The Other Side

Jesus died on the other side of the river. This thought has been crushing me this morning. One night a few months ago I had a profound moment in a small chapel looking out a window into the cold darkness while taking communion, in that moment God reminded me that Jesus died out there in the cold darkness, and I am called to follow him there. Recently I watched Motorcycle Diaries again, it speaks to my soul in a way that no other movie ever has, and I was hit by the picture of this leper colony being on the other side of the river. This morning I have been listening to the song Otro Lado Del Rio (click on here to listen for free), it is a beautiful lament and at one point in the dark sadness of the song it says “deep down inside of me I smile, because I see a light on the other side of the river”, in the movie it is late at night when the clean good side is celebrating that che jumps in the river and swims across, out into the cold darkness, through treacherous waters, because the light is on the other side and that is where he belongs. I love my church, but it is way to clean and pretty. The sound system alone could probably pay for an entire impoverished nation to eat for a year. How can I pretend to sit in the comfort of that place, with pristine crosses hanging everywhere, a high quality music being played and sung, and even imagine that I am in anyway drawing near to the cross? The Pope’s Easter address was focused on the suffering in our world, it is so great; both on an international level and on millions of individual levels. Today is a celebration, but of what? If we have not truly lamented the suffering in our world can we actually join in the celebration of Easter? Today, it feels much like this song, and it is only somewhere deep inside me that I am finding a smile, and it is only caused by the dim light across the river in the place of suffering. God help me if I spend my life on this side of the river and do not jump into the dangerous river in order to live on the side of the cross; which is the side of the suffering and the oppressed.