Love Without Borders
Chapter Twenty-Six
The scars speak.
Not in words. Not in the language the argument understands, the language of propositions and premises and conclusions drawn from evidence properly weighted and logically arranged. The scars speak in a language older than language, a language that does not travel through the ears but through the seeing, through the eyes that the fire has opened past any possibility of closing, and the seeing is the hearing, and the hearing is the knowing, and the knowing is the thing I have been refusing to know since the first moment in the grey when the nearness carried its wounded quality and I filed it and set it aside and went on building my case against a defendant I had not yet looked at.
I am looking now. The fire has ensured this. The fire has taken the closing of the eyes and made it impossible, has taken the turning-away and blocked every exit, has taken the not-seeing and burned it down to the last ash, and what is left is the seeing, only the seeing, the pure, unmediated, undefended seeing of a man who has run out of ways to not look at what is in front of him.
What is in front of me is the face. I have been in the presence of the face since the Throne, since the grey broke and the fire began, since the summons pulled me from the dim country into this blazing, total, inescapable nearness. The face has been here through the entire case. The face listened while I laid the charges. The face absorbed the prosecution. The face did not defend, did not rebut, did not produce a counter-argument or a justification or an explanation, and the not-defending was the first answer I did not understand, and the not-understanding was the crack.
Through the crack, I see.
The scars are not incidental. The scars are not decorative. The scars are not the marks of a distant injury long healed and carried now as a symbol, the way a soldier carries a medal or a scholar carries a credential, an indication of a past event that confers present authority. The scars are wounds. The scars are present-tense, open, living wounds that carry the full weight of the suffering that made them, and the suffering that made them is not a suffering I have encountered in any of the evidence I compiled for the case, because the suffering in the evidence was June’s suffering and my suffering and my mother’s suffering and my father’s suffering, and this suffering, the suffering in the scars, is none of those and all of those and something more than all of those, something that contains every suffering I named and carries it and does not put it down.
The scars are in the hands. I see this first, because the hands are closest, because the fire illuminates the hands the way a lamp illuminates the page it is held over, with a focused, inescapable clarity that shows every line and every mark and every detail the darkness hid. The hands are scarred. The hands carry wounds that go all the way through, entry and exit, front and back, the kind of wounds that are not made by accident or by illness or by the random cellular rebellion that killed my sister. The kind of wounds that are made by intention. By decision. By the deliberate, voluntary submission of one body to a violence that the body did not deserve and could have refused and chose not to refuse, and the choosing-not-to-refuse is the fact, and the fact is in the hands.
The fact is in the hands, and the fact is not the fact I built my case around. My case was built around the fact of June’s suffering. My case was built around the silence of a God who let her die. My case was built for a defendant whose hands were clean, whose distance from the suffering was the crime, whose refusal to intervene was the charge. And the hands before me are not clean. The hands before me are torn. The hands before me carry the evidence of an intervention I did not include in my brief because I did not know it existed, because the intervention was not the kind the case was looking for, because the case was looking for a rescue from the outside, a hand reaching down from the safe distance of omnipotence to lift the girl from the bed and set her on her feet and cancel the cells and reverse the dying and give back the seventeen casseroles and the crossword and the pencil and the smile, and the hand that is before me now is not that hand.
The hand that is before me now is the hand of someone who did not reach down from outside. The hand is the hand of someone who reached in. The hand is the hand of someone who went into the place where the suffering was, not to remove the suffering from a distance but to enter it from the inside, to be present in it, to bear it, to carry it, to let it do to him what it did to her, and the letting is the scar, and the scar is the fact, and the fact changes the shape of my case the way a key changes the shape of a lock, not by breaking it but by fitting it, by finding the exact internal configuration that the argument did not map because the argument assumed a lock that could not be opened, and the assumption was wrong, and the wrongness is the scars, and the scars are speaking.
The speaking continues, and the continuing is not gentle.
I need to be clear about this. The fire is still fire. The presence is still agony. The face is still the face of the One I accused of the worst crime in the moral catalogue, the crime of standing off while a child suffered, and the accusation has not been withdrawn, and the withdrawal has not been requested, and the not-requesting is itself a kind of statement, a declaration by the defendant that the accusation is welcome, that the courtroom is open, that the prosecution may say everything it has to say and the defendant will not gavel it down or strike it from the record or respond with the kind of procedural maneuvering that shuts up the accuser before the accusation is fully heard.
The accusation was fully heard. Every word. Every number. Every pound, every year, every prayer, every inch of the folded arms. The full force of the case, laid in fire, heard in fire, and not rebutted. Not because the defendant had no response, not because the defendant was caught and cornered and unable to mount a defense, but because the defendant’s response was not a response of the kind the accuser demanded. The accuser demanded an argument. The defendant offered a body. The accuser demanded a reason. The defendant offered a wound. The accuser demanded why. The defendant offered with.
And now the with is unfolding. Now the scars are showing me what the with means, and the meaning is not a meaning in the way the case understands meanings, not a logical derivation from premises to conclusion, not a proposition that can be weighed and found wanting. The meaning is a story, and the story is in the wounds, and the wounds are telling it the way wounds tell stories, which is not with words but with their existence, with the plain, undeniable, physical fact that something happened here, something was done to this body, and the something was chosen, and the choosing was for a purpose, and the purpose was not a principle but a person, and the person was every person, and every person includes a girl who was sixteen and held her pencil wrong and loved beetles and died in a room with a window that faced a parking lot while the dogwoods bloomed.
I see the wounds and the wounds show me the cross.
Not as a symbol. Not as the object that hangs on a wall in the churches my mother still attends and my father still kneels beneath and the pastors still gesture toward when they are making their points about sacrifice and substitution and the great economy of redemption that trades one death for all deaths and calls the trading love. I have heard that version. I have rejected that version. I have rejected it because the version I was given made the cross into a transaction, a payment, a settlement of accounts, as though the God of the universe ran a balance sheet and the balance sheet required blood, and the requiring of blood by a God who also claims to be love was the contradiction at the heart of my parents’ faith, and the contradiction was one of the beams in my case, not the central beam but a supporting one, holding up the argument from underneath.
