Love Without Borders
Chapter Thirty
There is a lake, and the lake has no business being this beautiful at the end of all things.
I do not mean a lake the way the living mean a lake, a body of water held in a bowl of earth with a shore of mud and stone and birches stripped to their white bones in November. I mean the thing the lake was always pointing to. I mean the thing that was behind the lake that Sunday afternoon when Reed took the turn toward the highway and the light fell across the water at the angle that turned everything to mercury and I sat up in my seat like something had called my name. The lake was doing something to me. The lake was opening a door I could not walk through and could not close after, and the ache of it sat in my chest for hours, sweet and useless and close to grief, and I did not know what was on the other side of the door, and I called it reaching because I had no better word, and the reaching was my whole life, the low hum in a frequency that nothing in my twenty-one years had ever tuned to.
The frequency has a source. I know it now. I have known it since the dying, since the silence came and the warmth began and the face arrived and the face was the thing the lake was pointing to and the heron was pointing to and the child on the stranger’s shoulder was pointing to and every sunset and every ache and every crack-open moment of beauty was pointing to, and the pointing was not the thing. The pointing was the invitation. The thing was Him. The thing was always Him. And now the pointing is over and the thing itself is here, not behind a door or through a window or across a lake but here, present, total, everywhere, the way light is everywhere when there are no more walls to cast a shadow, and the reaching that was my whole life has ended, not in the ending of a thing cut short but in the ending of a thing completed, a journey that has arrived at its home, a hunger that has found its meal, and the meal is inexhaustible, and the home is forever, and the forever is not frightening but restful, and the rest is the deepest thing I have ever felt.
I feel it now. The newness. The fire has completed its work in all seven of us, consumed the false and kept the true and freed the self in each, and now the fire has turned, and the turning is the making-new, and the making-new is not a distant event observed from outside the way you watch the sunrise from behind a window. The making-new is happening in me and around me and through me, and the in and the around and the through are not three separate locations but one location, one reality, one becoming, because the love that made me new is the same love that is making all things new, and the all-things includes the place, includes the here, includes whatever here means now that the grey is gone and the fire has turned and the presence that was the Threshold for me and the grey country for the five who refused and the fire for the two who held out to the very end has become something else entirely, something that has no predecessor and no comparison and no analogy in any experience any of the seven carried from their living.
The something is the restored. The something is the new creation. The something is the place the fire was always cleaning for.
I will try to say what the new creation is like, and the trying will fail, because the new creation is larger than the vocabulary of a twenty-one-year-old girl from a town with a lake and a borrowed cabin and a boyfriend who diagnosed car trouble by sound. But the trying is worth the failing, because the beauty of this place is the same kind of beauty that broke me open when I was alive, the beauty that had no name and pointed through itself to something else, and the something else is no longer something else. It is this. It is here. It is the beauty itself, arrived, unmediated, the thing behind every lake and every heron and every late sun turning a street to gold for thirty seconds before a cloud closed it off.
The new creation is the world remade. Not a different world. Not a replacement world, the way you replace a broken lamp with a new lamp and throw the broken one away. The same world, the same creation, the same earth and sky and water and light, but healed. The way Reed was the same Reed after the fire consumed the managing, the man himself, the person underneath the project manager, the same but freed. The way Naomi was the same Naomi after the fire consumed the brace, the woman herself, the person underneath the flinch, the same but healed. The same creation, with every wound entered and every false thing consumed and every true thing kept and every hidden beauty uncovered and every door that was shut thrown open, and the opening is the glory, and the glory is the love, and the love is the light by which I see everything, and everything I see is beautiful, and the beauty no longer aches.
That is the strangest thing. That is the thing that tells me the reaching is truly over, the thing that tells me the journey has truly arrived, the thing that proves to the girl who cried at gas-station sunsets and felt her throat close at strangers’ weddings that the ache was never a permanent condition. The beauty does not ache. The beauty does not open a door I cannot walk through. The beauty is the door walked through, the door behind me now, the door that was the gap between the reaching and the having, and the gap is closed, and the closing is not a loss but a completion, and the completion is a joy so total that the joy I felt at the Threshold, the joy I thought could not be surpassed, turns out to have been the prelude, the overture, the first notes of a symphony that is only now reaching its full orchestration.
I am in the full orchestration. I am in the new creation that is the beauty without the ache, the home without the homesickness, the having without the reaching, and the having is not a grasping, not a clutching, not the desperate hold of a hand that is afraid the thing will be taken away. The having is a resting. The having is the settled, quiet, breathing-out assurance of a person who has arrived at a place that will not close, a meal that will not end, a love that will not withdraw, and the not-withdrawing is the nature, and the nature is His, and the His is everything, and the everything is the new creation, and the new creation is the love made visible, the love made habitable, the love made home.
I see color. I want to say this because the saying matters. I see color the way the living see color when they are children, before the seeing becomes automatic and the automatic becomes invisible and the invisible becomes the loss of the thing that was always there. I see color as if color were being invented in front of me, each hue arriving with the specificity of a name spoken for the first time, and the name is the thing’s truest self, and the truest self is the beauty, and the beauty is the love expressed in green, in gold, in the blue of a sky that is not a sky but is the thing the sky was always pointing to, the canopy of the presence made visible, the held-ness of a creation that is held the way a child is held, from underneath, from all around, with the complete and unhurried attention of a love that made every color as a gift and is now giving every color again, restored, unveiled, seen for the first time by eyes that can finally bear the seeing.
I see water. Not the grey, formless, cold-not-cold water of Hades, the water the five described in the frequencies of their refusal, but water as water was meant to be, water that is alive with light, water that moves with the particular, unhurried, self-forgetting grace of a thing that is doing exactly what it was made to do, and the doing is the praise, and the praise is not a song sung to the love but the love singing through the thing it made, the way a river sings through its bed, not because the river is trying to make music but because the river flowing in the bed it was carved for is music, is the sound of a thing perfectly fitted to its purpose, and the purpose is the love, and the love is the maker, and the maker is here, in the water, in the color, in the light, in the air that is not air but is the breath of the presence breathed into the lungs of the new creation, and the breathing is the life, and the life does not end.
