Perhaps she came down for the apples, or was flushed out by the saws powering the far woods, or was simply lost, or was crossing one open space for another.
She was a figure approaching, a presence outside a kitchen window, framed by the leafless apple trees, the stiff blueberry bushes, the after-harvest corn, the just-before-rain sky,
a shape only narrow bones could hold, turning its full face upward, head tilted to one side, as if to speak.
Everything changing faster than we can respond: loss of jobs, research halting mid-study, inconsistency abounds, families shattered, uncertainty prevails.
What happened to of the people, by the people, for the people rather than dictated by just a few
We are so lost, how to find our way back to caring for the poor, the weak, the vulnerable with a spirit of commitment, compassion and sacrifice.
For God alone – no one else – remains our strength and shield. Lost and afraid, we want our lives back.
We need His Refuge where we may rest. We seek Sanctuary from this darkness, to once again awaken hopeful to a new morning.
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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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To invite Jesus to cleanse the temple of our hearts is not to ask for guilt and shame. It is to ask for healing. The same Lord who overturned tables did so not to destroy and humiliate, but to reclaim and restore. He interrupts only that which obstructs. He removes only that which hinders life and worship. His cleansing is never punitive; it is always redemptive. ~Scott Sauls from “What Would Jesus Overturn in Your Life?”
To live coram Deo is to live one’s entire life in the presence of God, under the authority of God, to the glory of God. To live in the presence of God is to understand that whatever we are doing and wherever we are doing it, we are acting under the gaze of God.
There is no place so remote that we can escape His penetrating gaze. To live all of life coram Deo is to live a life of integrity. It is a life of wholeness that finds its unity and coherency in the majesty of God.
Our lives are to be living sacrifices, oblations offered in a spirit of adoration and gratitude.
A fragmented life is a life of disintegration. It is marked by inconsistency, disharmony, confusion, conflict, contradiction, and chaos. Coram Deo … before the face of God. …a life that is open before God. …a life in which all that is done is done as to the Lord. …a life lived by principle, not expediency; by humility before God, not defiance. ~R.C. Sproulfrom “What Does “coram Deo” mean?”
We cannot escape His gaze…all of us, all colors, shapes and sizes… Created in His image, imago dei, so He looks at us as His reflections in the mirror of the world.
What we do, how we speak, how we treat others reflects the face of God. Jesus is the embodied temple, bringing His sacrifice to the people, rather than people coming to the temple with their sacrifices.
I cringe to think how we hide from His gaze. All I see around me and within me is: inconsistency, dishonesty, disharmony, confusion, conflict, contradiction, and chaos.
Everywhere, everyone is saying: only I know what is best.
We call hypocrisy on one another, holding fast to moral high ground when the reality is: we drown together in the mud of our mutual guilt and lack of humility. All that we have done to others, we have done to God Himself.
It is time for us to be on our knees asking for cleansing, for the temples of our hearts to be overturned, our corruption scattered.
Jesus comes to cleanse, repair, reclaim and restore – us.
Kind of takes one’s breath away.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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VERSE 1 It is not death to die To leave this weary road And join the saints who dwell on high Who’ve found their home with God It is not death to close The eyes long dimmed by tears And wake in joy before Your throne Delivered from our fears CHORUS O Jesus, conquering the grave Your precious blood has power to save Those who trust in You Will in Your mercy find That it is not death to die VERSE 2 It is not death to fling Aside this earthly dust And rise with strong and noble wing To live among the just It is not death to hear The key unlock the door That sets us free from mortal years T To praise You evermore Original words by Henri Malan (1787-1864). Translated by George Bethune (1847)
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 Whispering in your wings
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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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‘Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.’ is. xlv. 15.
God, though to Thee our psalm we raise No answering voice comes from the skies; To Thee the trembling sinner prays But no forgiving voice replies; Our prayer seems lost in desert ways, Our hymn in the vast silence dies.
We see the glories of the earth But not the hand that wrought them all: Night to a myriad worlds gives birth, Yet like a lighted empty hall Where stands no host or door or hearth Vacant creation’s lamps appal.
We guess; we clothe Thee, unseen King, With attributes we deem are meet; Each in his own imagining Sets up a shadow in Thy seat; Yet know not how our gifts to bring, Where seek thee with unsandalled feet.
