Holy Saturday's Work

Holy Saturday's Work

(for that which is already but not yet)

Go outside and kneel

beside still-sleeping beds.

Strip away all that's dead;

the leaves, brown and curled,
and the dry, empty stems
of last year’s blossoms.

Straighten, one-by-one,

the scallop-edged bricks
that have stood, leaning,  
all year-long
like forgotten gravestones.

Roll the giant flowerpot aside

and wonder at the sound of
stone scraping against stone.

- K. Chripczuk

Photo credit: Here

The Tears and the Garden

From The Jungle Book, after Mowgli fights off the deadly tiger Shere Kahn and the wolves who betrayed the pack:

"At last, only Akela, Bagheera, and about ten wolves who had been loyal to Mowgli remained. The boy's knees began to weaken, and a hurt began to grow inside of him, a hurt he had never known before. Sobs lefts his throat and tears ran down his cheeks. These strange happenings in his body frightened him, and he cried out to Bagheera, "What is this? Am I dying?"

"No, Little Brother," replied the panther, gently. "These are tears, which only [humans] use. Let them fall, Mowgli. Let them fall."

Mowgli sat and cried as if his heart were breaking. He had never cried before in his life. But then he had never been forced to leave the jungle before."

* * *

Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

                                                                                                          Matthew 26:36-38 

*   *   *

They come as I am bent, hauling sleepers and socks from the dryer, gathering the whole lot into my arms in a wide, sweeping motion.  They come too in the kitchen when no one's looking and I want to slide to the ground and hide behind the counter and let the damn river flow. 

On Sundays, they rise in the in-between spaces, as I walk to the restroom or stand looking for a seat in a sea of familiar faces.  Snuggled on the couch with my son reading the stories of Ramona I feel their gathering tide and as I read this passage from The Jungle Book they crash into me like waves breaking against a sandy shore.

This winter has been a season of tears, a rising, salty sea as my family and I find ourselves between what was and what will be and I'm reminded again and again that growth itself often involves surrender; dying to what's familiar and opening our empty hands to embrace what's new.  The gift of new life is preceded by death, the birth foreshadowed by pain and the fact that Christ struggled so in the face of his own great transition brings me hope.        

The tears of Jesus in the garden, like the tears of Mowgli in the passage above and the tears I have felt this winter long, are tears of transition.  They are the heavy, disoriented cries of pain that come in the dark cloudy pass of life in-between. 

“What is this,” Mowgli says, “Am I dying?” 

“My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” says Jesus.

To be human is to feel pain and sorrow, to sit breaking and broken as the tears roll down.  We hold-on for as long as we can, clutching tight to the old, the known, and then finally, letting go at last, we feel the fear of falling as the thin skin of safety, the strong walls of that which holds us give way to something more. 

And all along the dark, dry and narrow passage that leads us continually from death to life, the gift of tears comes to water us, to nourish our thirsty souls and the seeds of life within. 

“Let them fall,” says the good, wise friend, Bagheera, "let them fall." 

*   *   *

Oh Christ, who surrendered through great heaving tears of sorrow and loss, guide us please, through this narrow passage-way, teach us to breathe through the pain as we wait for the gift of new life.  Grace us, please, with the tears of surrender, those salty, sacred streams that water our souls.



Spring Snow (Remain here, stay)

Then he said to them, "I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay with me."

Matthew 26:38

Snow fell during my March retreat, swirling, driven white upon the spring-green and brown world.  Flat and thin, large flakes like communion wafers dissolving on the sun-warmed tongue of the earth.  It lay in patches, queen-ann’s-lacing the woodland path where the first shoots sprung up and tiny, white flowers dotted. 

I couldn’t help but smile, for surely God was laughing – laughing at our springing forward eagerness, our expectation that the turning of the seasons might be rushed along through impatience.  We were ready for spring, but the stillness of winter crept in among us, bringing its gentle silence and heavy, dripping ice. 

As snow fell, heaven whispered, “Stay here, just a little longer.  There’s more to be found here in the depths of this silence, more to be gathered.”

*   *   *

I know this snow won't last, it's here and gone before the day is done like manna, so much bread falling from heaven's cloudy eye.  But there’s nothing more painful to me than being asked to stay where I would rather not.  Give me the command to “get up and go” and I’ll be ready, bags packed, at your beck and call.  But ask me to stay and watch awhile and I, like the disciples, would prefer a dark and restless sleep to the tearful wrestling with that which I did not, would not, chose. 

Yet here we are, days into spring, and snow is falling still, heavy and wet, pillowing everything under gentle curves.  The birds don’t seem to mind, busy as they are and singing too, confident in what’s to come.  They believe, as all earthly creatures must, that the world will turn again, rolled back like a giant stone as life emerges. 

