Cross Carrying

There is strength in proving that it can be borne

Although it tear —

What are the sinews of such cordage for

Except to bear

The ship might be of satin had it not to fight —

To walk on seas requires cedar Feet

Emily Dickinson #1113

38 of 40

My mother would sternly say “We all have our crosses to bear.” She would know, my father drank.

We would nod our small heads, as we were trying to carry the same cross.

It is the yearly week that some are literal in thinking about carrying a cross. Xeno, 300 years before Christ, defined the human quality of stoicism. Bearing a burden, suffering or sacrificing for a greater good.

I think of those crucified – those dying that day – and that an extra few hours of living was the greater good – rather than refusing to carry the cross and being put to death then and there. I think how the Romans wanted to publicly murder Jesus so badly that they forced Simon of Cyrene, Libya, to carry it when an old 33 year old in those days, could not. The fifth station of the cross.

But our “crosses to bear” are what we do not control. I am fat because I eat too much – no cross there. Several friends are dying in the near term, fully under the cross of bodies failing. But there is a middle cross.

”There is strength in proving that it can be borne”

It is the Xeno Stoicism that accepts the burden, because it means something to forebear it. I am being sued. It has been a burden for two years. I could have ended it by “settling”, but I cannot lie, even secretly. I have chosen that burden.

We decide to have children, and they are not us. We live lives that are not what we want. We do things that hurt us. All avoidable, all burdens. We make some crosses.

When I was completely full of my capacity – Football Captain, Ivy Bound, not fat – I listened to my father, before he had had today’s 12oz of VAT 69 Scotch, detail the endless frustrations of a life led below his hopes, his burdens of paying for us, of his anger at what he had chosen to do. I knew he meant drinking. But I looked at him hard in the eye (for once) and said “You do not have to do this. I can find a way to pay for Cornell. We can support you, just quit.”

He paused, shocked, as I meant it, happily accepting his burden. “You do not understand.”

And I did, and do, not.

”There is strength in proving that it can be borne”

The human Jesus did not want to die. He could not carry the cross. His mind in that day 2,000 years ago is a mystery. But the reality beyond that day is no mystery, it changed things. The sureties are derived from Faith – no matter the conviction.

I know that in the end, my father had no faith. He was carrying a cross and would die. I look at the cross of living and seem to have Faith for no reason. Because Faith has none. These recounted events, even my father’s rejection of anything but his cross, passes all understanding.

We can feel superior in our harrumphing judgment of others. Or we can know that we do not know them, and do know God. Because somewhere we know that we did not make ourselves, that there is no stoicism in the love we were given.

Easter has no cross, it has no burden other than we have to see beyond the jelly beans.