“Is it nothing to all of you who pass this way? Look! See, if there’s any suffering like my suffering…” (Lamentation 1.12).
The author Connie Willis, in her collection of Christmas stories, introduced me to Auden’s “For the Time Being.” I find myself, at the beginning of every January thinking of its final part. The narrator enters to announce its end and that once again we have glimpsed what could be, and returned to life thinking that it was a nice “possibility.” I’m sure I thought of it on the seventh of this month as I took down ornaments, unwound the lights, and packed away the trees. The season had ended.
Like most of the world, I didn’t know what happened that night. And like so much of this city and this nation, I watched what unfolded at the corner of two streets in Memphis I’d never heard named before then. I heard the moans and cries. I heard the profanity and the violent words. And I watched a young man’s last whole day conclude in pain.
My background taught me that all things are texts. And all texts are open to interpretation, which are dependent on the person and their experiences. With Auden’s work, it is how much a fantasy Christmas can seem. And with the vicious treatment of Tyre Nichols, it is the neglect. It’s the failure of anyone who witnessed that young man’s suffering that night to do anything to soothe it.
The reason I notice what I do in these two different texts is because I too take down more than decorations. I pack up more than tinsel and beads. I put away the memory that God came among us, lived as one of us. All to save us. Not from some medieval honor or from the Devil’s grip, but from who we are not.
In that season we are face to face with the reality that to be human is holy. We are not simply carriers of a Divine Breath, but bear an image like that of the One. Why else would Jesus tell us that what we do to each other, we do to him?
And what we do to him, we do to ourselves.
In love, we show love for ourselves. In kindness, we show ourselves kindness. In violence, we commit violence to ourselves. In taking life, we lose some of ours. And when we fail to reach out to others, we find ourselves being passed by.
How many times have I ignored a look of distress or hurried past eyes that are approaching tears? When was the last time I looked up from my book or dared to look at the screen when there was something I did not want to see? Which was the most recent evening I stood by as someone was dying inside?
There are still things we have not fully stored away: bins waiting for Epiphany items before they are taken to the garage until the end of the year. Perhaps it’s worth looking through them before we do to see what may need to remain through the year.
Jesus, Incarnate One, have mercy upon us.