The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “God’s Grandeur”
Today marks the crushing of Christ in the Garden of the Oil Press, Gethsemane.
“Gethsemane” means “oil press” –a place of olive trees treasured for the fine oil delivered from their fruit. And so, on this Thursday night, the pressure is turned up high on the disciples, not just on Jesus.
The disciples are expected, indeed commanded, to keep watch alongside the Master, to be filled with prayer, to avoid the temptation of weakened flesh thrown at them at every turn.
But they fail pressure testing and fall apart.
Like them, I am easily lulled by complacency, by my over-indulged satiety for material comforts that do not truly fill hunger or quench thirst, by my belief that being called a follower of Jesus is enough.
It is not enough. I fail the pressure test as well.
I fall asleep through His anguish. I dream, oblivious, while He sweats blood. I might even deny I know Him when pressed hard.
Yet, the moment of betrayal becomes the moment He is glorified, thereby God is glorified.
Crushed, bleeding, poured out over the world — from precious loving wings that brood and cover us — He becomes the sacrifice that anoints us.
Incredibly, indeed miraculously, He, the crushed, loves us, bent and flattened as we are – anyway.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Luke 13:34
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words. They should remain open. Our only comfort is the God of the resurrection, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who also was and is (our) God. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “Circular Letters in the Church Struggle”
An old man going a lone highway, Came, at the evening cold and gray, To a chasm vast and deep and wide. Through which was flowing a sullen tide The old man crossed in the twilight dim, The sullen stream had no fear for him; But he turned when safe on the other side And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near, “You are wasting your strength with building here; Your journey will end with the ending day, You never again will pass this way; You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide, Why build this bridge at evening tide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head; “Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said, “There followed after me to-day A youth whose feet must pass this way. This chasm that has been as naught to me To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be; He, too, must cross in the twilight dim; Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!” ~Will Allen Dromgoole “The Bridge Builder”
A terrible accident collapsed a massive bridge yesterday, taking lives from grieving families, creating a great gap for those who depend on the span for connection and transport.
No human bridge builder could instantly repair the deep and wide gap left behind when the bridge came down.
Christ – the Divine Bridge to humanity from heaven – was broken too, separated from His Father, the Builder.
The chasm left behind was so wholly unbridgeable. Forsaken, Christ suffers for His brothers and sisters who are drowning in sin by paying, with His life, a ransom we on our own could never satisfy.
His grace is the only bridge able to bear our awful weight.
We need a Mediator, a divine engineer, whose grace is strong enough to fill our every hole, bridge our every gap, carry hope to our emptiness and grief and deliver us wholly to our Father, who was and is our God.
Lord, comfort us by spanning our troubled waters, bearing our weighty burdens, to ensure we will safely reach the Other Side where Your arms await us.
For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. 1Timothy 2:5
In a daring and beautiful creative reversal, God takes the worse we can do to Him and turns it into the very best He can do for us. ~Malcolm Guite from The Word in the Wilderness
Samwise Gamgee and Homer, our two Cardigan Corgis, do barn chores with me twice daily. They run up and down the aisles as I fill the buckets and throw the horses hay. Then they explore the manure pile out back, have a happy roll in some really smelly stuff in the field, and have stand offs with the barn cats (which they always lose).
We have our routine. When I get done with chores, I whistle for them and we all head back to their breakfast in their outdoor pen.
We always return home together.
Except this particular morning. I whistled when I was done and although Homer came running, Sam’s furry fox face didn’t appear as usual. I walked back through both barns calling his name, whistling. No signs of Sam. I walked to the fields, I walked back to the dog pen, I walked the road (where he never ever goes), I scanned the pond where he once fell in as a pup (yikes), I went back to the barn and glanced inside every stall, I went in the hay barn where he likes to jump up and down on stacked bales, worried about a bale avalanche he might be trapped under, or a hole he couldn’t climb out of.
Nothing.
I’m really anxious about him at this point, fearing the worst. Even Homer seemed clueless about where his friend disappeared.
Sam was nowhere to be found, utterly lost.
Passing through the barn again, I heard a little faint scratching inside one Haflinger’s stall, which I had just glanced in 10 minutes before as a mare was peacefully eating hay. Sure enough, there was Sam standing with his feet up against the door as if asking what took me so long. He must have scooted in when I filled up her water bucket, and I closed the door unaware he was still inside. He and his horse buddy kept it their secret.
Making not a whimper or a bark when I called out his name, passing that stall at least 10 times looking for him, he patiently waited for me to open the door and set him free.
The lost is found even though he never felt lost to begin with.
Yet he was lost to me. And that is all that matters. We have no idea how lost we are until a determined Someone comes looking for us, doing whatever it takes to bring us back alongside them.
