Good Friday Musings

 

To lay down my life

in a moment is one thing—

I think I could do that

for Jesus or protecting others...

 

But to lay down my life

day in and day out,

to say no to sweet kisses,

to strong arms and loving acceptance...

...surely not!

 And yet...that is the call

more than the first—

To lay down my life again and again,

to open my hands to loss

and find it gain

To lay down my life

and the longings of my heart—

I cannot—not on my own;

Pry open my grasping hand,

my Fierce and Kind Redeemer

Place Your hand in mine,

that I may grasp firmly

the stinging nettle of sacrifice

and be raised to new and eternal Life. 

 

 

Unless I Die...

Unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. 

But, if it dies, it will bear much fruit. 

—Jesus

A darkening sky greets the great eye

blinking open its shutter to morn—

o'erhead, coarse comes a rook's cry,

from here dreams appear bleak and forlorn

Here, in my cramped, close cell I hear

the neighbour dog howl a lament—

the dirt and the dark I fear,

they close in and my choice I repent

Buried, buried unseen and deep,

with the dog next door I mourn—

my eyes, dreamless now, can only weep,

trapped in the earth like a kernel of corn

How long must I suffocate,

freedom denied, in this dank tomb?

Life with death I conflate,

Later to find my prison mould a womb

The waiting feels empty and long,

but the Gardener waters the earth

about me, and o'er me raises His song,

stirring my spirit, breathing rebirth 

The confines feeling so like death

are the only means of shedding the husk

of flesh strangling my dreams, my breath,

clouding my eyes by dusk

White rhizome rises, unfurling green,

fresh air floods my chamber, tight,

in my heart awakens a dream

after my soul's dark night.

Resuscitated by the Arts

Does music ever make you see? Does it break your heart, spilling it hot over your lashes? Does music become your voice when you cannot find the words to express your grief, sorrow, or hope? Music paints vistas on the mind—sunsets over mountains, starlight over tawny grasses bent by the breeze, snow on trees, russet leaves kicking up in the dirt lane. Certain songs carry a mood with them—autumn fog and rain, driving under sunny skies, poignant sadness, golden morning light. Music breathes life into weary souls, stands us on our feet, bows our heads—it even gives us earthbound creatures wings. Music heals. Music speaks what we cannot, when we cannot. Music opens the storeroom of our memories. Music flies us beyond ourselves into the great, wide world and the space beyond.

When I see a musician who is intent at his craft, playing for pure pleasure, joy wells up in me—and a bit of envy, too. I wish I could make a heart soar. . . or sing. . .or see. Though I cannot express myself in music, I know the intense concentration, the pleasure in my craft. It happens when I write sometimes. At other times, writing is an exercise and discipline, like musical scales.

Every craft has its learning season, disciplines, and the ability to sweep the craftsman or artist into its heart and flow so deeply that time passes without notice. But what I have noticed is that various crafts and arts influence one another. Music and stories often inspire me to paint, draw, or write. The visual arts encourage poetry or music to flow out of me. Poetry makes me want to be alive, to attend.

I have a deep respect for my friends who are writers, musicians, woodworkers, leather artisans, weavers, gardeners, and embroiderers. Their words and music and crafts all breathe life into my heart, into my veins. They remind me that Beauty comes in many forms and fills life with pleasure. The time poured into a craft is a form of tangible love given to others. 

I treasure my pincushion made from cloth designed and woven by one sweet friend, a wooden box carefully fitted and joined by another, words crafted into letters, stories, and poems by many dear folks, and pen-and-ink drawings of dragons and pictograms by yet another friend. I carry in my heart the deep strains of the cello, the lilting violin, the steady piano, the magical guitar picking I have been privy to over the years. And I delight in my friend’s whimsical illustrations and story of an island of creatures that must be saved again and again by one very patient saviour, who constantly goes unthanked.

My friends are a talented set, whether through the arts mentioned above, or the art of homemaking, hospitality, and keeping beauty in their homes and hearts. The creativity of God overflows in so many directions from people, it is rather amazing. And it breathes, breathes life into others in some way or another. Creativity is constantly begetting, expanding in life and Beauty. Creativity brings wholeness and healing into a world shattered by the Fall. Artisans and craftsmen are healers, then. Agents of God to breathe Beauty and life into others. Creativity gives room for expressing what we feel but cannot name, for expressing love and inclusion. Creativity builds what we all long for so deeply: home.

In a Glass Darkly

Have you ever seen a photo of yourself, or caught your reflection in a window and wondered, "Who is that person?" Sometimes I see my reflection in the mirror and I catch wisps of the flyaway, carefree girl that I am. Yet there are moments, usually in photographs, when I see the old soul inside of me. Hopefully that means I look wise and thought-full, rather than crinkled and worn down by cares. But I wonder... 

