In the high woods that crest our hills, Upon a steep, rough slope of forest ground, Where few flowers grow, sweet blooms today I found Of the Autumn Crocus, blowing pale and fair. Dim falls the sunlight there; And a mild fragrance the lone thicket fills.
Languidly curved, the long white stems Their purple flowers’ gold treasure scarce display: Lost were their leaves since in the distant spring,
Their February sisters showed so gay. Roses of June, ye too have followed fleet! Forsaken now, and shaded as by thought, As by the human shade of thought and dreams, They bloom ‘mid the dark wood, whose air has wrought With what soft nights and mornings of still dew! Into their slender petals that clear hue, Like paleness in fresh cheeks; a thing On earth, I vowed, ne’er grew More delicately pure, more shyly sweet.
Child of the pensive autumn woods! So lovely, though thou dwell obscure and lone, And though thy flush and gaiety be gone; Say, among flowers of the sad, human mind, Where shall I ever find So rare a grace? in what shy solitudes? ~Robert Laurence Binyon “Autumn Crocus”
The late September emergence of autumn crocus is always sudden, rising up near the equinox in the shade of spent peony bushes.
These rare blooms: tall, tender, bold, and frail, their incubation triggered by retreating light from above, unlike their springtime cousins emerging through melting snow.
The autumn crocus waits with thoughtful temerity, summoned forth from the soil to remind us the end of summer is not the end of them or us.
A luminous gift of hope and beauty borne from a humble bulb; plain and only soil-adorned.
Slowly unfurling on a pale leggy stem, the tender lavender petals peel back to reveal golden crowns of saffron, brazenly blooming when all else is dying back.
Vulnerable to blustery wind and heavy rains, they easily wilt, crushed, deeply bruised purple – under the Sun’s reflection made manifest; returning defeated, inglorious, fallen, to dust.
Yet we know – they remind us: they (and we) will rise again.
…we know what is coming behind the crocus. The spring comes slowly down this way; but the great thing is that the corner has been turned. . . It remains with us to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer. C.S. Lewis from God in the Dock
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Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes, Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour; And eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet give you a Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder Majestic – as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! – These things, these things were here and but the beholder Wanting; which two when they once meet, The heart rears wings bold and bolder And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Hurrahing in Harvest”
This poem is (in Hopkin’s own words) “the outcome of half an hour of extreme enthusiasm as I walked home alone one day from fishing in the [River] Elwy.”
This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight; The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves; The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves, And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows. Under a tree in the park, Two little boys, lying flat on their faces, Were carefully gathering red berries To put in a pasteboard box.
Some day there will be no war, Then I shall take out this afternoon And turn it in my fingers, And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate, And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves. To-day I can only gather it And put it into my lunch-box, For I have time for nothing But the endeavour to balance myself Upon a broken world. ~Amy Lowell from “September 1918”
There is no point in seeing without responding; there is no way to respond without seeing.
Christian life and practice require both faith (the sight of the heart) and works (the lurch of the heart toward him in obedience). ~Kathleen Mulhern from “A Christ Sighting” from Dry Bones
Am I the only one who awoke this morning praying today might be a day of healing between peoples, when the barbarous becomes beautiful and we seek to become balanced rather than broken?
A day of no drone missiles being launched, no threats of annihilation and winner takes all, no one gunned down in the street, no vehicles used as weapons, no harsh and angry words spoken, no child misused, no one sold into slavery, no one overdosing, abandoned, homeless and starving.
Am I the only one who awakes and only seeks to watch the clouds to praise the heavens to see the leaves turn color to take out this one day and taste it and find that it is good, then put it away for self-keeping to share when and if I find someone else as hungry for grace and mercy as I am,
so as to balance myself somehow in the beauty of this world while teetering on its brokenness?
God empties himself into the earth like a cloud. God takes the substance, contours of a man, and keeps them, dying, rising, walking, and still walking wherever there is motion. Annie Dillard from “Feast Days” in Tickets for a Prayer Wheel
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
What does it feel like to be alive? Living, you stand under a waterfall… It is time pounding at you, time. Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation’s short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.
