Third Sunday of LENT (Written on March 13, 2009)

For the Lectionary (what's a lectionary?) of March 22, 2009: John 3:14-21

 

But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.

 

LIGHT, BUT GRAY by Larry Patten

Though brusque, the doctor seemed willing to answer questions. I kept asking.

“So, what causes PVD?”

“Three things come to mind,” the lab-coated man said, “Sometimes it just happens. It is more likely after head injuries. The usual culprit, however, is birthdays.”

Drats. Age again.

In a few months I’ll celebrate two score and seventeen years (as Lincoln might say). This dubious achievement will be the final time I’ll claim to be in my mid-fifties. The late-fifties loom.

Along with those birthdays, other age evidence mounts.

First it was hair. Brown. Brown packed its bags. The Salt-and-Pepper clan arrived. Most of the Peppers bid farewell. My hair remained thick for years. Then less thick. The thinner hair retreated. As Billy Crystal’s character in City Slickers stated, “I'm losing hair where I want hair and getting hair where there shouldn't be hair.” Does a forehead with additional square footage guarantee increased wisdom? Don’t answer. It was a rhetorical question.

What about my wrinkles? I don’t remember using the Amazon one-click option to add the “crow’s feet” or “laugh lines” to my face. I never ordered birds or chuckles.

Now PVD.

A few days ago I saw fireworks, falling stars and lightning. Any of those would’ve been exciting if it was the Fourth of July, a view of the night sky from an alpine lake or watching a Midwestern storm brew trouble. Instead the light show took place on the edge of my peripheral vision while going about mundane tasks like walking down the hallway or brushing teeth.

And so it was that an ophthalmologist explained posterior vitreous detachment (PVD) to me. The vitreous humor, according to my Merriam-Webster, is the “transparent jelly that fills the eyeball posterior to the lens.” Simplistically, the white of the eye observed as you stare in the mirror is that vitreous humor. It’s the largest part of your vision delivery system. As birthdays accumulate—and they will—the “jelly” turns more liquid, and that may cause slight detachment, separation . . . and flashes of unbidden light. In most cases it heals on its own.

I discovered doctors enjoyed sharing information like, “The chances of getting PVD are similar to your current age.” In other words, as a ten-year old, I have a ten percent chance and as a sixty-year old a sixty percent chance. Easy math.

Hair. Skin. Eyes. Drats. Age. Wasn’t light supposed to be good? Now it’s bad. Beware personal lightning strikes and private fireworks. Whew, my body’s changing. What about my faith as I age?

This week I read the Gospel of John’s view of light and darkness. In the section including the best-known passage in the Gospels (John 3:16’s For God so loved the world . . .), there was also the powerful challenge to those who lived in light versus darkness. And vice-versa. With John’s mythic, magisterial language the way of faith through Jesus was unambiguous. Live in the light. Good = light. Evil = dark.

When I was younger, with fewer birthdays, I thought that. I believed that. And yet now I have doubts.

I deeply appreciate John’s “those who do what is true come to the light.” Literally and symbolically, I do want to live out my faith “in the light” where others see me. Where I am seen. But there is more than only light and only dark. As a child I was afraid of the dark. Creatures lurked. Unexpected noises unnerved me. Now I revel in the night sky only unfurled in the dark. On backpacks, I crave the dawn, the gray tones of earliest morning. Under a slate-colored Sierra sky, I’ve heard the rustle of deer and the cooing of birds. In the gloaming, when a day’s light fades, I sense the earth preparing for slumber. Darkness is a gift for all creatures weary from a day’s work.

In the blessed grays of my life, I wonder about John’s “eternal life.” Is that my goal as a Christian? Believe and have eternal life? Don’t believe and perish? Will non-Christians perish, abandoned by a selective God? Some fervently claim that belief. But I doubt it. I don’t share John’s certainty. But, thanks be to God, I joyfully struggle with how I will treat my neighbor in the light of today.

In this Lenten journey, I will—older, through probably not that much wiser—claim my gray-tinged doubts. There are too many ways of believing, and too many beliefs with different paths, for me to be certain there is only one way.

I grow older. Hair. Skin. Eyes. All changing. Now I see flashes of light where I’d rather have darkness. My faith? Let me live in the light. Let me have just enough bright courage to serve God through the witness of Jesus the Christ. But let that same courage include the gray areas.

in Peace,

Larry