*   *   *

Stay awake my friends, stay awake and watch awhile.  Do not fear the long dark night for even now the world itself is tilting, leaning toward the edge of winter and the end of our waiting.  Outside my window the trees’ heavy white robes of snow are sliding to the ground where they lay, like burial shrouds, cast off, empty. 

Remain here, stay and listen awhile and you too might hear the moment the melting begins; one single drip followed by a chorus of dripping, dropping, living waters as death is again defeated, transformed, until all that remains are the shining droplets, a million sparkling crystals hung like jewels on the tree of life.     

Photo source here. and here.

This post is shared with Playdates with God and Hear it on Sunday, Use it on Monday.

Filled With Compassion

"But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion . . ."
                                                                                                                  Luke 15:20

First comes the divestment,

the division of all you have,
blessed, broken and given,  
like bread.   

Then the wait begins,

the long, empty hours and days

wherein you wander the vacant

halls of your life,

emptied of all that owned you.
 

Your life is a bowl now,

open,

hollowed out,

exposing a growing

breadth and depth of love,

a willing humility.  

Then and only then

may you be filled

with compassion,

filled with that which reaches out

beyond the borders of you,
beyond emptiness,
to embrace
one come home.

The Search for Spring

I was worried that maybe it was a little too late for this post now that spring is officially here, but given that it's only 35 degrees outside (and windy) and that I wore my coat and hat in the house all last evening, I think we could all still use the reminder.  Enjoy!

*   *   *   *   *



While welcoming in the New Year, my family also unwittingly welcomed in a veritable cornucopia of germs and we're still reeling from it all.  I have the pediatritian on speed-dial and the fridge boasts a wide collection of fruit-flavored antibiotics.  We've been trapped inside for days now, wading through mountains of old tissues and tripping over empty syringes of infants' Ibuprophen. 

One particularly rough morning, I stood in the middle of a sea of sickness like the captain of a sinking ship and declared, "Get dressed, get your shoes and coats on, we're going out."  Mustering the efficiency of someone evacuating in the path of a natural disaster, I piled all four kids and the jogging stroller into the van in 10 minutes flat.

I pulled away from the curb without a plan . . .  

This post was published in Central Penn Parent Magazine, simpy click on the link to continue reading. 

When Your Brother Bleeds (twins and the cross and community)

Looking at Stars

The God of curved space, the dry

God, is not going to help us, but the son

whose blood splattered
the hem of his mother’s robe.
- Jane Kenyon
 

“You know you have blood on your shirt, right?” 

I was getting ready to meet a friend at a restaurant after a long, exhausting day and my husband was concerned with the bloody stain on my shoulder. 

“No,” I said, “I already changed my shirt once.  Did you see his clothes?”  I led him over to the laundry basket and showed him our eighteen-month-old son’s clothes, streaked and stained with splotches of red.  It had been a bloody day. 

That morning I stood at the bathroom sink holding Levi who cut his finger on a can he looted from the recycling bin.  I turned his body out away from me, hoping to avoid staining my new shirt, but as I stood there rooting through the medicine cabinet, blood poured out of the tiny cut. 

It ran in a bright red stream
     down the hand that held him,
          splashing onto my pants and shoes as he waved his little hand around.

It drop,
      drop,
          dropped
                    to the beat of his pulse, 
falling onto the white counter-top like so many crimson beads off of a broken necklace.  I felt it clinging to the hairs on the back of my hand and marveled at its rich scarlet hue. 

I called my four-year-old to fetch a washcloth while Levi's twin, Isaiah, wandered in anxious little circles by my feet. Finally, we all sat down at the dining room table and I doled out Band-Aids with great liberality.  I put two or three on the finger that still gushed and two or three on other fingers and on his other hand in hopes of distracting him from pulling them off.  Then, of course, Isaiah needed some too and my assistant, the four-year-old, as well as the little girl I was babysitting. 

It wasn’t until later that I noticed Isaiah had blood on him too, places where it had splashed and splattered as he stood nearby watching me tend his brother. 

Looking at Isaiah’s splotched clothes, I thought, “When your brother bleeds, it gets on you.  This is what it means to be a brother.  This is what community really is.” 

*   *   *   *   *

Blood is messy and vital, rich, and yet we talk of it so complacently.   Somehow, in our dainty sipping of communion cups, we manage to miss the mess and I wonder if, in missing it, we don't also miss the communion.

Christ came and died on the cross, where blood drop,
                                                                                  drop,
                                                                                       dropped out,
splattering onto those who gathered near.  This is the community that Jesus establishes, a blood-splattered, blood-drinking communion of sinners turned saints.   

 *   *   *   *   *

 

The stomach bug hit later in the week.  It started with Levi in the middle of the night standing, crying in his crib and we went through layer after layer of sheets and pajamas, as my husband and I tag-teamed the dual tasks of comfort and cleaning.  Isaiah stood in his own crib, just a few feet away, looking-on all bleary-eyed and curious and each time we laid Levi back down to sleep and crept our way back out of the room, Isaiah laid down too. 