The gathering begins.
I have been here since the Threshold. I have been here since the dying moment, since the noise stopped and the silence came and the warmth began and the face met me and I knew it on sight, the way you know a voice you have heard calling your name from inside every beautiful thing your whole life, and I said the glad yes because the yes was the truest thing I had ever done, truer than any word I had spoken in twenty-one years of living, and the love received the yes and the receiving was the homecoming and the homecoming was the beginning. I have been in the glory since the beginning. I have been in the presence since the first moment, the first of the seven, and I have been here while the love pursued the other six, each along the road their particular heart required, each through the doors the love needed to open or wait beside, and the love waited, and the love waited, and the love waited with the patience that is not a strategy but a nature, and the waiting is over now, and the six have come, and the seven are together, and the togetherness is what I feel happening, a drawing, a convergence, a movement not of bodies through space but of souls toward each other in the geography of the love, and the geography has no borders, and the borderlessness is the nature, and the nature is the title, and the title is the truth.
I feel them. I have felt them since each yielding, by frequency, by the quality of the knowing. But feeling and gathering are different things. Feeling is knowing they are here. Gathering is being brought together, face to face, presence to presence, the way a family scattered across a country is brought together at a homecoming, not merely knowing the others exist but standing in the same room, seeing the same faces, hearing the same voices, touching the same hands. The love has been healing and completing and freeing each of the seven, and now the love is doing the last thing, the thing that completes the completing: bringing the seven together.
I understand, in the way I understand everything here, by the quality of the knowing, that this gathering is not accidental and not incidental and not a pleasant afterthought to the real business of being saved. The gathering is the real business. The gathering is what the saving was for. Not seven separate rescues producing seven separate happy endings in seven separate rooms of the glory. One rescue, one love, one Christ, one cross, one fire, producing one gathering, one family, one body, and the body is His, and the His is the love, and the love is the thing that bound the seven together from the first moment on the wet road, before any of us knew the others existed, before any of us knew there was a love at work in the weather and the ice and the curve, a love that was not causing the wreck but catching the wrecked, not designing the death but meeting the dead, not arranging the collision but arriving in the aftermath with scarred hands and a come that would not stop sounding until every one of the seven had come.
The gathering begins, and the beginning is Reed.
He is here.
I do not mean he arrives, because arriving implies a previous absence, and Reed has not been absent from the love since the moment the managing broke and the competence ran out and the man underneath the project manager finally let himself be rescued. Reed has been in the glory since his yielding, since Hades, since the grey broke open and the light came in and the hands took the weight he could never carry. I have known this. I have felt him in the glory the way I felt him in the living, by the steadiness of his presence, by the particular, solid, unwavering quality of a man who is finally standing on something he did not build and does not have to maintain.
But now he is here. Not felt at a distance. Not sensed by frequency. Here, the way a person is here when you can see their face and hear their voice and touch their hand, and the seeing and the hearing and the touching are not the sensory experiences of the living, not the firing of nerves and the processing of data through organs of perception, but something deeper, something truer, something that the living senses were always reaching toward and never quite achieving, the knowing of a person by the whole of yourself, the total presence meeting total presence, the face seen by the face, the self known by the self, the love received from the love.
Reed. Twenty-eight. My floor, my railing, my steady man. My boyfriend who diagnosed car trouble by sound and carried the groceries in one trip and knew the right insurance to buy and held me together with his competence and his quiet, measured, managing care, and the care was real, the care was always real, and underneath the care was the man, the person I loved not for what he could do but for who he was, and the who-he-was was the thing he could never see because the doing was always in the way, and now the doing is gone, consumed by the fire that consumed the managing, and what is left is the man, only the man, and the man is beautiful.
I see him. I see him the way the love sees him, by the total quality of the knowing, and the seeing is not the seeing of the living, where I saw his competence and his steadiness and his half-smile and his squared shoulders and the set of his jaw when the weather turned. The seeing is the seeing of the new creation, where I see him, the person underneath the competence, the self underneath the steadiness, the heart underneath the half-smile, and the heart is open now, the heart that was sealed behind the managing and the sorting and the measuring and the relentless effort to hold the world together by the force of a will that could not admit it needed holding. The heart is open, and the openness is the fire’s work, and the fire’s work is beautiful, and the beauty is the man, and the man is Reed, and Reed is here.
I see what the fire kept in him. The love. The love underneath the competence, the love that was not a strategy, the love that was the one thing Reed did that was not a project and not a plan and not a problem to solve. He loved me. He loved me not because I needed managing, though I did, and not because I needed holding together, though he did that too. He loved me because I was Lena, because the ache in me called to something in him that was deeper than the tools, something the managing could never reach and never satisfy, a tenderness the competence did not know how to express except by carrying the groceries and diagnosing the car and buying the right insurance and holding the wheel. The tenderness was the truest thing in him, and the fire kept it, and the keeping is what I see now, the tenderness uncovered, the love unmanaged, the man himself standing in the new creation without his hands on any wheel and without his jaw set against any storm, and the standing is not the standing of a man who has lost everything. The standing is the standing of a man who has found the one thing he could never provide for himself: a love that wanted him and not his record.
We are together. I do not know how to describe the togetherness because the togetherness is not the togetherness of the living, not the standing-next-to, not the arms-around, not the foreheads-touching in a bed with too many quilts while the fire ticks down to coals in the dark. The togetherness is deeper. The togetherness is the meeting of two people who are both known completely by the same love and are now known completely by each other in the light of that love, and the knowing is not the knowing of the living, where I knew Reed’s habits and his favorite meals and the sound he made when he was thinking and the way he smelled after rain. The knowing is the knowing of the new creation, where I know Reed the way I am known, by the whole of myself, without the veil of the living and without the distance of the managing, and he knows me the same way, the reaching girl and the ache and the cruelty-when-afraid and the beauty-hunger and the whole particular twenty-one years of Lena, known, and the knowing is not the end of the love but the deepening of the love, the love that was always there and is now freed from every barrier that kept it partial.
