The Upstairs Room

Today I am thinking about Jesus' disciples straggling in from wherever the explosion of his death and reported resurrection threw them. Like blind people, they grope their way toward one another, coalescing in community. They find an upstairs room with a door that locks and they just stay there -- together. Maybe they compare notes about Jesus' post-death appearances, seeking to grasp what happened through pinning down the particulars. Perhaps they just look at one another and shake their heads, saying things like, "Amazing. Who would have thought?" Likely they begin sentences they cannot finish, laugh helplessly, cry abruptly, and shrug. They just hang out. Everything is the same as before and yet everything is different. What sense can they make of what has happened? They need a whole new frame of reference: new wineskins for the new wine they've been given. There isn't much to say until that structure evolves.

True revelation seems always to need a time of incubation. Its immediate consequence is a feeling of dislocation. The world goes on as usual. People go to work, advocate for causes, pick their children up from school, play out their loves and competitions; and the receivers of the revelation feel like a curtain has been drawn between them and all these activities. They are suddenly strangers in their own lives. Not knowing what to say about this, they hope that they need say nothing.

And yet the urge to integrate the experience is also strong. They want to name and describe the revelation lest it disappear. They begin to search for people who have the experience to hear them, who can help them with words, who understand that what happened is real. No wonder the disciples sought one another out.

A wise mentor can be an invaluable asset in a situation like this. It's always a good idea, if you're on the receiving end of a revelation, to find somebody who can help you process it. It generally takes time. Contrary to popular belief, instant fully-formed insights are not usually the rule when divinity informs humanity.

The disciples eventually emerge from their room. They become a dynamic community in Jerusalem, a community that understands the revelation so well they can describe it in many different languages and can live it in such a way that everybody takes notice.

For now, let's hang out with them in their upper room, in the state of uncertainty and wordlessness, in incubation. In this way we'll be empty bowls to receive whatever the Holy has to give us. We'll grow it into something before we let it loose on the world.