“Come out of that closet child? lets go somewhere” I would coaxed my daughter many afternoons. Forever I will remember the face of her reluctant obedience as she would leave behind her beautiful world to go walk with me to a park. As we walked she would awaken out of her imaginary world . Slowly she would tell me of what she saw and did in the closet. Every conflict was resolved in her closet. And everything good was preserved.
I had other children. I would say to them , “its time to come out of the closet!” Their faces ,I remember ,were filled with reluctant shame as they were leaving behind an addictive world. A world where conflict is resolved with the pained senses being anestisized by image or substance. Since creation , Everyday , children all over the world ,are coming in and out of these closets.
But as much as there are imaginative kids and addicted kidsa ,there are also big children in another closet. The biggest and bravest kids I know still talk abut going to this beautiful place called their “prayer closet. ” these closets may be as big as a bedroom or as small as a backpack or even the hem of Suzanne Wesley’s apron. It is a hiding place for a child of God to enter the beautiful world. Even Jesus came from a closet out into calvary. Jesus went to a beautiful secluded place before He brought His beauty to us.
I suppose it was not so different than the duplicitous closets the first children. Adam and Eve lived in. in their innocent prayer closet, the garden, they divided. at one point were with the beautiful and holy. Here all was more than they could ask or imagine And then , in their shame were hiding in the same closet with their imagination pained and paranoid imprisoned in darkness. At another moment they were reaching for the forbidden.
Still the whole of mankind groans in closets.While some are in prayer closets, others are in addictive closets trying to kill the shame. Instead of hiding in garmets of beauty and truth they are hiding in drink or food or images.
Both in the closet are drinking from a cup . One from the cup of shame and wrath, the other from the cup of acceptance and grace. From the cup of grace , the child’s eyes are opened to a world that is infused with Jesus. From the cup of wrath the child is intoxicated into a blindness where all is dark. The light is off.
But from the cup of grace, the child’s eyes are opened to a world that is illuminated with Jesus . Many children of God have, at times, been in both these closets . Some by trickery and pain have been hiding in the closet that is a prison But a few small ones, by childlike faith, have been hidden in a closet as a refuge where every intention of their Father is illuminated.
I come out of such a closet . And The Father has spoken “Child when are you going to come out and lets go somewhere”
The following blogs, in the category of “Church Doors” will journal my hiding in the Catholic closet. I may lose friends, increase enemies . But, I will be able to walk again with my Father and tell the stories of all the adventures in Jesus he has shown me in this secluded closet.
I thank my husband George Unglaub, Good Shepherd Church and Blessed Sacrament chapel for every day I have been In Our Father’s Closet.