I remember not being very old, looking into the storm cloud blue eyes reflected back to me and realising I was the 'me' behind those eyes, the 'self' inside that little strawberry blonde head. I had that moment of knowing that I am myself. Sometimes we ourselves notice the way the light catches our eyes, or that fine lines are appearing where none lived before. A look we have never seen our pensive faces wear is reflected back in still water, or captured on film. For a moment we see the selves we are, we catch a glimpse of ourselves from an outside perspective.

The realisation, the knowing whisks away with a blink of our round eyes. I catch myself wondering, "Can we see rightly or are our eyes too fractured?" This question came to me first under the night sky. When I am upset or uncertain, I often look to the heavens to put myself in perspective. Planets shine strong in the darkness. Stars' light illumines my eyes and my heart as I breathe out prayers to their Maker and mine. In the nighttime all I see is shadow or—due to my astigmatism—light splayed, spilled, splitting in all directions.

Do my real eyes see reality, or only a fragmented reflection of what is real? Even the glasses I wear to right my vision do not fix the aberration that makes lights star out, especially at night. I hunger for the answer, to know if my real eyes see the world as it is. I hunger still more for the questions that arise when I stand small in the inky night. I want to see, to know, Beauty. I want to catch that pensive look of mine in a photo and be in wonder that that is me, the self I am. I yearn to be. I want to am (if one can break grammar rules in the desire to live ontology).

Saint Paul's words rise up in me; like a clarion call they ring and reverberate through my heart and mind: 'For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.' Or as another translation says: 'Now we see things imperfectly, like [fuzzy] reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.' The Fall is like an astigmatism, distorting our view of reality, of God. Even putting on the glasses of God's word and seeing the world from His side does not change the fact that we live inside the brokenness of the Fall. We see more clearly, yet not perfectly. The edges waver and star, making us blink to clear our eyes. The constant hope before us is that the Fall's breach and fragmentation will one day be fully healed and made whole. As gloriously proclaimed by Saint Paul:

In my opinion whatever we may have to go through now is less than nothing compared with the magnificent future God has planned for us. The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own. The world of creation cannot as yet see reality, not because it chooses to be blind, but because in God’s purpose it has been so limited—yet it has been given hope. And the hope is that in the end the whole of created life will be rescued from the tyranny of change and decay, and have its share in that magnificent liberty which can only belong to the children of God!

A Living Vapour

Fresh morning sun peered into my eyes as I swung my car onto the main road in town. I cruised toward a church I had never entered, realising—as I pulled between the mustard-coloured lines to park—that I did not know where to go. I stood uncertainly, looking back and forth between the looming church and the sad-looking parish centre behind it. I made the decision to poke my head in at the parish centre, as the lovely church looked a bit too imposing to enter without someone by my side. A slip of paper on the glass door confirmed that I had chosen correctly. Skirting the infant baptism class, I veered toward a room sparsely filled with ladies of various shapes, hair colours, and backgrounds.

Walking into a group of persons is intimidating enough for me, let alone a group of grown-up women belonging to a denomination I'm unfamiliar with, all of whom I had never met in my life. Yet, I was determined to attend this morning of prayer and meditation as soon as I had heard about it. That determination walked me through the double doors and to the first table where someone caught my eye and smiled. I chatted with a woman while waiting for the tea water to boil. I introduced myself to the ladies at the table where I set my things. I probably looked like a wide-eyed protestant from a mile away, but they were all kind enough to explain things for me when I asked. I tactfully neglected to ask why women's gatherings never supply protein-rich breakfasts, hoping the fruit and assorted breads would keep my morning appetite satisfied.

Soon, we filed over to the spacious church in little knots of chattering women. My tentative, shy feeling whisked away as I stepped under those dark, wooden rafters and my nostrils caught a strong scent of incense. Dust-brown pews invited us to sit in the sunlight sifting down from high windows. I chose a spot a bit apart from the kind ladies I had shared breakfast with. Quiet and reflection are hard for me to practise in close proximity to other persons. We practised two variations of lectio divina, meditating on a passage of Scripture from Isaiah, and then on the calling of Matthew, using a Caravaggio painting. We sang a few hymns in English and in Latin. I journalled and prayed and reflected over more Scripture. We were guided through a much slower and more deliberate Mass and celebration of the Eucharist.