I had hopes for my rough edges. I wanted to use them as a can opener, to cut myself a hole in the world’s surface, and exit through it. ~Annie Dillard from An American Childhood
What I have been after all along is not an explanation but a picture. This is the way the world is, altar and cup, lit by the fire from a star that has only begun to die. My rage and shock at the pain and death of individuals of my kind is the old, old mystery, as old as man but forever fresh, and completely unanswerable. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I came here to study hard things – rock mountain and salt sea – and to temper my spirit on their edges.
“Teach me thy ways, O Lord” is, like all prayers, a rash one, and one I cannot but recommend.
The Cascade Range, in these high latitudes, backs almost into the water. There is only a narrow strip, an afterthought of foothills and farms sixty miles wide, between the snowy mountains and the sea. These mountains — Mount Baker and the Sisters and Shuksan, the Canadian Coastal Range and the Olympics on the peninsula — are surely the edge of the known and comprehended world….
That they bear their own unimaginable masses and weathers aloft, holding them up in the sky for anyone to see plain, makes them, as Chesterton said of the Eucharist, only the more mysterious by their very visibility and absence of secrecy. ~Annie Dillard from Holy the Firm
Some unwonted, taught pride diverts us from our original intent, which is to explore the neighborhood, view the landscape, to discover at least where it is that we have been so startlingly set down, if we can’t learn why. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
The shadow’s the thing. If I no longer see shadows as “dark marks,”as do the newly sighted, then I see them as making some sort of sense of the light. They give the light distance;they put it in its place. They inform my eyes of my location here, here O Israel, here in the world’s flawed sculpture, here in the flickering shade of the nothingness between me and the light. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
We are here to abet creation and to witness it, to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but we notice each other’s beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to an empty house. ~Annie Dillard from The Meaning of Life (1991 Life Magazine)
But time is one thing we have been given, and we have been given to time. Time gives us a whirl. We keep waking from a dream we can’t recall, looking around in surprise, and lapsing back, for years on end. All I want to do is stay awake, keep my head up, prop my eyes open, with toothpicks, with trees. … You don’t run down the present… You wait for it, empty-handed, and you are filled. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
An infant is a pucker of the earth’s thin skin; so are we. We arise like budding yeasts and break off; we forget our beginnings. A mammal swells and circles and lays him down. You and I have finished swelling; our circling periods are playing out, but we can still leave footprints in a trail whose end we do know. ~Annie Dillard from For the Time Being
The world is wilder in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain or Lazarus. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?
Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts?
Why are we reading, if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage and the hope of meaningfulness, and press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?
What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and which reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered?
Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love?
Annie Dillard passed into glory yesterday at age 81, finally witnessing firsthand the holy and sacred mysteries she pondered in her writings.
Since 1974,I have been indebted to her God-given gifts of observation and unique ability to share precisely perfect words to describe how she felt about what she saw. In 1976, she did a reading locally – I was amazed at herinsistence that we all have the power to open our eyes to this place we have been set down, to witness all that is secret, holy and fleet in our existence…
She indeed left her mark while living, teaching and writing here in Whatcom County for a time nearly fifty years ago…
All the photos on this page are from my collection of pictures I’ve taken here in Whatcom County, as I can imagine this scenery inspired Annie in her writing while she was here.
We are invited by Christ Himself to “come and see.” (John 1:39)
We weren’t conceived by random happenstance –
We are here because we were earnestly needed and wanted, by a power and divinity with a capacity for love and compassion beyond anything we are capable of.
We aren’t a cosmic joke, or random couplings of DNA. We aren’t pawns in the universe’s chess game.
We have the capacity to see the image of God in one another, as well as in the mirror, yet we ignore with our own eyes, His shimmering reflection.
…beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there… ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
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The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are… Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. ~Frederick Buechner in “Wishful Thinking and later” in Beyond Words
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed…
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. -2 Cor 4:8-9, 16-18
I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage …that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened. ~Fyodor Dostoevsky from The Brothers Karamazov
Twenty-five years ago, a day started with bright sun above and ended in tears and bloodshed below.