Reed. I did not lose you. The dying was not the losing. The going-ahead was not the abandoning. I went first because the reaching was my gift and the reaching made me ready, and you came after because the managing had to be consumed before the man could be freed, and the consuming took longer because the managing was stronger, and the strength of the managing was the depth of the need, and the depth of the need was the measure of the love that met it, and the love that met it was the same love that met me, the same Christ, the same scarred hands, the same come, and the come brought us both here, by different roads, to the same home.
The home holds us. The home holds the togetherness. The home holds the love that was always between us and is now between us without the filter of his need to hold the world together and my need to reach through every beautiful thing for the thing behind the beauty. The filters are gone. The needs are met. The love remains, the same love, Reed-and-Lena love, but completed now, the way the ache was completed, the way the managing was completed, freed from the incompleteness that was the condition of the living and resting now in the completeness that is the condition of the home.
We are together, and the togetherness is not the end of the gathering. The togetherness is the first reunion, and more are coming.
Daniel
She is coming and I know it the way I have always known things about my sister, by the deep, pre-verbal, bone-level frequency of a connection that was forged in the same house under the same god with the same notebook and the same ledger and the same cold, assessing, recording, filing love that was not love.
Sloane is coming, and the coming is the thing I have waited for since the Threshold, since the dying moment, since I met the One I spent my life dreading and found that the One was not the god of the house but was instead the scarred hands and the carried verdict and the weight taken and the stone set down, and the setting-down freed me and the freedom was the lightness and the lightness was the glory, and I have been in the glory since the first moments, the second of the seven, and the glory has been rest, deep rest, the rest of a man whose coat has been emptied of the stone his whole life was bent under, and the rest has been good, and the rest has been the love, and the rest has held one ache that the rest could not resolve: my sister.
I left her. I need to say this, because the saying is the truth, and the truth is the condition of the new creation, and the new creation does not paper over the things that happened. I left her in the house. I was older. I was the soft one, the one who bent, the one whose breaking was visible and catalogued and entered in the notebook under headings the god of the house devised for recording the failures of his children. I broke under the god, and the breaking drove me out, and the going was my survival, and the survival was my abandonment of her, because she was still in the house, she was still under the god, she was still in the rooms where the notebook was kept and the assessments were made and the love was a ledger, and I left her there.
I left her, and the leaving made her hard. The leaving taught her the lesson the house was always teaching, the lesson the god was always entering in the notebook: you are on your own. The people who are supposed to hold you will leave. The love is conditional. The conditions will not be met. The failure is yours. Sloane learned the lesson and she learned it better than I did, because I learned it as a man who bent and she learned it as a woman who braced, and the bracing was the armor, and the armor was the wall, and the wall was the contempt, and the contempt was the sneer she wore for twelve years like a face painted over the wound, and the wound was the girl on the kitchen floor, and the girl on the kitchen floor was my sister, and my sister was the one I left.
The fire consumed the guilt. I want to say this too, because it is true, and the truth matters. The fire consumed the guilt the way it consumed the stone, the way it consumed the shame, the way it consumed every false thing in every one of the seven: not by erasing the thing that happened but by entering it, by the scarred hands going into the thing that was done and coming out still reaching, and the still-reaching was the forgiveness, and the forgiveness was the fire, and the fire was the love, and the love held the truth of the leaving without requiring the carrying of the stone the truth had become. I left her. The leaving was real. The guilt was real. The leaving and the guilt are not the truest things. The truest thing is the love that entered the leaving and the guilt and came out on the other side still reaching for both of us, for the brother who left and the sister who stayed, for the soft one and the hard one, for the stone and the wall, and the reaching brought us both here.
And now she is here. Now my sister is here, not felt at a distance, not sensed by frequency, but here, the way a person is here when the years of separation collapse into the single moment of the meeting and the meeting is the only thing that is real and the years are the dream and the meeting is the waking, and the waking is now.
I see her. I see Sloane the way the love sees Sloane, by the total quality of the knowing, and the Sloane I see is not the Sloane I left. Not because she has been replaced. Because she has been freed. The armor is gone. The wall is gone. The contempt is gone, the sneer is gone, the jaw-set-against-the-world is gone, the cold, measured, assessing distance the architecture maintained between her and every person and every god and every love that tried to get close is gone, consumed by the fire that met the armor with nothing to push against and the contempt with nothing to fight and the wound with the holding and the cruelty with the staying. What is left is the girl. The girl from the kitchen floor. The girl who painted before the paints were taken away. The girl who loved her brother before she learned to sneer at her brother. The girl who was always there, underneath the armor, behind the wall, inside the contempt, the true self the false self was built to protect and instead imprisoned.
The girl is free. The girl is here. My sister, twenty-six years old, freed at the very last, the last of the seven, the hardest, the longest holdout, the one whose armor held when every other defense in every other soul had fallen, standing now in the new creation without the armor and without the wall and without the contempt and without the sneer and without the jaw and without the vow, and the without is not the nakedness of exposure, not the vulnerability she spent her life refusing. The without is the freedom. The without is the lightness. The without is what being-without-the-false feels like when the true has been found, and the true is the girl, and the girl is my sister, and my sister is here, and the here is the home, and the home holds us both.
I do not speak, because speaking in the new creation is not the pushing of air through vocal cords to produce the sounds the living use to approximate the things they mean. Speaking in the new creation is the opening of the self to the other, the total communication of the known to the known, and the communication has the quality of the love, and the love says everything the living speech could not, everything the years of separation and the guilt of the leaving and the hardness of the staying could never fit into the clumsy, approximate, always-insufficient words the living use for the things that matter most.
The love says: I am sorry I left you.
