I don’t remember how I first came to know of Andrea Gibson. I do know ever since I have been aware of them, I have understood they were dying of an incurable cancer growing in their beautiful, brilliant body.
Bodies are tough companions.
We need them. We love them. Or, maybe we hate them.
But either way, all our experiences, if they exist anywhere at all, exist within them.
And we each, over time, become quite accustomed to our surroundings. But for those who are awake, we know these bodies will ultimately betray us in one way or another.
Andrea has written a lot about bodies in all of their beauty and terror. The first poem of theirs says this:
When a human dies the soul moves through the universe
Trying to describe how a body trembles when it’s lost
Softens when it’s safe
How a wound would heal given nothing but time
Do you understand
Nothing in space can imagine it
No comet
No nebula
No ray of light can fathom the landscape of awe
The heat of shame
The fingertips pulling the first grey hair
And throwing it away
“I can’t imagine it.”
The stars say
“Tell us again about goosebumps.
Tell us again about pain.”
I believe most poetry is prayer, but Andrea Gibson’s has always seemed to be particularly in touch with the divine, and particularly generous in shining such heavenly light upon those of us confused and wandering through the world, wondering if and how we will find our way home, day after painstaking/ glorious day.
Andrea Gibson died this week.
Because eventually we outgrow our vessels, even the ones that brought us all the way here. One day, something gnarly begins to take root in what was once a safe place for us and for those we invited to join us.
Institutions are like bodies, I think.
Sometimes, they are a cradle in which to rest. Sometimes, they are a cage from which to emancipate ourselves.
I suppose a lot of life is surrendering to the truth about the structures in which we have dwelled. And, to understand the truth fully, we must be present, look around, ask questions, like the poets—who are not only good at praying, but who are often good prophets.
Perhaps we could start by perusing the parishes that were once our places of refuge. Do these churches that taught us to love our neighbors still practice what they preached to us when our little fingers first clasped together in the discipline of prayer?
Our educators? Are the colleges where we learned to be the “hands and feet of Christ” still emulating a God who chooses to die so that others might live?
And, did they ever? Were we just too young or too scared to notice when they said one thing and did another?
What about the organizations we support with our time, money and labor? Do they offer themselves as soft places for the lonely and forgotten to fall or are they distracted by the aspirations of the empire, amassing wealth, gathering weapons or building walls to keep out “the least of these?”
The answers, of course, will be more complex than the binary propositions allow. Because just as bodies are made up of individual parts, institutions are made up of individual people. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ask these questions, though.
And if a certain person or a place from my life ever seems beyond repair, I will always believe in resurrection, because I am a Christian and because I, too, am a poet. But the first step toward resurrection is, unfortunately, always death.
In order for any body or any place to transcend, it must first stop existing in its current iteration. What a pain.
I mean it. Death is so awful and so particularly cruel.
Then again, so is living.
To be alive is to be burdened with deciding whether and when to stop trying and instead start moving on. Is there still a way to stay and advocate for a body or at a place that once nourished and protected us or do we suspect it has become too unsafe or unkind to live in any longer?
My prayer is for those of us watching the news, reading the reports, sitting in the meetings and feeling the pull to, shall we say, “start the resurrection process.” May we find solace in Jesus’ words, “fear not, I am with you always.”
And, if some person or place has gone and ruined Jesus for you, then perhaps an assurance from Gibson, another of God’s children who went on before us:
My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined.
Thank you, Andrea, for all the beauty, the bravery, and of course, the goosebumps. And thank you to all the poets who bring theology down from the clouds and into our ailing bodies and aching souls.
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Kerri Fisher is Clinical Associate Professor and the Associate Dean for Community and Action at Baylor University’s Diana R. Garland School of Social Work.