The cross I am seeing is not that cross. The cross I am seeing is not a transaction. The cross I am seeing is an entrance. The cross is the door through which the defendant walked into the suffering, the actual, physical, chosen entry of the One I accused of standing off into the very thing I accused Him of standing off from. The wounds are not a payment. The wounds are a record. The wounds say: I went in. I went into the worst of it. I went into the pain and the humiliation and the abandonment and the silence and the dying, and I went in not because the balance sheet required it but because the going-in is who I am, and who I am is the love, and the love does not stand off, and the not-standing-off is the scars.
The argument has no brief for this. The argument was built for a God who stood behind the bench. The argument was built for a God who watched. The argument was built for the distance, and the distance was the crime, and the crime was the case, and the case was the arms, and the arms were built to hold the distance between the accuser and the accused, and the distance is gone, because the accused is not behind the bench. The accused is on the cross. The accused is in the suffering. The accused went into the room where June died and did not go in as an observer or a recorder or a heavenly administrator noting the event for the ledger but went in as a sufferer, as a bearer, as a body that took the weight of the dying onto itself and was broken by the weight and did not refuse the breaking.
I am watching a God be broken, and the breaking is the answer.
I say: This is not an answer. This is a display. You are showing me Your suffering, and Your suffering is real, and I do not deny that it is real, but the reality of Your suffering does not explain the reality of hers. Two sufferings do not cancel each other out. Two wounds do not make a healing. The cross does not undo the hospital bed. The nails do not reverse the cells. The dying of God does not give back the life of a girl who ran and swam and found beetles interesting and held her pencil wrong, and the not-giving-back is the charge, and the charge still stands, and the standing of the charge is the arms, and the arms are mine, and I will hold them.
I say this, and the saying is weaker than the saying in the last chapter of the case. The saying has the quality of a wall that is still upright but is no longer bearing the load it was designed for, a wall whose structural integrity has been compromised not by an external force but by an internal shift, a settling of the foundation, a rearrangement of the weight-bearing elements into a configuration that holds the wall in place but cannot hold it for long, and the not-for-long is the change, and the change is the scars, and the scars are the settling.
Because the cross is not a display. I know this even as I say it is. The copy editor in me, the part that notices when an argument goes soft, the part that has been my most reliable instrument since the day I decided that the world was a text and the text had errors, can see that the cross is not a display the way my case was a display, the way the prosecution was a performance, the way the folded arms were a posture. The cross is not a posture. The cross is an event. The cross is a thing that happened, a thing that was done, a thing that was undergone, and the undergoing was not for the purpose of answering Micah’s case in a fire at the end of all things but for the purpose of being in the suffering, all the suffering, every suffering, the suffering of a girl and the suffering of her brother and the suffering of a father who broke in a parking lot and the suffering of a mother who went on kneeling, and the being-in was the purpose, and the purpose was the love.
And the love is what the argument cannot hold.
The argument can hold a charge against a God who stands at a distance. The argument can hold a charge against a God who watches. The argument can hold a charge against a God who permits suffering from the safety of omnipotence and then asks for worship from the beings who bore the suffering He permitted. The argument cannot hold a charge against a God who got into the bed. The argument cannot hold a charge against a God who took the nails. The argument cannot hold a charge against a God who went into the dying and died and did not come back untouched but came back scarred, came back wounded, came back carrying in His own body the marks of the same violence that the argument charges Him with permitting, because the permitting, if it is permitting at all, is the permitting of a surgeon who permits the knife to cut his own flesh before it cuts the patient’s, who goes first into the wound, who says I will not ask you to bear what I have not borne, and the bearing is the proof, and the proof is the scars, and the scars I carry now before your face in the fire.
I am a man who notices when arguments go soft. My argument is going soft. Not at the edges, where arguments typically begin their decline, where the supporting evidence weakens and the footnotes fray and the citations lose their force. My argument is going soft at the center, at the load-bearing beam, at the central claim on which the entire structure rests, and the central claim is this: that the God who let June die was not in the room.
The God who let June die was in the room.
The scars say so. The wounds say so. The cross says so. The fire says so. The face says so, the face that absorbed every charge I made without defending itself, without producing a counter-argument, without offering the explanation I demanded, because the face was not offering an explanation. The face was offering evidence. Not the evidence of a defense. The evidence of a presence. The evidence that the defendant was not behind the bench when the girl was dying but was in the bed, was in the cells, was in the bones, was in the sixteen years and the three months and the Tuesday and the April and the dogwoods and the parking lot and the thin hands and the seventy-one pounds and the crossword and the pencil and the comma and the breath and the not-breath, and the being-in was the suffering, and the suffering is the scars, and the scars are the answer.
Not the answer I asked for. The answer I asked for was a reason. A justification. A defense that would explain why a good God would permit a child to die of her own cells while three hundred people prayed for the cells to stop. The answer I received is not a reason. The answer I received is a wound. The answer I received is the wound of a God who did not explain the suffering but entered it, who did not stand at the podium and deliver the closing statement but climbed into the bed and bore the dying, and the bearing is not a justification and the bearing is not a defense and the bearing does not explain the cells or the prayers or the silence or the damage or the dominoes, and the bearing does not need to explain them, because the bearing does something the explaining could never do.
The bearing is with.
The bearing is the with the face offered when I demanded the why, and the with is not an argument, and the with is not a proposition, and the with cannot be put into the evidence box or placed on the scales or weighed against the seventy-one pounds and found sufficient or insufficient, because the with is not a unit of measurement. The with is a presence. The with is a scar. The with is the fact of a God who was in the room, and the being-in-the-room is not an answer to the question why did she die but is an answer to a different question, a question I did not know I was asking, a question that was underneath the case like a foundation under a house, invisible, unexamined, assumed, and the question is: Was she alone?
Was June alone when she died?
