“See Other Side”
An Easter Meditation by Rev. Patrice Ficken
Luke 24:1-12
Sanbornton Congregational Church, UCC
April 8, 2007
(Please do not re-print or re-use without permission of the author)
(Note: The following meditation is a dialogue with the short story, “See Other Side” by Tatyana Tolstaya, published by The New Yorker, March 12 2007. )
A woman travels to
She travels in his footsteps, trying to recreate what he experienced, seeking to connect with him through the passage of time and his passing. Yet she feels confused, let down, unsure of what excited him so, to send such a card. She finds herself in an arid landscape with: “disappointed American tourists in pink sweatshirts…unhappy that the travel agency has tricked them yet again: everything in
She stands with them, with her head back, staring through the darkness toward the ceiling of the chapel, trying to catch a glimpse of heaven shown in the postcard. She wonders, “What did he see that I don’t see?”
We may feel the same way, as we look into the dark, empty tomb, the stone now rolled away – asking ourselves – what did the disciples see, what did they experience in those early days after Jesus’ crucifixion, so long ago? We hear their message as if sent to us on the back of a postcard, “The stone was away! Christ is Risen….see other side…wish you were here!” We read the words, we use it as a bookmark, and seek to follow in their footsteps, arriving here at church this day searching for a hint of that something that the disciples saw and felt and touched and knew.
We may or may not come away disappointed, asking as well, “What did they see that I don’t see?”
It is fashionable to dismiss Christianity these days. We ask: is Christianity just some old ruin, some dusty, musty relic smelling of mold, populated by cranky, sweaty tourists?
The woman, standing there at the sight of her father’s postcard, muses that perhaps her experience is what the waiting room of heaven is like: “The crowd stands dense and stubborn, elbow to elbow….The darkness presses on our heads. It smells like mice, mold, and something else, too, something very old – as though time itself had an odor. Then the human smells come through: aging flesh, perfume, breath mints, sweat, tobacco. This is how it will be right after death: there will be the sound of others breathing and sniffling in the dark; heat, anticipation, a subtle hostility toward one’s fellow-traveler; a polite decision not to show this hostility; egotism, stubbornness, hope, doubt. The waiting room for Heaven – where else is there to go?” (“See Other Side” by Tatyana Tolstaya)
The crowd stands in the dark. They wait for someone else to put 25 cents in the box so that the light will illumine the mosaic above. No one wants to do it. No one wants to give in. They want, as she says, to see “heaven for free.”
Are we not like those weary travelers? Perhaps we too feel that we have given enough, done enough. We’ve paid for the flight, the hotel. We’ve worked hard, taken the vacation time. We expect something to happen.
So where is our resurrection experience? Why are we here, standing in the dark, peering inside the empty tomb, wondering – why don’t we feel anything? Why isn’t anything happening?
And then, just when we think we’re going to stand in the dank and the darkness forever – we hear the clank of the coin in the box and the light shines above and there it is before us: “a starry sky, a dark-blue cupola with huge, shimmering stars that seem startling close…the magical dark-blue abyss, raised above us by nameless artists, speaks for itself, sings in a wordless language…” (“See Other Side” by Tatyana Tolstaya)
The woman pushes her way through the crowd to see who is responsible for filling the box with coins, for lighting the captivating scene above. She finds a blind man in a wheel chair, his head lowered, his eyes closed, as he listens intently to the words of his companion describing what she sees above.
She realizes that if her father hadn’t sent the postcard, she would have never come to this place. She writes: “I wouldn’t have come to this dark chapel. I wouldn’t have encountered the blind man. I wouldn’t have seen how, with a wave of his hand, the blue light of Heaven’s threshold could flare on the other side of darkness.”
She continues, “Because we are just as blind – no, a thousand times blinder than that old man in the wheelchair. We hear whispers but we plug our ears; we are shown but we turn away. We have no faith: we’re afraid to believe, because we’re afraid we’ll be deceived. We are certain that we’re in the tomb. We are certain there’s nothing in the dark. There can’t be anything in the dark.” (“See Other Side” by Tatyana Tolstaya)
And yet, something lit up that empty, dark place inside the disciples’ hearts long ago. We need not read the postcard literally, only be willing to follow in the footsteps of its sender. We need only place ourselves in their shoes, to walk the path they walked to understand what happened that first Easter morning. For them, it was as if the tomb was broken open by the force of God’s power and love. For them, a light went on and they experienced the sublime: an expansiveness of joy, an enlarged capacity to love, a new found confidence to carry forth Jesus’ life and teachings – even in the face of defeat, despair and death.
Somehow, Jesus broke through to live, to live in their hearts.
Maybe we need to dig out that postcard again. Maybe we need to read its words for it says: “Beloved daughter, beloved son! I have never seen anything so sublime (see other side) in my life! Makes you want to cry! Oh, if only you were here! Your Mother, Your Father!”
Let us pray,
Gracious God,
We confess we find ourselves
too often standing in the dark,
waiting for something to happen,
for someone else to turn on the light.
Today, as we stand in the warm glow
of Resurrection light,
may our hearts break open to receive you,
to know beyond a doubt that you live,
because you live in us. Amen.
