The Explosion of God's Heart: Entering the Inner Life of the Paschal Mystery

Abstract

The Explosion of God's Heart:Entering the Inner Life of the Paschal Mystery Belden Lane (bio) INTRODUCTION BY STEVEN CHASE Last October, Belden Lane lost his son Jon after an unexpected and incomprehensible 9-month bout with cancer. As Belden let me know, the following Perspective shares something of his wrestling with God as a result of Jon's inexplicable death. The piece deals with the implications of Trinitarian theology, focusing on God's deep personal investment in the suffering of creation. This focus pinpoints how one's image of God can make a profound change in the face of the dark mystery of suffering. Belden's idea of "the explosion of God's heart" is, of course, communicated through the power of words. Still, this reflection from Belden reflects something of what it means for Sacred Mystery to dwell among us even in the mists of darkness that are beyond words. As I first read this short essay, I realized that we needed to publish these words. In three short pages, Belden creates a highly personal piece that, even in its obvious pain and slow movement toward healing, has a universal quality as well. He weaves various disciplines together with threads of experience that he describes with much tenderness and truth. The Perspective is an example of teaching spirituality (see Barbara Quinn Presidential Address essay) from the depths of grief and loss. Perhaps we all need to give ourselves radical permission to write and teach in this way. Blessings to you and your family, Belden, as you seek and find "home at last" amid your ambiguous grief and the exploding heart of your God. I believe that Emily Dickinson, too, knew something of the heart and of the explosion: The Heart asks Pleasure – first – And then – Excuse from Pain – And then – those little Anodynes That deaden Suffering – And then – to go to sleep – And then – if it should be [End Page 71] The will of its Inquisitor The privilege to die –1 PERSPECTIVE BY BELDEN LANE "Two thousand years ago marks the Incarnation of God in Jesus, but before that there was the Incarnation through light, water, land, sun, moon, stars, plants, trees, fruit, birds, serpents, cattle, fish, and "every kind of wild beast" according to the Genesis creation story (1:3–25)." —Richard Rohr2 "In creation God comes to know himself, that is, he realizes himself as the creative principle of the other. Creation, then, is 'another God' in the sense that it is God manifested in otherness." —Bernard McGinn, summarizing John (the Scot) Eriugena3 This time of year our golden retriever Joey and I sit each morning among the trees in the gazebo in our back yard. We ponder the mystery of God's bringing these tall oaks into being—like this dog, this man—so as to mirror a divine grandeur, stillness, tenacity, and interdependence. How is it, I wonder, that God comes to know himself through the creatures he's made? The trees, the dog, and myself are clearly other than God, yet we can't be said to exist outside of God.4 "This is what I'm like," God must say to himself. "Yet it's also what I'm not like!" To what extent is God stretched, even laid open, by what he sees in us his creatures? Is there even an echo in God's heart of what churns now within the restiveness of my soul? I've been asking questions like these this year since the sudden death of our 40-year-old son to cancer. It's left us with a 5-year-old granddaughter full of questions of her own. Like fault lines in the earth, an event like this can bring a startling shift in one's understanding of God. I was raised to think of the Divine as all-powerful, ethereal and distant, far above me. Yet I was assured that the prayers of the faithful could persuade him to break into the world now and then with miraculous interventions. But my prayers don't seem to have worked this year. God hasn't miraculously intervened on our behalf. Well-meaning people offer...