I have carried this question for fourteen years without knowing I was carrying it. I have carried it inside the case, inside the argument, inside the folded arms, like a letter sealed inside a wall, a message hidden in the structure, a load the building bears without knowing it bears it. The case was about justice. The case was about the problem of evil. The case was about a good God and a dead girl and the impossibility of holding both in the same hand. But underneath the case, under the argument, under the logic and the evidence and the precision and the moral force, underneath all of it, in the place where the boy on the bedroom floor still kneels and the prayer is still being prayed and the conditional is still being issued into the silence of a ceiling that has not yet proved itself empty, underneath everything I built, the question is not why but was she alone.
Was my sister alone when she died?
And the scars say no.
The arms begin to fail.
I use the word fail because it is the honest word, the word a structural engineer would use, the word that describes what happens when a load-bearing element encounters a force it was not designed to bear. The arms were designed to bear the case. The arms were designed to hold the argument in place, to maintain the posture, to keep the body upright and the weight back and the eyes open and the refusal intact. The arms were designed for fourteen years of holding and all the unmeasured time of the grey and the summons and the Throne, and the arms held, and the holding was the most sustained act of will I have ever performed, more sustained than the editing, more sustained than the reading, more sustained than the silence I kept at the kitchen table while my mother talked about grace and my father said nothing and the chair where June used to sit held the particular emptiness of a seat whose occupant is not coming back.
The arms were not designed for the cross. The arms were not designed for the sight of a God on a cross. The arms were built to hold a charge against a God at a distance, and the God on the cross is not at a distance. The God on the cross is at the closest distance a being can be, the distance of zero, the distance of inside, the distance of a presence so near that it is indistinguishable from the pain itself, and the indistinguishability is the thing the arms cannot bear, because the arms need a gap. The arms need the space between the accuser and the accused. The arms need the distance that makes the accusation possible, the courtroom that separates the prosecution from the defense, the bench that elevates the defendant above the proceedings, and the cross destroys the courtroom. The cross puts the defendant on the floor. The cross puts the defendant below the floor, below the accuser, below the accusation, below the case, below the argument, in the lowest place, in the place where the dying happens and the suffering is real and the prayers go unanswered and the ceiling stays silent, and the being-in-the-lowest-place is the fact, and the fact is in the scars, and the scars are the demolition of the courtroom.
My courtroom is being demolished. Not by force. Not by the gavel I braced for, not by the divine authority I expected to be wielded against me, not by the sentence I prepared to receive and to reject. My courtroom is being demolished by the simple, terrible, un-answerable fact that the defendant is not a defendant. The defendant is a co-sufferer. The defendant is a co-bearer. The defendant is the One who was in the room when June died, who was in the cells when the cells mutinied, who was in the body when the body failed, who was in the breath when the breath stopped, who was in the silence when the silence descended, who was in the April when the April came, and the being-in is not a defense and not an argument and not an explanation. The being-in is a wound. And the wound is in the hands. And the hands are extended. And the extending is not a verdict. The extending is an invitation. And the invitation is not bow or submit or accept the terms or concede the case. The invitation is come.
Come.
The word arrives without sound, the way the comma arrived, the way June’s voice arrived, the way the pursuing nearness arrived in the grey, not through the ears but through the being, through the total, fire-saturated, presence-filled being of a man who has been argued to the end of his arguments and pressed to the end of his pressing and folded to the end of his folding and is standing now in the fire with nothing between him and the face except the arms, and the arms are failing.
Come.
Not: come because you were wrong. Not: come because the case is dismissed. Not: come because the defendant has been acquitted and the charges have been dropped and the court finds in favor of the accused. The come does not reference the case. The come does not mention the argument. The come does not address the evidence or the brief or the prosecution or the fourteen years of folded arms and principled refusal. The come addresses Micah. Not Micah-the-prosecutor. Not Micah-the-accuser. Not Micah-the-man-who-built-a-case-on-a-bedroom-floor. Just Micah. The boy who loved his sister. The boy who lost his sister. The boy who knelt on a floor and addressed the ceiling and received no answer and built from the no-answer a structure that held him upright for fourteen years and through the dying and through the grey and through the summons and through the fire, and the structure is coming down, and the coming-down is not defeat.
The coming-down is not defeat. I need to say this, to think this, to let the thought form in the fire where the fire can test it and prove it or burn it away. The coming-down of the argument is not defeat because defeat requires an adversary, and the face before me is not an adversary. Defeat requires a competition, and the fire is not a competition. Defeat requires a winner and a loser, and the scars are not winning and I am not losing, and the not-losing is the thing I could not have understood before the cross came into view, because before the cross the only categories I had were winning and losing, accuser and accused, prosecutor and defendant, and the cross abolishes the categories. The cross is not a victory over me. The cross is not the gavel coming down. The cross is the sound of the gavel being set aside, the courtroom being dissolved, the proceedings being terminated not because the case was bad but because the case, however true its facts, was addressed to the wrong court. The court of why. And the court of why has been closed. And the court that remains is the court of with. And in the court of with, the defendant is not a defendant. In the court of with, the defendant is a companion. And the companion has scars. And the scars say: I was there.
The arms fail. Not all at once. Not the way a bridge fails, with a catastrophic break and the rush of structure into void. The arms fail the way dawn fails the dark: slowly, incrementally, with the gradual withdrawal of the thing that was holding the other thing in place, the tension easing, the clenching loosening, the muscles that have been locked for fourteen years beginning, one fiber at a time, to release.
I am letting go of the case.
I am letting go of the case not because the case was wrong. The suffering was real. The prayers were real. The death was real. The damage was real. The dominoes were real. The father broke. The mother knelt. The boy went to the floor. The girl died. All of this is true, and the truth of it does not change, and the arms were right to hold it, and the holding was not a mistake but a vocation, the only vocation a fifteen-year-old boy could find when the ceiling stayed silent and the God his family worshipped did not do the one thing the boy asked Him to do.