This is a day for recollection; we live out a remembrance of the torrential red that flowed that day;
A quarter century later, our streets both near and far-away still course with the blood of innocents, so what have we learned from all this?
That terrible day’s edges were so sharp we all bled; still bearing the scars, we need comforting.
So do not be afraid: you are not alone.
We breathe and weep and love as we remember that day, emerging inevitably transformed.
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Day after day, day after still day, The summer has begun to pass away. Starlings at twilight fly clustered and call, And branches bend, and leaves begin to fall. The meadow and the orchard grass are mown, And the meadowlark’s house is cut down.
The little lantern bugs have doused their fires, The swallows sit in rows along the wires. Berry and grape appear among the flowers Tangled against the wall in secret bowers, And cricket now begins to hum the hours Remaining to the passion’s slow procession Down from the high place and the golden session Wherein the sun was sacrificed for us. A failing light, no longer numinous, Now frames the long and solemn afternoons Where butterflies regret their closed cocoons. We reach the place unripe, and made to know As with a sudden knowledge that we go Away forever, all hope of return Cut off, hearing the crackle of the burn- ing blade behind us, and the terminal sound Of apples dropping on the dry ground. ~Howard Nemerov “Summer’s Elegy” from Collected Poems
As far as I can see this autumn haze That spreading in the evening air both ways, Makes the new moon look anything but new, And pours the elm-tree meadow full of blue, Is all the smoke from one poor house alone With but one chimney it can call its own; So close it will not light an early light, Keeping its life so close and out of sight No one for hours has set a foot outdoors So much as to take care of evening chores. The inmates may be lonely women-folk. I want to tell them that with all this smoke They prudently are spinning their cocoon And anchoring it to an earth and moon From which no winter gale can hope to blow it,— Spinning their own cocoon did they but know it. ~Robert Frost “The Cocoon”
The summer ends, and it is time To face another way. Our theme Reversed, we harvest the last row To store against the cold, undo The garden that will be undone. We grieve under the weakened sun To see all earth’s green fountains dried, And fallen all the works of light. You do not speak, and I regret This downfall of the good we sought As though the fault were mine. I bring The plow to turn the shattering Leaves and bent stems into the dark, From which they may return. At work, I see you leaving our bright land, The last cut flowers in your hand. ~Wendell Berry “The Summer Ends” from A Timbered Choir.
I too regret the closed cocoon, so seemingly safe at the time — once launched before being ready, there is no returning.
In this fading, failing light, I feel undone, weepy at harvest, gathering urgently, not wanting anything to go to waste, trying to memorialize it all as it changes.
I part again from you, Summer – your gifts seemed endless until you yourself ended – a reminder that someday, so must I.
photo by Bob Tjoelker
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Thereis something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man… ~Long time equestrian wisdom attributed to many famous riders
Twenty-five years ago today, two days before the world changed forever, I helped organize a gathering of Haflinger horse owners from western Canada and the United States in our nearby town of Lynden, Washington. We enjoyed an annual meet-up at the local fairgrounds to enjoy our horses together for a few days doing breed demonstrations for the public, riding, jumping, dressage, driving in teams, vaulting – a little of everything with our versatile horses.
We received permission from Lynden City Hall to have a Haflinger parade on a quiet Sunday morning while local folks were worshipping in the many churches in town. We wanted to be sure to begin from the fairgrounds after services had started, do a two mile route through town and back to the fairgrounds before the traffic increased later.
It was a remarkable sunny morning of over ninety Haflingers and their people – some riding, driving, or leading their horses — all enjoying the quiet peace of a Sabbath morning in a friendly little town. Some of the owners and their horses had been in local parades in their home towns, but none had the experience of being an “all Haflingers” troop through a downtown.
It all went smoothly without a hitch. Well, actually there were several “hitches” in the parade: carts and wagons being pulled by our golden friends.
Everyone returned safely home before September 11, 2001. Life hasn’t felt as peaceful or calm in the same way ever since. This 2001 Haflinger parade was the one and only time it happened in our part of the world.
