Cry aloud to the Lord!
O daughter of Zion!
Let tears stream down like a torrent
day and night!
Give yourself no rest,
your eyes no respite!
Arise, cry out in the night,
at the beginning of the watches!
Pour out your heart like water
before the presence of the Lord!

(Lamentations 2:18-19)

There is a certain paradox of our human existence whereby one of our deepest human longings, that of intimacy, is only achieved by giving way to one of our greatest and apparently contra-natural fears, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. Intimacy and vulnerability are two edges of a single sword, and without lowering the shield of fear, without letting our defenses down and allowing the subjective gaze of another peer behind our carefully constructed masks and veils, we can never truly achieve the intimacy that is at the heart of true and abiding love.

The word vulnerable comes from the Latin word for “wound,” and this is only fitting. To allow ourselves to become vulnerable is to invite another to pierce us with a sacred wound, to penetrate the depths of our most tender heart, and in so doing we expose ourselves as naked and bleeding creatures. Behind our carefully constructed facades and stony masks we have fears, dreams, shames, longings, and a frail brokenness that we dare not let another see.

The fear of vulnerability is that we do not know the nature of the wound that will strike us. That which penetrates our heart can be the love which forms a healing bond, bringing together our many broken pieces and holding them in a tender embrace, allowing us to experience life in vivid color and waking joy. But it is also true that we may entrust our hearts to one who will only cause us pain, that we might entrust to another our most precious gift only to find it shattered in their hands. This is vulnerability’s risk, and we may be tempted to question whether the reward is worth it.

Perhaps the question should be asked another way: can a life deprived of intimacy ever be considered as truly lived? As human beings, we are born lovers, we are created for the tender embrace of intimacy, and thus our spirits are infused with a remarkable resiliency. There is no experience of love that does not strengthen us, does not expound upon our humanity, does not fill the gaps of our heart with the beauty of a life truly lived.

Yet by opening ourselves up to this experience of love and intimacy, we cannot escape the experience of sorrow and pain. Love can cauterize but it can also scar, and even with the distance of time those scars can linger like haunting reminders of pains endured. It is the choices we make in the presence of these spectral fears that decide the beauty of our lives.

There is another path of intimacy which when walked gives us the strength and healing to embrace the path of love that from our depths we all long to take. This other path is the path of prayer. It is in the intimacy of prayer, the experience of vulnerability before the divine, that we enter into the arms of the God who is Love and who invites us to “pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord.” It is in the silence of prayer, gazing into the eyes of God, the lover so intimate that he knows us better than we know ourselves, and before whom we have no choice but to be naked, that our mourning is turned into dancing (Ps 30:11) and our sorrow into joy (Jn 16:20).

The true hope of the Christian belief in resurrection is that the Christ who rose from the dead and ascended into heaven never discarded his scars. We have a God who himself has suffered the wounds of love, who invited others to know his truest, deepest self, who became vulnerable before them, and who ultimately bore the wounds of that love. Now seated at the right hand of the Father, our Christ receives our prayers as a wounded God, and it is by allowing ourselves to enter into his wounds that our own become truly sacred.

So when the pain of intimacy tempts us to be vulnerable no more, we do well to turn to the intimacy of prayer, to bring our pains before the suffering God, to “cry aloud to the Lord” and to “let tears stream down like a torrent day and night.” In the intimacy of prayer we will discover that we do not cry alone. Just as the tears of Christ raised Lazarus from death, so too will they loose us from the bonds of fear and allow us to experience the beauty of a life lived in the intimacy of true love.

     the winter moon, we lie entwined
in lover’s gaze, peering deep behind
inviting eyes. You kiss me with dewfall

     lips as we drift beyond the waking
world’s domain, my hand like an
anchor on your naked skin, never

     allowing my dreams to drift too
far from your love. Between a
slumber’s phase I discover that you

     smile in your sleep. I laugh, then
drift again, as your sleeping smile
consumes my morning reverie.

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But, for my part, I cry to you, Yahweh,
every morning my prayer comes before you:
why, Yahweh, do you rebuff me,
turn your face away from me?

Wretched and close to death since childhood,
I have borne your terrors – I am finished!
Your anger has overwhelmed me,
your terrors annihilated me.

They flood all around me all day long,
close in on me all at once.
You have deprived me of friends and companions,
and all that I know is the dark.

