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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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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I rise today in the power’s strength, invoking the Trinity believing in threeness, confessing the oneness, of creation’s Creator.
I rise today in heaven’s might, in sun’s brightness, in moon’s radiance, in fire’s glory, in lightning’s quickness, in wind’s swiftness, in sea’s depth, in earth’s stability, in rock’s fixity.
I rise today with the power of God to pilot me, God’s strength to sustain me, God’s wisdom to guide me, God’s eye to look ahead for me, God’s ear to hear me, God’s word to speak for me, God’s hand to protect me, God’s way before me, God’s shield to defend me, God’s host to deliver me, from snares of devils, from evil temptations, from nature’s failings, from all who wish to harm me, far or near, alone and in a crowd.
Around me I gather today all these powers against every cruel and merciless force to attack my body and soul.
May Christ protect me today against poison and burning, against drowning and wounding, so that I may have abundant reward; Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me; Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me; Christ to the right of me, Christ to the left of me; Christ in my lying, Christ in my sitting, Christ in my rising; Christ in the heart of all who think of me, Christ on the tongue of all who speak to me, Christ in the eye of all who see me, Christ in the ear of all who hear me.
For to the Lord belongs salvation, and to the Lord belongs salvation and to Christ belongs salvation. May your salvation, Lord, be with us always.
—”Saint Patrick’s Breastplate,” Old Irish, eighth-century prayer.
Six years a slave, and then you slipped the yoke, Till Christ recalled you, through your captors cries! Patrick, you had the courage to turn back, With open love to your old enemies, Serving them now in Christ, not in their chains, Bringing the freedom He gave you to share. You heard the voice of Ireland, in your veins Her passion and compassion burned like fire.
Now you rejoice amidst the three-in-one, Refreshed in love and blessing all you knew, Look back on us and bless us, Ireland’s son, And plant the staff of prayer in all we do: A gospel seed that flowers in belief, A greening glory, coming into leaf. ~Malcolm Guite — A St. Patrick Sonnet
St. Patrick is little remembered for his selfless missionary work in Ireland in the fifth century, but rather has become a caricature of all the drunken silliness of this day. Visiting his grave in Downpatrick, Ireland, just a humble stone on a hill top overlooking the sea, I wondered what he would make of the modern March 17.
He would advise us to be still and know.
He would plant his staff in us and all we do; we would respond by flowering up from the green.
Be still, and know that I am God… Psalm 46:10
Be still and know that I am God. Be still and know that I am. Be still and know. Be still. Be.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
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 promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn.’ The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not. C.S. Lewis ~~writing on suffering in The Problem of Pain
The Christian has never been promised a pain-free existence. No one escapes suffering, no matter how strongly they believe in God. It is what we signed up for.
How could an all-powerful all-knowing God allow suffering, especially in innocent children? This is a standard argument used against the existence of a beneficent God. The reasoning is — if abundant suffering and evil is allowed in the world, no merciful God is in control.
Yet that reasoning sets aside gospel reality: God identifies so strongly with His Creation, He allows His own suffering and death.
He mourns. He weeps. He hurts. He bleeds. He dies. Just like us.
What all-powerful all-knowing God would do that? Our God would, because He is first and foremost a loving God who makes imperfection perfect again. Then He defeats death to ensure our eternal union with Him.
No, there isn’t a “no pain” guarantee –neither God nor even the natural world ever promised that. But only our God promises “no stain” –that we are washed clean for eternity by His shed blood.
In the midst of our sadness and mourning, that is our greatest comfort of all.
For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 2 Corinthians 1:5
I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. John 16:33
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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…the whole experience <of compline> is in some way a touching of the hem of Christ’s garment: something has been given, something disclosed. And the person holding a candle at compline may hear a call, and make a journey, as another stressed woman once did, from touching the hem of Christ’s garment to meeting him face to face.
… just occasionally, it opens into deeper things, on to more ultimate questions. Just occasionally, there is an opening of heart and soul, which in some sense the liturgy itself has made possible; and then it is that, just sometimes, someone takes a few more steps on that journey from the hem of his garment to the light of his countenance. ~Malcolm Guite from Poet’s Corner
Most of us are like that desperate woman hoping for healing by reaching out to touch the hem of His robe – ashamed to be so needy, hoping to go unnoticed, not actually wanting to bother anyone, but still helpless – so very helpless.
He knows when we reach out in desperation; He feels it.
So He lifts us up as we begin our journey to His light – from a touch of His hem to seeing His face.
