Matthew (Part 2)

5:6

I only know pictures. Your eyes open like a book. The kind of book that's got hard covers. The one that's so big you have to sit it on a table to read it. It's delicious. It uses all the words found in any dictionary but for some reason when you read them in this book they seem to have deeper meaning. The pages are silky. The margins are two fingers deep. The letters are blackberry black. They're blacker than any letters you've ever seen before. Somehow the blackness gives emotion to the story you're telling. It's like the color of a cave. I've been inside the cave where there was no light. Sometimes you might forget whether or not you have hands or feet. You might not know the difference between standing or sitting. And so you try to remember color. You think of red. You think of wildflowers across the canvas. You think of someone swimming underwater, their dress filling out like a jellyfish. You think of someone's lips. You'd like to kiss them but you're afraid because when you do you'll close your eyes and then it will be dark again. So instead you just stare. They are so beautiful with a face that is flush with color. The eyes and the cheekbones and even the hair is in ribbons like caramel. Yes you desire her. Of course you do. The cave hasn't taken that away from you. But now you're just glad that you found her picture in your head. She can light the cave like a little fire. Even though you haven't got a thing to roast inside of her, you can remember what it's like to press the chocolate and the marshmallow between the stiff graham crackers. Her skin in the dark looks tan and you convince yourself that it doesn't matter if your eyes are open or closed. She's an illustrated book. She's got pictures. And every one of them is looking right at you.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

5:7

Is there dirt in Heaven?

I sat and I thought about the dirt. Where does it all come from? How do the clean things become dirty?

Where does each particle of dirt come from? Is it on the shoe of the man who is visiting the town where his mother is dying? Does it blow through the open window when the woman leans out with her cigarette, looking at the city, sobbing? Does it blow through the vents of this old stone building where I am working to earn enough money to pay for my nun’s habit? Does it come from me even though it is my job to clean the floors and fold the towels and make the beds?

Am I redundant?

It all has to come from somewhere. All the dirt has always been here, yes? It doesn't come from outer space. It doesn't magically appear. No. Everything that's new and clean eventually starts to come apart. It starts to decay. And what was once shiny becomes dull. And what was once fresh becomes ash. I understand this. Things are born. Things grow. But everything that's here was already here. Yes?

It was all put here at one point. It multiplied. It grew. It died. It speaks to me. “Don’t you remember me?” And then it came back. Here it is in the corners of this little kitchenette. Under the bed. In the cobwebs under the radiator. Those cobwebs are made by the spiders, but the spiders came from somewhere. The spiders came from the other spiders. And you can trace that back forever. All the way back to the beginning.

I am a speck of dirt. I am ash. I am hiding in the corner of this nunnery that I must clean to earn a bed, waiting for the future maid to clean my dirt. My filth. I know rejection. I am dirty, and I am poor. I wear shabby clothes. I cannot afford better clothes. The people brush me aside. They put me in a dustbin and tell me to get better clothes. But when do the things that are new become the things that are old? And when do we stop coveting these things? When do they get so dirty that we drop them into the dark corners of the world?

I knocked on so many doors. So many heavy doors. Each time the stern face would come and let me go no further than the squint of her eye. They would kick me off the porch or sweep me down the walkway.

It wasn't until I found the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy that I was given a bed and a place to wash. Even those women had very little hope that I would ever be clean. How could I tell them that I had been told to come? How could I show them that my orders were not something I could ignore? How could I say that my filth is my salvation? It would take a lot to change their minds.

The Voice that spoke to me was the Voice that was there when the first speck of dirt was created. And He didn't care how dirty I am because He knew that everything was dirt. It was all dust. Every last one of them with their tall black columns and their tightly tied knots was nothing but dust.

We weren't even dust, to be honest.

We came from someone who came from dust. We weren't original. We were the inheritors of dust and dirt. And so as I clean these dirty rooms over and over again just to make the small amount of money I need to buy my own black column and my own tightly tied knot. I know that everything I put in the trash bin will be clogging up the corners of this room the very next day. Because we're all dirty and poor. That's what He tells me. And let me tell you something, He talks to me a lot. And I've been listening to Him since the beginning. I'm not missing a single word.

First Appearance

I grew up on a farm, and farm life teaches you humility rather quickly. While you might believe that as humans we are masters of the universe, nothing on a farm will kneel for you. You have to learn what they want and how to bring out the best in them. I worked the dirt on the farm. I had to work so that the dirt would be free of clods. I had to make the dirt smooth. So my interest in dirt stretches back almost to my beginning.

Was there dirt in Eden? Of course. He made the first of us from dust. And so all of us have that in common. We are dust. We are dirt. We cannot demand of the dirt or bully the dirt. We must accept it (even if we are forced to clean it). The cycle is the first instance of G-d’s Mercy.

When He came to me, I was a young silly girl twirling and spinning at a dance in my village. He asked me, “How long do I have to wait for you?” I was humiliated and broken by that. His pain embarrassed me. The crown of thorns poked holes where blood ran out like streams. It wasn’t his defiled appearance that shocked me; it was the pleading in His eyes. He asked me that question, and I knew he was expecting an answer. Not in words. I never speak back even after all of this time. His words to me inspired obedience. Respect. And never fear.

A Second Visit

I was alone in my cell, thinking about how the dirt of humanity is such a plague here on earth, but it must be a blessed thing In heaven. And He came to me as flesh, clean of His wounds, with His heart radiating light, red and white.

“Now is the time of Mercy,” He said to me. I felt the light and the words intertwine and penetrate my heart. “This time of Grace will lead to the time of Justice.” I knew His words as soon as He spoke them. I knew the course. He had directed me once to step out into the wilderness with nothing but His blessings on me. And now He is here to direct me again.

“The time of Justice.” Of course. I understood from my beginning that everything is Him, including the dirt I had to “clean.” Dirt takes a new step towards cleanliness if you see the cycle of its existence. And now that cycle stretches out to include me with His voice.

The last act is Mercy, and His words vibrated through my whole body until His words flew from me with the Hope that it would circle the Earth. I came from nothing as did Christ as did Adam, and so the filth of my life was an opportunity to receive Mercy. It was because I was an empty living monument to the smallest particles that Christ chose me to spread His words.

The first vision I had was at that dance when I was so young and untested. The first sighting I had from Him as He directed me to leave my home and knock on doors to find a home. To answer His calling.. That picture of Christ was Him as the polluted human that He had been so that ALL sin could live with Him, die with Him, and be resurrected. I am clean because I am dust. There is no hierarchy of dust. And that realization is the Mercy that I now sift and help others to see and feel. There is nothing and no one so low that they can’t connect to G-d with the goal of finding themselves, as Jesus found me, a lowly servant just cleaning the rooms of a habit to earn enough for my own robes of nunhood.

We are standing on the ground of Mercy, and there is no way out but up. Mercy will direct us if we feel it as if we are all the punished vision of Christ.

We can be clean like Him. We can be washed of sin. Hear me, besmirched and beautiful world. This is the time of Mercy.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.