Lent

Already Resurrection

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IMG_3727Soft green bundles hang outside our upstairs window with stringy tufts dripping below. Our grand tree in our backyard is coming back to life. It has been a long winter. Its bare branches have survived the winter winds and freezing temps. The tree’s trunk has survived with the melted snow, even if it took weeks to seep into the frozen ground.

It has not yet reached its full maturity of summer leaves that will sway with the summer winds and give shade to the summer play of young ones below.

These soft green bundles speak the promise of its coming. They whisper to me that even if not fully formed, there is already promise of summer. There is already resurrection.

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Palm Sunday: A few words

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The youngest rises early and is fully alive at 6:15 a.m. Perhaps he is his mother’s son. Breakfast consumed quickly, he begins his play. He shouts at objects in repeated indecipherable words. They are unknown to the untrained ear. But to us, with visual cues of context, we discern what they mean. As he shouts in repeated fashion, we echo back our confirmation that we heard.

“Truck.”
“Train.”
“Tracks”
“Brother”
“Deacon”

His attempt to name is intense and urgent. He shouts them like cannonballs hurling towards the target until affirmed that we heard and understood him.

May my prayers be the same – eyes open to the world, to that which delights my eyes and that which frustrates my heart.

May I launch it all, in few words, towards the Eternal Listener until I hear it reverberate back my way. Continue reading

Love on the Edge

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Thrashing around, their little bodies twist and turn. Couch cushions lay on a heap in the floor – collateral damage from brothers wrestling. I’m in the thick of it, tickling belies and shielding my face from injury. It is raucous and joy-filled. It is a moment of brothers let loose to be brothers… living this life together that is messy and dangerous and beautiful.

It is love on the edge.

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HOLY SATURDAY: For today, there is Life.

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photoWhile the sun still sleeps and darkness hangs out, I gather my things. Race bib, shoes, headphones. I review the logistics in my head. Many steps stand between me and my first half-marathon.

My mind wanders to the sanctuary, where we sat last night in darkness at the end of our Tenebrae service. A service of shadows. A service of death. Black fabric still drapes the communion table and pulpit. As the birds began their day’s song, I know that the darkness sits in silence even now.

The complex theological questions of Good Friday swirl in my head (where was Jesus’ father, Joseph, while Mary wailed? Where was Jesus’ father, the Holy One, while love and sorrow flowed mingled down?). Yesterday the questions seemed important to think through. Today, they seem rhetorical. On the silence of Holy Saturday, faith is not about understanding the mystery. It is about communion with the mystery. Continue reading