Sam was just waiting for that closed door to be opened. And this Holy Week, the door is thrown wide open and we’re welcomed back home.
photo by Nate Gibson
Let’s have a feast and celebrate.For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found. Luke 15: 23-24
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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Jesus comes near and he beholds the city And looks on us with tears in his eyes, And wells of mercy, streams of love and pity Flow from the fountain whence all things arise. He loved us into life and longs to gather And meet with his beloved face to face How often has he called, a careful mother, And wept for our refusals of his grace, Wept for a world that, weary with its weeping, Benumbed and stumbling, turns the other way, Fatigued compassion is already sleeping Whilst her worst nightmares stalk the light of day. But we might waken yet, and face those fears, If we could see ourselves through Jesus’ tears. ~Malcolm Guite “Jesus Weeps”
On this Holy Monday, facing ahead to a week of knowing our world is in disarray~ a week of facing our own shame and mortality, a week where thorns and tears overwhelm the blossoms~~
To remember what He did this week long ago, to conquer the shroud and the stone, to defy death, makes all the difference to me.
Indeed Jesus wept and groaned for us.
To be known for who we are by a God who weeps for our sin and despair and groans with pain we caused: we can know no greater love.
This week ends our living for self, only to die, and begins our dying to self, in order to live.
And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Luke 19:41
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
Seems the sorrow untold, as you look down the road At the clamoring crowd drawing near Feel the heat of the day, as you look down the way Hear the shouts of Hosanna the King
Chorus Oh, daughter of Zion your time’s drawing near Don’t forsake Him, oh don’t pass it by On the foal of a donkey as the prophets had said Passing by you, He rides on to die
Come now little foal, though you’re not very old Come and bear your first burden bravely Walk so softly upon all the coats and the palms Bare the One on your back oh so gently
Midst the shouting so loud and the joy of the crowd There is One who is riding in silence For He knows the ones here will be fleeing in fear When their shepherd is taken away
Soon the thorn cursed ground will bring forth a crown And this Jesus will seem to be beaten But He’ll conquer alone both the shroud and the stone And the prophesies will be completed On the foal of a donkey as the prophets had said Passing by you He rides on to die ~Michael Card
On the outskirts of Jerusalem the donkey waited. Not especially brave, or filled with understanding, he stood and waited.
How horses, turned out into the meadow, leap with delight! How doves, released from their cages, clatter away, splashed with sunlight.
But the donkey, tied to a tree as usual, waited. Then he let himself be led away. Then he let the stranger mount.
Never had he seen such crowds! And I wonder if he at all imagined what was to happen. Still, he was what he had always been: small, dark, obedient.
I hope, finally, he felt brave. I hope, finally, he loved the man who rode so lightly upon him, as he lifted one dusty hoof and stepped, as he had to, forward. ~Mary Oliver “The Poet thinks about the donkey” from her book Thirst.
With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings…
The tattered outlaw of the earth, Of ancient crooked will; Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb, I keep my secret still.
Fools! For I also had my hour; One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet. G. K. Chesterton from “The Donkey”
Palm Sunday is a day of dissonance and dichotomy in the church year, very much like the donkey who figured as a central character that day.
Sadly, a donkey gets no respect, then or now – for his plain and awkward hairy looks, for his loud and inharmonious voice, for his apparent lack of strength — yet he was the chosen mode of transportation for a King riding to His death.
There was a motley parade to Jerusalem: cloaks and palms laid at the feet of the donkey bearing the Son of God, disorderly shouts of adoration and blessings, the rebuke of the Pharisees to quiet the people, His response that “even the stones will cry out” knowing what is to come.
But the welcoming crowd waving palm branches, shouting sweet hosannas and laying down their cloaks did not understand the fierce transformation to come, did not know within days they would be a mob shouting words of derision and rejection and condemnation.
The donkey knew because he had been derided, rejected and condemned himself, yet still kept serving. Just as he was given voice and understanding centuries before to protect Balaam from going the wrong way, he could have opened his mouth to tell them, suffering beatings for his effort. Instead, just as he bore the unborn Jesus to Bethlehem and stood over Him sleeping in the manger, just as he bore a mother and child all the way to Egypt to hide from Herod, the donkey would keep his secret well.
Who, after all, would ever listen to a mere donkey?
We would do well to pay attention to this braying wisdom.
The donkey knows – he’s a believer.
He bears the burden we have shirked. He treads with heavy heart over the palms and cloaks we lay down as meaningless symbols of honor. He is the ultimate servant to the Servant who laid aside His crown.
A day of dichotomy — of honor and glory laid underfoot only to be stepped on, of blessings and praise turning to curses, of the beginning of the end becoming a new beginning for us all.
And so He wept, knowing all this. I suspect the donkey bearing Him wept as well, in his own simple, plain and honest way, and I’m quite sure he kept it as his special secret.
Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. Zechariah 9:9
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. A red wing rose in the darkness.
And suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand.
That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive, Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.
O my love, where are they, where are they going The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles. I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder. ~ Czeslaw Milosz “Encounter”
She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year;… her own birthday and every other day, individualized by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought one afternoon that there was yet another date of greater importance, her own death… A day which lay sly and unseen among all other days of the year… but not the less surely there. When was it? ~Thomas Hardy from Tess of the d’Urbervilles
We do not know the day or the hour of our death day. We must not be lulled into complacency by the routines of daily life; it could be tomorrow or the next day or maybe it was yesterday.
Each moment is a gift, like the flash of a blossom or the transparency of a rabbit’s ear, pulsing with each heart beat as our blood flows and sustains.
And we know – blood was shed, just as blossoms shed, covering us all.
Keeping watch, keeping watch – there is a day when we go home.
fallen sakura petals in Tokyo (photo by Nate Gibson)
Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour. Matthew 25: 1-13
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close emerging, As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been, Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass— innocent, golden, calm as the dawn, The spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful face. ~Walt Whitman “The First Dandelion”
As the days warm and lengthen, the grass is getting happy almost overnight. Under my window the first star of spring opens its eye on the front lawn. Yellow as butter, it is only one. But it is one, and in the nature of things, and like the multiple asterisks seeding the night sky, it will flourish and take over every grassy bank in town. I long to be prolific as the dandelion, spinning pale parachutes of words, claiming new territory by the power of fluff. The stars in their courses have bloomed an unending glory across the heavens, but here in my yard a local constellation prepares to launch multiple, short-lived, radiant coronas to proclaim the new-sprung season. ~Luci Shaw “Dandelion”
This dandelion has long ago surrendered its golden petals, and has reached its crowning stage of dying – the delicate seed-globe must break up now – it gives and gives till it has nothing left.
The hour of this new dying is clearly defined to the dandelion globe: it is marked by detachment. There is no sense of wrenching: it stands ready, holding up its little life, not knowing when or where or how the wind that bloweth where it listeth may carry it away.
It holds itself no longer for its own keeping, only as something to be given; a breath does the rest… ~Lillias Trotter from “Parables of the Cross”
It is spring: soon a field of new dandelions will stand ready in full-puff; their seeds detach as I walk through, flying to their next life.
My own readiness feels very much like the peak of labor in childbirth, a moment feeling as if time has stopped – an inevitability that one can never go back to the way things were.
This “crowning” of the new life as it emerges means the surrender and emptying of the old life.
So, like the dandelion, I turn my face full on to the breeze, giving and releasing, until I have nothing left.
Only then – only then – is there a moment of detachment, a flying to whatever is next, leading me to eternity.
Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means. 2 Corinthians 8:11
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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As through a long-abandoned half-standing house only someone lost could find,
which, with its paneless windows and sagging crossbeams, its hundred crevices in which a hundred creatures hoard and nest,
seems both ghost of the life that happened there and living spirit of this wasted place,
wind seeks and sings every wound in the wood that is open enough to receive it,
shatter me God into my thousand sounds.
~Christian Wiman “Small Prayer in a Hard Wind”from Every Riven Thing
the same abandoned school house near Rapalje, Montana a few years later, this photo by Joel DeWaard
May I, though sagging and gray, perilously leaning, be porous enough to allow life’s gusts to blow through me without pushing me over in a heap.
The wind may fill my every crack, crevice, and defect, causing me to sing out.
Someday, when I do shatter, toppling over into pieces into the ground, it will be amidst a mosaic of praises.
photo by Joel DeWaard
‘I am not a prophet. I am a farmer; the land has been my livelihood since my youth.’ If someone asks, ‘What are these wounds on your body?’ they will answer, ‘The wounds I was given at the house of my friends.’ Zechariah 13: 5-6
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. Isaiah 53:5
photo by Joel DeWaard
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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Now I become myself. It’s taken Time, many years and places; I have been dissolved and shaken, Worn other people’s faces, Now to stand still, to be here, Feel my own weight and density!
All fuses now, falls into place From wish to action, word to silence, My work, my love, my time, my face Gathered into one intense Gesture of growing like a plant. Now there is time and Time is young. Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun! ~May Sarton from “Now I Become Myself”
My grade school took part in an educational experiment in the early 1960’s. It was one of the first schools to mainstream special needs children into “regular” classrooms. At that time, the usual approach was to put kids with disabilities in separate rooms, if not entirely separate schools.
During those years, the average class size for a grade school teacher was 32-35 kids, with no teacher’s aides, rare parent volunteers, (except for field trips and room mothers who threw the holiday parties) and no medications or special accommodations for ADHD or dyslexia. I’m not sure how teachers coped with nearly three dozen noisy disruptive kids, but somehow they managed to teach in spite of the obstacles. Adding in children with mental and physical challenges without additional adult help must have been very difficult.
