Evening, and all the birds In a chorus of shimmering sound Are easing their hearts of joy For miles around.
The air is blue and sweet, The few first stars are white,– Oh let me like the birds Sing before night. ~Sara Teasdale “Dusk in June”
I am half agony, half hope… ~Jane Austen from Persuasion
Sure on this shining night Of star made shadows round, Kindness must watch for me This side the ground. The late year lies down the north. All is healed, all is health. High summer holds the earth. Hearts all whole. Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand’ring far alone Of shadows on the stars. ~James Agee “Sure on this Shining Night”
This time of uncertainty holds the earth captive; our hearts fearful of war in a shimmering summer dusk.
I weep for wonder in hope for a healing peace, at this time, at this place, singing under these stars.
May we rest assured, on another shining night, sometime, we know not when, we know not how, we will lay down arms and live without threat of war.
Amen and Amen.
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knotting the tops of bunched handfuls the drooping heads tied together.
My seven siblings and I sheltered ourselves
inside these labyrinths in a galaxy of grasses. ~Heather Cahoon “Shelter”
As a child I enjoyed exploring our hay field to find the tallest patch of grass. There, like a dog turning circles before a nap, I’d trample down the waving stems that stretched up almost to my eyes, and create a grass nest, cozy enough for just me.
I’d lie down in this green fortress, gazing up at the blue sky, and watch the clouds drift lazily by. I’d suck on a hollow stem or two, to savor the bitter grass juice. Scattered around my grassy cage, attached to the broad grass stems, would be innumerable clumps of white foam. I’d tease out the hidden green spittle bugs with their little black eyes from their white frothy bubble encasement. I hoped to watch them make foam, to actually see them in action doing what they do best, but they would leap away.
The grassy nest was a time of retreat from the world by being buried inside the world. I felt protected, surrounded, encompassed and free –at least until I heard my mother calling for me from the house, or a rain shower started, driving me to run for cover, or my dog found me by sniffing out my green path.
It has been years since I hid in a grass fort or tried to defroth spit bugs. I am overdue, I’m sure.
Over twenty years ago, on a spring morning, I was driving into work on one of our county’s rural two-lane roads, savoring a grumbly mood and wishing I was heading somewhere else on a bright and sunny day. My mind was busy with the anticipation of the workday when I noticed a slight shift to the right over the fog line by the driver in the car ahead of me. Suddenly I realized why, in a moment of stark clarity.
An empty gravel truck and trailer rig was approaching as it came over a hill, its driver seemingly unaware his huge trailer was starting to whip back and forth behind him. As the huge rig approached me, the trailer was coming back to my side of the road at a nearly ninety degree angle from the truck, filling up the entire lane in front of me.
I had no choice but to run my car off the road into a grassy field to avoid being hit head-on by the still-attached but runaway trailer. Only by chance were there no deep ditches at that particular point in the road. My car dove right into tall grass, enfolded in a shroud of green, shielding me from a tangle of metal and certain death.
It was a near miss, but a miss nonetheless.
I sat still for a moment, gathering my wits and picking up what was left of my frayed nerves from where they been strewn about. All I could see in front and around me was grass, just like my little childhood fortresses.
It was very tempting to stay right there, hidden away in the safety of the grass, as if I had been a spittle bug wrapped in a foam cocoon, my heart racing with the relief of still being alive.
Instead I was able to drive out of the grassy field, and go on to work to do what I had been grumbling about that day, abruptly made aware of the privilege of having a life to live, a job to go to, and a grassy field perfectly situated to swallow me up into safety.
It was only later, as I called my husband about what had taken place, that I wept. Until then, I couldn’t stop smiling. I felt encased in liquid bubble wrap, foam-protected by One bigger and stronger, in whose image I had been made.
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People have said, “Don’t cry” to other people for years and years, and all it has ever meant is, “I’m too uncomfortable when you show your feelings. Don’t cry.” I’d rather have them say, “Go ahead and cry. I’m here to be with you.”
I cry easily, always have. Certain songs and hymns will trigger tears, and of course, any rituals surrounding baptisms, funerals, weddings, and graduations.
Tears don’t bother me, whether they are my own or someone else’s. My medical office and exam rooms were always well- stocked with boxes of tissues as a safe place to cry it out.
One of my routine mental health history questions was “what will bring tears to your eyes – dicing onions doesn’t count?”