Psalm 88:13-18, NJB

One of the more difficult emotions to endure in the spiritual life is anger at God, the feeling that God has abandoned us when we believe we have tried, however imperfectly, to follow him and serve his will. We try not to be angry at him, we try to convince ourselves that everything is serving some grander purpose, that God in his infinite wisdom knows what is good for us and that the deprivation we are suffering is ultimately for our good. Sometimes we succeed in believing. But often times, when the pain is great, when the loss we suffer truly breaks our hearts and fills us with sorrow, then we cannot help being angry at God.

The angst that accompanies this anger is at times as painful as the loss that engenders it. We often feel guilty for being angry at God. We perhaps fear that we will only invite further calamity by being angry at a God we believe to be perfect and good. We might feel childish in our anger, thinking that by now we should have reached a level of spiritual maturity where we don’t revolt against the one who has our best good in mind. But the anger is still there, and the racing commentary inside our heads on the anger itself, all of those thoughts that tell us the anger is wrong and why, in the end only exacerbates the anger itself, and we often become spiritually paralyzed.

One of the reasons I love praying the Psalms, which as Catholics we do regularly in the Divine Office, is that the Psalms give expression to all of the emotional highs and lows of a soul in love with God. The Psalms give voice to the human experience of God, and in that way become instructive of how we too should pray. One of the striking things about the Psalms is how personally and intimately David expresses his heart to God. David knows that he can hide nothing from God, and he consciously chooses to hold nothing back from him, and so we see expressed in this beautiful poetry the total abandon of the heart to God.

In order to achieve this depth of intimacy with God there must first be a real trust in his relationship with him. In a sense, being free to express his anger with God demonstrates that David trusts in God’s ultimate loving kindness and compassion. He knows that God is not petty or vindictive, and he has experienced true friendship with God throughout his life, friendship that is rooted in honesty and openness. And so when he feels that God has abandoned him, he tells him so, freely and openly.

It is a false piety that suggests that we only speak of God in flowery language and reverential tones. There is a place for that, especially in liturgy. But at the heart of our prayer must be an open, intimate, free sharing of our hearts with our Beloved. It is dishonest to hold back our anger from God. David demonstrates this in his expressions of despair, accusing God of depriving him of friends and companions, of leaving him alone and in the dark.

As Christians, we look especially to the incarnation as proof that we have a God who is not afraid to get dirty. He does not require that we treat him at all times with a purely royal etiquette. Yes, Jesus Christ is King and we must never forget that. But God takes on many roles in our lives, and the many images of God all speak of different aspects of our relationship to him. He is King, yes. But God is also father, mother, brother, lover, and friend. God comes down to us and gets messy with us, and that includes the messiness of our human emotions. God is big enough to handle our anger.

There is one more image of God that must be remembered: God is the Great Physician. He is the healer of our wounds. One of the reasons God wants us to be so open in expressing our anger, disappointment, despair, all of our hurting with him, is because it is by bringing our brokenness to him that we allow him the opportunity to heal us. Untreated anger leads to resentment, and being resentful of God is very different than being angry with him. Being resentful becomes a true block to our spiritual growth, it becomes a foul and festering abscess in our heart, and it can turn us bitter and hard. This we must fight against, and the only way to fight against it is by bringing our anger to God in the intimacy of our prayer.

It is during these times also that we must rely on the two great sacraments of healing, Eucharist and Reconciliation. When we are angry with God, when possible we should increase our reception of the sacraments, receiving the Eucharist as often as possible and going to confession regularly. In these two sacraments we enter more deeply into the healing mystery of Christ, we unite our own pains and sufferings and anger and despair to the Cross of Jesus Christ, and we allow our broken hearts to be held in the healing hands of God.

We should not be afraid of our anger with God. Instead, we should share it with him openly, as lovers, as friends, as intimate companions. This is the relationship we see in the Psalms of David, it is the relationship we are invited to in Jesus Christ. This is the God who calls to us in the Gospel, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt 11:27-30). We have a God who willingly binds himself to us, walks with us in our pain, in our anger, in our suffering, in our brokenness, so that even in our greatest despair, we never walk alone. Our anger with God will weary our soul if we attempt to endure it alone. But if we share openly with him, if we trust in his friendship and his love, then he will indeed walk with us, and our weary hearts will finally find their rest.

down in supplication. The kiss that haunts
me yet gives me new life, extinguished
breath in bated expectation. Will this blood
turn red once again? My skin elevates in

longing for your touch, memory alive with
quivering recollection. This canyon in my
heart is empty but beautiful, a cavernous
space with echoes of your song. My sorrow

prepares a concert hall, hoping you will
one day dare to sing that song anew.