Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities— his eternal power and divine nature— have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. Romans 1:20
All creatures are doing their best to help God in His birth of Himself.
You and I weren’t conceived by random happenstance, nor are those unwelcome souls who are wished or washed away before ever taking a breath.
We are here because we are earnestly needed and wanted, by a Power and Divinity beyond our comprehension, Who has capacity for love and compassion unmatched by anything in our earthly experience.
We aren’t a cosmic joke or mistake. We aren’t pawns in the universe’s chess game.
Though we may loll about in the smelly stuff of this life, thinking what we say or do doesn’t matter a hill of beans, we are created by God as a witness to who He is, in whose image we are made.
He won’t be ignored; we have no excuses.
We were blind but now we see…
God looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. Psalm 53:2
…we all suffer. For we all prize and love; and in this present existence of ours, prizing and loving yield suffering. Love in our world is suffering love. Some do not suffer much, though, for they do not love much. Suffering is for the loving. This, said Jesus, is the command of the Holy One: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In commanding us to love, God invites us to suffer.
Over there, you are of no help. What I need to hear from you is that you recognize how painful it is. I need to hear from you that you are with me in my desperation. To comfort me, you have to come close. Come sit beside me on my mourning bench. ~Nicholas Wolterstorff from Lament for a Son
I wondered if 7:30 AM was too early to call her. As a sleep-deprived fourth year medical student finishing a long night admitting patients in the hospital, I selfishly needed to hear her voice.
I wanted to know how Margy was doing with the latest round of chemotherapy for breast cancer; I knew she was not sleeping well these days. She was wearing a new halo brace—a metal contraption that wrapped around her head like a scaffolding to secure her degenerating cervical spine from collapsing from metastatic tumor growths in her bones.
She knew, we all knew, she was trying to buy more time from a life of rapidly diminishing days.
Each patient I had seen the previous 24 hours while working in the Emergency Room benefited from the interviewing skills Margy had taught each medical student in our class. She reminded us that each patient had an important story to tell, and no matter how pressured our time, we needed to ask questions that gave permission for that story to be told. As a former nun now married with two teenage children, Margy had become our de facto therapist at a time no medical school hired supportive counselors.
She insisted physicians-in-training remember the suffering soul thriving inside the broken body.
“Just let the patient know with certainty, through your eyes, your body language, your words, that you want to hear what they have to say. You can heal so much hurt simply by sitting beside them and caring enough to listen…”
After her diagnosis with stage 4 cancer, Margy herself became the broken vessel who needed the glue of a good listener. She continued to teach, often from her bed at home. I planned to visit her that day, maybe help out by cleaning her house, or take her for a drive as a diversion.
Her phone rang only once after I dialed her number. There was a long pause; I could hear a clearing of her throat. A deep dam of tears welled behind a muffled “Hello?”
“Margy?”
“Yes? Emily? ”
“Margy? What is it? What’s wrong?”
Her voice shattered like glass into fragments, strangling on words that struggled to form.
“A policeman just left. He told us our boy is dead.”
I sat in stunned silence, listening to her sobs, completely unequipped to know how to respond.
None of this made sense. I knew her son was on college spring break, heading to Mexico for a missions trip.
“I’m here, what’s happened?”
“The doorbell rang about an hour ago. Larry got up to answer it. I heard him talking to someone downstairs, so I decided to try to get up and go see what was going on. There was a policeman sitting with Larry on the couch. I knew it had to be about Gordy.”
She paused and took in a shuddering breath.
“The group was driving through the night in California. He was asleep in the back of the camper. They think he was sleepwalking and walked right out of the back of the moving camper and was hit by another car.”
Silence. A strangling choking silence.
“They’ll bring him home to me, won’t they? I need to know I can see my boy again. I need to tell him how much I love him.”
“They’ll bring him home to you, Margy. I’m on my way to help you get ready…“
God is not only the God of the sufferers but the God who suffers. … It is said of God that no one can behold his face and live. I always thought this meant that no one could see his splendor and live. A friend said perhaps it meant that no one could see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is splendor. … Instead of explaining our suffering, God shares it. ~Nicholas Wolterstorff from Lament for a Son
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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March. I am beginning to anticipate a thaw. Early mornings the earth, old unbeliever, is still crusted with frost where the moles have nosed up their cold castings, and the ground cover in shadow under the cedars hasn’t softened for months, fogs layering their slow, complicated ice around foliage and stem night by night,
but as the light lengthens, preacher of good news, evangelizing leaves and branches, his large gestures beckon green out of gray. Pinpricks of coral bursting from the cotoneasters. A single bee finding the white heather. Eager lemon-yellow aconites glowing, low to the ground like little uplifted faces. A crocus shooting up a purple hand here, there, as I stand on my doorstep, my own face drinking in heat and light like a bud welcoming resurrection, and my hand up, too, ready to sign on for conversion. ~Luci Shaw “Revival” from What the Light was Like
A few remaining hints of frost drip with rain, the frozen ground oozing with mud and mire.
