American in Paris

I've been away from the blog for a while.

No, I haven't been in Paris for a month. But I did spend a week there at the beginning of April. April in Paris is supposed to be beautiful, but based on my time there, I wouldn't know. It was a work-related trip.

There's a big trade show that happens in Paris each year, and I was there representing my publishing firm. I worked 17 hour days, walking the show floor all day, then sitting in the hotel lobby with my Powerbook (the only spot the Wi-Fi worked) until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, connected to my office back in Colorado, trying feverishly to meet the drop-dead deadline for our magazine's May issue. Aside from a very brief dinner with our staff at a cafe a few steps down the street my first night there (from which I excused myself early because I had to get back to the hotel to work), I thereafter saw the inside of my hotel room, the inside of the hotel lobby, the inside of the subway station (steps down to it were right outside the hotel front door), the inside of the subway train, and the inside of the Paris Expo exhibit hall.

While there, I received e-mails from friends back home, asking me about the Paris riots and strikes. Apparently the U.S. press was showing riot scenes in full color on the evening news. I neither saw nor heard a single word from anyone about the riots from any Parisians while in Paris. If it hadn't been for the e-mails, I might have passed the week without ever knowing that just a mile or so away, Parisians and the Paris police were doing battle. (Sorta says something about the way the media tend to shape our view of reality.)

I did get a glimpse of something else, however. The run up to the Paris trip, the trip itself, and its aftermath has provided a sort of squeaky-hinge turning point for my life. "Squeaky hinge" in the old black-and-white "B" movie sense of scary foreboding.

In the two weeks prior to the trip, I was the object of several prophecies, the substance of which was that I have for some time lived a sort of hermetic life, a life apart, a sort of monkish existence, but that time has drawn to a close. Paris was a sort of pinnacle point of that life — a sign — isolated and preoccupied by my work, unaware of either the delights or the riots in the fabled City of Lights. The last night I was there, I had the latest in a string of tornado dreams, which for me have always prophetically preceded periods of significant personal change that always involve what I guess you could call profound deconstruction. Last time around, six years ago, I had a series of six or seven dreams, during each of which I observed a single tornado. I lost my home, my job and my family. The recent dreams involved two and, in the Paris dream, six or seven tornados. Naturally, I'm a little nervous. I'm still waiting to see where all of this goes, which explains, at least in part, my prolonged absence from the blog.

But as I entered Holy Week, at least one thing of significance crystallized. Yesterday, is the day we now call Good Friday, the day that at the time seemed like the End, but actually proved to be the Beginning. The day that we — oh yes, I think most of us eventually must admit that we'd have been in that crowd shouting "Crucify him!" or at least slinking away in fear while it was done — condemned him to the cross. Tomorrow, we celebrate the day that Jesus walked away — alive forever — from Joseph of Arimethea's tomb, having defeated both sin and death.

I think The Church often misses the ultimate significance of that act, and gets lost in the details. For many years, I certainly have. But in that two-part act, Jesus became the Hinge of History. Prior to the cross, Jesus proclaimed the last days of God's dealing with a "special" group. His sayings, parables, teachings and healings progressively dismantled the idea of "ins" and "outs." Anyone willing to read the Gospel accounts guilelessly, in humility, can't miss it. The folks he was speaking to certainly didn't miss it: Jesus rebukes were not for "sinners" but primarily for those who presumed to draw the lines that separate sinners from God — always placing themselves safely on the God side of the line. Jesus crossed the line, and took a stance squarely on the other side, with the sinners — those whom he explicitly stated he was there to save. That's why they crucified him.

On Easter, Jesus greeted first Mary of Magdala — he didn't greet a man and certainly not one of the religious elite of the time, but a woman of questionable reputation, one the religious folks of the time would have placed far over on the wrong side of the line. Why Mary? I think the answer is simple. First, he loved her and she had returned his love. But second, how better to underscore his point?

During that three-day period, from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, Jesus became the Door to the Eternal and proclaimed the Eternal Yes of God. And woe upon woe to us, the naysayers, the blind judges, the self-appointed dividers of sheep and goats — a group among whom I still, to my great dismay, so often find myself numbered.

As long as we attempt to be our own yes, by saying no to others, by continuing to insist that lines be drawn, we remain whitewashed tombs.

But Jesus left the tomb. If we chose to remain there, examining the empty grave clothes, then we cannot partake of His resurrection life. What possible hope is there for us?

Only to admit that we belong, with Mary of Magdala, on the wrong side of the line, stuck fast in the kingdom of darkness. We must admit it, because — hallelujah! Glory!! — Jesus is there with us, able to turn even our deepest darkness to incomparable Light.