Tenured Otherwise
There comes a day
when everything you knew about the world shifts like equinox light and you know you’ve entered a new season. I watched evil systematically tenured then judge me unworthy. Crushed, I lost faith until seeds sown in hope bloomed cynical and I walked away. I left my gifts at the altar where they rotted, unwanted and backed away undone, utterly undone uttering cries of dereliction on the outskirts of the dregs of my life and all its work devoted to proclaiming God’s goodness. I rested in the womb of God’s tomb for years, perplexed, not knowing what to do--or how-- silent, defeated, waiting, fallow, wondering: Will there be resurrection? Or is it all an idol hope taught by powers of death who bilk us of life to shore up megalomaniacal self-aggrandizement? I don’t know, yet this I do: I was faithful, not sinless, but faithful still to the God of love who calls us to love no matter what. Instead of writing about it, isolated in my lovely tower (and it was lovely!), the call to love students and children and dying parents won Until I was undone and utterly victorious, for I have risen from the grave to a new life of hands-on service to comfort those dying into their own resurrections. My mission failed while God’s prevailed. This is all I really wanted after all—for the Son to shift with global transformation. And so it’s done, though something sad remains whispered through time of what could have been if only we would systematically tenure love. © February 2019, Tess Lockhart. All rights reserved. |