I have never seen volcanoes

(emily dickinson)

I went to Nashville over the weekend to attend a memorial service of a young man who had just died after struggling with leukemia. He was a dear old friend’s son. He was twenty-seven years old. An old friend generously flew me there, my Marias stayed with Sophie. I walked a line of people to reach my friend at the front of the church, where she, her husband and family members stood, receiving condolences, embraces, tears. I folded her slight body in my arms and put my hand on the back of her head and told her that I loved her, that I was so sorry, it was so much. Mothers. Sons. What is there to say? I didn’t know the young man, my friend’s son, but I learned a lot about him from the service, from the pictures that flashed by on a giant screen over the congregation, from the truly beautiful eulogies delivered bravely by his sister and by his father. The congregants were many, all unmasked save a few and all, apparently, devoutly Christian. This bothered me, and I felt shame in my preoccupation. The passing thought will Jesus not strike any with Covid? a couple of times. I held the hand of an old friend whom I haven’t seen in nearly ten years and smiled into the warm brown eyes of another. I was not moved by the Christian fervency but rather struck by the smile of the beautiful man who had passed away after suffering for fifteen months with this wicked disease, a young man who was newly married, whose life was, as they say, full ahead of him. The young man with the open heart, with a sense of humor, an endurance athlete, a bicycle builder, a solid faith in a life after this life. In even a return, fully healed and clothed. I can only observe the comfort afforded the faithful, have no curiosity nor ability to feel it myself. Not anymore. I think of the ground, the stars, the carbon and bits of our bodies, what returns to the earth and the air. This one precious life.

I am not a believer. I am not, I can say now, Christian. During these intensely religious gatherings I am alone in a smothering sea (desolation) yet at once feel something divine, a love that surrounds and holds (consolation) everyone. The Ignatians would say this is being away from God and moving toward God. That knowing when to resist, to struggle against or to go with the flow, along, is discernment.

175

I have never seen "Volcanoes"—
But, when Travellers tell
How those old—phlegmatic mountains
Usually so still—

Bear within—appalling Ordnance,
Fire, and smoke, and gun,
Taking Villages for breakfast,
And appalling Men—

If the stillness is Volcanic
In the human face
When upon a pain Titanic
Features keep their place—

If at length the smouldering anguish
Will not overcome—
And the palpitating Vineyard
In the dust, be thrown?

If some loving Antiquary,
On Resumption Morn,
Will not cry with joy "Pompeii"!
To the Hills return!

Emily Dickinson