I am letting go of the case because the case was addressed to a God who does not exist. The God I argued against, the God who stood off, the God who watched from the safe remove of omnipotence while a child was consumed by her own cells, that God does not exist. That God is a construction. That God is the defendant I built in my bedroom and carried to the courtroom and charged with the crime and convicted in absentia, and the conviction was just and the sentence was fair and the argument was sound, and the only flaw, the only structural deficiency, the only error in the brief, was that the defendant in the courtroom was not the defendant in the room.
The defendant in the room was in the bed.
The defendant in the room had scars.
The defendant in the room was dying too.
The arms come down.
They do not crash. They do not fall. They lower, the way a man lowers his hands when he has been holding something heavy for a very long time and the time is finally over and the thing can be set down, not dropped but placed, carefully, on the ground beside him, because the thing is still precious and the setting-down is not an act of contempt for the thing but an act of release, of permission, of the body saying to itself: you have carried this long enough. You have held this with everything you had. You have honored it with the holding. Now put it down.
I put it down. The case. The argument. The evidence. The brief. The prosecution. The verdict. The sentence. The fourteen years. The ceiling. The silence. The bedroom floor. The conditional prayer. The folded arms. All of it. I put it down in the fire, and the fire receives it, and the receiving is not destruction. The fire does not burn the case. The fire does not erase the suffering or the prayers or the death or the damage. The fire holds the case the way the face held the charges: without flinching, without defending, without offering an explanation, without reducing the suffering to a means or the death to a purpose or the girl to a lesson. The fire holds the case and the case is real and the holding is real and the holding does not need the arms anymore because the holding has found larger hands.
The hands with the scars. The hands that went through.
I say: I do not understand. I do not understand why she died. I do not understand why the prayers were not answered. I do not understand why the ceiling was silent. I do not understand the cells or the suffering or the seventy-one pounds or the Tuesday or the April or the dogwoods or any of it. I do not understand, and the not-understanding is not a deficiency and not a failure and not a concession, and I will carry the not-understanding for as long as the carrying requires, because the not-understanding is honest, and the honest is the only thing I have ever been, and the being-honest is the thing the arms were for.
And the face does not say: you will understand. The face does not say: I will explain. The face does not offer the understanding as a reward for the surrender, as though the laying-down of the arms has purchased the right to the answer, as though the why is waiting on the other side of the yes and will be delivered once the transaction is complete. The face offers something else. The face offers the with again, the same with it offered when I demanded the why, but the with is different now because I am different now. The arms are down. The case is laid. The courtroom is dissolved. And the with, received by a man whose arms are down, is not a consolation prize for a lost argument. The with is the thing. The with is the actual, real, sufficient, devastating thing. The with is the answer to the question I did not know I was asking: Was she alone?
She was not alone. June was not alone. She was not alone in the hospital bed and she was not alone in the cells and she was not alone in the bones and she was not alone in the dying and she was not alone in the breath and she was not alone in the not-breath and she was not alone in the silence and she was not alone in the April and she was not alone on the Tuesday and she was not alone when the dogwoods bloomed and she was not alone when my father broke and she was not alone when my mother knelt and she was not alone when I stood at the foot of the bed holding nothing, because the nothing I was holding was not nothing. The nothing was a presence. The nothing was a wound. The nothing was a God who was so close that I could not hear Him the way you cannot hear the heartbeat of someone who is holding you, and He was holding her, and the holding was the silence, and the silence was the with, and the with was the love, and the love had scars because the love was there, in the bed, in the dying, in the worst of it, bearing it, being broken by it, going down into it and not coming back untouched.
The not-coming-back-untouched is the scars. The scars are the proof. Not the proof I asked for, not the proof the case demanded, not the logically rigorous, evidentially grounded, philosophically robust proof that would satisfy the editorial standards of an academic text. The proof of a wound. The proof that can only be offered by a body that was there, that bore the thing, that carries the marks of the bearing. The proof of the scars is not that the suffering made sense. The proof of the scars is that the suffering was shared. And the sharing does not explain the suffering and does not justify the suffering and does not reduce the suffering to a component in a larger plan. The sharing changes the suffering from a solitary ordeal to a companioned one, and the companioning is the answer, and the answer is not an argument, and I am not being argued into surrender.
I am being known into surrender.
I am being known by a God who knew June’s suffering because He was in it. I am being known by a God who knows my grief because He carried it. I am being known by a God who knows the argument because He listened to every word of it and did not flinch and did not defend and did not explain, because the explaining would have been a reduction and the defense would have been a distance and the flinching would have been a turning-away, and this God does not reduce and does not distance and does not turn away. This God turns toward. This God enters in. This God goes into the bed and the cells and the dying and the silence and the April and the floor of the bedroom where a boy kneels and prays the last conditional he will ever pray, and the going-in is the love, and the love is the fire, and the fire is the answer, and the answer is the scars.
I say: Yes.
The word is so small. After fourteen years of the argument, after the grey and the summons and the Throne and the case and the fire and the arms, after everything I built and everything I held and everything I was, the word is so small that it almost does not register, almost disappears in the fire the way a single note disappears in a symphony, absorbed by the larger sound, taken up into the music, and the music is the fire and the fire is the love and the love has been playing since the dying moment when I first felt the scarred nearness and turned away from it and folded my arms and began the long, principled, grieving, beautiful, wrong refusal that has been my life and my death and my standing in the grey and my burning in the fire.
Yes.
Not: yes, I was wrong. Not: yes, the case is withdrawn. Not: yes, I concede. Just: yes. The yes of a man who has met the One he argued against and found that the One is not the one he argued against. The yes of a man who demanded an answer and received instead a companion. The yes of a man who built a case against the silence and discovered that the silence was not silence but the sound of a God too near to be heard. The yes of a man whose arms are down because the arms are not needed anymore, because the thing the arms were holding has been received by hands that are larger and scarred and carry the weight without strain, the weight of June’s dying and Micah’s grief and the father’s breaking and the mother’s kneeling and the prayers and the silence and the ceiling and the damage and the dominoes and all of it, all of the case, every exhibit, every charge, every fact, held now by the hands that went through, the hands that bear the nails, the hands that entered the suffering and did not come back clean.
Yes.
And the fire changes.
