Repairing The Breach

Personal Reflection Rubem Alves, Brazilian Poet and Theologian, tells a story that illuminates the process of meaning-making, and truth-seeking. The story goes like this, there is a spider that stands on the edge of a great precipice, on the edge of a great void, the unknown. To build her web, the spider must jump into this dark, unknown, chasm, not knowing where nor how she will land. Having undertaken this momentous leap, the spider finds herself within an elaborate web of her own making, home. Faith and mission are a lot like this. We stand on the edge of mystery, on the edge of human-made chasms, on the edge of unknown outcomes, and our faith beckons us to jump, weaving a home that illumines pathways in the dark, knitting a fragile web across the divide, a bridge that reconciles one point to another and all the space in between. As I write this, I imagine being that spider standing and looking into the chasm. What is the chasm I see? What is the fear holding humanity and the earth captive? What has been breached, violated? In his mission manifesto, Jesus proclaimed, “Is this not the fast that I choose…. To let the oppressed go free? How is it that we have complexified life so much that we have lost sight of the freedom and awe of the most natural things: love, friendship, earth, connection? How is it that we have bound these so tightly that they are threatened with extinction. Let us “unbind them and let them go.” One of the great teachers for me on how to do this, is my children. Before Christmas last year, my three-year-old responded to my question, “what would you like for Christmas?” with the answer, “bubbles.” It was as simple as that. My daughter wanted to laugh as she blew invisible spheres of wonder throughout the backyard. It is moments like these, that illuminate Jesus words in the sermon on the mount, “let the children come to me, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” Back Porch #3 - Carol Aust 87