Jack Hardaway
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Long story short.
I once had to get Animal Control to catch a feral cat.
It involved a cage with bait, and eventually, late one night, it set off the trap, and was captured.
I found it the next morning.
It was huge.
Its ears were tattered ribbons, its face was a patch work of quilted scars with two burning eyes blazing out.
It was furious.
A wild feral anger that I had never seen before.
It threw itself against the bars of the cage over and over. Hissing and spitting and howling, scratching and biting the wires.
No one could get near enough to even pick up or open the cage.
The cage could barely contain it.
Untamed. Wild. Feral. Dangerous. Defiant.
It left a lasting impression. This was no cute kitty, kitty.
We try to make God safe.
Sometimes we are reminded that God isn’t.
That God is Holy.
Feral. Wild. Untamed. Strange. Our categories and language fall apart, we disassemble when we encounter the holy.
The Transfiguration of Jesus.
The disciples blither, then fall to the ground in fear.
Like Moses going up the mountain with the devouring fire of God, eventually to be given up for dead. Claimed by God’s wildness.
Peter, James and John, afterwards they would have been more careful around Jesus, cautious of a feral wild glory barely contained by his flesh, threatening to burst forth at any moment.
God is holy.
An overwhelming presence that invades our space, trespassing our boundaries, transgressing our comfort and sensibilities. A presence where how we see and understand falls apart and we fall to the ground.
God’s ways are not our ways.
Feral and untamable, uncontainable.
And we have been baptized into that wild, holy, feral love that stops at nothing.
Even death and hell are transgressed and invaded.
Nothing can contain that love, nothing can comprehend that love, nothing can stop that love.
God is holy.
Jesus touches us and bids us stand and to go down the mountain into a world of need and pain.
We have been touched by that wild love.
We will always be at least a little strange, at least a little off balance.
That wild love is barely contained in us, always on the edge of breaking out.
Holy. Holy. Holy.
That love will stop at nothing to set us free, blazing eyes tearing at the cage.
Words fail.
Long story short.