The change is not gradual. The change is immediate, the way the change from pain to relief is immediate when the thing causing the pain is removed, when the hand that was pressed against the hot surface is finally lifted, when the body that was braced against the wind finally steps inside. The fire does not diminish. The fire does not recede. The fire is the same fire, the same intensity, the same totality, the same presence, the same face, the same scars, the same love. Nothing about the fire has changed. Everything about my reception of the fire has changed. The fire that was agony is becoming warmth. The fire that was burning is becoming light. The fire that was the friction of a self pressed against a love it would not receive is becoming the heat of a self that has opened and the love that is pouring in, and the pouring is the glory, and the glory is the fire, and the fire was always the glory, and the glory was always the fire, and the only difference was the arms, and the arms are down.
I understand, now, what the reconciled have been feeling. I understand what Reed felt when the managing ended and the being-managed began. I understand what Naomi felt when the fury dissolved and the tenderness landed. I understand what Quinn felt when the running stopped and the stillness held. I understand what Lena felt in the dying moment when the beauty she had always reached for reached back. I understand what Daniel felt when the weight he carried all his life was taken by hands that had carried it first. I understand what the five of them have been standing in, basking in, glowing in, while Sloane and I burned in the same presence and called it fire. The fire is not fire. The fire is home. The fire is the warmth of a house whose door has been open since the beginning, whose light has been burning since before the grey, whose invitation has been sounding since the dying moment when the face first appeared and the scars first pressed and the love first came, and I turned away, and the love did not stop coming, and I folded my arms, and the love did not fold, and I built my case, and the love was not the defendant, and the defendant was a construction, and the construction has fallen, and what remains is the love, and the love is the fire, and the fire is home.
I am home. Or I am approaching home. Or the home is approaching me. The direction is unclear because direction is no longer a category that applies, because in the fire that is now glory the categories of the argument no longer hold, the courtroom no longer exists, the bench and the podium and the evidence table and the witness stand have all dissolved into the fire, and the fire is the presence, and the presence is the face, and the face is smiling, and the smiling has the quality of a recognition, the quality of a man being seen for the first time as who he actually is, not the prosecutor but the brother, not the accuser but the boy who loved his sister, not the principled atheist with the folded arms but the fifteen-year-old on the bedroom floor who was praying, who was actually praying, who was asking the ceiling for the one thing he wanted, which was not an argument and not a case and not a logical defense of the existence and goodness of a supreme being but a girl, alive, running, swimming, holding her pencil wrong, talking too much, finding beetles interesting, smiling the smile that was not brave but genuine, doing the crossword with Deb, living, breathing, being June.
He wanted June. The boy on the floor wanted June. And the wanting was the prayer, and the prayer was the only honest thing the boy ever said to the ceiling, and the ceiling was not empty, and the silence was not silence, and the prayer was heard.
The prayer was heard.
And then I see her.
Not as a memory. Not as the image I have carried for fourteen years, the image of the girl in the hospital bed with the thin hands and the half-finished crossword and the weight dropping off her body like water off a ledge, the seventy-one pounds, the number I put into the evidence box and placed on the scales and held up before the court as Exhibit A, the irreducible fact of a girl reduced to almost nothing by a God who could have stopped the reducing and chose not to. Not that image. Not the image of the dying. Not the image of the last breath, the sentence that stopped in the middle, the word that was a breath and then the word was gone.
I see June.
She is standing in the fire, and the fire is glory on her the way the fire is glory on the reconciled, the way the fire is now becoming glory on me, and the glory on her is the glory of a girl who is not dying, who is not reduced, who is not seventy-one pounds, who is not a number in an evidence box or a fact in a brief or a dead girl carried by a grieving brother through fourteen years and a grey country and a fire at the end of all things. The glory on her is the glory of a girl who is whole. Who is restored. Who is the thing I asked for on the bedroom floor, the thing the prayer demanded, the thing the ceiling received in silence and the silence kept and the keeping was not a refusal but a holding, a bearing, a patient, scarred, suffering, loving holding of the request until the time came to answer it, and the time is now.
She is here.
I cannot speak. The yes used the last of my language, the last of my words, the last of the articulacy that has been my instrument since the day I decided that the world was a text and the text had errors. I have no words for what I am seeing. I have no categories. I have no case, no argument, no evidence, no brief, no closing statement, no margin notes, no corrections. I have only eyes, and the eyes are full, and the full is not the fullness of the fire but the fullness of the seeing, and the seeing is June.
She looks the way she looked before the diagnosis. This is the first thing I register, and the registering breaks something in me that the argument could not break and the fire could not break and the scars could not break and the cross could not break, because the something that breaks is not the argument. The something that breaks is the grief. The grief that has been the bedrock under the case, the foundation under the structure, the thing I built the whole edifice on, the dead girl who was the reason for everything, the grief breaks, and the breaking is not a shattering but a releasing, a cracking-open, the way a seed cracks open when the life inside it is finally too large for the shell, and the shell was the grief and the life is the seeing and the seeing is June, whole, standing, alive in a way that the word alive cannot hold, because the word alive as I have known it means not yet dead and June is not not yet dead. June is past the dead. June is on the other side of the dead. June is in the place where the dead have been taken up and the dying has been entered and the suffering has been borne and the bearing has been completed and the completion is the restoration, not the erasure of what happened but the redemption of it, the taking of the worst thing and the carrying of it all the way through to the place where the worst thing is no longer the last thing.
June was sixteen and three months when she died. June is not sixteen and three months now. June is something else, something the fire has made, something the glory has restored, something that carries the full weight and dignity of the person she was and the person she would have been and the person she is, and the is is the word, the present-tense, first-person, current-reality is that I have not been able to use about my sister since April, since the Tuesday, since the stopping. June is.
She smiles. And the smile is the smile. The smile from the hospital bed, three weeks before the end, the smile that was not brave but genuine, the smile that carried the report, the dispatch from behind the curtain, the news from the something-after that the something-after was good. The smile that said it is okay, Micah while her older brother stood at the foot of her bed and held nothing and believed nothing and folded his arms around the beginning of an argument that would last fourteen years and beyond the grave.
