baffled

Baffled is such a terrific word.  It sounds like it feels.

When I'm baffled it feels like cotton candy in my head.

Not a pleasant sensation.

It's been one week since we celebrated Easter and Walter Brueggeman's prayer is a good fit
in light of today's infamous Doubting Thomas gospel reading...

We are baffled

”Christ is Risen
He is risen indeed!
We are baffled by the very Easter claim we voice.
Your new life fits none of our categories.
We wonder and stew and argue,
and add clarifying adjectives like “spiritual” and “physical.”
But we remain baffled, seeking clarity and explanation,
we who are prosperous, and full and safe and tenured.
We are baffled and want explanations.

But there are those not baffled, but stunned by the news,
stunned while at minimum wage jobs;
stunned while the body wastes in cancer;
stunned while the fabric of life rots away in fatigue and despair;
stunned while unprosperous and unfull
and unsafe and untenured . . .
Waiting only for you in your Easter outfit,
waiting for you to say, “Fear not, it is I.”
Deliver us from our bafflement and our many explanations.
Push us over into stunned need and show yourself to us lively.
Easter us in honesty,
Easter us in fear;
Easter us in joy,
and let us be Eastered. Amen.”

Easter Tuesday/April 17, 2000

taken from

Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth

Prayers of Walter Brueggemann

Fortress Press, 2003, p. 162