The love says: The leaving was real, and the fire held it, and the holding was the forgiveness, and the forgiveness was the cross, and the cross was the entering, and the entering healed the leaving, not by undoing it but by going into it with the scarred hands and coming out on the other side still reaching for both of us.
The love says: You are my sister, and the being-my-sister was never conditional, and the notebook was wrong, and the ledger was wrong, and the god who kept them was not the God who holds us now, and the God who holds us now went into the house and the notebook and the kitchen floor and the box of paints going down the stairs and came out scarred, and the scars are the proof, and the proof is: the love was always there, in the house, in the worst of it, in the leaving and the staying and the hardening and the armor, the love was there, and the love brought us here.
Sloane
Daniel.
My brother. Thirty years old. The soft one. The one who bent where I braced, who carried a stone where I built a wall, who flinched from the god of the house where I sneered at the god of the house, who left where I stayed, who was freed at the Threshold where I held out to the very end. Daniel, who I envied for his freedom and despised for his softness and resented for his leaving and loved with the love the armor could not permit me to acknowledge because acknowledging the love would have required acknowledging the wound and acknowledging the wound would have required acknowledging the girl and acknowledging the girl would have required the tears and the tears would have required the vulnerability and the vulnerability was the one thing the vow forbade.
The vow is consumed. The armor is consumed. The wall is consumed. The contempt is consumed and the sneer is consumed and the jaw is consumed and the twelve years of the architecture are consumed, and what is left is the girl, the girl I was before the paints went down the stairs, the girl who loved her brother with the simple, unguarded, unarmored love of a child who has not yet learned that the people who are supposed to hold you will leave, and the girl is here, and the girl is me, and Daniel is here, and the being-here-together is the thing the house never permitted, the thing the god of the house could not have designed a ledger for, the thing no notebook could record or assess or file under a heading, because the thing is the love, and the love is not a measurable quantity, and the unmeasurability is the freedom, and the freedom is the fire, and the fire has brought us both here.
I see my brother. I see him the way the love sees him, and the seeing is not the seeing of the house, not the seeing of the girl who watched the older brother bend and learned from the bending that bending was weakness and weakness was the enemy and the enemy must be armored against. The seeing is the seeing of the new creation, where bending is not weakness but was always the first motion of the yielding, and the yielding was the freedom, and Daniel’s freedom was not the thing I should have despised but the thing I should have followed, and the should-have is not the condemnation, because the fire does not condemn, and the love does not enter the should-have with a notebook and a heading and an assessment. The love enters the should-have with the scars, and the scars say: the road was longer for you, and the length was the depth of the wound, and the depth of the wound was the measure of the armor, and the measure of the armor was the size of the love that consumed it, and you are here now, and the now is what matters, and the mattering is the holding, and the holding holds the brother and the sister and the leaving and the staying and the house and the god and the notebook and all of it, held, healed, forgiven, home.
I am with my brother. I am with Daniel in the new creation, and the being-with is the being-with of two people who grew up in the same rooms under the same false god and were broken by the same falseness in different ways, one by bending and one by bracing, and both breakings were real and both breakings have been healed, the stone taken and the wall consumed, the shame lifted and the armor burned, and what is left is the brother and the sister, the true selves, the children of the house freed from the house, and the freedom is not the freedom of the leaving, not the freedom Daniel found when he walked out the door and I found when the fire found me at the Throne. The freedom is the freedom of the love, the love that entered the house and the god and the notebook and came out scarred and still reaching, still reaching, still reaching for both of us, and the reaching found us, and the finding is this, and this is the home.
I do not have the words for what passes between us. The girl on the kitchen floor does not have the vocabulary for the meeting of a brother and a sister whose wound was each other and whose healing is each other and whose home is neither of them but the love that holds them both. I do not need the words. The words were the architecture’s tool, the precision the system required for the managing and the sorting and the assessing, and the system is gone, and the tool is unnecessary, and what remains is the thing the words were always failing to carry: the love itself, communicated not in language but in the opening of the self to the self, the known meeting the known, the healed meeting the healed, the freed meeting the freed.
Daniel and Sloane. Brother and sister. Thirty and twenty-six. The soft one and the hard one. The stone and the wall. Both consumed. Both freed. Both here, in the home that is not the house, in the love that is not the ledger, in the holding that is not the assessment, in the fire that burned away everything false and left everything true, and the truest thing is this: we are siblings, and the being-siblings was never a condition in a notebook, and the love that holds us now held us then, in the house, in the worst of it, in the leaving and the staying, and the holding was the love, and the love was the fire, and the fire has brought us home.
Naomi
The three of us are here.
I feel this the way I have felt everything since the fire consumed the brace and the flinch and the false god and left me standing in the presence of the God I fled and finding that the God I fled was not the God who is. I feel it by the quality of the knowing, by the frequency of each presence in the glory, and the frequencies I feel now are the two frequencies I know better than any others, the two frequencies I lived beside in a rented house three doors down from a laundromat with a broken dryer, the two people who became my family when my family’s god drove me away.
Quinn. Micah. The housemates. The walking wounded who found each other.
We were not a theology. We were not a doctrine. We were not a church or a congregation or a fellowship or any of the words the church of my childhood used for the groupings of people the god required for the administering of the shame. We were three damaged people who shared a house because the sharing was easier than the alone, and the ease was the grace, and we did not know it was grace because we did not know that grace was a thing that could exist outside the apparatus of the trapping.
Grace was always there. I know this now. Grace was in the kitchen where Quinn made coffee too strong and Micah read the newspaper with a pencil behind his ear and I sat on the counter with my legs dangling and my mug in both hands and the morning was quiet and the quiet was the holding, and the holding was not the holding of the church but the holding of three people who had each been wounded by the world in their own specific way and had chosen, without choosing, to be wounded together rather than wounded alone, and the choosing was the grace, and the grace was the love, and the love was the Christ, and we did not know it.
