Life in Death

Shuffled through cathedral after cathedral, hostel after hostel, a weary band of American college literature and writing students found themselves in Norfolk, England, a space they were told was sacred. At least, it was a space meant to evoke feelings of sacredness. Their professors said it was because of Julian, that anchorite who wrote down her encounters with God and would later be known as the first woman to have surviving written work in the English language. The students stood in awe of her, visited her cell, embodied her pilgrimage from one side of the tiny anchorite cell to the other.

I was one of those bedraggled members, with my greasy, unwashed hair clinging to my cheeks and eyes puffy from sleep deprivation. I was anxious and depressed and dissociated, detached from myself and having trouble associating with my surroundings. Nothing felt real. Medically, I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I knew what I was feeling and that was the absence of any good feeling at all, the complete inability to feel wonder accompanied by a gnawing numbness or constant sorrow for unidentified reasons. God was difficult to talk to, difficult to find.

With an unswallowable lump in my throat, I dragged myself after the rest of my classmates as we climbed down from an ill-ventilated travel bus and filed into Norwich Cathedral. There were three white-haired ladies in cotton dresses vacuuming around the pews. The vacuums sounded a lot like death: a great gasping and whirring that heaved its way into my head and proceeded to make a home there.

I wandered as far away from the ghastly noise as I could and found a quiet nook to the left of the pulpit. There, I came to a standstill before a painted statue of Mary, mother of God. The crucified Savior lies limp in her lap, his eyes closed in death, his skin sallow and sagging, his swollen legs dragging against the cold stone base of the artwork. His only covering is a single goldenrod yellow cloth around his waist, a sobering reminder of his humanity that pulls the viewer’s eye across his jagged ribs and bloated stomach. The tangled mess of thorns still pierces his brow, the sword wound in his side still bleeds. His death is present.

Jarred, perhaps, both by the art and the vacuums that continued their wailing siren song, I clenched my jaw and moved away.

Then Jesus’ eyes opened.

He fixed me with a glassy stare, narrow slits of glistening pain, pinning me to my place on the cold tile floor. My body suddenly felt like a bad metaphor: tense and awkward, waiting for someone to finally acknowledge it was broken.

I must have been imagining things. It must have been a cruel trick, wishful thinking. Jesus’ eyes had most definitely been closed a moment before, a fact that, afterwards, all the photos proved true. I blinked and looked away, turned again to face Jesus and his eyes were still open. I squeezed my eyes shut once more as goose bumps scurried across my arms, and when I opened them again Jesus was still there. He was patient. He watched me take several steps backward, and then he spoke in my head without moving his lips, like the Spirit was alive even if the body was not.

“I died for you,” he said.

“What on earth is that supposed to mean?” I demanded under my breath.

He didn’t repeat his words. He didn’t answer my question. He just kept staring. “Well,” I said, and ran away to read about how the cathedral’s famous organ pipes were broken. But they were under construction; they were being healed.

***

In the statue, Mary’s inner robe is pomegranate red, symbolically soaked in the blood of her son. She, too, is suffering. Her robe’s detailed folds reach out and carry their crucified Lord, holding his body against her knees. Her eyes search the heavens, her bright mouth closed in wordless prayer. Still, her voice is oddly devoid of any expression of grief or mourning. The shock of his death hasn’t run through her own weakened body as it has through his. The full weight of Christ’s death falls on himself, the grief of the world borne on his shoulders alone.

Jesus sees and identifies with our suffering. He has carried it, once and for all, the pain and the fear, the uncertainty and the darkness. And all he asks of us is that we come. So, let us come to God with our empty hands, looking back at Jesus and holding our gaze to his. It’s ok if we don’t have the words. It’s ok if we feel numb, shocked out of all emotions except anxiety in times such as these. God meets us there. He finds us even when we’re struggling to seek him. As Julian of Norwich once wrote, “Pray, even if you feel nothing, see nothing.” And that will be enough.

Lord, have mercy on your people.

words by Eliana Chow and photo by Marlow Amick