Some patients would look at me blankly, not sure they ever remember crying, and others will weep at the mere suggestion.
No matter what the reason for someone’s tears, it is a powerful outward expression of human feeling, like a laugh or a grimace of pain. I watch for those cues and sometimes feel their emotion as surely as if it were my own.
Even tears can bring peace – like a river.
I am with you. And always intend to be.
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Here at the centre everything is still Before the stir and movement of our grief Which bears it’s pain with rhythm, ritual, Beautiful useless gestures of relief. So they anoint the skin that cannot feel Soothing his ruined flesh with tender care, Kissing the wounds they know they cannot heal, With incense scenting only empty air. He blesses every love that weeps and grieves And makes our grief the pangs of a new birth. The love that’s poured in silence at old graves Renewing flowers, tending the bare earth, Is never lost. In him all love is found And sown with him, a seed in the rich ground. ~Malcolm Guite “Station XIV of the Cross”
The Holy Saturday of our life must be the preparation for Easter, the persistent hope for the final glory of God. The virtue of our daily life is the hope which does what is possible and expects God to do the impossible. To express it somewhat paradoxically, but nevertheless seriously: the worst has actually already happened; we exist, and even death cannot deprive us of this. Now is the Holy Saturday of our ordinary life, but there will also be Easter, our true and eternal life. ~Karl Rahner “Holy Saturday” in The Great Church Year
I said to my mind, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; yet there is faith But the faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing. ~T. S. Eliot, from “East Coker” The Four Quartets
The happy ending has never been easy to believe in. After the Crucifixion the defeated little band of disciples had no hope, no expectation of Resurrection. Everything they believed in had died on the cross with Jesus. The world was right, and they had been wrong. Even when the women told the disciples that Jesus had left the stone-sealed tomb, the disciples found it nearly impossible to believe that it was not all over. The truth was, it was just beginning. Madeleine L’Engle from “Waiting for Judas” in Plough Magazine
This in-between day after all had gone so wrong: the rejection, the denials, the trumped-up charges, the beatings, the burden, the jeering, the thorns, the nails, the thirst, the despair of being forsaken.
This in-between day before all will go so right: the forgiveness and compassion, the grace and sacrifice, the debt paid in full, the immovable stone rolled away, our name on His lips, our hearts burning to hear His words.
What does it take to move the stone? When it is an effort to till the untillable, creating a place where simple seed can drop, be covered and sprout and thrive, it takes muscle and sweat and blisters and tears.
What does it take to move the stone? When it is a day when no one will speak out of fear, the silent will be moved to cry out the truth, heard and known and never forgotten.
What does it take to move the stone? When it is a day when all had given up, gone behind locked doors in grief.
When two came to tend the dead, there would be no dead to tend.
Only a gaping hole left Only an empty tomb Only a weeping weary silence broken by Love calling our name and we turn to greet Him as if hearing it for the first time.
We cannot imagine what is to come in the dawn tomorrow as the stone lifted and rolled, giving way so our separation is bridged, darkness overwhelmed by light, the crushed and broken rising to dance, and inexplicably, from the waiting stillness He stirs and we, finding death emptied, greet Him with trembling and are forever moved, just like the stone.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? 2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me. 15 My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.
16 Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet. 17 All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. 18 They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.
19 But you, Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me. ~Psalm 22: 1-2, 14-19
his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness— so he will sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him. For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand. Isaiah 52: 13-15
When I was wounded whether by God, the devil, or myself —I don’t know yet which— it was seeing the sparrows again and clumps of clover, after three days, that told me I hadn’t died. When I was young, all it took were those sparrows, those lush little leaves, for me to sing praises, dedicate operas to the Lord. But a dog who’s been beaten is slow to go back to barking and making a fuss over his owner —an animal, not a person like me who can ask: Why do you beat me? Which is why, despite the sparrows and the clover, a subtle shadow still hovers over my spirit. May whoever hurt me, forgive me. ~Adelia Prado “Divine Wrath” translated from BrazilianPortuguese by Ellen Doré Watson
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“My God, My God,” goes Psalm 22, “hear me, why have you forsaken me?”
This is the anguish all we of Godforsaken heart know well. But hear the revelation to which Christ directs us, further in the same psalm:
For He has not despised nor scorned the beggar’s supplication, Nor has He turned away His face from me; And when I cried out to Him, He heard me.
