Grace Unnamed (midweek message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Grace Unnamed

October 3, 2018

I am in New York at a conference of my Anglican/Episcopalian religious order:  the Society of Catholic Priests, whose rule of life I follow.  Our daughter Emily is in Ashland helping Elena. 

Yesterday evening, I was able to check off an item on my bucket list:  I took in a Broadway Show.   I went with Elena’s nephew, a librarian who lives in the suburbs here.  We saw Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton,” and it was the best theatre I have every witnessed. 

Late in the second act, I along with most of the audience wept openly at a song about the Hamiltons dealing with great tragedy and betrayal, “It’s Quiet Uptown”.  A profoundly moving paean to working through suffering and using quiet to create space to heal broken hearts, it uses the idea of the unimaginable—both for bad and for good—to make its point and touch our feelings: 

“There are moments that the words don’t reach

There is suffering too terrible to name.

You hold your child as tight as you can

And push away the unimaginable. 

And moments when you’re in so deep

It feels easier to just swim down

The Hamiltons move uptown

And prepare to live with the unimaginable. 

I was in the garden

And walk alone to the store

It’s quiet uptown.

I never liked the quiet before.

I take the children to church on Sunday

Make the sign of the cross at the door

I pray

That never used to happen before…  

I don’t pretend to know

the challenges we’re facing

I know there’s no replacing

What we’ve lost...

But I’m not afraid, I know who I married...   

There’s a moment that the words don’t reach

there’s a grace too powerful to name

We push away what we can never understand

We push away the unimaginable…

Forgiveness.  Can you imagine?

Forgiveness.  Can you imagine? 

If you see them in the street

Walking side by side

Talking by her side.

Have pity.

They are going through the unimaginable.” 

Hamilton-- It's Quiet Uptown

Trust in bewilderment, hope in despair, and forgiveness:  it’s all there.   Faced with unimaginable horror, we try to accomplish the unimaginable and cope.  We are thrown back on using our imaginations, of hoping against hope, of rebuilding trust gradually in quiet as we work through the unimaginable.   There is a grace too powerful to name that touches us and gets us through where words and thoughts fail, and gives us power to forgive the unforgiveable. 

Grace and peace.

Fr. Tony+