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How’s your Lent? Mine has been…arid, thank you. Perhaps it’s because the entire last year has had a Lenten quality to it, but I’m finding this season especially rough. I don’t feel like I’m connecting with my goals. I’m impatient. I am tired of wandering through the desert of my soul. And I’m sure I’m not alone. In more ways than one.
I made myself a desert place
and waited for Lent to come,
to roll like a storm,
rinse grit from my sand-caked soul,
beat into me a scrubbed resolve.
Instead, came dervishes of whirling dust,
heat to crack the skin, no shepherd
to steer me as pellets pocked my eyes.
I made myself a desert place
and longed for Lent to find me,
devour me like manna, drink me to the lees,
like the swollen tongue of a parched wanderer.
Instead, I have ceased seeking saints
to reckon with my resemblance
to things that slither in the shadows,
tongues primed to flick my skin, name me kin.
I made myself a desert place
and begged for Lent to change me
only to find I will not reach the other side
until the Lent of life finds me fallen
on the final dune outside the city
I sought so far, so long.
Just in time for Easter — the second of my collaborations with Krissy Mosley of Visionarie Kindness. The topic was suggested by Miss Ruth, a meditation on the storms currently battering the life of a mutual friend. No matter how dark our nights are, Easter always arrives. (My words are in italics; Krissy’s in regular type.)
I see prayers being answered.
I see clouds gather like a furrowed brow.
I see miracles so clear, light blue skies before the evening
I see storms mounting, a menagerie of shades of gray
I see nations closing the gap not out of fear but faith.
I see faith fragile as an old bone.
I see a faith that crosses religious lines
Wind whipping, blowing change faster
interconnections — preceding daybreak.
than we ourselves can follow.
Purified waters in hyssop, “washed whiter than snow”
God spreads his hands and smiles.
God with blue ink, he writes upon our red hearts
Nothing is written in stone
just so you know.
God visits our tears
He wipes them with holes
in his hands.
He says to me — He says to all of man
I bear it, my child, you’re not alone.
And, in an instant, Easter morning.
I hope that this post finds all of our readers doing well. I’d say I’m doing well but I’m also losing track of time. I had no clue how close we are to Easter until right before Lori posted the piece she co-wrote with Krissy, What Hope Looks Like on My Street.
It can be hard to feel the comforting presence of Christ right now. Me? I need church. There’s just something about the sanctuary whether it is quiet and still or filled floor to rafters with soaring music. Fortunately, our pastor has been recording meditations for those of us at home. Here is one about Clouds of Hope.
–SueBE
You’ve seen the memes, the stories on the news. People are having a difficult time with social distancing. I ran into a church friend at the grocery store last night, and it was all I could do to refrain from hugging her. Right now, being together is not good for us. But how can we cope with being alone? It will take a journey to the center of ourselves to find the answers.
Though you fill a room with silence,
you are not alone.
Though you thrash in a sea of panic,
you are not lost.
Instead, remember:
everything you do is sacred;
every movement a dance.
Let your touch be only healing.
Draw energy from the sun.
Turn with purpose toward
what is essential and cull
with tenderness what is not.
Do not lose yourself.
Let the holy within you rise
to greet silence as a friend
and enter into prayer
that moves and lives
and has being in you
for as long as it lasts.
Gethsemane surrounds us.
But Easter is coming.
Today, Holy Thursday, begins the Triduum, the three days that recollect and celebrate the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. Most of us know this story well. We’ve pondered that journey. But how often do we think about the people who walked the path with Jesus?
Simon of Cyrene was picked out of the crowd to help Jesus carry the cross. How and why was he chosen? Well, we know he was from Africa. He might have been a person of color. Or the Roman guards simply noticed he wasn’t Jewish — he was “other.” Or he might have expressed sympathy for Christ. Whatever the reason, he is an outsider, someone from the fringes — the type of person Jesus favored in life.
The women of Jerusalem wept for Jesus and were comforted by him. Women weren’t exactly valued commodities in Jesus’ day. They were mostly seen as possessions, with no voice or agency of their own. Yet Jesus turns to women again and again in his life and along the road to his death — he listens to them. He values them. He speaks to them. Again, Jesus chooses the outsider.
Veronica wipes Jesus’ face. Again, a woman does the unthinkable, and Jesus rewards her with kindness.
