Scene
6
[Richard
re-enters the candlelit nave of St. Julian’s Church]
Richard: Anchoress! Awake,
old friend—
I would speak with thee again.
Anchoress: Wisdom would have
kept thee far.
Be with thy wife.
Richard: ‘Tis my wife who
bids me come;
Her heart is changed away
From
the violent words she spoke to thee.
Anchoress: It was no offense;
I have understood her well,
And with her I have
grieved.
Richard: Then grieve again,
old friend,
For my sake and for hers—
My Mary has the plague.
Anchoress: So thou art
double-stricken, then—
Son and wife.
Richard: Thrice stricken,
say I,
That I may not depart with them.
Anchoress: I hear thy pain,
my lord.
Thou knowest that I am no stranger
To the valley of the
shadow of death.
Richard: But what does it
mean?
Am I not a good man, Anchoress?
I know, I know—all men are
unrighteous—
But I have been as
faithful
As strength and will and
place of life
Have enabled me to be.
And yet my world melts away
In one great cascade of
fire.
The judgment of hell licks at my
feet
When I expected heaven
Or, at least, purgatory’s
slow ascent.
What does it mean?
Is there in truth no
God?
Anchoress: First tell me
this:
The God whose being is questioned—
What does he look like?
Richard: I am a poor
theologian, Anchoress.
What does he look like?
He is great, glorious, mighty beyond
compare;
From all ages he has reigned,
Impassible, unknowable,
Beyond all
creaturely capacity
To know,
touch, or understand.
He watches us from heaven,
And in his justice
dispenses
Good or ill, according
to what men deserve.
Anchoress: And yet you called
all men unrighteous.
What then do they deserve?
Richard: Thou wouldst entrap
me with my words.
Anchoress: Let it be no trap,
But a guiding hand, that thou may
see
That which is already known to thee.
Richard: So be it. If all
men are unrighteous,
They deserve the harshness of God’s
wrath.
Anchoress: So you say. But is
that what God does?
Richard: Is it not? This
moment tells me so.
My claw-rent heart likewise.
Anchoress: Look upon the
wall. What see’st thou there?
Richard: The crucifix.
Anchoress: Behold thy God.
Is he impassible to our strife?
Does he dispense suffering
According to the
harshness
Of a law-court’s scales?
I have seen the God of all creation
Take our very station,
Drink down our
humiliation,
Embrace the suffering
That rends
our broken hearts.
No heartless majesty serve we here,
No distant, tranquil
spirit
Unmoved by waves of
human fortune.
He has wrestled the ancient beast
Of death and pain and
sorrow—
Wrestled through the night with it;
Yes, even by it been
beaten down—
And yet, because of that one fight
So many years ago,
Suffering and death now
and forever
Walk their way with
limping stride.
He has changed their very nature.
Richard: Explain this,
Anchoress.
I can see thy point—
We serve a God not
unmoved by pain:
So great is his concern
for us
That he accepts it too—
This is a consolation, yes—
But how is suffering
changed?
How is my plight rendered any less
fierce
Because holy Christ has suffered
too?
Anchoress: The one thing
necessary for our knowledge
Is simply this: the love of God.
That love is shown, beyond doubting,
Beyond even
understanding,
In the cross, the blood, the chalice
of thanksgiving.
God holds all that is
In the center of his hand,
In the center of his hand,
And it is small beyond
compare.
But it exists, and shall exist,
because he loves it.
The suffering we bear is part of
that existence,
The tearing, spinning
force of the potter’s wheel,
That pulls at the fabric
of all we are.
His hands, they hold us we spin;
His lathe, it traces out
the shape of our construction,
The beauty of what we’re
meant to be—
But suffering is the movement that
lets him work,
It is the fire of his
kiln,
And by it,
if we submit to the working of his hands,
We become
ever more what we were meant to be.
Suffering is the way of Christ,
And it is the way for
creatures
To grow into
his great love.
That is the burden of compassionate
grace—
That we must suffer into
beauty,
Suffer into
love,
But it is a heritage that neither
highest star
Nor brightest angel
Has even the
chance to partake.
We are broken, yes,
But in our brokenness we
may become
Higher than
all creation.
And all this is down to the great
love of God for us.
Richard: I want to submit,
yes, to the potter’s hand—
But what I become in character or
strength
Through all this
tearing, spinning, burning—
It helps not Mary nor my
son.
Does God demand they suffer and die
Simply to make me a
better man?
This cannot be the final answer
To the riddle of our
pain.
Anchoress: Thou art right.
There is more.
Unspeakably, ineffably more.
There is no word in any tongue
That encompasses this
answer
More than ‘hope.’
We have the sure foundation of the
promises of God
That our suffering,
This dark chapter we walk even now,
Is
not the end of the story.
And, like any good story,
We may not understand
the whole
Until we
have reached the end.
God spoke to me once of this great
truth,
And his words are seared
into my soul.
This he said, and this I proclaim to
the world:
“All shall be well,
And all shall be well,
And all
manner of things shall be well.”
There is yet one great act of God to
come,
One great mystery to be
revealed,
A final
grace for his much-beloved creation.
And on that day, and with that act,
All manner of things
shall be well.
This, even this--
Our pain, our suffering,
our sorrow,
The deaths
of those we love—
Even
this he shall make well.
The final day will dawn,
And we will look back at
the pages
Of the story
we’ve walked through,
And we shall laugh
And cry great tears of
joy
For all that
God has done in them,
For
he has made all things well.
Now, Lord Yarbury—now, Richard—
Go again.
Go, in the mercy of God,
In the great love he has
for thee
And thy
sorrow,
And be with thy wife.
Thou art loved of God,
And so is
she.
Be blessed, my friend.
Richard: My thanks,
Anchoress.
I may not understand,
But my love responds to
his great love,
And
willingly I submit.
God be with thee. I go.