So some kids got recruited to help out the kids with disabilities. It helped the teacher by creating a buddy system for the special needs kids who might need help with class work or who might have difficulty getting around.
I was assigned to Michael so our desks were side by side for the year. He was a thin little boy with cerebral palsy and hearing aids, thick glasses hooked with a wide band around the back of his head, and spastic muscles never going where he wanted them to go. He could not remain still, try as he might. He walked independently with some difficulty, mostly on his tiptoes because of his shortened leg tendons, frequently falling when he got going too quickly. His thick orthopedic shoes with leg braces would trip him up. His hands were intermittently in a grip of contracted muscles, and his face was always contorting and grimacing. He drooled a lot, so perpetually carried a Kleenex in his hand to catch the drips of spit that ran out of his mouth and dropped on his desk, threatening to spoil his coloring and writing papers.
His speech consisted of all vowels, as his tongue couldn’t quite connect with his teeth or palate to sound out the consonants, so it took some time and patience to understand what he said. He could write with great effort, gripping the pencil awkwardly in his tight palm and found he could communicate better at times on paper than by talking.
I made sure he had help to finish assignments if his muscles were too tight to write, and I learned his speech so I could interpret for the teacher. He was brave and bright, with a finer mind than most of the kids in our class. He loved a good joke and his little body would shudder as he roared his appreciation. I was always impressed at how he expressed himself and how little bitterness he had about his limitations. He was the most articulate inarticulate person I had ever met.
As Michael appeared around the corner of the grade school building every morning, he would walk quickly in his careful tip-toe cadence, arms flailing, shoes scuffing, raising up dust with each step. He would wave at me and call out my name in his indecipherable voice.
Once, as he approached, a group of kids playing tag swooped past him, purposely a little too close, spinning him off his feet like a top and onto the ground. Glasses askew, he lay momentarily still, and realizing I was needed, I ran to help him up. Despite all he endured, I never saw Michael cry, not even once, not even when he fell down hard. When he got angry or frustrated, he’d get very quiet. His muscles would tense up so much he would go into even greater spasms.
I had no tolerance for anyone who bullied him. I could see the pain in his grimacing face. Although he would give me a huge toothy smile of thanks, his eyes, as usual, said what his mouth could not. Michael knew I needed him as much as he needed me. I relished my new role as the life preserver thrown to him as he struggled to stay afloat in a sea of classroom hostility.
There were many times when I resented being teased by other students about Michael being my boyfriend. Although he would blush bright red when he heard that, Michael really had become a good friend, who just happened to be a boy.
The following academic year, he moved to another school district, so I never saw Michael again. However, I heard him on local radio six years later, reading an essay he’d written for the county Voice of Democracy contest on what it meant to be a free citizen. His essay was one of the top three award winners that year. I was amazed at how understandable his speaking voice had become.
Years later, I went on to medical school, learning from patients who lived with even far greater limitations than Michael. I realized that my initial training in compassionate care had been as I sat by his side helping him navigate 5th grade. He showed me how important it was to take the time to understand his voice and his heart when others would or could not.
I didn’t appreciate it then as I do now, but he taught me far more than I ever taught him: patience, perseverance and respect for the journey through obstacles rather than focusing just on the destination.
He helped me surpass my own less visible limitations. I was his special friend – one who just happened to be a girl.
So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. Galatians 6:9
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? ~John Stott from “The Cross of Christ”
With all that happens daily in this disordered world, in order to even walk out the door in the morning, I fall back on what we are told in God’s Word, in 365 different scripture verses for each and every day of the year:
Fear not.
Do not be overwhelmed with evil but overcome evil with good.
And so – we must overcome — despite our fears in this world of pain.
As demonstrated by the anointing of Jesus’ feet by Mary of Bethany, we must do what we can to sacrifice for others, to live in such a way that death cannot erase the meaning and significance of a life. We are called to give up our own selfish agendas in order to consider the needs of others.
It is crystal clear from Christ’s example as we observe His journey to the cross next week: we are to cherish life -all lives- even unto death. As Christ Himself forgave those who hated and murdered Him, He forgives us as well.
Our only defense against the evil we witness is God’s offense through His Love. Only God can lead us to Tolkien’s “where everything sad will come untrue”, where we shall live in peace, walk hand in hand, no longer alone, no longer afraid, no longer shedding tears of grief and sorrow, but tears of relief and joy.
No longer overcome by evil but overcome with goodness, all to God’s glory.
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
The Lord our God is good The Lord our God is good Full of kindness and compassion Merciful and just The Lord our God is good Who else knows our deepest pain Bears it as his own Finds us in our naked shame, Clothes and brings us home Who takes his inheritance And gives it all away Welcomes guests to feast with him Who never can repay
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