Mtr Mary Trainor
Dear friend,
Years ago a close associate confessed: “I have no idea what most poetry is saying. Do you?” She was holding out a book of familiar poetry, moving it in my direction so I could see the poem that troubled her.
“Yes, I do,” I answered her question. She offered another, “Can you tell me what it means?” My answer was an immediate, “No.” She recoiled as if dashed with cold water. I hastened to explain: “My words would fail miserably. I more or less understand it at the soul level. It’s like listening to beautiful music. It changes your insides, but not in a way people can see.”
John’s Gospel affects me very much this same way. Even when I think I understand some of it, I can’t always put it in words.
Take today’s verses from John 12. The Gospel is more poetry than prose, painting word pictures from which we can stand back and muse over for hours at a time, much like a museum piece that continues to inspire, confound, and enlighten, all in the same hold-your-breath moment.
A sample of this breathtaking Gospel for today: “Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness.”
Rhythmic and repetitive, it draws me in, fascinated, satisfied, oddly confused. The words are clear and the words are dubious, just as God can seem comprehensible while cloaked in mystery. I have become more comfortable in this reality of God, a beautiful painting I cannot describe, a lilting melody I can never create, a poem I cannot begin to explain even as I understand its deepest truth.
***
What is not confusing in today’s Gospel is the point Jesus makes clear: If we want to know what God is like, observe Jesus. Yes, God’s a mystery, and yes, God is plain to see in the actions of the son, healing, teaching, feeding, protecting, finding, forgiving, loving. Jesus of Nazareth is the spiritual spitting-image of God the Father.
***
My brother has one biological son. Except for their extreme height, there is little physical resemblance. I was thinking out loud about that one day, saying that I see nothing of the Trainors in my nephew. A close family friend looked at me with incredulity. “What do you mean,” she said. “I see only his Father in him, his laugh, his curiosity, his love of Angels baseball, fishing, respect for nature, intelligence, care of family, gentleness of spirit, country music, and that same humor you all have.” See the Father, see the Son.
***
I may not always be able to put God, or poetry, into words, but thankfully, there were souls who lived long ago who came to know the Son of God in living flesh. We have received from them the gift of their experience, captured in Gospels and letters, that we might "see and believe," as Jesus had hoped.
Mtr Mary