We know it now. The three of us know it now, here, in the new creation, where the brace is consumed and the running is ended and the case is dissolved and the three of us are together, the chosen family made true, the walking wounded healed, the house of the damaged made the household of the love. I see Quinn, twenty-four, the youngest, the one who ran, the one who numbed, the one who filled every silence with motion and every stillness with noise because the stillness and the silence were the places where the knowing lived and the knowing was the thing she fled from all her life. Quinn is still now. Quinn is the stillest person in the new creation, the stillness of a woman who ran for twenty-four years and has finally stopped and has discovered that the stopping is not the death but the life, and the life is the being-known, and the being-known is the being-wanted, and the being-wanted is the thing she ran from and is now resting in, and the resting is the stillness, and the stillness is the glory.
I see Micah, twenty-nine, the eldest, the one with the folded arms, the one with the case, the one whose grief was his sister and whose argument was his God and whose refusal was the longest and the most principled and the most dignified of any refusal in the grey. Micah’s arms are unfolded now. Micah’s case is dissolved. Micah is standing in the new creation with his sister June beside him, the girl who died at sixteen while three hundred people prayed, and the girl is whole, and the wholeness is the answer, and the answer was never an argument. Micah’s face has the quality of a man whose question has been answered not by the refutation of the question but by the entering of the questioner into the pain that produced the question, and the entering is the scars, and the scars are the proof, and the proof is the peace, and the peace is a peace the case could never have produced, because the case was looking for a justification and the justification was the wrong category, and the right category was the with, the God who went into the suffering and came out wounded, and the wounded God is the one whose hands now hold June’s hand, and the holding is the answer Micah spent fourteen years demanding.
We are together. The housemates. The chosen family. The three who shared a house and a morning and a coffee too strong and a quiet that was the grace we did not name. Naomi and Quinn and Micah, twenty-seven and twenty-four and twenty-nine, the braced and the running and the folded, the wounded-by-the-church and the wounded-by-the-self and the wounded-by-the-death, all healed, all freed, all home, and the home is not the rented house three doors down from the laundromat. The home is the love. The home has always been the love. The home was the love in the kitchen and the love in the morning and the love in the too-strong coffee and the love in the quiet and the love in the choosing-to-be-wounded-together, and the love was the Christ we did not know, and the Christ we did not know knew us, and the knowing was the pursuit, and the pursuit brought us here.
Quinn
I am still.
I want to say this because the saying is the proof and the proof is the miracle and the miracle is the smallest, quietest miracle in the new creation, so small and so quiet that it would be invisible to anyone who did not know that for twenty-four years I could not be still, could not stop, could not sit in a room without reaching for the noise or the substance or the motion or the next thing, the next distraction, the next numb, the next anything-that-is-not-the-silence, because the silence was where the knowing lived and the knowing was the thing that would destroy me if I ever let it catch me.
The knowing caught me. The knowing caught me in Hades, in the place with nowhere to run and nothing to numb with, and the catching was not the destroying. The catching was the holding. The catching was the being-still-and-known-and-wanted, the thing I fled from my whole life, and the thing I fled from turned out to be the thing I was running toward without knowing it, because the fear of being known was the distortion and the being-known-and-wanted was the truth, and the truth is that I am Quinn, twenty-four, the youngest, the runner, the numb one, the one who could not sit still for five minutes without reaching for the next thing, and I am still now, and the stillness is not the death but the life, and the life is the fullest, most awake, most present life I have ever lived, because the stillness is the being-here, and the being-here is the being-with, and the being-with is the love, and the love is the home, and the home is the new creation, and the new creation is alive with the kind of life that does not need noise or motion or substance or the next thing, because the thing itself is here, the thing every next-thing was a substitute for, and the thing is the love, and the love is enough.
I am with Naomi and Micah. I am with my housemates, my wounded family, my chosen people who chose me back when I was not choosable, when I was running and numbing and skittering and deflecting and doing everything I could to make myself unchosen so that the choosing could not hurt me when it was withdrawn. They chose me anyway. They chose me with the too-strong coffee and the morning quiet and the not-asking-where-I-was-last-night and the being-there-when-I-came-back, and the choosing was the love, and the love was the Christ we did not know, and the Christ we did not know is the Christ we know now, and the knowing is the new creation, and the new creation holds us, all three, the braced and the runner and the arguer, healed and still and home.
Micah
June is beside me and the beside-ness is the answer that is not an argument.
My sister. Sixteen. Not sixteen the way she was sixteen when she died, not sixteen in the way of a body that weighed seventy-one pounds at the end and could not hold a pencil and could not finish a crossword and could not explain the difference between the beetles and the Beatles because the explaining required a breath the lungs could no longer supply. Sixteen in the way of a self made whole, a person completed, a girl who was always June and is now June without the illness, June without the dying, June without the hospital room with the window that faced the parking lot while the dogwoods bloomed. June, complete. June, the comma corrected. June, the crossword finished. June, the breath restored.
I hold her hand. I have been holding her hand since the fire showed me the scars and the scars showed me the cross and the cross showed me the God who entered it, and the entering answered the question I spent fourteen years asking into ceilings and courtrooms and the dark, and the answer was not a word but a wound, and the wound said: I was there. I was in the room. I was in the dying. I was in the seventy-one pounds and the failing lungs and the parking lot and the dogwoods and the three hundred prayers that sounded to you like silence and were not silence but were the sound of a love entering the suffering because the love could not stand off from it, could not remain at a distance, could not hold the gavel and keep the hands clean, because the hands that held the gavel were the same hands that bore the nails, and the bearing was the entering, and the entering was the with, and the with was the answer, and the answer was always going to be this: not a justification but a presence, not an argument but a wound, not a theodicy but a God who suffered too.
I am Micah. Twenty-nine. The one with the case. The one who folded his arms and demanded the defense and received the wounds. The one whose argument was the longest and the strongest and the most sincere of any argument in the grey, and the sincerity was the dignity, and the dignity was real, and the fire did not mock the dignity. The fire consumed the case but not the grief. The fire consumed the argument but not the love. The fire consumed the prosecutor but not the brother. I am the brother. I am the brother who loved his sister and the loving was the truest thing in the whole fourteen-year case, truer than the evidence, truer than the charges, truer than the verdict the prosecution demanded, and the brother is kept, and the keeping is the fire, and the fire is the love, and the love holds me and June and the housemates and all of it, the case and the grief and the kitchen and the coffee and the morning quiet, all of it held, all of it home.