This morning has a hint of fragrance as buds dare to peek open, testing the air.
I wake to dawn’s fiery burning light I hear beckoning eagle chatter and frog chorus
I follow the sun wherever it may appear, so eager for warmth and revival, grateful to be alive to notice.
The thaw is at hand; a new day is aching to bloom.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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When I was a child I once sat sobbing on the floor Beside my mother’s piano As she played and sang For there was in her singing A shy yet solemn glory My smallness could not hold
And when I was asked Why I was crying I had no words for it I only shook my head And went on crying
Why is it that music At its most beautiful Opens a wound in us An ache a desolation Deep as a homesickness For some far-off And half-forgotten country
I’ve never understood Why this is so
But there’s an ancient legend From the other side of the world That gives away the secret Of this mysterious sorrow
For centuries on centuries We have been wandering But we were made for Paradise As deer for the forest
And when music comes to us With its heavenly beauty It brings us desolation For when we hear it We half remember That lost native country
We dimly remember the fields Their fragrant windswept clover The birdsongs in the orchards The wild white violets in the moss By the transparent streams
And shining at the heart of it Is the longed-for beauty Of the One who waits for us Who will always wait for us In those radiant meadows
Yet also came to live with us And wanders where we wander. ~Anne Porter “Music” from Living Things
One evening, when our daughter was only a toddler, just learning the words to tell us what she needed, I was preparing dinner, humming to a choral music piece playing in the background.
She sat on the kitchen floor, looking up at me, her eyes welling full with tears like pools of reflected light spilling over from some deep-remembered reservoir.
At first I thought she was hurt or upset but then could see she was feeling an ache a desolation deep as a homesickness as she wept for wonder at the sad beauty of the music that spoke for her the words she could not express:
Of the One who waits for us Who will always wait for us In those radiant meadows
Yet also came to live with us And wandered where we wander.
For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever… 2Corinthians 4:17-18
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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This morning’s sun is not the honey light of summer, thick with golden dust and slow as syrup pouring from a jug. It’s bright, but thin and cold, and slanted steep and low across the hillsides. Frost is blooming white, these flowers forced by icy winds that blow as hard this morning as they blew all night. Too cold for rain, but far too dry for snow.
And I am restless, pacing to and fro enduring winter’s grip that holds us tight. But my camellias, which somehow know what weather to expect—they’re always right— have broken bud. Now scarlet petals glow outside the window where I sit and write. ~Tiel Aisha Ansari “Camellias”from Dervish Lions
Near a shrine in Japan he’d swept the path and then placed camellia blossoms there.
Or — we had no way of knowing — he’d swept the path between fallen camellias. ~Carol Snow “Tour”
Camellias are hardy enough to withstand winter’s low temperatures, defying freezing winds and hard frosts with their resilience.
On windy days, full and ripe camellia blooms plop to the ground without warning, scattering about like a nubby floral throw rug. They are too bulky to step on, so the tendency is to pick a path around them, allowing them the dignity of a few more days before being swept off sidewalks.
In one sense, these fallen winter blossoms are holy messengers, gracing the paths the living must navigate. They are grounding for the passersby, a reminder our own time to let go will soon come. As we restlessly pursue our days and measure our steps, we respectfully make our way around their fading beauty.
An unexpected blessing is bestowed in the camellia’s restlessness: in their budding, in their breaking open, in their full blooming, in their falling to earth, in their ebbing away.
The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever. Isaiah 40:7-8
Mortals, born of woman, are of few days and full of trouble. They spring up like flowers and wither away; like fleeting shadows, they do not endure. Do you fix your eye on them? Job 14: 1-3
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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All the paths of the Lord are loving and faithful. Psalm 25:10
All does not mean “all – except the paths I am walking in now” or “nearly all” – except this especially difficult and painful path. All must mean all. So, your path with its unexplained sorrow or turmoil, and mine with its sharp flints and briers – and both our paths, with their unexplained perplexity, their sheer mystery – they are His paths, on which he will show Himself loving and faithful. Nothing else; nothing less. ~Amy Carmichael–from You Are My Hiding Place
Sometimes we come to forks in the road where we may not be certain which path to take.
Perhaps explore the Robert Frost “less traveled” one?
Or take the one that seems less tangled and uncertain from all appearances?
Or in the recent email to U.S. federal employees, take the forced resignation or choose to wait and be fired?
Perhaps we chose a particular path which looked inviting at the time, trundling along minding our own business, yet we start bonking our heads on low hanging branches, or get grabbed by stickers and thorns that rip our clothes and skin, or trip over prominent roots and rocks that impede our progress and bruise our feet.
Sometimes we come to a sudden end in a path and face a steep cliff with no choice but to leap — or turn back through the mess we have just slogged through.
Navigating the road to the cross must have felt like ending up at that steep cliff. There was no turning back, no choosing or negotiating a different pathway or taking time to build a downward staircase into the rocks.
Christ’s words reflect His uncertainty and terror. His words reflect our deepest doubts and fears– how are we to trust we are set on the right path?
