The Dolorous Stroke

Today I celebrate my death, a death like the extirpation of the central head of a many headed hydra, but nonetheless a real and very painful dying. I am slain by God’s holiness, by my alienation from Him by my alienation from humankind, by my alienation from mine own self and from life itself. I am slain. I slew myself. Wielding the clumsy two-edge sword of human will, I, by grace, stroked my own dolorous stroke, not knowing what would become or even fully what I slew. The sad grey kingdom of mine own self received the stroke with fearful thankfulness.

It was a relief to die. It is a relief to die. Amid the falling dust and ashes of my life immediately a rose springs forth, a symbol at once of the wound of Christ, now my own wound, and the beauty of His resurrection and mine own. Now I live, roses, dust and ashes, and writhing heads of lesser selves still dying. But the roses, ah the roses of His new life mine own, yet His. It is the fragrance of the roses that I would linger on.