic rather than simply re-arrange the chairs. Acknowledge where empty is empty. And learn to live with the empty.

Empty of the innocence of imaginings: the imaginings of the world as I knew it before a pandemic. 

Empty of beloved people:

Empty of Oz who died on the day we closed a church (something that they do not teach us to do in Seminary). Dear Oz, my first sem teacher who told me in no uncertain terms in my first term that he saw in me the gifts and call to ministry, and encouraged me to heed the call. Dear Oz who then encouraged me along the way, always, ALWAYS encouraging me to be myself and trust that my diversity would be a gift in whatever ministry contexts I served. Dear Oz whose funeral is this Saturday coming. A funeral I will miss.

Empty of Linda who died two days after Oz. Dear Linda who, in the swirling grief of losing a son born the same year as me, opened a window to the life of a parent and let me look inside, let me see myself from the perspective of a mother of a child born in 1974, let me see what it would be like for that mother to lose her adult child. Dear Linda who allowed me into her sacred journeys: of grief, of battle with cancer and of constant celebration of the blessings in life. Dear Linda who was so well cared for by Dear Bill, all the way to the end. Dear Linda and Dear Bill whose love for and honesty with me inspired me to go on so many times when I wanted to: Just. Let. Go. Who inspired me to not bring that pain to a mother of a child born in 1974. Dear Linda whose funeral I missed.

Empty of Tess who died shortly after. Dear Tess who tirelessly fought for those on the margins: the homeless, the hungry, the addicted, the lonely. Dear Tess who took my hands and said we must, we must, find a way to provide housing. Dear Tess who was Jesus’ hands and feet like nobody else I’ve known. Who invited me into the community and said “you are a gift.” Dear Tess whose funeral is this Saturday coming. The funeral I will officiate in some serendipitous machination of time and space that has allowed me to grieve and bring support all at once: be empty and (use)ful all at once.

Empty of Antler, whom I loved as an aunt from a family to which I no longer belong. Dear Antler who made me countless flans and pumpkin pies when she learnt I liked these things. Dear Antler, for whom I made countless morning coffees, which we shared on the back porch with her first morning smoke (and her first morning coughing spell), while the dew was still glistening on the grass like a shining welcome to the day, in the company of her tomato plants and our musings and secret-sharings on everything from faith to family to our journeys in life: things done and left undone in thought word and deed. Dear Antler whose funeral is today, a funeral which I will not attend. For how does one attend where one does not belong? Where no space exists? Where distance is preservation?

Empty of a stone cottage in Cambridge: my first home “of my own” on native land. A stone cottage which was a sanctuary for so long. Until it was no longer sanctuary, but pandemic prison: the place where I was held captive to not being present at all, where I lost completely the capacity to see myself - through no fault but my very own lack of attendance to self. The place where I was reminded of growing up behind bars: double grills on all the windows of my childhood. To keep danger out? Or insanity in? Or out-sanity out?

Empty of moorings for a season when I didn’t know where home was and there was no lighthouse calling me home. Was it a person, place or thing? Was it a fixed address or a cyber orange ranger making a three point triangle: Cambridge, Wiarton, River Road in all possible combinations trying to find a place to dock.

Empty of compass or navigation tools, a box balanced on other boxes of expectations slowly withering on the vine while trying to balance on a fence which gave an awful wedgie, nigh onto haemorrhoids, as fence sitting does, when attempted for long spells of time.

Empty of a rectory where floors were laid and dreams were hatched only to die prematurely leaving little dream carcasses floating around with dream dust bunnies left behind after yet another move. Sold sign is up. Closing next week or the week after. At least the movers were cute and efficient!

Empty of the office that had been planned. The life that had been planned. Empty even of the bags of shame that had been used to numb the pandemic anxiety, then used to numb the post-pandemic-lets-pretend-we-are-ok-when-we-aren’t anxiety, then used to numb the post-pandemic-its-all-falling-apart-ness until there was nothing left to numb but numbness itself which is kinda like trying to shove empty into empty and coming up empty-handed because truth does not lie and cannot deny: empty is as empty does and empty doesn’t have to make room for anything because … well because its already empty, you see?

Empty of the church at Sauble Beach. Closing a church should be a course in seminary: this is how you close a church, plan the hospitality, print the bulletins, bandage your heart, squash down your existential questioning, compress your grief under your clergy collar, and hold the crook, quell your manic urge to scream “the light in the world is going out.” Make sure the formerly sacred is not used in unsacred ways like for a bird bath because bird poop is not appropriately sacred even though it is the only way certain seeds can propogate, like Jamaican bird pepper which will only germinate once it has passed through the ass of a bird, the way a baby is birthed through the canal of a virgin - who died and said we could define sacred, anyways? Was it Jesus? Is that a disobedient question? Or is it my Lutheranism showing? I feel the urge to nail something to a church door. Maybe a sold sign. Close a church. How do you close a church anyway? The closing next week or the week after. Too. Plus.

Empty of the energy to fight or ask questions. Empty of the notion of rock bottom. Empty of the violence of rejection. Empty of the violence of tokenism. Empty of the violence of fence-sitting. Empty of the gullibility that imagines belonging that was only a mirage in a far away future that will never come to pass.

In the emptiness I find one thing. One true thing. When I look not for what I cannot see, but look instead at the space left behind after the emptying, where no stack of carefully balanced griefs procures my vision. I see one thing.

One person.

One soul.

Made in the image of God.

Belonging to creation and Creator.

Hollowed out. An empty vessel. A vessel which I call upon Jesus to please refill. Please. Refill. Free. Refill. Already paid for so it doesn’t matter that my pockets, my soul, my being is empty, turned inside out. Come. Buy without money. Take this empty vessel and wash it in forgiveness. For you know without searching. You knew before these threads were knit together. You know the coming out and going in. You Know: where I fit, where I belong, where I may be your hands and feet.

You sent me a bear. And a turtle. Within the space of a few minutes this week. They are my compass back to you, Creator: maker of medicine. Maker of me. Make me medicine, for the world you want to be.

The stack of empty empty boxes, so carefully juggled into a vertical balancing act have all come tumbling down. The stage has gone dark. My consciousness is struggling to tidy up the mess of empty boxes before day breaks and a new act must begin.