The smile that is the comma.
The comma between I think the something-after and is good. The comma I filed beside the argument and could not reconcile with the argument and carried alongside the argument through every room and every year and every grey measureless stretch of the dead man’s country. The comma that would not resolve. The comma that pressed and pressed against the case with the soft, persistent, un-arguable force of a girl who was dying and knew it and was not afraid and said so, and the saying was the crack, and the crack has become the door, and the door has become the opening, and through the opening I see her, and she is the answer to the comma, and the comma is the answer to the case, and the case is over, and the girl is here.
June opens her mouth and speaks, and the speaking is not the speaking of the scars, not the wordless, image-borne language of wound and presence and with. The speaking is the speaking of a sister. The speaking is June’s voice, the specific, particular, irreplaceable voice of a girl who talked too much and knew it and did not care, the voice that told me about beetles and crossword clues and the night-shift nurse named Deb who could not spell rhythm and lost three weeks’ worth of competitions because of it, the voice that carried across the yard on summer evenings when she was telling General the cat about her day, the voice that said He’s not mean, he’s just scared about the neighbor’s beagle, the voice that said I think the something-after is good in a hospital room that smelled of lavender and antiseptic while a half-finished crossword puzzle sat on the windowsill like a dare that time had accepted and she had not.
June’s voice says: Hi.
And the hi is the end of the argument and the end of the case and the end of the arms and the end of the grey and the end of the fire-as-agony and the beginning of the fire-as-glory and the beginning of the Micah I was before the argument and the beginning of the Micah I am after the argument and the beginning of the life I did not know was waiting on the other side of the death I used as the foundation of my refusal.
The hi is small. Like the yes. Like the comma. Like the pause in a long sentence that changes everything that comes after it without raising its voice. The hi is the first word my sister has said to me since the hospital bed, since the something-after, since the good, and the word is not an argument and not a defense and not a vindication of the case or a dismissal of the case. The word is a greeting. The word is the word a person says when someone they love walks through the door, and I have walked through the door, and the door was the arms, and the arms are down, and the door is open, and I am through, and she is here.
I say: June.
Just her name. The way I used to say it when I came home from school and she was sitting on the kitchen floor reading a book about arthropods with General on her lap and a pencil behind her ear and her socks mismatched because she believed that matching socks was a concession to a world that valued conformity over self-expression, and I would say her name, just her name, as I walked past the kitchen, and the name was not a greeting or a summons or a question. The name was an acknowledgment. The name was the verbal equivalent of the hand on the shoulder, the touch that says: I see you. You are here. The world has you in it, and the having makes the world more tolerable than it would otherwise be.
June.
She reaches for me, and the reaching is real, and the realness is the thing that finishes the breaking of the grief, because the grief was built on the assumption that the reaching was over, that the reaching had stopped when the breathing stopped, that the last time anyone would reach for June or be reached for by June was the hospital bed, the thin hands, the hands I held and my mother held and my father held, and the holding was the goodbye, and the goodbye was the end.
The goodbye was not the end.
I reach back. I reach for my sister the way I used to reach for her when she was small and I was pulling her up from the grass after a fall, or when she was sick and I was bringing her water, or when she was frightened in the dark and I was sitting on the edge of her bed telling her that the noises were just the house settling and the settling was not dangerous and the dark was not permanent and the morning was coming. I reach for her the way the boy on the floor reached for the ceiling, with the full extension of the self, with the total commitment of the body, with the abandoned, unconditional, undefended reaching of a person who wants the one thing he wants more than anything he has ever wanted and is willing, finally, to want it without conditions, without the case, without the argument, without the arms.
Our hands meet. And the meeting is the fire, and the fire is the glory, and the glory is the restoration, and the restoration is not the undoing of the suffering but the redemption of it, the carrying of it all the way through to the place where the suffering has been taken up by the One who entered it and the entering has made the suffering not nothing but not the last thing, not the defining thing, not the load-bearing wall of the universe, and the wall has been replaced by a door, and the door has been opened by the hands with the scars, and through the door is June, and June is here, and here is the something-after, and the something-after is good.
It is good.
June said so. Three weeks before the end, in a hospital room, with a pencil and a crossword and a smile that was not brave but genuine, June said the something-after was good. And I carried those words alongside the argument for fourteen years, and the two did not fit, and the not-fitting was the crack, and the crack was the comma, and the comma was the door.
The door is open. I am through. June is here. The something-after is good. June was right.
June was right.
The fire completes its turning. The agony that was the condition of my burning, the friction of the arms against the love, releases its last heat, its final resistance, the way a fever breaks in the small hours of the night and the patient, who has been burning and burning, feels the first cool touch of the air on the skin and knows that the burning is over and the body has come through and the morning is possible.
I have come through. The fire has not destroyed me. The fire was never going to destroy me. The fire was the love, doing to the resistant what the love longed to do to the willing: burning away the false, the wrong, the constructed, the defended, until what was left was the true self, the self that existed before the argument, the self that sat on a hospital bed and did a crossword with his dying sister and laughed at her handwriting and was just a boy, just a brother, just a person who loved another person and lost her and did not know what to do with the losing.
The self that was under the argument is the self I am now. The argument has been burned away. Not the grief. The grief remains, and the remaining is not a failure of the fire but a feature of it, because the grief was never the false thing. The grief was the true thing. The grief was the evidence that the love was real, that the loss was real, that the girl was a person and not a principle, and the fire does not burn what is true. The fire burns what is false. The argument was false. Not the facts in the argument — June died, the prayers were spoken, the ceiling appeared to be silent, the damage cascaded, the dominoes fell — but the conclusion drawn from the facts, the conclusion that the silence meant absence, the conclusion that the distance was real, the conclusion that the defendant was behind the bench. That was false. That was the shell. That was the thing the fire was for, and the fire has done its work, and the shell is gone, and what is left is the boy, the brother, the griever, the one who loved, and the love is not the argument, and the love is truer than the argument, and the love is standing in the fire that is now glory and holding his sister’s hand.
