Canter Bridge

We are being saved from what we were.

We come in from the muck and the cold and slowly, with muscles labor-sore, drop our clothing on the mudroom floor. It is foul, cold, unsheltering stuff, redolent with things we would forget, toils that damaged others and ruined ourselves. They fall, articles of clothing that once provided some modest protection, no longer needed in this new, warm, nourishing house.

But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. (Colossians 3:8–11 ESV)

Too familiar with sturdy lists of virtue and vice to introduce language that is unnecessarily new, the apostle Paul names the torn, muddy fabric of ourselves in classical ways, with nomenclature his first readers would have found robustly familiar. This is the raiment of what we were, interpenetrated with the smoke of wrath, heavy with the stink of a style that once defined us. We can hardly peel this stuff away quickly enough.

There is anger, mis-shaper of countenance and heart.

There is wrath, a boiling cauldron that prepares no food.

There is malice, our devious prowess of ruin.

Slander, the poison of tongue and lips at senseless war.

Obscene talk, the drivel of honor-less hearts.

We step out of them into the naked chill, they fall still bearing the space of our shoulder, our hip.

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. (Colossians 3:12–14 ESV)

Warmth and wholeness wait.

Compassionate hearts, quick to care.

Humility, for we are second.

Meekness, the new and quiet wait.

Patience, our liberation from now.

Bearing with one another, for now we glimpse what they will one day become.

Forgiveness, for we need not punish or control.

And love, the foundation, the pillar, the roof, the hearth of new life.

New clothes, a modestly flattering cut, a style that will not pass.

This is who we will be. We are becoming.