At times we feel paralyzed in our love for another.
Not cold. Not finished. Paralyzed. The heart still beats, but it cannot move. The mouth opens, but the words catch. We want to reach across the table, across the bed, across the silence — and we find we cannot. And in that paralysis, we go blind.
This is what the ancients called the darkness of chaos.
In that darkness, we do not recall with whom we are speaking.
We speak to the offense. We speak to the old wound. We speak to the missed call, the forgotten word, the anniversary that passed like any other Tuesday. We speak to the story we have told ourselves about the other. But we no longer speak to them.
And in that moment, both have forgotten one another's truest nature.
Which is Light.
The Nag Hammadi texts say it plainly, and the Gospel says it more plainly still: You are not the anger that visits you. You are not the resentment that takes up residence in your chest. You are not the record of wrongs you keep so carefully accounted.
You are children of Light. From Light you came, and to Light you return. As it is written in the Gospel of Thomas — "If they say to you, 'Where did you come from?' say to them, 'We came from the Light, the place where the Light came into being on its own accord.'"
Remember, then.
Remember that Light which first drew the two of you so magnetically together?
Before there were arguments to win. Before there were ledgers of who did what, and when, and how many times.
There was a recognition. The Gospel of Philip calls it the bridal chamber — not a place of courting, not a performance, but a mystery where two lights recognize they were never truly separate. You did not fall in love because you were lonely. You were drawn because Light recognized Light.
Beyond the anger, beyond the frustration and resentment that now clouds the glass, yet remains that brilliant meeting.
It has not left. Light does not leave.
It is not gone because the honeymoon ended. It is not gone because a birthday was missed, because an anniversary was forgotten, because words were said in the flesh that should never have been spoken. The forms change. The Light remains.
So what shall we do in this paralysis?
We remember. The sacred word in those hidden gospels is always the same: Remember. Repentance was never about shame. It was about remembrance — to come back to Mind. To come back to the knowledge of whom you are.
With eyes to see, look again.
Not at what they did. At what they are. Not at what you have lost. At what you have become a part of.
For when Light met Light in you two, a third thing was born. Not just his light, not just her light, but the light that is you together. And you became a part of that Light, and that drawing Light became a part of you.
You cannot destroy it with a harsh word, my friends. You can only forget it for a season. And seasons end.
So tonight, if you are paralyzed, do not try to fix everything. Just do one holy thing:
In the darkness of the chaos, whisper to your own soul first: I am Light.
Then look at the one before you — the difficult, beautiful, frustrating, beloved one before you — and whisper to their soul: You are Light.
All the rest — the forgiveness, the conversation, the healing — will have to find its way from there. If it is that you find yourself a bit teary-eyed in awe, that's not just emotion. In the old texts, tears were often the sign that the soul had remembered something the mind had forgotten. The Light recognizing itself.
But it will find its way, because Light always finds its way home,
Pastor Mark