He hears us, and he knows, because he has suffered as one Godforsaken. Which means that you and I, even in our darkest hours, are not forsaken. Though we may hear nothing, feel nothing, believe nothing, we are not forsaken, and so we need not despair.
And that is everything.
That is Good Friday and it is hope, it is life in this darkened age, and it is the life of the world to come. ~Tony Woodlief from “We are Not Forsaken”
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Emmett Till’s mother speaking over the radio
She tells in a comforting voice what it was like to touch her dead boy’s face,
how she’d lingered and traced the broken jaw, the crushed eyes–
the face that badly beaten, disfigured— before confirming his identity.
And then she compares his face to the face of Jesus, dying on the cross.
This mother says no, she’d not recognize her Lord, for he was beaten far, far worse
than the son she loved with all her heart. For, she said, she could still discern her son’s curved earlobe,
but the face of Christ was beaten to death by the whole world. ~Richard Jones “The Face” fromBetween Midnight and Dawn
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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
Strangely enough~ it is the nail, not the hammer, that fastens us together~ becoming the glue, the security, the permanence of solid foundation and strong supports, or protecting roof.
The hammer is only a tool to pound in the nail to where it binds so tightly; the nail can’t blend in or be forgotten, where the hole it leaves behind is a forever wounded reminder of what the hammer has done, yet, how thoroughly the hammer, and we, are forgiven.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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…having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love. John 13:1
What e’er the soul has felt or suffered long, Oh, heart! this one thing should not be forgot: Christ washed the feet of Judas. ~George Marion McClellan from “The Feet of Judas” in The Book of American Negro Poetry 1922
Here is the source of every sacrament, The all-transforming presence of the Lord, Replenishing our every element Remaking us in his creative Word.
For here the earth herself gives bread and wine, The air delights to bear his Spirit’s speech, The fire dances where the candles shine, The waters cleanse us with His gentle touch.
And here He shows the full extent of love To us whose love is always incomplete, In vain we search the heavens high above, The God of love is kneeling at our feet.
Though we betray Him, though it is the night. He meets us here and loves us into light. ~Malcolm Guite “Maundy Thursday”
May the power of your love, Lord Christ, fiery and sweet as honey, so absorb our hearts as to withdraw them from all that is under heaven. Grant that we may be ready to die for love of your love, as you died for love of our love. ~St. Francis of Assisi
On Maundy Thursday, this is how to love Jesus’s love:
No arguing over who is the greatest. No hiding dirty feet needing washing. No making promises we don’t keep. No holding back the most precious of gifts. No falling asleep when asked to keep watch. No selling out with a kiss. No drawing of swords. No turning and running away. No lying and denying. No covering up our face and identity. No looking back. No clinging to the comforts of the world.
But of course I fail again and again when I’m fearful. My heart resists leaving behind the familiar.
Plucked from the crowd, we must pick up and carry His load (which is, of course, our load) for Him. Now is our turn to hold on and not let go, as if life depends on it. Which it does — requiring no nails.
The fire of His love leaves our sin in ashes. The cleansing of His sacrifice washes us. The food of His body nurtures our souls.
From nurture and washing and ashes rises new life: Love of His love for our love.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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Lyrics: Angels where you soar up to God’s own light take my own lost bird on your hearts tonight and as grief once more mounts to heaven and sings let my love be heard
Lyrics: I, your Lord and Master, Now become your servant. I who made the moon and stars Will kneel to wash your feet. This is My commandment: To love as I have loved you.
Kneel to wash each other’s feet As I have done for you. All the world will know You are My disciples By the love that you offer, The kindness you show. You have heard the voice of God In the words that I have spoken. You beheld Heaven’s glory And have seen the face of God.
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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”
When Jesus wept, the falling tear in mercy flowed beyond all bound; when Jesus groaned, a trembling fear seized all the guilty world around. ~William Billings
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 19:41-42
Commencing this holy week of remembrance, knowing how our world is in a terrible disarray, too many sleeping in the street, some in graves, many grieving losses, all wondering what comes next.
On this journey, we face our own fears of vulnerability and mortality, these days when thorns overwhelm emerging blossoms~~
To remember what He did this week long ago, and still does today 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 us and moans 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.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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So it is ourselves that we must spread under Christ’s feet, not coats or lifeless branches or shoots of trees, matter which wastes away and delights the eye only for a few brief hours. But we have clothed ourselves with Christ’s grace, with the whole Christ– “for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ”— so let us spread ourselves like coats under his feet. ~Andrew of Crete, 8th century bishop
This child through David’s city Shall ride in triumph by; The palm shall strew its branches, And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry, Though heavy, dull, and dumb, And lie within the roadway To pave his kingdom come.
