The Lenten Writings: the beginning of the end

Christ has no body now, but yours.
No hands, no feet on earth, but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which
Christ looks compassion into the world.
Yours are the feet
with which Christ walks to do good.
Yours are the hands
with which Christ blesses the world.

Theresa of Avila

Lent.

The beginning of the end.

The end of the beginning.

As you enter the Lenten season, would you journey with me?

Today I turned off facebook, printed some Praying in Color Lenten templates, and prepared my heart.

Lent is new too me, a recovering Baptist. I was introduced in the Mystic Activists. I was first marked by ashes from a prison parish priest. It was a singular experience.

Except for the obvious dunking ritual, Baptist’s shy away from externals. There is goodness in that; as faith is a very personal deal. How I encounter the Mystery may take a lifetime to unfold, and may not look very churchy.

But I think humans need ritual. It grounds me, it reminds me of the rhythms of the year, and it gives me pause. In this busy space called life, it is good to pause.

Enter Ash Wednesday.

I need only to listen

We went out tonight to explore Multnomah village. A mama daughter date, to talk.

• A decision was before us. I asked what she might need for the conversation. Pen, paper, journal….?
• “I need only to listen”

I stopped, startled by the simplicity of her words.

There are many decisions in front of me, of us. Adult in size and weight, things like housing and jobs and schools. I can get caught up in the task, scrolling through data and going back and forth between supposed options.

• “I need only to listen”… comes with the whisper of Jesus’ invitation.
• Cease striving, and know.

Listen.

The Lenten Writings: a time to speak

“You can tell the people that if they proceed in killing me, that I forgive and bless those who do it. Hopefully , they will realize that they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish.

The church would betray its own love for Good and its fidelity to the gospel if it stopped being a defender of the rights of the poor, or a humanizer of every legitimate struggle to achieve a more just society … that prepares the way for the true reign of God in history.

When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.” (The Church is the people by Oscar Romero).

There comes a time when to be silent is to participate in the violence, the hiddenness.

The wise man of old said the now famous words, “there is a time to be silent, and a time to speak.”

There is a movement taking place.

We watched the #MeToo campaign sweep our news feeds last fall. It gave voice to women, and men, who had experienced sexual abuse. It was a conversation starter, naming sexual harassment and sexual verbal abuse for what it is; sexual abuse.

Someone started a #ChurchToo hashtag; and slowly, the silence is beginning to break. What about the Church and sexual abuse? The Catholics led the way, perhaps not by choice. But the Protestants, known historically for protesting injustice from within, have largely been silent.

And so now we see a movement sweeping the country #SilenceIsNotSpiritual. It started with a statement. It is continuing with story. #LentenLament gives voice to the grief, which is right and good.

When girls are not safe in their homes, when boys are not safe in their churches, when women think workplace abuse is “the way it is”, when men perpetrate rape culture….

It is time to lament.

How are you breaking the silence?

How might you be invited to share your story?

What codes of silence are still being kept in your circles?

In your faith community?

It is time to speak.

This is my story. In my home. In my faith community.

I am speaking out.

How about you?

The Lenten Writings:

Don’t run

when faced with

something or someone

that seems like an adversary

Stay with it

Try to hear it

Let the process unfold

Do not judge

Let it all be

Sooner or maybe later

what is constricted

will lift its head

and surprise you

with how simple the truth is

In the meantime

keep returning

to the center

surround your heart

with love

let the ugly thoughts

and harsh feelings

fade away

Don’t shove them out

And never

let them take over

Listen and learn

Source: “my soul feels lean” from my soul feels lean; poems of loss and restoration, Joyce Rupp, Sorin Books, Notre Dame, IN.,2013.

The Lenten Writings: of silence and speaking

We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.

—Milosz

And the few willing to listen demanded that we confess on television.

So we kept our sins to ourselves, and they became less troubling.

The halt and the lame arranged to have their hips replaced.

Lepers coated their sores with a neutral foundation, avoided strong light.

The hungry ate at grand buffets and grew huge, though they remained hungry.

Prisoners became indistinguishable from the few who visited them.

Widows remarried and became strangers to their kin.

The orphans finally grew up and learned to fend for themselves.

Even the prophets suspected they were mad, and kept their mouths shut.

Only the poor—who are with us always—only they continued in the hope.

The sunset tonight was unable to be captured. It stood in stark contrast to the stiff buildings created as magnificent structures of grandeur.

Today was a day of breaking silence. Perhaps that is what this poet was getting at. The poor know it. They shoot straight. It’s no use pretending. We’re all f-d up anyway right?!

Perhaps this is the kind of honesty that is missing in the Church. Instead, we put on foundation and avoid strong light.

I choose to continue in hope.

Late takers, poem.

Philokilia: New and Selected Poems by Scott Cairns. Zoo press: Lincoln, NE, 2002.

From the Lenten Poetry Companion, Mystic Activists, Neighborhood Ministries.

Mystic musings.

My ego is like a fortress–I have built its walls stone by stone to hold out the invasion of the love of God. 

But I have stayed here long enough. 

There is light–over the barriers.   Oh my God–

The darkness of my house forgive And overtake my soul. I relax the barriers.

I abandon all that I think I am, all that I hope to be, all that I believe I possess. 

I let go of the past, I withdraw my grasping hand from the future, and in the great silence of this moment,

 I alertly rest my soul.

As the seagull lays in the wind current, so I lay myself into the Spirit of God.

My dearest human relationships, my most precious dreams, I surrender to his care.

All that I have called my own I give back. All my favorite things which I would withhold in my storehouse from his fearful tyranny.

I let go. 

I give myself unto Thee, oh my God.

Amen. 

