Tag: key

Fixing Eyes on the Unseen: Remember My Chains

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Colossians 4:18

I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand. Remember my chains.
Colossians 4:18

Paul reminds us in his letter to the Colossian church that he is still a prisoner, shackled by chains, limited in his ability to write in his own hand but certainly not helpless.  Despite such hardship, he remains a faithful and encouraging witness for God.

He really is asking that we remember our own chains, ones that are invisible but just as restrictive to our freedom. We are bound to sin as if by chains, locked with the key thrown away, pitiful in our imprisonment. The gospel is now the only key that will spring the lock, unclasp the chains, unbind our hands and feet, free our souls.

Remember my chains?  I have just been handed the key.

This year’s Lenten theme:
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4: 18

Breaking the Lock

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And yes it is necessary to admit
walking in the forest
the heart is a lock

it has inviolable chambers
like the woods, fallen trees
that block

access to the river
snowdrops surprising its edges
moss crystalline with frost

What I thought I wanted what I have tried to be
was the slender instrument that opened

a key: presence moving deeper into the forest
that releases the birds from the trees
and sends them   ascends them
to sky   by definition
open

but now there is nothing left to be solved like a riddle

this time the lock must be broken
what’s left has to be seized

because God only loves the strong thief
I mean the man who breaks his heart for God
~Jennifer Grotz, “Locked” from Window Left Open

All my life I wanted to be an effective key, unlocking life’s mysteries and opening up the world to those who are hopeless, stifled and trapped. Doctor training gave me a few locksmith tools. I found my patients taught me far more about their pain and suffering than my professors did.

Yet profound mysteries remain: some illnesses are rare or unique enough to defy diagnosis, some just don’t respond to available tools, while illnesses as well understood and treatable as depression or COVID infection still kill and incapacitate with abandon. The keys I may have accumulated don’t fit every lock. They don’t necessarily open the doors to freedom from fear or worry.

At times I feel aimless, wondering what tools I still have and if I remember how to use them. Simple knowledge is only one key, while brute force – breaking and entering – may be necessary to break the hardest lock of all – access to the troubled heart and soul.

God wants in, to pick up our broken pieces and put us back together. He doesn’t need a key to enter what He Himself has built from scratch. He owns the place.

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At Least I Twirl

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The quiet of dawn
the honesty of dawn
the peace of empty roads

I start out
after years of twirling
in place

As once before when I began without knowing…
~Lawrence Bridges from “Lake Hughes Road”

All at once I saw what looked like a Martian spaceship whirling towards me in the air. It flashed borrowed light like a propeller. Its forward motion greatly outran its fall. As I watched, transfixed, it rose, just before it would have touched a thistle, and hovered pirouetting in one spot, then twirled on and finally came to rest. I found it in the grass; it was a maple key, a single winged seed from a pair.

Hullo.

I threw it into the wind and it flew off again, bristling with animate purpose, not like a thing dropped or windblown…

O maple key, I thought, I must confess I thought, o welcome, cheers.

And the bell under my ribs rang a true note, a flourish as of blended horns, clarion, sweet, and making a long dim sense I will try at length to explain. Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world. Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath. That breath never ceases to kindle, exuberant, abandoned; frayed splinters spatter in every direction and burgeon into flame. And now when I sway to a fitful wind, alone and listing, I will think, maple key. When I shake your hand or meet your eyes I will think, two maple keys. If I am a maple key falling, at least I can twirl.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Today’s late spring morning sun woke me early to streaming light
poured out on quilt and blankets.

Curious, I head out to see what’s happening with the world.
The road stretches empty for miles east and west

Thus kindled, exuberant, unleashed,
I am blown by dawn’s gentle breezes,
so inspired to twirl in place in my hilltop celebration,
as I’m pulled to the ground, settling in and buried
for what will come next.

