the silence

it would have been my older brothers birthday recently...he died several years ago...but on the date of his birthday i was thinking about him.

i did not always think of his cerebral palsy because most of the time he was first my brother, and second someone who came to look like skinned knees on asphalt feels. he was a gift to my life that seemed to underline grace and gravity at the same time...all the good and all the difficulty occurring at the same time. there was never another choice.

there was a time when i was in grade school that i slipped out of my bed, down the hallway, to the doorway of the kitchen. i had heard a soft weeping sound when i was trying hard to listen into the night for the sound of a train whistle. the the train with its whistle usually happened way off in the distance when i was supposed to be going to sleep, and in the evening i would lay there waiting for that lonesome sound in the night. that was what i was listening for...

when i came down the hallway and up to the kitchen i carefully peaked around the corner. the three of them seemed interlocked or woven together as my mother held my brother, and my father bathed the leg filled with the poison of gangrene. his leg had progressively gotten worse and more discolored over time. there was a date to amputate this limb that was taking on the dark colors of something dying. i could see over my mothers shoulder as she held him tightly, it was my brother john who was suffering and crying - it was his anguish i had heard.

a moment later i was caught.

my dad looked up and i could see tears in his eyes for the first time in my life. i froze when he saw me. he then did something i did not expect. he gave me just the ever so slightly nod that gave me permission to stay in that place where i was very quiet and hovered from some distance. i was thinking too many things and there were so many things that i did not know what to think. his tears were as disturbing to me as my brothers suffering. i saw love and pain, grace and gravity...and the discovery i made that night and successive nights was that God was silent.

this is the very first time i can remember in my life that there was silence, that this is true and experienced. there were so many prayers for my brother that went unanswered. God was hard to figure out. he doesn't choose to answer all prayers. it seems he is not paying attention. how can i get his attention. this is not fair. i am not sure i like him. i don't understand his silence.

the other day i was reading something richard elliott friedman says about silence found in his book The Disappearance of God...he writes of 'divine recession'. as this hebrew scholar progresses through the old testament he creates a picture of God who 'fades as he goes.' he writes of how God can be very clear and present but that he often fades or withdraws, 'stepping back from human beings so they will have room and desire to step forward.'

i did not have a way to understand the silence when i was young and still wonder about it. can i trust this God? life was unsimplified early for me. the only thing that was bigger than the suffering i saw was the love enfleshed in my parents who held my brother with a desperate hope. they believed, they hoped, they cried, they served my brother in a way that would incarnate something i could not put my finger on then. it was a hope both immanent and transcendent, now and someday then. i put my faith in them while i was trying to figure out what God was up to.

silence became a part of my story.

maybe i understand something about God.

is this how trusting became such a big deal to me?

happy birthday john.