I hold her hand. The hand is not thin. The hand is not the seventy-one-pound hand. The hand is the hand of a girl who is whole, who is restored, who is the bearer of a life that was taken and has been returned, and the returning is not the erasing of the taking but the completing of a sentence that stopped in the middle. The sentence has been finished. The word that was a breath and then was gone has been spoken again, and the speaking is the fire, and the fire is the glory, and the glory is the good that June knew about and Micah did not, and the good is here, and the here is home.
June says: I told you.
And the telling is not a rebuke. The telling is not the I told you so of a person who won the argument. The telling is the I told you of a girl who saw the good before her brother did because she was closer to it, because the dying brought her near it and the nearness gave her the report, the dispatch from behind the curtain, and the dispatch was true, and the truth was the comma, and the comma has found its sentence, and the sentence is: I think the something-after is good, and the something-after is here, and the here is the fire, and the fire is the love, and the love has scars, and the scars mean He was with me, and the with was enough, and the enough is the good.
I say: I know.
Two words. After fourteen years of arguments that filled rooms and chapters and the measureless grey. Two words. And the two words are more honest than the fourteen years, because the fourteen years were honest about the facts but wrong about the conclusion, and the two words are honest about everything: the facts and the conclusion and the scars and the cross and the entering and the with and the love and the fire and the girl who is standing beside me, whole, in the glory, smiling the smile, and I know. I finally know.
The something-after is good.
The glory opens. There is no other word for it. The glory opens the way a landscape opens when you crest a hill and the land beyond is wider and deeper and more luminous than anything the approach suggested, and the approach was the fire, and the fire was the argument, and the argument was the hill, and the hill has been crested, and the land beyond is the home, and the home is the glory, and the glory is the presence, and the presence is the same presence it has always been, the same face, the same scars, the same love, only now the presence is not fire to me. The presence is warmth. The presence is light. The presence is the thing the reconciled have been standing in, and I am reconciled, and the being-reconciled is not the end of the being-Micah but the beginning of it, the first moment since I was fifteen that I am Micah without the qualifier, without the modifier, without the who-lost-his-sister and the who-built-a-case and the who-folded-his-arms. Just Micah. The way June says my name. The way the fire says my name. The way the face has been saying my name since the dying moment, through the grey, through the summons, through the Throne, through the case: Micah, Micah, Micah, not the accuser but the boy, not the prosecutor but the brother, not the builder of cases but the lover of his sister, and the lover of his sister is here, and the sister is here, and the love is here, and the here is the end of the long argument and the beginning of the long peace.
I see the others. They are here, in the glory, in the fire that is glory, and the seeing of them is the first seeing that does not carry the weight of the case. I see Reed, and Reed is not the managing man anymore, Reed is the freed man, the man whose competence ran out and whose need was met and whose standing-in-the-glory has the quality of a man who has finally set down the clipboard and the schedule and the five-year plan and is simply present, simply here, simply a person being held by something larger than his own capacity. I see Naomi, and Naomi is not the wounded woman anymore, not the woman who fled the cruel god and found the real one, but the woman who has been made new by the finding, whose worship has the quality of a person who has discovered that the tenderness is real and will not be withdrawn and can be trusted, can finally, finally, after everything, be trusted. I see Quinn, and Quinn is not the running woman anymore, not the woman who numbed and hid and could not be still, but the woman who is still, perfectly still, held in the glory the way a hand is held in a warm hand, and the stillness is the peace, and the peace is the end of the fleeing, and the end is the beginning.
My housemates. My people. The ones I loved in the kitchen at 412 Garfield Street, the ones who knew my argument without needing to hear its full rehearsal, the ones who let me fold my arms at the table and did not try to unfold them, who gave me the space to be the man the grief made me and did not insist that I be someone else. Naomi, who knew about loss. Quinn, who knew about hiding. The two of them, broken in their own ways, sitting across from me on Tuesday mornings while I did the crossword in ink and the kitchen smelled of burnt toast and coffee grounds and the pine air freshener that came from my car, the old Accord, the car that carried us to the concert and carried us onto the wet road and carried us to the curve where the dying began.
They are here. They are glory. They are home.
I see Lena, who went first, who said the glad yes in the dying moment, who was the first through the door. I see Daniel, who laid down the weight he could not carry and was carried himself. I see them, the two who said yes before the rest of us had finished saying no, and the seeing is the first seeing that does not carry the separation, the divide between the reconciled and the refusing, because the divide is over. The divide was the arms. The divide was the argument. The divide was the case, and the case is laid down, and the laying-down has dissolved the divide, and what is left is the gathering, the re-gathering, the coming-together of the seven who died on a wet road on a Sunday evening and have been traveling, each by their own path, through the dying and the grey and the fire, to this: the home. The glory. The presence. The same face that met each of them, fitted to each heart, the same scarred hands, the same wounded love, the same invitation — come — spoken in the particular language each of them needed to hear it in, and each of them, in their own time and by their own turning, heard it and came.
I came last. Not quite last. Sloane is still in the fire. I can feel her there the way I could feel her in the grey, the armored woman, the woman whose contempt was the thickest wall in the dead country, burning now in the presence the way I was burning, and the burning is not the end for her either, because the burning was not the end for me, and the fire that burned the argument out of Micah will burn the armor off of Sloane, because the fire is the love, and the love does not give up, and the not-giving-up is the thing I finally understand, standing here in the glory with June’s hand in mine and the scars of the cross before me and the faces of the reconciled around me and the fire-that-is-warmth on my skin.
The love does not give up. The love did not give up on the girl in the hospital bed. The love did not give up on the boy on the bedroom floor. The love did not give up on the man in the grey with the folded arms. The love did not give up when I said no at the Threshold and no in the grey and no at the Throne and no to the fire and no to the face and no to the scars and no to the cross and no to the entering and no to the with. The love heard every no and answered every no with the same scarred, patient, wound-bearing come, and the come outlasted the no, and the outlasting is the love, and the love is the fire, and the fire is the glory, and the glory is the end of the argument.