When we take that next step, no matter which way or which one, we end up in the Father’s loving and faithful arms.
He has promised this.
Nothing else; nothing less.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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What a piece of work is a man! …And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? ~ William Shakespeare – Hamlet’s soliloquy
God – the God who made the dust, who made the stars, who made the elements of which we are composed – that same God chooses from the beginning to make his dwelling among us, to live for all time like us, as a servant of the soil. I am the dust of the earth, but God declares that he is not too good, not too proud, for my dustiness. ~Daniel Stulac fromPlough Quarterly No. 4: Earth
What I know for sure is this: We come from mystery and we return to mystery. I arrived here with no bad memories of wherever I’d come from, so I have no good reason to fear the place to which I’ll return. And I know this, too: Standing closer to the reality of death awakens my awe at the gift of life. ~Parker Palmer “On the Brink of Everything“
…I do nothing, I give You nothing. Yet You hold me
minute by minute from falling. ~Denise Levertov fromPsalm Fragments (Schnittke String Trio),in The Stream and the Sapphire
This dust left of man: earth, air, water and fire prove inadequate to quell the significance of how, in spoken words at the beginning, this dust became us, and how, forevermore, this is holy dust we leave behind.
We are held secure from falling by transcendent hope of eternal life, restored by a glory breathed into us – such a piece of work we are the plainest of ash.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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This is a litany to earth and ashes, to the dust of roads and vacant rooms, to the fine silt circling in a shaft of sun, settling indifferently on books and beds. This is a prayer to praise what we become, “Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return.” Savor its taste—the bitterness of earth and ashes. ~Dana Gioia from “The Litany”
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. ~T.S. Eliot from “The Wasteland”
…let us be marked not for sorrow. And let us be marked not for shame. Let us be marked not for false humility or for thinking we are less than we are
but for claiming what God can do within the dust, within the dirt, within the stuff of which the world is made, and the stars that blaze in our bones, and the galaxies that spiral inside the smudge we bear. ~Jan Richardson from “Blessing the Dust”in Circle of Grace
God’s people are reminded today, through dust and ashes, that our stay here is temporary.
This reality recently became very clear to me. So I follow Christ where He goes, He paused to gather me in – one more lost sheep.
This earth quakes and floods and burns and shatters, as does my frail human heart in all its dustiness.
His light splinters, spilling into colors and hues through that misty veil -God’s people are smudged with no longer bitter ash, no longer opaque, but shining luminous and eternal and glorious.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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All I could see from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood; I turned and looked another way, And saw three islands in a bay. So with my eyes I traced the line Of the horizon, thin and fine, Straight around till I was come Back to where I’d started from; And all I saw from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see; These were the things that bounded me; And I could touch them with my hand, Almost, I thought, from where I stand. And all at once things seemed so small My breath came short, and scarce at all.
The world stands out on either side No wider than the heart is wide; Above the world is stretched the sky,— No higher than the soul is high. The heart can push the sea and land Farther away on either hand; The soul can split the sky in two, And let the face of God shine through. But East and West will pinch the heart That can not keep them pushed apart; And he whose soul is flat—the sky Will cave in on him by and by. ~Edna St. Vincent Millay at age 19, from “Renascence”
I know for a while again, the health of self-forgetfulness, looking out at the sky through a notch in the valley side, the black woods wintry on the hills, small clouds at sunset passing across. And I know that this is one of the thresholds between Earth and Heaven, from which I may even step forth from myself and be free. ~ Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 2000
I was told once by someone I respected that my writing reflected “sacramental” living — reflecting my effort to touch and taste the holiness of everyday moments, as if they are the cup and bread that sustain us.
I allowed that feedback to sit warmly beside me, like a comforting companion during the hours I struggled with what to share here.
Yet, as tomorrow begins weeks of Lenten observance, I realize it is all too tempting to emphasize sacrament over the sacrifice it inevitably represents.
As much as I love the world and the beauty I find here, I need to recognize there will be “thin places” between heaven and earth where we must forget “self” and step forth through a holy threshold into something far greater.
So I struggle with what sacrificial living truly means, as a terrifying illuminating freedom remaining far beyond my grasp.
I may even step forth from myself and be free…
photo of San Juan Islands by Joel De Waardphoto of San Juan Islands by Joel De Waardphoto of San Juan Islands by Joel De WaardAI image created for this post
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The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on, Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
The heart of a woman falls back with the night, And enters some alien cage in its plight, And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars. ~Georgia Douglas Johnson “The Heart of a Woman” fromThe Heart of a Woman and Other Poems
Some mornings I’m not sure what else to do with my worry, so I fling my tender heart out ahead of me, hoping I might eventually catch up with it to bring it back home before nightfall.
Sometimes it is a race to see if anyone else rescues it first or if someone even notices it out there fluttering its way through the day, trying to stay aloft.
Perhaps, in its lonely flight, it will try winging its way home and there I’ll find it patiently waiting for me on the doorstep as I return empty-handed.
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