And still th’unbroken silence broods While ages and while aeons run, As erst upon chaotic floods The Spirit hovered ere the sun Had called the seasons’ changeful moods And life’s first germs from death had won.
And still th’abysses infinite Surround the peak from which we gaze. Deep calls to deep and blackest night Giddies the soul with blinding daze That dares to cast its searching sight On being’s dread and vacant maze.
And Thou art silent, whilst Thy world Contends about its many creeds And hosts confront with flags unfurled And zeal is flushed and pity bleeds And truth is heard, with tears impearled, A moaning voice among the reeds.
My hand upon my lips I lay; The breast’s desponding sob I quell; I move along life’s tomb-decked way And listen to the passing bell Summoning men from speechless day To death’s more silent, darker spell.
Oh! till Thou givest that sense beyond, To shew Thee that Thou art, and near, Let patience with her chastening wand Dispel the doubt and dry the tear; And lead me child-like by the hand; If still in darkness not in fear.
Speak! whisper to my watching heart One word—as when a mother speaks Soft, when she sees her infant start, Till dimpled joy steals o’er its cheeks. Then, to behold Thee as Thou art, I’ll wait till morn eternal breaks. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Nondum (Not Yet)”
There is great darkness right now in our country’s leadership, spilling shadows over the rest of the world.
Each day brings a new proclamation of presumed earthly power, exacting great cost to those who are most vulnerable and powerless.
Though it may seem God is silent, He is not.
God broods, as do parents who protect their offspring. He hears the cries of His people who are harmed and helpless. He will respond, and His children understand we are still in the “not yet” of His kingdom on earth, and we wait for His return to set all things right.
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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The first time I saw him it was just a flash of gray ringed tail disappearing into autumn night mist as I opened the back door to pour kibble into the empty cat dish on the porch: just another stray cat among many who visit the farm.
A few stay.
So he did, keeping a distance in the shadows under the trees, a gray tabby with white nose and bib, serious yet skittish, watching me as I moved about feeding dogs, cats, birds, horses, creeping to the cat dish only when the others drifted away.
There was something in the way he held his head, an oddly forward ear; a stilted swivel of the neck. I startled him one day as he ate his fill at the dish.
He ran, the back of his head flashing red, scalp completely gone.
Not oozing, nor something new, but recent. A nearly mortal scar from an encounter with coyote, or eagle or bobcat. This cat thrived despite trauma and pain, tissue still raw, trying to heal.
He had chosen to live; life had chosen him.
My first thought was to trap him, to put him humanely to sleep to end his suffering, in truth to end my distress at seeing him every day, envisioning florid flesh even as he hunkered invisible in the shadowlands of the barnyard.
Yet the scar did not keep him from eating well or licking clean his pristine fur.
As much as I want to look away, to avoid confronting his mutilation, I always greet him from a distance, a nod to his maimed courage, through wintry icy blasts and four foot snow, through spring rains and summer heat with flies.
His wounds remain unhealed, a reminder of his inevitable fate.
I never will stroke that silky fur, or feel his burly purr, assuming he still knows how, but still feed his daily fill, as he feeds my need to know: the value of a life so broken, each breath taken filled with sacred air.
The depth of his wounds shows how much he still bleeds.
This is my only close photo of our wounded farm guest
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness , is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken. But this is the first and great commandment nonetheless. Even in the wilderness- especially in the wilderness – you shall love him. ~Frederick Buechnerfrom A Room Called Remember
The wilderness might be a distant peak far removed from anything or anyone, where there is bleak darkness.
The wilderness might be the darkest corner of the human heart we keep far away from anything and anyone.
From my kitchen window on a clear day, I sometimes see a distant mountain wilderness, when the cloud cover moves away.
During decades of perching on a round stool in clinic exam rooms, I was given access to hearts lost in the wilderness many times every day.
Sometimes the commandment to love God seems impossible. We are too self-sufficient, too broken, too frightened, too wary to trust God with our love and devotion.
Recognizing a diagnosis of wilderness of the heart is straight forward: despair, discouragement,disappointment, lack of gratitude, lack of hope.
The treatment is to allow the healing power of the Father who sent His own Son to navigate the wilderness in our place.
He reaches for our bitter, wary, and broken hearts that beat within our bodies, to bring us home from the dark wilderness of our souls.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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