Over and again during the morning I was drawn to a stream of soft light pouring onto the altar floor. At first I could see lingering incense smoke illumined in that shaft. While the aroma of incense dissipated throughout our time in that hushed sanctuary, it did not leave my memory. I remembered how the light had caught the final tendrils of sweet-smelling smoke as I stepped in through that dark doorway. The beam of light had taken the invisible trail of vapour, giving it form and substance. I thought about how our prayers are to rise to the Lord as a sweet aromatic waft of incense. That is all we are, a breath of wind, a curl of blue smoke, nearly invisible—until the light rounds out our contours and gives us substance. Only the Light, Jesus Himself, makes our prayers visible, real, and dimensional. We—who are but a puff of smoke and then we are gone—He makes solid, visible creatures. He rounds out our spirits, souls, and selves by shining His light not on us, but through us. "...Blaze again like fire in every leaf", says Malcolm Guite. It is the Light shining through the smoke, through the leaf, that shows the substance of the thing pierced by the Light.


Truth is multi-façeted, like a luminous jewel. This day the truth I saw was that both our prayers and our selves are but a vapour, then they are gone. Both need the Eternal Light to shine through them to make them solid, real. Like the ever diminishing scent of incense, our prayers fade and need to be re-kindled. We must daily speak joy. We must continue to cry the mercy of God. We must bring our requests again to God...Not because He forgets, but because we do. We so quickly forget our wraith-like wreathes of praise, the persistence in our petitions, the Kindness that leads us to repentance. Our prayers either rise into the Light Himself, or they flit away into the rafters, losing substance and depth.


As I stepped out into the crisp air and noon-day sun, my eyes re-focussed from cool semi-darkness to overwhelming brightness. The sunlight that had peeked into my green eyes in the morning, now laughingly showed me the world boldly, clearly. The light revealed the depth and the contours of all around me. Light in our world only shows what is there, but I am learning that the Light Himself makes things real by shining upon them, through them. I climbed into my car and tilted her toward home, reflecting on my need for the Light to illumine and enliven me.

The Art of Grieving

Drip-drop. Drop-drip. Plink! Glorious Spring rain drips off the gutter-less eaves of my cottage this forenoon; every now and then one drop making a sharp ping off something metal below. Steady, strong notes to set the rhythm for the day, those water-drops. I draw icy water for the kettle, waiting for its warm whistle as a Southwest wind kicks up its heels. The song of the rain slows, softens, becomes silent. Whirling this way and that come the downy flakes of snow. 

Pungent Earl Grey tickles my senses as I gaze long at the steady, slanting white. I am very much alone, but not in the least lonely. Solitude need not make one solitary. Fog, snow, roiling grey skies – they are all friends. The damp, chill, and quiet give one time to pause, to recalibrate the soul toward stillness and Beauty. When we make the time to hush, not writing, nor reading, nor listening to the ever-present music that pervades our senses, we are able to be. We are able to grieve or mourn, to ponder and reflect, to pray and listen, to know and be known.

Stillness and reflection often seem colossal threats to our current 'culture of noise'. Particularly in the process of grieving, perhaps the greatest conundrum in this age. In times-not-long-past, there was a set period for mourning in which the mourner at the least wore a black band on their arm, if not complete outfits of black. Now we hardly even say someone has died, but that they have 'passed away'. We have funerals and weddings in 'Life Centres' at cemeteries. Our culture seeks to sanitise death from all its ugly brokenness. I am very, very pro-life, but even I cannot ignore the effects of the Fall. We cannot pretend that death is routine, neat, and 'part of life'. It is not. It is a violent affront to God the Creator. It is madness and fragmentation at their extreme end.

Grieving is a slow process; whether it is the death of a loved one, the loss of a friendship, or the crumbling of a cherished dream. It takes silence and prayer to walk the road of sorrow. Yet, not even the evangelical church seems to accept this. Half-truths are still lies, yet they ring forth from our Postmodern Evangelical churches and the reams of pages in 'Christian' bookstores: God must always make bad things good. We must always smile and say we are well, that it is good to be alive. Christians are always to be happy, happy, happy - which translates to fake, fake, fake. God will make all things well, but probably not the way we think He should, and often not on this earth. It is good to be alive, because we were made for life - but 'good' does not mean 'easy'. 

The Anglican response to death in the prayer book does not ignore the creeping shadow of death, nor does it wallow in the Fall. It brings one's focus back to God, the Author of life, the Redeemer of death:

Thou only art Immortal, Creator and Maker of mankind;
and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and unto earth shall
we return. 

For so Thou did ordain when Thou created me,
saying, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
All of us go down to the dust... 

Yet even at the grave we make
our song: 

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Even at the grave we sing of the Hope to come. We weep and mourn in Hope. This is not easy. We may sing our alleluias through teeth clenched, through stinging tears. But we have Hope: Jesus Himself, the Resurrection from the dead for all who are 'in Christ'. And when death takes from us one who does not know God, we lament even more. Again, we cannot pretend that death is normal. It is grotesquely abnormal. We still mourn loss. 