It starts with reaching out. It starts with taking a few more steps.
And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” And he looked around to see who had done it.But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. 3And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” Mark 5: 30. 32-34
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
Before the ending of the day, Creator of the world, we pray That with Thy wonted favour Thou Wouldst be our guard and keeper now.
From all ill dreams defend our eyes, From nightly fears and fantasies; Tread under foot our ghostly foe That no pollution we may know.
O Father, that we ask be done Through Jesus Christ, thine only Son, Who with the Holy Ghost and Thee Dost live and reign eternally.
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I have seen the sun break through to illuminate a small field for a while, and gone my way and forgotten it. But that was the pearl of great price, the one field that had treasure in it. I realize now that I must give all that I have to possess it. Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you. ~R.S. Thomas “A Bright Field”
The secret of seeing is, then the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought.
The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise.
I return from one walk knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms. I return from the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name.
Litanies hum in my ears; my tongue flaps in my mouth. Ailinon, alleluia! ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing.
I do not know You God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside. ~Flannery O’Connor from A Prayer Journal
Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God… ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I am learning to step aside so my own shadow stops obscuring God’s gift of illumination. I can be so blinded by discouragement, busyness and distraction that I lose sight of God Himself.
I stand in the way and need a push to let the Light shine forth.
Surprise me, dear Lord. Cram this common bush with heaven.
Though I regularly lament in the shadows, help me lift my voice in praise and gratitude for your gift: the pearl of great price you generously hold for me to find each day.
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Matthew 13: 44
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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September. Second-year medical student. An early patient interview at the Massachusetts General Hospital Routine hernia repair planned, not done. Abdomen opened and closed. Filled with disease, cancer.
The patient is fifty-six, a workingman, Irish I sit with him, notice the St. Christopher medal around his neck. Can’t hurt, can it? he laughs. I have become his friend.
I bring him a coloring book picture that shows this thing, this unfamiliar organ that melted beneath our hands at dissection: Pancreas.
Leaving his room, crying, avoiding classmates, I take the back stairs. I find myself locked, coatless in the courtyard outside. ~Kelley Jean White “Pandora”
At seventeen years old, I thought I had things figured out. I had graduated near the top of my senior class, was heading off to college, and felt confident about who I was becoming. I had attended church all my life but my commitment to my faith was actually waning rather than strengthening.
In anticipation of college tuition bills, I took a summer job at a local nursing home for $1.25 an hour as a nurses’ aide. My total training was two days following a more experienced aide on her rounds of feeding, pottying, dressing and undressing, and bathing her elderly patients. Then I was assigned patients of my own and during a typical shift I carried a load of 13 patients. It didn’t take long for me to learn the rhythm of caretaking, and I enjoyed the work and my patients.
One woman in particular remains vivid in my memory 52 years later. Irene was in her 80’s with no nearby family, bedridden with a painful bone disease that had crippled her for a decade or more. She was unable to do any of her own self care but her mind remained sharp and her eyes bright. Her hearty greeting cheered me when I’d come in her room several times a shift to turn her on her egg-crate mattress bed to prevent pressure sores on her hips and shoulders.
The simple act of turning her in her bed was an ordeal beyond imagining – it always hurt her. I felt as though I was impaling her on hundreds of sharp needles.
I would prepare her for the turn by cushioning her little body with pads and pillows, but no matter how careful I was, her brittle bones would crackle and crunch like Rice Crispies cereal with every movement. Tears would flow from her eyes and she’d always call out “Oh Oh Oh Oh” during the process but then once settled in her new position, she’d look up at me and say “thank you, dear, for making that so much easier for me.”
I would nearly weep in gratitude at her graciousness when I could do so little to alleviate her suffering.
Before I’d leave the room, Irene would grab my hand and ask when I would be returning. Then she’d say “I know the Lord prepared you to take care of me” and she would murmur a prayer to herself.
As difficult as each “turning” was for both of us, I started to look forward to it. I knew she prayed not only for herself, but I knew she prayed for me as well. I felt her blessing each time I walked into her room knowing she was waiting for me. She trusted me to do my best.
One evening I came to work and was told Irene was running a high fever, and struggling to breathe. She was being given oxygen and was having difficulty taking fluids. The nurse I worked under asked that I check Irene more frequently than my usual routine.
As I approached her bed, Irene reached out and held my hand. She was still alert but very weak. She looked me in the eye and said “You know the Lord is coming for me today?” All I could say was “I know you have waited for Him a long time.” She murmured “Come back soon” and closed her eyes.
