The Kiss

Part 2 of my story...

I came across a phrase when I was seventeen that summed up my love affair with Jesus.  Written by an Argentinian poet and translated into English, it was etched onto the tablet of my mind as pure truth.

"He kissed me and now I am someone different."

That was what had happened between me and Jesus.  He had kissed me!  And with that kiss, my heart, my mind and my life were transformed!  Like the old fairy tales where a dark spell has been cast upon the princess and she has fallen into a deep sleep, so I was awakened by the kiss of a Stranger, and life would never be the same again.

Many years passed from those early moments of first love (and first kisses), but the poetry of it reverberated always through the halls and corridors of my soul.  Sometimes soft...sometimes loud... the kiss always lingered near.

Until I came to a time of great adversity.  The echo of the kiss was fading as life was difficult and aching.  I was struggling deeply with who I was and what I was called to do.  I found myself living in a new place - both physically and in my soul - disoriented.  Labels and categories that had once been useful, were now confining me and squeezing me in.  They had been places of comfort before, but now just caused confusion, angst, and resentment.  I was trying to find my way by listening to the voices - of people and society - around me but though I longed for guidance, it all sounded like gibberish.  I was propelled by the internal voice of "should"....'I should be this...I should do this....I should have this....'  My heart ached.

During this time, I took a trip to Europe to go visit some friends and ended up on a spur of the moment journey into Vienna.  And I found God waiting for me there.

All over on display in Vienna was Gustav Klimt's painting, The Kiss.  I had never seen it before, but now it was all around me - on posters, in stores, on match boxes, on shopping bags...everywhere!  The funny thing is, I hated it!  It seemed gaudy and excessive; too gold and geometric.  It offended my eyes, but I could not get away from it.  And, like a thistle that secretly attaches itself to a sock or pant leg while on a hike, unknowingly I returned home carrying this picture in my mind.

Back on this continent, I soon received a letter from a friend from Singapore.  She knew of my internal struggle and the voices that seemed to dominate the conversations in my head.  Though she had no advice for a fix, her closing line to the letter was simply, "May you enjoy His many kisses".  

(Funny...for the first time in my life, I think I understand the Psalmists use of the word "Selah".  When a spark of God's beauty has been glimpsed and the only response is to stop and pause in wonder!)

Perhaps you will think me dense, or perhaps you will see God as a great, persistent Lover, but even after all this, I did not "selah" - pause and reflect.  I did however, walk into the house of a friend of mine and there, hanging at the top of her split level stairs was a picture of Klimt's, The Kiss!

Still fighting my distaste for the picture, a few mornings later, I relented and met God on the couch.  I really didn't feel like I needed a lesson in kissing, but rather clarity on my life direction.  I needed answers, and relief, and peace from Him.   Instead,  He directed me to the story of The Prodigal Son.

Perhaps the most well known story in the scriptures, I am sure I had read it a hundred times.  I was skimming my way through the passage when I came to the part where the squandering son comes to his senses and decides to go back to his father.  Reading a little more slowly, I could see the picture Jesus was painting when he said, "when he was still a long way off, his father saw him.  His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him and kissed him."  (emphasis mine)

Klimt's picture flooded my mind...and was transforming into something beautiful before my eyes.  God had given me a picture of a "prodigal daughter" through Klimt's image.  While I was a long way off (away from the original kisses of my Love), He saw me.  Not only did He see me, but He came to me (all the way to Vienna and back!)  Not only did He come to me, He kissed me...again!

Through tears, I read on in the story.  The son begins to confess to his father - true things - that he had sinned and wasn't worthy to be called a son.  Those were true things my heart understood, because I knew that was my confession too!  But then the story turns to the central person in the narrative and a phrase, like the one when I was seventeen, changed my life.

"But the father wasn't listening."

The father wasn't listening.  He was too busy calling for clothing to be put on this child of his, for rings and shoes to be lavished on him, for food to be prepared, and for a celebration to begin.  (And I'd like to believe the father was clutching the child's face and showering it with kisses in between shouting out those orders.)  

It was in that space, between the confession of the son and "but the father wasn't listening", that God said, "Tara, all those things you say about yourself or labels you put on yourself...well, I'm not listening.  All those voices that bombard you to tell you what they expect out of you...well, I'm not listening.  All the "shoulds" that berate you...I'm not listening to them.  Here, with me, all that matters is My embrace and My kisses.  I am not listening to anything else.  And if I am not listening to any of the other noise, you don't have to either!"

That is where I find myself.  Kissed and changed.  A prodigal extravagantly (in spite of everything) loved.  An embraced woman in a picture covered with elaborate robes.   

I find I have a God who pays no attention to the voices that would try to define me.  Rather He reminds me of who I am - the beloved finding her identity only in what the Lover says about her.  So, I become the woman in Klimt's picture - resting and delighting in the embrace of my Love, and enjoying His many kisses!