This is to remember those few days we spent together — the insides of us enjoying the outsides of our Haflingers.
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Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.
So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair.
The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said,“Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.
Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial.For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”
When the large crowd of the Jews learned that Jesus was there, they came, not only on account of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well,because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus. John 12: 1-11
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. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”
I am a man who has hoped, in time, that his life, when poured out at the end, would say ‘good-good-good-good-good!’ like a gallon jug of the prime local spirit. I am a man of losses, regrets, and griefs. I am an old man full of love. I am a man of faith. But faith is not necessarily, or not soon, a resting place. Faith puts you out on a wide river in a little boat, in the fog, in the dark. Even a man of faith knows that … we’ve all got to go through enough to kill us. ~Wendell Berry from Jayber Crow
She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. Mark 14:8
Last week, it became apparent one warm late summer evening that in the thick bushes lining the front of our farmhouse under our windows, some animal had died.
The stink wafted on the breeze into our bedrooms through our summer-open windows.
The outdoor farm cats and our dog were accounted for, so it must have been a dead squirrel, a raccoon or even a (actually dead) possum, all occasional nighttime visitors to our cat food dish on the nearby front porch.
Trying to find the offending carcass would involve cutting through dense foliage that had been growing over two decades – not an easy task to undertake. So we closed the windows and hoped the smell would dissipate quickly.
Surprisingly, a day later it was mostly gone, much to our relief. It is possible another animal scavenger decided it was worth hauling away. We were most grateful the smell of death was no longer filling our house…
Just the week before this scripture section from the book of John, Martha warned Jesus that opening Lazarus’ tomb would release the inevitable stench of death. Yet when Lazarus was raised, the odor of death was overcome by renewal and restoration.
When Martha’s sister Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with an expensive fragrant oil, normally used in preparation for burial, it fills the entire house with its perfume. Jesus sees it as a harbinger for what is to come in the next week.
His faith in God’s plan means Jesus goes through enough to kill Him.
In this broken world, we live in the smudge and stench of mortal man’s smell of death, yet we are saved by this crushed, dying Savior who pours out a perfume of Himself for us.
Like Mary, let us also do what we can: filling God’s house with His fragrance.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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In gratitude to the writing and wisdom of farmer Wendell Berry who, at age 92, passed through his porch’s dark doorway yesterday 8/31/26
All day he’s shoveled green pine sawdust out of the trailer truck into the chute. From time to time he’s clambered down to even the pile. Now his hair is frosted with sawdust. Little rivers of sawdust pour out of his boots.
I hope in the afterlife there’s none of this stuff he says, while I broom off his jeans, his sweater flocked with granules, his immersed-in-sawdust socks. I hope there’s no bedding, no stalls, no barn
no more repairs to the paddock gate the horses burst through when snow avalanches off the roof. Although the old broodmare, our first foal, is his, horses, he’s fond of saying, make divorces.
…he says let’s walk up to the field and catch the sunset and off we go, a couple of aging fools.
I hope, he says, on the other side there’s a lot less work, but just in case I’m bringing tools. ~Maxine Kumin from “Chores”
photo by Emily Vander Haak
They sit together on the porch, the dark Almost fallen, the house behind them dark. Their supper done with, they have washed and dried The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses, Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two. She sits with her hands folded in her lap, At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak, And when they speak at last it is to say What each one knows the other knows. They have One mind between them, now, that finally For all its knowing will not exactly know Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone. ~Wendell Berry “They Sit Together on the Porch”
If just for a moment, when this world is tilting so far we just might fall off, we pause to look at where we’ve been and get our feet back under us.
The porch is a good place to start: a bridge to what is beyond without leaving the familiar.
Outside, looking square at the unknown, yet still hearing and smelling and tasting the affection that dwells just inside these walls.
What could we want more than to be missed when we step away?
Our voice, our words, our heart, our touch never to be replaced, its absence a hole impossible to fill…
When we are called back inside where Love made us who we are, may the “in between” of time spent on the porch, be even more treasured, because two aging fools sat together there a spell.
front porch
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Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it.
Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”
Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.”
Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone.
And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.”
When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.”
The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth.
Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” John 11:38-44
The man was wholly raised, but not wholly freed. See, here is a living man in the garments of death! That napkin and other grave-clothes were altogether congruous with death, but they were much out of place when Lazarus began again to live. It is a wretched sight to see a living man wearing his shroud.
If the Lord Jesus Christ employed the disciples in relieving Lazarus of his grave-clothes, do you not think he would employ us if we were ready for such work? Innumerable are the instances of souls blessed by human instrumentality… ~Charles Spurgeon from “Unbinding Lazarus”
When the Lord speaks, it will usually produce something that needs to be unwrapped. God’s words are powerful. They create, heal, and restore. They change things in both the visible and invisible realms.
…as we become committed to the discipline of unwrapping, like the bystanders Jesus invited into Lazarus’ miracle story, we’ll be better positioned to participate in the wondrous things Jesus is always doing in the lives of others and the world around us. ~Randy Boldt from “The Discipline of Unwrapping”
After one moment when I bowed my head And the whole world turned over and came upright, And I came out where the old road shone white. I walked the ways and heard what all men said, Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed, Being not unlovable but strange and light; Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite But softly, as men smile about the dead
The sages have a hundred maps to give That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree, They rattle reason out through many a sieve That stores the sand and lets the gold go free: And all these things are less than dust to me Because my name is Lazarus and I live. ~Gilbert Chesterton “The Convert”
Love, take my hand and lead me like the blind, Unbandage me, unwrap me from my fear, Open my eyes, my heart, my soul, my mind. I struggle with these grave clothes, this dark earth, But you are calling ‘Lazarus come forth!’ ~Malcolm Guite from “He who has ears to hear let him hear’
The witnesses were marveling over the miracle of a living, breathing Lazarus, four days dead, stumbling out of the tomb, still wrapped in his graveclothes, in response to Jesus’ shout “Lazarus, come out.”
The next command, spoken to those standing there with their mouths agape, was just as consequential: “Unbind him, and let him go.”
Jesus’ message was clear. This miracle doesn’t end with a stilled heart beating again. It is an ongoing resurrected transformation for the witnesses as well.
What the Lord raises up, the community must unwrap, helping Lazarus move back into life, with support.
We are surrounded every day by those who, like Lazarus, are metaphorically walking in their graveclothes, spiritually dead or dying. They may be a family member or neighbor, they may be living unhoused in the woods down the road, they may be lying overdosed in a city alley. When called back to life, their next step can’t happen until they are unbound from the death-wraps that smother and blind them.
The rest is up to us, their community. Jesus, with only His words, gives new life to the dead. Jesus, with only His words, commands us to make it possible for the living to thrive, unshackled from paralyzing sin, and freed to new life.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother.
So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”
When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him.Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him.When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there.
Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.And he said, “Where have you laid him?”
They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” John 11:17-37
Beauty, to the Japanese of old, held together the ephemeral with the sacred. Cherry blossoms are most beautiful as they fall, and that experience of appreciation lead the Japanese to consider their mortality. Hakanai bi (ephemeral beauty) denotes sadness, and yet in the awareness of the pathos of life, the Japanese found profound beauty.
For the Japanese, the sense of beauty is deeply tragic, tied to the inevitability of death.
Jesus’ tears were also ephemeral and beautiful. His tears remain with us as an enduring reminder of the Savior who weeps. Rather than to despair, though, Jesus’ tears lead the way to the greatest hope of the resurrection. Rather than suicide, Jesus’ tears lead to abundant life. ~Makoto Fujimura
When I read that Jesus weeps as He witnesses the tears of grief of His dear friends, I am comforted.
He understands and feels what we feel, His tears just as plentiful and salty, His feelings of love brimming so fully they must be let go and cannot be held back. He too is overwhelmed by the pathos of His vulnerable and visceral humanity.
Our Jesus who wept with us becomes a promise of ultimate joy.
There is beauty in His rain of ephemeral tears.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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