Dissonance

Dissonance

I sat at the dining room table this morning, journal in hand, listening to classical piano music with my resurrection centerpiece and tried to remember the word dissonance.
I wrote down disconcerting
then disorienting
and finally remembered dissonance.  That is typical for me and my word searches these days.

The scripture for today in the lectionary is the one I did a Bible study on yesterday - Mattew 28L 1-10 as the women come to the tomb and find it empty and later encounter Jesus on the way to tell the disciples that is will meet them in Galilee.  Yesterday as I first spent time with the text and later led the study, I felt overwhelmed with the promise of resurrection.  YES.  Goodness will outweigh or even triumph!  over the powers of the wicked.  The wicked being the cornoa virus and also the machinations of the political.

Today I sit after having a dream about Chuck.  In the dream I was at the pulpit and he came up smiling with a wallet I had lost that had money in it.  And teasing I gave him a $5 bill and he kissed me and said he loved me.  As I wrote this the first time in my journal I cried.

The dissonance is the belief in the resurrection and the work - the hidden subversiive work of God - and the present experience of empty, lonely, sad, waiting.

There are times I look at this condition - and call it "both and" but today it just seems dissonant - the intellectual beliefs and the felt experience.  I live always between being and doing, feeling empty and too busy, loved and alone.  Both and.  Trusting in God's work but tired of waiting.  And really and truly wondering if I will ever be happy again.

AND then I texted one of my directees and made arrangements to do spiritual direction this morning with her and felt my spirit lift.

It is hard to be me.  But I suspect we all live in this crazy dissonant place and this pandemic may just be bringing us closer to the bone in recognizing it.

Also two good things in the past 24 hours. A  minister friend of mine who lives in Northwest Ohio asked me to do a Bible study for clergy.  AND one of my directees sent me this: 

God and I have become
like 2 giant fat people
living in a tiny boat.
We keep bumping into each other
and LAUGHING

That's me - laughing with God  and crying at the same time.