Yet he shall be forsaken, And yielded up to die; The sky shall groan and darken, And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry For stony hearts of men: God’s blood upon the spearhead, God’s love refused again.
But now, as at the ending, The low is lifted high; The stars shall bend their voices, And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry In praises of the child By whose descent among us The worlds are reconciled. ~Richard Wilbur from “A Christmas Hymn”
Castlerigg Stone Circle in Cumbria
When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” Luke 19: 37-44
Feeling heavy, dull and dumb, I am convinced I’m no more than a simple rock among a multitude of rocks~ inconsequential and immobile, trod upon and paved over, forgettable and forgotten.
I might believe there exists no pulse in my stony heart.
I might believe I am incapable of love if I turn away from this God descending to walk the same humble ground where I lie.
Yet even the low are lifted high by His descent– every stone, even the dumb and lifeless, shall cry out in community with Him, even the silent will find a voice to praise.
Even my own voice, meager and anemic, shall be heard.
I am no longer forgotten. In fact, never have been forgotten.
So hard to reconcile- if the stones have known all along, so should I.
So must I.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. Whathours, O what black hours we have spent This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went! And moremust, in yet longer light’s delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me; Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see The lost are like this, and their scourge to be As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “I wake and feel the fell of dark”
Surfacing to the street from a thirty two hour hospital shift usually means my eyes blink mole-like, adjusting to searing daylight after being too long in darkened windowless halls. This particular January day is different. As the doors open, I am immersed in a subdued gray Seattle afternoon, with horizontal rain soaking my scrubs.
Finally remembering where I had parked my car in pre-dawn dark the day before, I start the ignition, putting the windshield wipers on full speed. I merge onto the freeway, pinching myself to stay awake long enough to reach my apartment and my pillow.
The freeway is a flowing river current of head and tail lights. Semitrucks toss up tsunami waves cleared briefly by my wipers frantically whacking back and forth.
Just ahead in the lane to my right, a car catches my eye — it looks just like my Dad’s new Buick. I blink to clear my eyes and my mind, switching lanes to get behind. The license plate confirms it is indeed my Dad, oddly 100 miles from home in the middle of the week. I smiled, realizing he and Mom have probably planned to surprise me by taking me out for dinner.
I decide to surprise them first, switching lanes to their left and accelerating up alongside. As our cars travel side by side in the downpour, I glance over to my right to see if I can catch my Dad’s eye through streaming side windows. He is looking away to the right at that moment, obviously in conversation. It is then I realize something is amiss. When my Dad looks back at the road, he is smiling in a way I have never seen before. There are arms wrapped around his neck and shoulder, and a woman’s auburn head is snuggled into his chest.
My mother’s hair is gray.
My initial confusion turns instantly to fury. Despite the rivers of rain obscuring their view, I desperately want them to see me. I think about honking, I think about pulling in front of them so my father would know I have seen and I know. I think about ramming them with my car so that we’d perish all, unrecognizable, in an explosive storm-soaked mangle.
At that moment, my father glances over at me and our eyes meet across the lanes. His face is a mask of betrayal, bewilderment and then shock, and as he tenses, she straightens up and looks at me quizzically.
I can’t bear to look any longer.
I leave them behind, speeding beyond, splashing them with my wake. Every breath burns my lungs and pierces my heart. I can not distinguish whether the rivers obscuring my view are from my eyes or my windshield.
Somehow I made it home to my apartment, my heart still pounding in my ears. The phone rings and remains unanswered.
I throw myself on my bed, bury my wet face in my pillow and pray for sleep without dreams, without secrets, without lies, without the burden of knowing a truth I alone now knew and wished I didn’t..
Postscript: I didn’t tell anyone what I saw that day. My father never asked. He divorced my mother, and was remarried quickly, my mother and two families shattered as a result. Ten years later, his second wife died due to a relentless cancer, and he returned to my mother, asking her forgiveness and wanting to remarry. Within months, he too was diagnosed with cancer and Mom nursed him through his treatment, remission, recurrence and then hospice.
We became a family again, not the same as before, yet put back together for good reason – forgiving and forgiven.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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