Howard Thurman 

When hello means goodbye

Holding space tonight for the babies gone too soon. Sometimes hello means goodbye.

Sometimes the baby is taken before it’s life is even known. Sometimes others make choices for wee ones. Sometimes we don’t even get to say hello. Sometimes there is no space or time for goodbye. Sometimes we are asked to love a baby not knowing for how long what the end of the story will be. Sometimes there are no tears left to come. 

This concludes pregnancy and infant loss month. I have entered spaces of grief often this month, my own and others. My heart aches for my baby gone before I could know her. And for a mother who buried hers today. I hold space for a family who has been mourning for a long while. And for another whose baby changed us all. For a family daring to love without guarantees, just to bathe a baby in love. 

In the middle of Halloween and elections, may there be space for quiet remembering and loud grief.

Death screams. 

And we will never be the same. 

Precious Lord

I woke up with these lyrics woven vividly into a dream acompanied by the music itself:

Precious Lord, take my handLead me on, let me stand

I’m tired, I’m weak, I’m worn. 

Through the storm, through the night

Lead me on to the light

Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home. 

When my way grows drear precious Lord linger near

When my light is almost gone

Hear my cry, hear my call

Hold my hand lest I fall

Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home. (Thomas A Dorsey)

I did some reading about the origin of this song today. The author was leading music when he received a telegram saying that his wife had died in childbirth. A week later, the baby died as well. Somewhere in the journey of his despair he sat at a piano and this heart cry poured out.

I also learned,  curiously, that Elvis made this song famous and also Mahalia Jackson. This was not something I knew as those singers were banned in my Baptist upbringing. When I hear this song I hear it in my grandmothers voice. 

My grandma was the song leader at Aurelius Road Church, in the Lansing/Holt area. She had a deep voice, unusual for a woman. As the story grows, or goes, she wore a peacock feather in her hat.  She was single in a day that was rare. She owned her own gift and Bible bookstore, and had a dry cleaning business. She had her secrets, which died with her.

I know that for me, as a child, my grandmother provided moments of safety. I had named her Meemie, early on. Supposedly, this was my childhood attempt to say pennies, and she always brought me plenty of those. So I would look at her purse In her photograph and say Meemie’s. (I will let you draw from that what you want to; it is not the point of the story). 

Meemie would come to see us on a big airplane, her floral suitcase bulging and held together with packing tape. When we opened it, it would be full of crackerjack prizes. No one ever pointed out where all those boxes of crackerjacks must’ve gone.

 I would lean my head against her fur collar as we came home from the airport,  trying to avoid the scratchy wool coat. It was cold, and it smelled like mothballs. I remember going to sleep with her sitting by my bed and singing the old songs, one after the other.

I felt safe those nights, and I think they were held safe by her presence. She represented moments of respite in a very confusing world.  

In later years, the tables turned. She had followed us to Arizona. I stayed to graduate with my class when my family moved to Canada. I was left with the car, weeks away from my 16th birthday. The agreement was that I would visit my grandmother once a week, and put $.10 a mile in a jar. I started out doing it out of compulsion. Very quickly, a deep friendship grew.

I would surprise her with Kentucky fried chicken and Mountain Dew. She would make waffles for dinner, and fill them with every mix in imaginable. I would bring my textbooks and study. And somewhere in the evening I would take out her old hymnal and sing. All the verses, one song after another. She would join in, her voice quivering.

There were many years where it was hard to sing those old songs as I wrestled with the reality of my childhood contradictions and violence. They are being redeemed one by one. The truth contained in the ancient words still calls to my spirit.

I walked the dark street tonight with my pug, singing this song. If the neighbors could hear, they might have wondered. They don’t know that a story continues to be written, co-authored by God. 

It is the story of an old woman and a little girl, a story of music in the night.

After the rain

You don’t treasure rain until you have lived in the desert. The heat rises so intensely that it is palpable. You know the feeling you get when you open the door of the oven to check the cookies? That’s Arizona, every time you open the car door. “Why oh why do we live in an oven?”  One daughter’s query when returning from South Anerica left us all laughing. Why indeed?!

And then the monsoons come. The humidity rises (not like the Midwest) and temperature drops. 108′ and a little sticky; better then 118′, maybe. Whispers of wind tease us, clouds build up every afternoon. Up north, it rains every day, til the pine trees glisten. Here, heat lightning clears the city pools, teasing us from afar. 

Pink from city lights, the clouds glow every few minutes with the lightning. Thunder rumbles in the distance, not quite close enough. 
And then it comes, smell first. Then the wind, stirring the leaves of the eucalyptus. Rain begins to fall, softly sometimes, pounding the sidewalk and flooding the streets at others. In Arizona, we run outside in the rain. “Puddle-stomping” barefoot kids march up and down the edge of streets. Windows open, porch rockers sway in rhythm as neighbor’s emerge. 

Maybe this is what hope looks like. Maybe it smells like the desert after the rain. 

Maybe it smells like Jesus. 

For tonight.

So many nights right now hold more questions than answers. Sleep beckons, then eluded capture. Thoughts and feelings tumble over each other for center stage. 

So what is true?  What is true for tonight is the Presence. It is both not enough and more than enough. 

I remember early in my recovery process in 1998 night times were terrifying. Memories often came back at night, and there was no way to know what new truth might come into full knowing. The brain works that way, processing trauma as it heals. I often would fall asleep to Fernando Ortega: Jesus King of Angels. The words washed over me, allowing me to surrender and sleep. 

So for tonight a bedtime prayer:

🌛the peace of God be over me to shelter me, 🌜under me to uphold me, 🌙about me to protect me, ⭐️behind me to direct me, 🌟ever with me to save me. 💫The peace of all peace be mine this night. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.