Learning to lament takes times of silence, of being. It can take the form of long walks, writing poetry, playing or writing music, cleaning vigorously, cooking and baking (for oneself or others), painting or drawing, gardening, crying, and many other things. Strikingly, lamentation is often pro-creative. By that I mean that we find an outlet for grief, anger, and sorrow in making, in serving. 

Look at the first line of the Memorial Prayer - it calls God three things: Immortal, Creator, and Maker. We tend to think of the last two words as being synonyms, but they are Names and have nuances. A 'creator' begets - the thing begotten is from himself, is part of himself, like a child shares the 'humanness'  and DNA of its parents. A 'maker' is a companion or a spouse, as well as one who designs or constructs. So, the act of creation is intensely personal and part of the creator-begetter. The act of making is taking something already in existence and fitting it together; as one takes flour, water, and yeast to make bread; or wood, nails, and varnish to fit into a wardrobe; or chisels and marble to form a sculpture; or a man and a woman together fashion a marriage. 

In grieving we image God by making. We turn to pro-creation to pro-cess (move forward, continue). We seek solitude and silence in order to better serve, because the act of serving (helping one's neighbour with various tasks, inviting others over for dinner, etc.) brings us outside of ourself so that we do not dead-end in grief.

This brings up the other aspect of lamenting. To lament, I said, one needs times of solitude. But one also needs time with others. God says in the beginning that, "It is not good for the Man to be alone". God was right there with the Man, but still says he is 'alone' or without a match (or mate) of his own. We need other persons. We need friends and family who will be still with us, who will listen to us. We need others to serve with our creative acts. We need those close to us to cry with us, and also to make us laugh. 

The hush of snow is heralding a chance to ponder, time to be. This late Spring snow is a gift before I step into the bustle of Summer. The silence of a full day to process and grieve is worth the thanks-giving. Right here and now I learn to be still and know... and to be known.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

~ Johanna

Is Nothing Wasted?

They cut down half the tree at the first turn on the trail up to Red Mountain. It was an aspen or poplar of some sort, and I had had many a thought whilst gazing upon it. Half of the tree is clothed in green leaves, but the other half was mostly dead and bare. 

The juxtaposition of life and death had snatched my attention several times on that hike. Sometimes reminding me to be thankful for the beauty of life when seen in the shadowy presence of death. Sometimes it reminded me that I am like that tree - full of life where God has come in, yet plenty of dead branches of sin still needing to be removed.

When I saw that the dead half of the tree had been chopped down, my first response was to check the tears rising in my eyes. Why should I be sad that someone removed a tree that was sapping life from the living half? Would I be sad if God just cut out all of my sinful deadness and removed it? No, that is ridiculous. I rejoice when He clears out the deadness inside. But sometimes -- always, I think -- it hurts when He prunes away my sin.

Sometimes we must endure unbearable hurt. We must recall that pain is not always a result of our own sin. All sorrows and hurts can be used for our good, though I cannot always remember that when I am walking through the depths of the valleys. 

Today has been one of those days where I want to bear someone else's pain, but I cannot -- it is too much for me, and it does not alleviate them. When I looked out over the city from the foothills tonight, I realised that the hurt I feel for my friend, though it seems crushing to me, is only the hurt of one person amongst those thousands. One hurt among the billions across the globe. I cried out to God, asking how He could possibly bear the brokenness that fills His world. Then I walked home past that brokenness. And it revolted me, rather than melting me, which I think sin ought to do. Yet I want to move beyond the repulsion to the point where I can lift broken things up to God, the only Redeemer and Re-creator.

The Lord reminded me several times tonight that He is making things not like they were, but better than they were. He is not only restoring us and the whole world, He is re-creating us. There is hope, beyond those darkest moments, most vile atrocities, and heart-shattering pains. How do I know? Because one day it was true to say that God was dead, and we killed Him. Because He became our sin, and His own Father turned His face away from Him. Then He turned death upside down. And one day, He will do that for us, too.

The hurt that broke your heart
And left you trembling in the dark
Feeling lost and alone
Will tell you hope's a lie
But what if every tear you cry
Will seed the ground where joy will grow

And nothing is wasted
Nothing is wasted
In the hands of our Redeemer
Nothing is wasted

It's from the deepest wounds
That beauty finds a place to bloom
And you will see before the end
That every broken piece is
Gathered in the heart of Jesus
And what's lost will be found again

When hope is more than you can bear
And it’s too hard to believe it could be true
And your strength fails you half way there
You can lean on me and I’ll believe for you
Give it time, you will believe it too

Nothing is wasted
Sometimes we are waiting
In the sorrow we have tasted
But joy will replace it
Nothing is wasted
In the hands of our redeemer
Nothing is wasted

~ Johanna