The end of the argument is not the absence of the argument. The end of the argument is the presence of the answer. And the answer is not a proposition. And the answer is not a logical derivation. And the answer is not the kind of thing that can be written in a brief or filed in an evidence box or set on the scales and weighed. The answer is a wound. The answer is a scar. The answer is a God who entered the suffering and came out scarred and offered the scars not as a defense but as a proof of presence, and the proof of presence is the answer to the question I did not know I was asking, and the question was: Was she alone?
She was not alone. She is not alone. She is here. She is in the glory. She is holding my hand. She is smiling the smile. She told me so.
I stand in the fire that is glory and I hold my sister’s hand and I look at the face of the God I spent fourteen years arguing against, and the face is not the face of the defendant. The face is the face of the companion. The face is the face of the One who was in the room. The face carries the scars of the entering, the marks of the cross, the wounds of the God who did not stand off from suffering but went into it, all the way into it, down to the bottom of it, and the bottom was the dying, and the dying was the cross, and the cross was the love, and the love is the fire, and the fire is the glory, and the glory is the home.
I am home.
The word is not a metaphor. The word is not the way I used it when I said the kitchen at 412 Garfield was home, or the way I used it when I said the argument was the house I lived in, or the way I used it when I built the case and called the case my ground. The word is literal. The word means: I have arrived at the place I was made for. The place the prayer on the bedroom floor was reaching toward. The place June knew about and sent the dispatch from. The place the fire was always burning toward, the destination the fire was always carrying me toward, even when I called the fire agony and the destination exile and the carrying punishment. The fire was carrying me home. The fire was always carrying me home. The fire carried me the way a current carries a swimmer who is fighting the current, not against the swimmer but with the swimmer, not to drown the swimmer but to bring the swimmer to the shore, and the shore is the home, and the home is the glory, and the glory is the fire without the resistance, and I am here, and the resistance is over.
My mother would say: God is good. She said it on the morning of the funeral. She said it on the morning after the funeral. She said it on every morning of the fourteen years between the funeral and the Sunday evening when her son drove into the rain and did not come home, and the saying was not a denial of the suffering and the saying was not a dismissal of the grief and the saying was not the shallow, reflexive cheerfulness of a person who has not looked at the evidence. The saying was the report. The saying was the same dispatch June gave from the hospital bed, the same comma, the same good, issued not from ignorance but from knowledge, from the deep, specific, tested knowledge of a woman who had buried her daughter and continued to kneel beside her bed every morning at six and address the ceiling with a prayer that was not a conditional but a statement: God is good. You are good. Even this. Even this.
She was right. She was right in the way that the comma was right, in the way that June was right, in the way that the thing I could not fit into the argument turned out to be the thing the argument could not contain because the thing was larger than the argument, and the thing is the love, and the love has no borders, and the borders I built — the case, the arms, the courtroom, the charge, the verdict — were borders the love crossed, every one of them, the way the fire crosses every barrier and the light crosses every shadow and the hand with the scars crosses the distance between the accuser and the accused by the simple, devastating act of showing the accuser that the accused was never at a distance.
My father would say nothing. My father would stand in the parking lot beside his car and hold his keys and look at the April sunlight and let the silence hold what the words could not. My father, who broke and went on. My father, who was smaller and went on. My father, who lost his captain and went on. And the going-on was its own kind of faith, the faith of a man whose joy had been permanently reduced and who got up every morning and drove to work and drove home and ate dinner and went to bed and knelt beside his wife and prayed, and the prayer was not eloquent and the prayer was not theological and the prayer was the sound of a man who had been broken by the thing he trusted and who went on trusting, and the going-on was the bravest thing I have ever seen, braver than the argument, braver than the arms, braver than the case I built on the bedroom floor, because the argument was a response to the silence that assumed the silence was final, and my father’s faith was a response to the silence that assumed the silence was temporary, and my father was right.
The silence was temporary. The silence has ended. The silence ended when the scars spoke. The silence ended when the wounds showed me the cross. The silence ended when the fire became the glory. The silence ended when June said hi and reached for my hand and smiled the smile and said I told you and the telling was the end of the long silence that began in a hospital room on a Tuesday in April and lasted fourteen years and through the grave and through the grey and through the fire and ended here, in the glory, in the home, in the something-after, which is good.
Which is good.
Which was always good.
Which was good when June said it was good and the comma entered the sentence and the sentence could not be resolved by the argument, because the sentence was not an argument. The sentence was a girl’s report from the edge of the thing she was about to enter, and the thing she was about to enter was the love, and the love had scars, and the scars meant He had been there first, and the being-there-first was the entering, and the entering was the cross, and the cross was the answer, and the answer was never an argument. The answer was always a person. The answer was always the God who entered it.
I stand in the glory. I hold my sister’s hand. I look at the scars. I feel the fire, which is warmth, which is light, which is the presence of the face that pursued me since the dying moment and through the grey and past the summons and into the fire and through the fire and out the other side of the fire into this, the home, the good, the place where the argument has been laid down and the arms have come down and the boy on the bedroom floor has been answered, not with the answer he asked for but with the answer he needed, which is not a reason but a presence, which is not a why but a with, which is not a God who explains suffering but a God who enters it, and the entering is the love.
The love has no borders. The love crossed the border of the dying. The love crossed the border of the grey. The love crossed the border of the argument. The love crossed the border of the arms. The love crossed the border of the fire. The love crossed the border of the cross, which is the most terrible border, the border between living and dying, the border between God and suffering, the border between the throne and the grave, and the love went through, and the love came back scarred, and the scars are the proof, and the proof is the answer, and the answer is the love.
I am home. June is home. The argument is over. The fire is glory. The boy on the floor has been answered. The girl in the bed has been restored. The man with the folded arms has laid them down. The prosecutor has met the defendant and found that the defendant was a companion. The case has been received by hands with scars. The grief has been held by the One who grieved first. The something-after is good.
And the good is the fire. And the fire is the love. And the love is the scars. And the scars are the proof. And the proof is the God who entered it.
And I am home.