Mtr Mary Trainor

A stray bullet and a mama cries
Her baby won't be coming home tonight
Sirens screaming down the avenue
Just another story on the evening news…

               “Love Wins,” Carrie Underwood

Dear friend,

Desolation. Flee. Vengeance. Woe. Distress. Wrath. Fear. Foreboding.

Today, the Daily Office offers us a most severe Gospel message, with Jesus ticking off a list of horrible and heinous events that lie ahead. (Luke 21:20-28).

But if you have managed to stay with Jesus through the litany of terrors, the passage ends with some exceedingly wonderful news: “When these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

This is such major good news that I think it fair to suggest the author of Luke’s Gospel buried the lead. Even in the midst of catastrophic events, world-shaking, world-ending events, we are not abandoned. That is the lead sentence, at least for me.

The words that precede today’s reflection are the opening lines from Love Wins, Carrie Underwood’s 2018 award-winning song. It begins in violence and lament, and ends in love triumphant. It reflects the human experience of being loved in the midst of trial, being loved even as our world falls apart.

Years ago I was part of a book group that had discovered the writer Anne Lamott, and her exquisitely articulated, raw, sensuous, horrifying yet beautiful journey into faith. We were excited to learn that a new book was available, and that a signing was scheduled at a nearby bookstore.

We arrived early, wishing to assure that we got a seat close to her. We learned she is rather shy out in the public’s eye, reluctant to do much more than the predictable reading of passages from the new work, and to make some comments. What she didn’t want was to entertain questions. Those gathered seemed to grasp what she desired, and more or less respected her wishes. Except for a man in my group.

In the middle of a pause, he raised his hand and said, “Miss Lamott, I know you don’t want questions, but may I make a comment?” Her eyes locked on his for what seemed an eternity, and then she said, with some hesitation, “I suppose so.” My group was as nervous as she appeared to be. And then he spoke: “Our biographies are nothing alike, and yet you tell my story. Thank you.’”

That is, in fact, her gift to so many people, the telling of their stories in her words, in her lived experience, painfully and honestly revealed on page after page, fear, failure, despair, then discovery, hope, renewal. From her place at rock bottom, on the streets of San Francisco, she found herself moving toward the strains of Gospel music wafting from the door of a church. Her redemption was drawing near.

Even in the midst of destruction, decay, disappointment, devastation, we are accompanied by the Holy One, the One who loves us from the day we are born until the day we die. We are never without this love. Never.

Love will, love can, love still, love wins. (Outro to Love Wins.)

Mtr. Mary