I see Naomi and Quinn. My housemates. My chosen family. My two wounded companions who shared a house with a wounded man and did not ask him to stop being wounded and did not offer him a cure and did not tell him the wound was a sin or a failure or an entry in a notebook. They sat with the wound. They drank the coffee. They let the morning be quiet. And the sitting and the drinking and the letting were the love, and the love was the Christ, and now the Christ holds all three of us and the holding is the home, and June is in the home, and June is whole, and the wholeness is the thing I demanded of God as a condition of my believing, and God did not meet the condition, because the condition was the wrong frame, and the right frame was the cross, and the cross did not prevent the dying but entered the dying and came out the other side with scars and with June, and June is here, and the here is the answer, and the answer is enough.
Lena
All seven.
I feel the completeness of the number like a chord fully sounded, every note present, no note missing, the harmony that has been building since the first dying moment now arrived at its resolution. All seven. The seven strangers who shared one afternoon on a highway and did not know each other and did not choose each other and did not know that the same Love was about to pursue each of them through death and beyond death to the end of all things, and the not-knowing was not ignorance but was the condition of the living, the beautiful, limited, aching, ordinary condition of people who do not yet see the design in the weather and the ice and the curve.
I see the design now. Not the design of the accident, because the accident was not designed, the accident was weather and ice and a curve taken at the wrong moment, and the wrong moment was not arranged by the love but was met by the love, caught by the love, received by the love the way a net receives the falling, not by causing the fall but by being there, spread and ready, underneath. The design is the gathering. The design is the this, the seven together, the strangers made family, the scattered made one, the wounded made whole, the dead made alive, the refused-and-refusing made welcomed-and-welcoming, and the making is the love, and the love is the Christ, and the Christ is the one who met each of us in the form our particular heart required.
He met me as the thing the beauty pointed to, the face behind every lake and every heron and every late sun on a street, and my yes was glad, and the gladness was the reaching fulfilled.
He met Daniel as the One who carried the stone, the scarred hands that took the weight the son of the house could never lift, and Daniel’s yes was the collapse of relief, and the relief was the freedom from the verdict he was never meant to bear.
He met Reed as the love that wanted the man and not the record, the rescue that the manager could never manage for himself, and Reed’s yes was the breaking of a lifetime of self-sufficiency, and the breaking was the being-held for the first time.
He met Naomi as the God who was not the god she fled, patient and tender and nothing like the shaming presence she was taught to call Father, and Naomi’s yes was the daring to believe the tenderness was real, and the daring was the healing of the god-image the church had broken.
He met Quinn as the stillness that did not kill, the being-known that did not condemn but wanted, the love that stayed when the running stopped, and Quinn’s yes was the end of the flight, the first time she let herself be still and seen and did not die of it.
He met Micah as the God who suffered too, the wounded One who entered the room where June was dying and did not stand off from the suffering but bore it in His own body, and Micah’s yes was the dissolving of the case, the argument met not by rebuttal but by scars.
He met Sloane as the love her cruelty could not exhaust, the staying that the armor had nothing to push against, the mercy that watched every cruel thing she ever did and still wanted her, and Sloane’s yes was her first true tears, the breaking-open she spent her life refusing, and the breaking was the healing, and the healing was the fire, and the fire was the love.
Seven ways of being met. Seven forms of the same love. Seven doors opened by the same hand with the same scars, fitted to seven different locks, because the love that pursued the seven knew each lock to its root and had the key that was made for each, and the key was always the same key, the crucified and risen love of the same Christ, and the sameness of the key was the oneness of the love, and the oneness of the love is the thing I see now in the new creation, the thing the gathering makes visible: that the seven separate stories were never seven separate stories. They were one story. One love. One pursuit. One Christ. One cross. One fire. One home.
The seven are together and the togetherness opens into something larger.
I have been trying to say what the new creation is, and the trying has failed in the way all trying fails here, by being too small for the thing it is trying to contain. But now the trying reaches its last and most necessary failure, because the thing I need to say is the largest thing, the thing the whole book has been building toward, the thing the whole story exists to make felt rather than argued, and the saying of it will be the smallest saying, because the largest things are always said smallest, the way I love you is three syllables and holds the whole of a life, the way home is one syllable and holds the whole of a longing.
The seven are not the end of the story. The seven are the telling of the story, the particular, concrete, dramatized telling, the seven strangers on a wet road on a Sunday evening when the light was the color of concrete and the ice was invisible and the cars went into the curve at exactly the wrong moment. The seven are the telling. But the story is larger than the telling. The story is the love itself, and the love itself is larger than seven, and the larger-than-seven is what the new creation is making visible, and the making-visible is the consummation, and the consummation is the thing I see now, the thing the gathering opens into, the thing the fire was always cleaning for.
All things.
The love is making all things new. Not seven things. All things. The fire that consumed the managing in Reed and the brace in Naomi and the running in Quinn and the stone in Daniel and the case in Micah and the armor in Sloane and the ache in me, the fire that found the beloved in each of us and burned away the false and freed the true and held the wound and healed the wound and made each of us clean, this fire, this love, this Christ, is doing the same work in all things, in every wound and every wall and every armor and every case and every running and every numbing and every brace and every shame in every life that has ever been lived, and the doing is the restoring, and the restoring is the consummation, and the consummation is the end toward which the whole of history was always traveling, the end the love intended from the beginning, before the curve and the ice and the grey and the Throne and the fire, before any of it, before any refusal and before any surrender, the love intended this: all things gathered into the love. All things made new. All things home.