The penitent thief (sometimes called Dismas) is crucified next to Jesus. What do we know about him? People were crucified for all sorts of crimes in Jesus’ day, but to be crucified for mere petty theft would have been a long shot, unless the thief was from the lower classes, or worse, a slave. Or the theft was far from petty — it was violent and extreme. There is some conjecture that the “thieves” were more like terrorists. Once again, it someone from the fringes, someone most unlikely, who responds to Christ’s call. In radically changing his heart, Dismas is promised paradise.
Women. Foreigners. Criminals. These are the people who walked the way of the cross with Jesus. Not his apostles. Not religious leaders. It was the most unlikely of people who shared the journey.
People are always amazed when I tell them that SueBE, Ruth and I have never met in person. Yet in my dark nights of the soul, they consistently walk with me. This Easter, take some time to ponder who walks with you. You just might be surprised.
I’m still feeling a little high from Easter. If you’ve never been to a Catholic Easter Vigil mass, you’re missing out! A bonfire is set ablaze, parishioners with lit candles enter a darkened church, the pastor intones a Passover-flavored litany…people are baptized! The saints are celebrated! Baptismal vows are renewed! It is all a bit dizzying. But it got me contemplating eternity, which is, after all, what we all hope to savor as a result of Christ’s death and resurrection. Forever is, as Prince once observed, “a mighty long time.” What will we do with it?
One thing’s for sure: We will not be bored. I feel quite sure that time will lose meaning in Paradise, especially with whole universes to explore and a history of people to meet. As for my plans? Well, maybe I’ll start small.
When eternity comes
(if I am fit to meet it)
I will lie on my belly
in a field of grass.
I will take 10,000 years
to know a single blade.
I will memorize its particular
shade of green, watch it
bend in wind, predict its
dance. See dew settle on it,
or rain. 10,000 years will suffice
to know its root, the angle of its taper,
its scent and relation to its neighbors.
I will fix myself on this blade until
I know it so intimately that
no other blade of grass
could ever be mistaken
for it. And then (only then)
I will move on to the
next blade.
Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash
I came across an article about what it means to be a Christian and there was a literal, no-kidding, honest-to-God (pardon the pun) checklist. If you repented and received Christ, ☑ check this box. If you are open to the leading of the Holy Spirit, ☑ check this box. If you belong to a Bible-based church that believes it is the inspired, inerrant word of God, ☑ check this box. At the end, you are to tally up your scores and, basically, get graded.
I’m not sure why some have decided to codify faith in this way, but I have to believe it wasn’t God’s idea.
Many faiths have their own interpretation of how to talk to God in prayer. Some have added chapters to the Bible, or believe that only their religion will lead to salvation.
Today, on Easter – and every day, for that matter – if you pray, God hears you. If you want to put the past behind you and find peace, you’re in. Talking to God is the same as talking to a friend. Say what’s on your heart. No background checks. No credit scores. No character references. Just you and God, and the path of life ahead.
There’s no doubt about it. This has been a tumultuous Lent for many of us. But tomorrow we celebrate a reminder that Christ is risen for us.
And that means all of us. The crabby ones. The disorganized ones. The baffled ones. Even the ones who rejected Him yelling “Crucify him!” just days after greeting him with waving palm branches.
And he forgave them. He forgives us all. He washes us clean.
Honor your soul. It isn’t easy but try to leave some of the anger at the foot of the cross. Don’t look back. Look forward. Step out as a guardian of nature, a messenger of wonder, or an architect of peace.
–SueBE
Ready or not, here Easter comes. I understand the feeling that Lori shared. I feel like I’m tumbling into Easter which is, apparently, in three days. You know how it goes – you know it is just around the corner but three days? That little reality hit me yesterday as I listened to the preacher speak at a friend’s funeral service.
He was one of those people who was a champion at building something out of the stones that life through his way. He had to be. The 9th of 10 children, he was 2 when his father died during the Great Depression. It would have been easy to grow up a child of sorrow but that wasn’t Roy’s way. When my son didn’t get the college scholarship he needed to attend his school of choice, Roy heard him out.
“So you’ll take this other one for two years and its a full scholarship? Sounds like a good deal.” Roy wasn’t going to let him focus on the down side.
Things seldom go the way we plan. People are seldom as cooperative and sunny as we would like. We can mourn the reality of this or we can take what we have and build something new.
The life of a carpenter or even a rabbi would have been easier, but Christ walked towards the passion knowing his suffering would bring grace for those of us who could never achieve it on our own.
–SueBE
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