When we commune with another, we forget self. We are opened to transformation. Change appears on the horizon of ego. It has deemed itself insulate, indomitable—impermeable to all that derails continuity.

Yet in beginning and end, life is a gift. We receive our being from another. And we must all give up our being to another, placed under the care of those who will lead us where we do not want to go (John 21:18). What we call our “death” is a kind of giving up.

To “give up” is to die to something.

At its center, Christianity puts death to sin, which means that it addresses all those who have been in harmony with sin, or rather, in cohabitation with sin. The Sinless One sits at the summit of the sinful because that is all we can begin to strive for. Christ is the highest point of our lowest depth. He is not different from us—certainly not foreign or alien—but to drink his water is to imbibe the changeless, the unmediated, the unceasing. It is to overflow in joy, to experience the deepest form of intimacy by caring for all within your field of view. 

It is, to begin.

I am a poor player reperforming, as in a shadow, this ultimate condescension. When I awake, I see that my movement is nothing but an imitation. I see that I am unworthy. I have not begun to scratch the surface. And yet, Christ is also an Imitation. Christ is the Image (Col 1). Christ’s unceasing action is to influence and elevate all that is truly human.

Christ never gives up on the living (or the dead, for that matter). There is no time but now when Christ is around. And that means something almost entirely different for every soul here in this vast cosmos. Our journey is to see this, continually anew.

Image by Steven Van