I see it. I see it the way I used to see the beauty that broke me open, the door that opened onto something I could not reach, except now the door is behind me and I am standing on the other side and the other side is not a place but a reality, a condition, a truth so fundamental that every other truth is a shadow of it the way the lake was a shadow of this light, and the truth is this: the love has no borders. The love never had borders. The love was never on one side of the death or one side of the grey or one side of the fire or one side of any wall or any armor or any case or any refusal the human heart could build. The love was always on both sides. The love was always the environment, the condition, the ground, the air, the light by which every shadow was cast, and the shadows were real and the shadows were painful and the shadows were the dying and the refusing and the grey and the fire and the tears, and the shadows did not diminish the love, and the love consumed the shadows, and the consuming was the fire, and the fire was for the beloved, and the beloved was everyone, and everyone is here.
Love without borders. The words arrive in me as the title of the thing I have been living, the name of the truth the seven were chosen to embody, and the embodying is not a lesson and not a sermon and not a theology but a life, seven lives, seven deaths, seven meetings with the same Love in the dying moment, two glad yeses and three hard-won surrenders and two final-judgment breakings, and the whole of it, from the first reaching by the lake to the last tears from the girl on the kitchen floor, the whole of it is the embodied proof of one truth: the love of God has no border that death can hold against it. Not death. Not the grey. Not the fire. Not the hardest human refusal. Not the armor or the case or the running or the brace or the managing or the stone or the numbing or the contempt. Nothing. No border. The love crossed everything. The love entered everything. The love pursued everything. The love waited for everything. The love consumed every false thing and freed every true thing and held every wound and healed every wound and forgave every cruelty and answered every case and stilled every running and melted every armor and lifted every stone and replaced every false god and completed every ache and brought every one of the seven home.
And not just the seven. All things. Every soul. Every wound. Every refusal. Every wall. The fire that was for the seven is for all things, because the love that was for the seven is for all things, because the Christ who died for the seven died for all things, and the dying was the crossing, the crossing of the last and deepest border, the border between God and the suffering of the world, and the crossing cost the love its own body and its own blood and its own breath and produced the scars, and the scars are the proof, and the proof is: the love will cross anything. The love will enter anything. The love will go into any wound and any wall and any grey and any fire and any death and come out the other side still reaching, still reaching, still reaching for the beloved, and the beloved is everything, and everything is being brought home.
This is what I see. This is what the new creation is making visible. The love is making all things new, and the making is not finished in the seven, because the seven were not the whole of the beloved but the telling of the beloved, and the telling points to the whole, and the whole is everything, and everything is here, being restored, being gathered, being brought into the love that was always the fire and the fire that was always the love, and the bringing is the consummation, and the consummation is the end of the old and the beginning of the new, and the new does not end.
I am Lena. Twenty-one. The first of the seven.
I was the open door. I was the glad yes. I was the one who heard the love calling from inside every beautiful thing and did not know its name and ached for it and reached for it and cried at gas-station sunsets and felt her throat close at strangers’ weddings and stood on a porch in her socks watching a heron lift off a lake and felt the whole of her crack open with the wanting of a thing she could not name.
The thing has a name. The name is a person. The person has scars.
The scars are the proof of the love, and the love is the fire, and the fire is the glory, and the glory is the new creation, and the new creation is the home, and the home is the thing the ache was always reaching for, the thing behind every lake and every heron and every late sun and every sleeping child on a stranger’s shoulder. The ache was the invitation. The reaching was the response. The beauty was the calling. And the caller is here, and the called are here, and the here is the home, and the home does not end.
I think of the wet road. I think of the Sunday evening, the light the color of concrete, the ice invisible on the curve, the noise that was everything and then was nothing. I think of the seven of us, alive, ordinary, wounded, carrying our particular pains in our particular ways through a world that had no idea what waited on the other side of the next few seconds. Reed with his hands on the wheel and his jaw set against the weather. Daniel in the other car with his sister beside him, the silence between them the silence of a wound neither of them would name. Naomi and Quinn and Micah in the third car, the housemates, the chosen family, driving home from a concert, the music still in their ears, the darkness ahead.
We did not know. None of us knew. We did not know that the curve was the threshold and the threshold was the beginning and the beginning was the love and the love was already waiting, already there, already on both sides of the metal and the glass and the ice, already holding the scarred hands open, already sounding the come that would not stop sounding until every one of us had come.
We did not choose each other. The wet road chose us, or rather the wet road was the place where the love caught seven strangers who were falling, and the catching was the beginning of the story, and the story has been told, and the story is over, and the over is not the ending but the arriving, the arriving at the place where the story opens into the thing stories are made to carry, the truth the telling was designed to hold, and the truth is simple and the truth is small and the truth is this:
The love of God has no border death can hold against it.
That is all. That is the whole of it. That is the truth the seven exist to make felt, and the feeling is not an argument and not a proof and not a doctrine but a living, a dying, a being-pursued, a being-found, a being-held, a being-healed, a being-freed, a being-brought-home, and the home is the love, and the love is the Christ, and the Christ is the One who met each of us in the dying moment and pursued each of us through the grey and waited for each of us at the Throne and held each of us in the fire and freed each of us from the false and kept each of us in the true and brought each of us here, to this, to the new creation, to the home, to the all-things-made-new, and the making is His, and the His is the love, and the love is the fire, and the fire is the glory, and the glory is the home, and the home holds all of us, all seven, all things.
God all in all.
The phrase arrives in me the way the face arrived in the dying, by the total quality of the knowing, and the knowing is not a theological formula and not a doctrinal statement but a felt reality, the reality I am standing in, the reality the new creation is. God all in all. The love in everything. The Christ in everyone. The fire in every wound and the healing in every fire and the glory in every healing, and the chain is unbroken and the chain is the love and the love has no end and the no-end is the nature and the nature is His and the His is everything.
