Learning to Live in Broken Dreams

The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing! God is putting the finishing touches on the salvation work he began when we first believed. We can't afford to waste a minute, must not squander these precious daylight hours in frivolity and indulgence…
Romans 13:12-13a (MSG)

I’m sure there’s a word, likely German, for an accidental but perfect Google search discovery. I’m talking about when you’re looking for something specific but out of the reach of your memory, and you come across something you didn’t know existed that’s actually better than what you were on the hunt for. Maybe we just make up our own word. Perhaps a portmanteau. “Querendipity.” No that’s terrible.

In any case, I was looking for a poem I really love (though apparently not enough to remember) that would tie in with the themes and intent of the Epiphany season. I did end up finding it, but I’ll save it for later. Because what I did find is perfect.

To be honest, I know next to nothing about the young Nigerian poet Samuel Junior Irusota or Inverse Journal, the site that published his work. But I can tell you after reading his words, I plan to correct that oversight. Take a moment to read this poem, and we’ll spend just a few brief paragraphs after unpacking it in the context of Epiphany.

HERE WE ROMANCE DEATH WITH OPEN HANDS

Here, parents go to bed with no hope
of seeing their children in the morning.
Here, everywhere you go, all you see is a basket of bones.
Here, children are left homeless and defenseless
with no hope of seeing the sun.
You do not want to be ripped apart by sounds of AK-47 riffles,
you do not want to be eaten by the news from the radio and the television.
Father went in search for food and never returned
and Mother she went in search of shelter and was hit by a stray bullet.
Amina, my sister, was raped to death by a gang of terrorists.
Abu, he was praying in a mosque and he died in a blast…
Here, we romance death with open hands.
Yet, every day we learn to live in broken dreams
hoping that the dawn births a better tomorrow
where we can all live in peace.
Tell me, where can we sleep with our two eyes closed
while keeping the hope of a new dawn awake?

In just a few weeks we will move from Epiphany into the season of Lent, and though we’re talking about mid-February, in terms of the traditional church calendar we are moving closer to the middle of the year. In fact, we are headed to its climax.

The movements of the traditional calendar are meant to be liturgical. They are narratively driven but presented to us not as a story to hear but as one to inhabit. The Gospel is the story of our lives too, and when we engage in it as participants and not mere observers, memory comes alive in us. Suddenly we awake to what it means for Christ’s eternal life to abide in our temporal frames.

It’s the difference between watching a sport and playing it. A fan can love a player or a team with no change to her internal or external state. But an athlete, even an amateur one, experiences the change that comes when treasuring is joined by trying.

And so we come to Epiphany. Where Advent is about inhabiting a place of expectation, waiting on God to fulfill His promises, and Christmas is about celebrating the arrival of Jesus who is the fulfillment, Epiphany moves our posture to that of a searcher. Christ has come. How can we tell? What has changed? What is changing?

The only way to live a life of purpose and flourishing is to embrace the tension of what Irusota describes in his poem, to “learn to live in broken dreams.” The poet’s experience, so foreign to us, only illustrates the narrative moment Epiphany invites us to inhabit. We live in a world forever changed by the birth and death and resurrection of Jesus but waiting still for his glorious return and the completion of his redemptive work.

Epiphany challenges us to see where new life breaks through and to boldly proclaim that the dream is alive, even if we only see it through the shards of a fractured society. This what it means to hope. As we see this life emerge in us and around us and remember how close Jesus is still to his people, we prepare ourselves for the season of Lent, where we will cultivate that emerging life in prayer and fasting as the celebration of Easter approaches. But we can’t skip chapters in the story of the Gospel. We know that one day no more tears or pain will remain, but until then we look to the poet’s question with a sober resilience, a faith with weight.

“Where can we sleep with our two eyes closed while keeping the hope of a new dawn awake?” Right here. Right now. We rest in Epiphany, knowing Easter is coming, because already the skies are different. Thanks be to God.

- Caleb Saenz