CowPi Journal

Scars

3 May 2005, 9 pm | Poem

They tell how it was,
and how time came along,
and how it happened again and again.
They tell the slant life takes
when it turns and slashes
your face as a friend.

Any wound is real.
In church a woman lets the sun find her cheek,
and we see the lesson:
there are years in that book;
there are sorrows a choir can’t reach
when they sing.

Rows of children lift their faces of promise,
places where the scars will be.

— William Stafford (via whiskey river)

A dear friend asked me the other day if Jesus still has his scars from the crucifixion. I said yes. I recently read a quote which I cannot find that said no one gets out of life without a few scars, including God in his Incarnation.

Winter and summer, darkness and lightness, death and rebirth, descent and ascent—the paschal mystery is the pattern of transformation. Each scar in your heart represents a wounding and a healing, a form of death and rebirth—many scars, many painful moments of death and eventual rebirth within your lifetime. Each scar is a reminder of tranformation.

Children know they will grow up. They know they will be transformed. They even look forward to it. Only through transformation do we grow. Stagnation means death only, no rebirth, no transformation. The Cross is our way to transformation.

Maybe that is one of the reasons why Jesus told us to see the world like a child?