By the next day they were both down with the bug and I sat holding them on the couch while John took the older two to the store to stock up on saltines and Pedialyte.  I sat in the corner of the couch with Levi in my left arm and he drifted into a deep sleep, exhausted and drained.  Isaiah fussed, tossing and turning in my right arm, slipping off, then turning and begging his way back up into my lap the second his feet hit the ground. 

Levi slept on through it all, so I didn’t dare move and just about the time I was getting frustrated with Isaiah he turned suddenly and threw-up all over me and his brother.  Levi woke, of course, as I grabbed a changing pad and laid it across my soaked chest.  But then, just like that, they both dropped off into a heavy sleep. 

When my husband came home some forty minutes later, we were sitting there still, the three of us covered in Isaiah’s vomit and I thought, again, “This is what community is.  When your brother, throws up, it gets on you.” 

*   *   *   *   *

I wonder sometimes about how we do community these days, all distance and convenience, all house-picked-up and table-manners-please.  Community, real community, is a cracking, bleeding thing.  It’s the voice that breaks into a sob on the phone without holding back and the “oh, thank God, you stopped by because I didn’t know how I was going to make it through this day.” 

Maybe we settle for something less because we’re afraid that, if anyone gets too close, we’ll vomit our messy lives all over them.  But isn't it possible, my friends, that this bloody, messy communion, this breaking open of our lives like so many loaves of of bread, is what it’s really all about?

Is there a time when you've found community in the midst of your brokenness?  I'd love to hear about it . . .

This post is linked with Playdates With God and Hear it on Sunday, Use it on Monday. 

Cut Flowers Vol. 2 (for your Easter baskets)

We're still doling out Valentine's candy at our house and I'm sure there's some Halloween candy lurking in the darker corners of the pantry, so the idea of filling four (yikes!) baskets with sweets for Easter morning isn't exactly appealing to me.  And while I am actually considering putting things like new socks and underwear in their baskets (anyone know if that's a sacrilege, by the way?) Easter's also the perfect opportunity to give a child you love something that will feed their heart in the year to come. 

 

Below are a few of my favorite children's bibles and books of prayer, won't you consider purchasing one for a child you know?  These also make great baby shower, baby dedication and Christmas gifts too.   

  

 

The Jesus Storybook Bible, by Sally Lloyd-Jones is recommended for ages four and up.  I love it because it has GREAT pictures and formats the bible as one grand narrative, paying attention to the treads of redemption that run throughout.  My three year old used to sit for hours paging through the pictures and both of our older kids requested it for bedtime reading for months on end. 

 

I ordered The Children of God Storybook Bible for Easter last year.  The biblical stories in this book are paraphrased by Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu and the illustrations come from artists around the world and reflect the artistic styles and heritage of their culture.  I love the interesting artwork in this one as well as the fact that it includes some stories not often found in children's bibles (ex. the story of Esther and also Naboth's Vineyard).  The stories in this bible are shorter and each is followed by a short prayer.  This is also recommended for ages four and up.

Psalms for Young Children, by Mari-Helen Delval is another I bought last year.  Each page has a paraphrase of a psalm and the opposite page has an image to go with it.  My husband and I have used this at bedtime when we're too spent to think of a good night prayer; we simply read one of the psalms as a prayer and our kids love it. 

I don't own I Will Rejoice, by Karma Wilson (yet!), but I've checked it out of the library from time to time.  Karma Wilson is the author of the popular Bear Snores On series.  This simple book filled with beautiful, joyful illustrations is based on the text of psalm 118:24, "This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it."

I did order this one for Easter this year.  Images of God for Young Children is, well, just that.  This book is for ages five and up and explores the biblical images for God, such as "God is Light," "God is Love," and "God is Wisdom."  I'm hoping this book might be helpful as my kids start to move away from a "God is an old man in the sky" view of God.  These are short reflections, like the Psalms book above, and I imagine we'll use this one for bedtime conversation starters (or enders!) too.  

 

 

 

 

I own Sybil Macbeth's Praying in Color for adults and, when my kids are a little older, will probably buy the kid's edition too.  If you're a doodler or simply love the smell of crayons and markers, praying in color is a simple, unintimidating entery into prayer.  This book is recommended for kids ages five and up.   

 

 



 

This last one, the Jesus is Calling Devotional for Kids, is by Sarah Youn and recommended for ages 8 and up.  Sarah is known for her direct style of writing which makes it feel like Jesus is speaking directly to you through her words.  Like the Jesus Storybook Bible, I know a lot of adults who've benefited from this book and I'll probbaly add it to our collection as the kids get older. 

 

What are some of your favorite children's bibles or devotional books?  How do you approach filling your child's Easter basket? I'd love to hear your ideas in the comments section below or over on the Field of Wildflowers facebook page!