Easter Letter To Jesus

Dear Jesus,

I’ve been wanting to write to you for a long time. To be honest, the reason I haven’t is that my heart breaks into uncountable shards when I think of you.

I remember when you came to me on that winter night in 1973, after walking home from the Wednesday night youth for Christ soirée with Kevin. We hugged goodbye and shouted “maranatha!” (“He is coming!”) to each other and I headed along my street among the thick snowflakes dancing down from infinity, each one humming like its own small crystal bell. 
 

I lay in my bed buzzing from Jesus-love and God-mystery and the lingering fragrance of strawberry that wafted from Carol Stevenson’s hair and the pink shine on her Jesus-prayer lips. 
 

And you came to me. At first as one of the ten thousand snowflakes drifting down, then growing into the shape of a white dove passing through the ceiling, down, down into my forehead where you burst like silver fireworks through my whole body. 
 

As I trembled, love for everyone and everything coursed through me - even for Troy Ondreczeck and his weaselly little sidekick, Scottie, who tried to beat me up that one night even though we used to be friends but they had become victims of reefer madness exactly like the movie predicted.

Your words “Forgive them for they know not what they do,” filled the inside of my ears and I felt bad for whatever sadness was inside them.

And your words “By their fruits ye shall know them,” floated around me, and I knew that’s the only way to tell a true Christian from a false one. I knew that you would always be there as a mirror for me to check my own falseness in, and it would always be up to me whether or not to look in the mirror. 
 

The next day I tried to tell Kevin about you, and about how we should forgive people, and love them, and try to remember that people have a lot going on that we can’t see, and that God is too big for us to understand. And Kevin rebuked me, saying that everyone who is wrong is going to hell and we should not give them a second thought. Then he listed a whole bunch of kinds of people who are going to hell, and the one that really got me thinking was “people who live downtown.” 
 

So, Jesus, what I’m trying to say is, you’ve been with me for 42 years now and the white dove isn’t the only way you’ve come to me. Remember that time I did something guilty and it was tearing me apart inside, and you came to me and took me to that well, and gave me a drink of that cool blue water? Remember that time not that long ago when I was in the literal and metaphorical jungle, confused and doubting, filled with doubt and fear that I'm so damned stupid and worthless and fake and arrogant and stupid, oh I already said that. And you calmy touched me on the forehead and that burst of silver galaxy light came again and your words "fear not" rang through the jungle and everything lit up? I remember all of these.
 

But then I can’t help but think of Kevin, and how somewhere he's grown up and out in the world, preaching somewhere. And my other friend, Dirk, who went to a giant youth for Christ convention in Dallas and when he came back he was so different, and he asked me if I had been saved and I started to describe how you came through my ceiling and filled me with - - he cut me off, and with his blue eyes gleaming like the sheen on a freshly sharpened sword, he said, “No! You are not saved until I decide that you are.” He's grown up now too, and preaching somewhere.  
 

So, Jesus, every time I think of you, my heart breaks. Because Kevin and Dirk are everywhere, and I don’t understand how, but they became your spokespeople. They rolled the stone back into place and re-sealed you in darkness and told you to stay in there and shut up. And that’s why my heart breaks, and that’s why I haven’t written to you over the years even though I have wanted to. 
 

The thing is, I don’t want to spend my relationship with you worrying about Kevin and Dirk. They have their own way, and I hope they are doing okay. But they also have those gleaming eyes, and that certainty, and lots of guns. And they are incrementally, day by day, giving themselves permission to kill me in your name.  
 

So, what I’m saying is, my heart breaks for the opportunity you handed all of us, and we failed you. We failed you.  
 

But, Jesus, as I write this letter to you, the most radiant tiny golden finch has just landed in the tree above my bird feeder. She's scoping out the food I've put out, deciding if it's the right food for her. Jesus, if you can come one more time, today, and let me know what's the best food to put out for her, please, that would really help.  
 

And Jesus, roll that stone again and re-open the doorway. Roll it open. Please, Jesus, roll the stone.