Solitude and Cathedral

When Bob took me to Paris he made certain I saw sights that would amaze me. This sculpture was one of those sights. We have a copy of it in our home. When we saw it at the Cincinnati Art Museum Gift Shop we both were instantaneous with the thought "Let's buy that!"

 

One hand is a man and one hand is a woman. This symbol of relationship and longing is most poignant to me.

 

I often quote Bonhoeffer regarding the fact that we are alone with Christ.

“[Jesus] stands between us and God, and for that very reason he stands between us and all other men and things. He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality. Since the whole world was created through him and unto him (John 1:3; 1st Cor. 8:6; Heb. 1:2), he is the sole Mediator in the world...

The call of Jesus teaches us that our relation to the world has been built on an illusion. All the time we thought we had enjoyed a direct relation with men and things. This is what had hindered us from faith and obedience. Now we learn that in the most intimate relationships of life, in our kinship with father and mother, bothers and sisters, in married love, and in our duty to the community, direct relationships are impossible. Since the coming of Christ, his followers have no more immediate realities of their own, not in their family relationships nor in the ties with their nation nor in the relationships formed in the process of living. Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following of him. To think otherwise is to deceive ourselves.

There is no way from one person to another. However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our psychology, however frank and open our behavior, we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get into touch with our neighbors through him. That is why intercession is the most promising way to reach our neighbors, and corporate prayer, offered in the name of Christ, the purest form of fellowship.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

 

Rilke is a poet I have been reading this past year. I happened upon this link in looking for the image of the Cathedral.

http://yearwithrilke.blogspot.com/2011/01/solitude-we-are.html

To speak again of solitude, it becomes ever clearer that in truth there is nothing we can choose or avoid. We are solitary. We can delude ourselves and act as if this were not so. That is all we can do. How much better to realize from the start that that is what we are, and to proceed from there. It can, of course, make us dizzy, for everything our eyes rest upon will be taken from us, no longer is anything near, and what is far is endlessly far.

Borgeby gärd, Sweden, August 12, 1904 Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

 

So as we clasp our hands in Christian fellowship and with loved ones may we always remember that though we desire intimacy with one another, no one can know us as thoroughly or as clearly as Christ. He is the One between the two of us. "The Holy Unseen Guest at every meal, the Silent Listener to every conversation."

 

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