Tell me, where is the road I can call my own
That I left, that I lost
So long ago?
All these years I have wandered
Oh, when will I know
There’s a way, there’s a road
That will lead me home
After wind, after rain
When the dark is done
As I wake from a dream
In the gold of day
Through the air there’s a calling
From far away
There’s a voice I can hear
That will lead me home
Rise up, follow me
Come away, is the call
With the love in your heart
As the only song
There is no such beauty
As where you belong
Rise up, follow me I will lead you home

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The Stones Themselves Will Start to Sing: Remember My Chains

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Remember my chains. Colossians 4:18

“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?”
“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Hail Lord, loose my chains…
~C.S. Lewis from Prince Caspian

My chains fell off, my heart was free;
I rose, went forth and followed Thee.
~Charles Wesley

As the cold chains of memory and wrath
Fall from our hearts before we are aware,
Their rusty locks all picked by patient prayer,
Till closed doors open…
~Malcolm Guite from “Peace”

These weeks of Lent are a time for me to remember my chains; they are invisible compared to all the rusty chains everywhere on our farm, but, in truth, are just as restrictive to freedom. 

I’m fettered not only by the chains imposed by the limitations of a selfish society, but primarily by chains I have made myself, needing no help from anyone as I add link after link until I’m completely weighed down and immobilized.

We are bound to our sin as if by chains, locked tight with the key thrown away, pitiful in our imprisonment. Saturation with the gospel and heart-felt prayer are the only keys that will spring the lock, unclasp the chains, unbind our hands and feet, free our souls, loose us to live fully as images of our Creator.

Remember my chains?  How can I forget? I have been handed the key to freedom.

This year’s Lenten theme for Barnstorming is a daily selection from songs and hymns about Christ’s profound sacrifice on our behalf.

If we remain silent about Him, the stones themselves will shout out and start to sing (Luke 19:40).

In His name, may we sing…

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The Hinge of Faithfulness

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No one compels you, traveler;
this road or that road, make your choice!
Dust or mud, heat or cold,
fellowship or solitude,
foul weather or a fairer sky,
the choice is yours as you go by.

But here if you would take this path
there is a gate whose latch is love,
whose key is single and which swings
upon the hinge of faithfulness,

and none can mock, who seeks this way,
the king we worship shamelessly.
If you would enter, traveler,
into this city fair and wide,
it is forever and you leave
all trappings of the self outside.
~Jane Tyson Clements from  No One Can Stem the Tide

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
~T.S. Eliot from “Little Gidding” The Four Quartets

I can, with very little effort, remember the restlessness of my late teens once I learned homesickness was not a terminal condition.  There was a world out there to be explored just beyond the gate of my childhood barnyard, and I just knew I was meant to be a designated explorer and traveler, seeking out the extraordinary.

Ordinary simply wouldn’t do.  Ordinary was plentiful at my childhood home on a small farm with a predictable routine, a garden to be weeded and daily chores to be done, with middle-aged parents tight with tension in their struggling marriage.

On a whim at age nineteen, I applied for wild chimpanzee research study in Africa, and much to my shock, was accepted.  A year of academic and physical preparation as well as Swahili language study was required, so this was no impulsive adventure.   I had plenty of time to back out, reconsider, choose another path and retreat to ordinary again.

It was an adventure, far beyond what I had anticipated and trained for.  When I had to decide between more exploration, without clear purpose or funds, or returning home, I opted to return to the place I started. I saw home differently, as if for the first time,  after  experiencing the world in all its glory and ugliness. The next path I took, I needed to leave the trappings of myself behind, unlatch the gate with the key I had been given from the very beginning. The hinge of faithfulness opens the gate wide.

I must remember I have chosen the path that leads to forever, though neither smooth nor easy. Entering that unknown, unremembered gate means I will arrive where I started, back at the beginning and knowing the place for the first time.

What seemed to be the end proved to be the beginning…
Suddenly a wall becomes a gate.
~Henri Nouwen from A Letter of Consolation

Doorway Between Two Worlds

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“I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.”
~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk

Some doors in our lives remain forever closed and locked.  No key, no admittance, no way in, no way out.   There is clarity in a locked door with no choices to be made.  If there is a choice and I’m unsure of what I should decide, I tend to run scared.

The locked door is an invitation with the potential to change everything when the key is handed to me.  I now must make a choice, even if the choice is to do nothing.

Do I lose the key and stay put where things are at least familiar?
Do I  knock and politely wait for the door to be answered?
Do I simply wait for the moment it happens to open, take a peek and decide whether or not to enter?
Or do I boldly put the key in and walk through?

The choice to be made is as plain as the key resting in my trembling hand.
When I approach, drawn to the mystery, the door is already standing open.

Fear not.
For unto us a child is born, a son is given.

He is the threshold between two worlds, the unlocking love that allows us to throw away the key.