Everything. All things. The word all is the largest word the girl from the lake knows, and the word is not large enough, and the not-large-enough is the final beautiful failure of the vocabulary, the last and gentlest breaking-open of a language that was made for a world of shadows and is now being asked to hold the light the shadows were shadows of, and the language breaks, and the breaking is the praise, and the praise is the silence, and the silence is the fullest silence, the silence of a soul that has said everything it can say and has arrived at the place where the saying gives way to the being, and the being is the love, and the love is the home, and the home is the rest, and the rest is the end of the reaching, and the end of the reaching is the beginning of the having, and the having does not end.
Here is what I know, at the end of all things and the beginning of all things new.
I know that the seven were loved before they were born. I know that the ache in me and the stone in Daniel and the managing in Reed and the brace in Naomi and the running in Quinn and the case in Micah and the armor in Sloane were each, in their own way, the signal of a love that was always there, always pursuing, always sounding the come that each heart was tuned to hear, and the hearing took different roads and different times and different kinds of breaking, and the love waited for every road and every time and every breaking, because the waiting was not impatience but was the patience of a love that had no deadline it did not set and no border it could not cross.
I know that the fire was never the opposite of the love. The fire was the love. The fire was the love doing in the resistant what it had always longed to do, and the resistance made it burn, and the burning was the agony, and the agony was the friction of a self pressed against a love it would not receive, and when the pressing stopped, when the yes came, the same fire that was agony became the warmth, the same presence that was the burning became the holding, and the holding was the healing, and the healing was the making-clean, and the making-clean was the making-new, and the making-new is the new creation, and the new creation is the home.
I know that the Christ who met each of us was the same Christ. The face that was the beauty for Lena was the scarred hands for Daniel was the rescue for Reed was the un-false God for Naomi was the stillness for Quinn was the wounded One for Micah was the love-that-stayed for Sloane, and the same was not a sameness of appearance but a sameness of identity, the same crucified and risen Love, the same cross, the same scars, the same come, fitted to each heart as precisely as a key to its lock, because the love that made each heart knew each heart, and the knowing was the fitting, and the fitting was the pursuit, and the pursuit was the love, and the love was the Christ, and the Christ is the center of the new creation, and the center holds everything.
I know that no one was lost. I know this with the certainty of a person standing in the proof. No one was lost. Not the glad and immediate. Not the hard-won. Not the holdouts. Not the last. The love lost none of them. The love could not lose any of them, because losing is the absence of the love and the love has no absence, the love is the presence, and the presence is total, and the totality is the nature, and the nature is the fire, and the fire is the glory, and the glory is the home. No one was lost, and the not-losing was not a sentimentality or a wishful thinking or a soft theology afraid to face the harder truth. The not-losing was the harder truth. The not-losing was the hardest truth, the truth that cost the love its own body on a cross and its own blood on a hill and its own breath in a grave, and the costing was the crossing, the crossing of the border between God and the death of the world, and the crossing brought the love to the other side, and the other side was the dying moment and the grey country and the Throne and the fire and the wherever-the-beloved-was, and the love went there, and the love waited there, and the love burned there, and the love healed there, and the love won there, every time, every soul, every no turned to yes by a love that would not stop coming.
I know that this is the end, and the end is the beginning, and the beginning does not end.
The present tense holds.
I have been in the present tense since the dying. The novel opened in my present, in the passenger seat of Reed’s car on a Sunday afternoon in November, watching a lake flash silver between the bare trees, and the present has not broken since, not through the silence and the warmth and the face and the yes and the glory and the waiting and the fire and the completing and the gathering and the new creation. The present has held because the present is the tense of the living, the tense of the real, the tense of the now that is the only tense the love knows, because the love does not remember loving and the love does not plan to love. The love loves. Present tense. Always present tense. The love is.
And now the present tense rests. The present that began in the passenger seat on a wet road at the end of November, the present that carried me through the dying and the silence and the warmth and the face and the yes, the present that carried Daniel through the dread and the stone and the collapse and the freedom, the present that carried Reed through the managing and the stripping and the breaking and the being-held, the present that carried Naomi through the fury and the dissonance and the daring and the believing, the present that carried Quinn through the running and the hiding and the stopping and the being-wanted, the present that carried Micah through the argument and the case and the scars and the dissolving, the present that carried Sloane through the armor and the contempt and the seeing and the tears, this present, this tense, this now, rests.
Not stops. Rests. The way I rested at the end of my own passage, when the reaching was over and the having had begun, when the walking was done and the sitting-down was not the end of the story but the beginning of a story that does not end. The present tense rests in a present that does not end. The now of the new creation is not a moment between a past and a future. The now of the new creation is the eternal present of the love, the always-now, the forever-here, the tense that has no past because the past has been redeemed and no future because the future has arrived and no ending because the love does not end.
I rest in the present. The seven rest in the present. All things rest in the present. The reaching is over. The pursuing is complete. The fire has done its work. The false is consumed. The true is free. The wounds are healed. The walls are down. The armor is gone. The case is dissolved. The running has ended. The brace has fallen. The stone is taken. The managing is finished. The ache is answered. The reaching has found. The homesickness is home.
And the love holds. The love holds the seven who were strangers and are family. The love holds the new creation that is the beauty without the ache. The love holds the present tense that does not end. The love holds all things, because the love is all in all, and the all-in-all is the home, and the home is the love, and the love is the Christ, and the Christ is the face and the scars and the cross and the entering and the with and the pursuit and the fire and the glory, and the glory is here, and the here is forever, and the forever is now, and the now is the rest, and the rest is the love, and the love has no borders.
No borders.
The novel opened with a lake that had no business being so beautiful at the end of November. The novel closes with a love that has no business being so relentless at the end of all things. But the love does not keep business. The love is not a ledger. The love is not a notebook. The love is not a god that files the beloved under headings and assesses the performance and enters the verdict and closes the book. The love is the fire. The love is the glory. The love is the home. The love is the Christ who went into the dying and came out scarred and still reaching, still reaching, still reaching, and the reaching found the seven, and the seven are home, and the home is the all-in-all, and the all-in-all is the love, and the love does not end.
I am Lena. Twenty-one. The first of the seven. The one who reached.
The reaching is over. The finding is forever.
Home.