I returned to her room as often as I could and found her becoming less responsive, yet still breathing, sometimes short shallow breaths and sometimes long and deep. Near the end of my shift, as morning was dawning, when I entered the room, I knew He had come for her.
She lay silent and relaxed for the first time since I had met her. Her little body, so tight with pain only hours before, seemed at ease. It was my job to prepare her for the mortuary workers who would soon come for her. Her body still warm to touch, I washed and dried her skin and brushed her hair and wrapped her in a fresh sheet, wondering at how I could now turn her easily with no pain and no tears. I could see a trace of a smile at the corners of her mouth. I knew then the Lord had lifted her soul from her imprisonment. He had rewarded her faithful perseverance.
I rejoice in the hope of the glory of the Lord, thanks to Irene. She showed me what it means to watch for the morning when He will come. Though immobile in bed, crippled and wracked with pain, her perseverance led to loving a young teenager uncertain in her faith, and helped point me to my future profession in medicine.
Irene brought the Lord home to me when she went home to Him.
And werejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance Romans 5:2b-3
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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My sorrow’s flower was so small a joy It took a winter seeing to see it as such. Numb, unsteady, stunned at all the evidence Of winter’s blind imperative to destroy, I looked up, and saw the bare abundance Of a tree whose every limb was lit and fraught with snow. What I was seeing then I did not quite know But knew that one mite more would have been too much. ~Christian Wiman “After a Storm” from Once in the West: Poems
Though a weak branch strains mightily to bear a summer’s bounty of fruit without breaking, it will sustain the load.
Then comes winter wind and ice storms and a snowflake becomes the mite too much.
Even so, a painful pruning is endured, when even the strongest limbs are trimmed back, urged to fearlessly grow on and be more fruitful.
I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. John 15: 1-2
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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A front of thunderstorms had sought you out. It vowed to run a diabolical black line through all that you were sure about— the ordinary, sane, the sensible. You raced to get the loose stuff off the lawn, with purpose rearranged and stacked the chairs, relieved, almost, when the phenomenon of gray-green storm clouds simplified your cares. And though it couldn’t miss, it kind of did. Darkness at noon gave way to sun at one. Catastrophe and doom had been short-lived. Embarrassed that your fears were overblown, you faced your mundane day-to-day concerns, vaguely upset that normalcy returns. ~Robert Crawford “Squall”
Beneath our clothes, our reputations, our pretensions, beneath our religion or lack of it, we are all vulnerable both to the storm without and to the storm within. ~Frederick Buechner – from Telling the Truth
I watch the storm fronts roll in, threatening my outside and inside: heavy damaging winds, thunder and lightning, torrential unpredictable rains, mudslides, horrible forest fires destroying what is familiar and routine.
Inside my own head, the storm clouds of news headlines overpower day-to-day mundane concerns: devastating wars and violence, crime and protests, homelessness, rampant starvation and disease, man’s ongoing inhumanity to man.
I want to hide under a rock until the storms inside and outside blow over.
In the midst of the tempest — while wars rage on the planet, while a bitter election season is underway — a miracle may be wrought. Brilliant light exposes how heaven weeps from heavy clouds. A rainbow touches the earth in holy promise.
God assures His people: this storm too will pass, even the storms of our own making. Darkness is overcome by Light.
Painting of snowy Cascades by John Hoyte
He stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves of the sea were hushed. They were glad when it grew calm, and he guided them to their desired haven. Psalm 107:29-30
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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The darksome burn, horseback brown, His rollrock highroad roaring down, In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth Turns and twindles over the broth Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning, It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning. Degged with dew, dappled with dew, Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through, Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern, And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn. What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Inversnaid”
There is despair in untamed hearts lost in the wilderness. Wildness lies just beneath the surface; it spills over, swirls round and round, spins out of reach.
Our world feels that way right now.
How are we spared drowning in its pitch black pool? Can we thrill to beauty surrounding us without being tempted into darkness?
Christ came not to tame creation’s wildness, but to pull us gasping people from its unforgiving clutches before we sink ever deeper in despair.
We are mere weeds trying to survive this wild world, to grow, to flourish, to witness to those who are bereft. O Lord, let us be left to live long in your Light.
Let us be left.
Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the wilderness. By day the pillar of cloud did not fail to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. You gave your good Spirit to instruct them. Nehemiah 9: 19-20
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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