waiting...

a new commandment

Radical, wonderful, and even more difficult than the original ten that Moses received from the hand of God... because in truth, we don't love ourselves well enough to love one another.

But Jesus did not say love one another as you love yourself... he said love them as I have loved you.

waiting...

Holy Week feels long, maybe the longest week in the year.

When I think of my own sense of foreboding, the helpless waiting... I can't help but wonder how much more painful it would have been for Jesus those last days before his time finally came.

What, it's only Wednesday? Tomorrow the downhill slide begins... with a feast. We've been in silence, keeping a vegetarian diet this week, but tomorrow evening we'll have meat again, and talk at supper... in honor of the last supper Jesus ate. Then we will all attend the Maundy Thursday ritual at one of the nearby parish churches.

And Friday we will fast. Feasting and fasting... living and dying... joy and sorrow. It's almost too much to bear.

glory?

Explain the glory, God.

Every year it's like this. I get closer to Good Friday and my doubt overwhelms my faith.

I am not big on pain... mine or anyone else's. I am especially not big on unnecessary pain, and this whole Jesus died for my sins thing puts the blame on me. Me... and you... and every other sorry member of the human species. Yes, I understand how amazingly mind-blowing it is to worship a God who stooped to endure human form... to live and die as a human being. But some human beings die peacefully in their sleep. (At least that's what we tell ourselves.) Or they die quickly. Most of us do not linger for hours in agony, with other people watching our every sigh and groan, waiting for us to die so they can be "right".

I really do hate this week.

anointing

Two Gospels tell the story of the anointing of Jesus.

In Mark's Gospel It is two days before Passover, the host is Simon the leper, the woman is not named and the oil is poured on Jesus' head. In John's Gospel, it is six days before Passover, the host is Lazarus (recently raised from the dead,) and it is Mary who produces the expensive perfume and pours it on his feet.

This is the kind of inconsistency that drives Bible scholars crazy... conflicting versions of what is apparently the same story. The truth will always lie somewhere in between. The point of the story, of course, has nothing to do with head or feet or when or where... or maybe even who.

And the point can change for us with each new reading, depending on what we need to hear.

This is the difference between the living Word of God and words on a page that are chiseled in stone, with one point, one interpretation.

Living with elderly sisters gives me a new spin on this story. Jesus said "You will always have the poor." He might just as well have said "You will always have emails to answer or dust bunnies to sweep." For NOW, be kind in the moment. Honor the interactions that express love, patience, service. You will not always have these opportunities.

palms and thorns

Palm Sunday again...

and again we take the roller coaster ride of Jesus' last days on earth.

The older I get the more it means, maybe because I have loved more and lost more, loved more and won more, been beaten up and betrayed, and yes, on occasion resurrected. I have heard the call of a God who makes no sense by earthly standards and yet in every natural way... from the creation of the cosmos to the fresh shoots in spring to the dying of the stalks in autumn... makes perfect sense.

We are here to live and die, to be joyful and to suffer, to win and to lose. I have come to believe that those things are not two sides of a flat coin but integral parts of the multi-dimensional whole. Join me in the wild ride.

In search of the hunger high

I recently read the book First There Is a Mountain by Elizabeth Kadetsky. It's about yoga, specifically her journey as both journalist and yoga practitioner to study, in India, with the famous yogi, Iyengar.

There was a cryptic statement early on in the book about her missing the "hunger high". That got my attention, in light of my personal Lenten discipline to fast on a regular basis. Was there really such a thing as getting high from being hungry? (Inquiring minds want to know.)

But then I speculated on my ongoing inability to ever exercise enough to reach the stage where endorphins are supposed to make you feel all warm and fuzzy, as opposed to irritable and sweaty, which is my experience with exercise of most any variety.

Still… an intriguing thought.

It didn't happen. Maybe I never got hungry enough. I was definitely hungry enough to feel empty, to feel a hole in my abdomen wanting to be filled. I was hungry enough to feel light-headed and sometimes slightly nauseated, but certainly not high. I know what high feels like, or should I say I remember distinctly what high felt like back when pot was available and cool. And I know what an alcohol buzz feels like.

I never felt either one. Of course that wasn't the point of fasting. The point was to experience hunger. Unwanted hunger. To create a condition, if only approximately, of what it's like to be poor. To relate to poverty in a way that a white middle-class nun never really can. I'm not even sure if that was successful. After all, it was self-imposed; I was able to eat if I wanted to. And sometimes I was so busy, so involved with a project that I could have cared less. I generally get hungry when I'm bored. And this has not been a boring Lent.

I did lose some weight. But that was probably more the moratorium on bread than my one day of fasting a week. All in all, a bust.

And yet… I experienced how the street vendor smells of cooking food are kicks in the teeth when your stomach is empty. I felt the wistful longing to stop and admire pastries in the bakery window, knowing I could not go in and buy one, whether the reason was money or discipline. I felt more like sharing. That's something.

The downhill slide

The religious life is a strange place. 

This is, of course, Holy Week, called that because we're leading up to the holiest day of the year for Christians: Easter... resurrection. I've read a few books this past year that have suggested that resurrection is the only reason to be a Christian, and I've read some that say the resurrection most likely never happened and so what? That Jesus' life, in and of itself, was a testimony to the inner being of God, an example for how we should be patterning our own lives.

I find I have not experienced a major crisis of faith over either viewpoint. I tend to lean on the side of "so what?" simply because I wasn't there, and so many stories of the encounters with the resurrected Jesus describe him as unrecognizable. By his best friends. That said, I also believe in a God who can and does work miracles when it suits God's purposes. The nature of those miracles seems to be what we all get in a snit over. Was he bodily resurrected? Maybe, maybe not. 

He was resurrected. The power and intensity of his presence after the crucifixion glows from the pages of all the accounts of the sitings and interactions that people had with him. His teaching and example did not die with him.

Today is Maundy Thursday, the day we celebrate the Last Supper. We remember tonight that he ate one last hearty and joyful meal with his friends before the downhill slide into tomorrow. We remember that he washed the feet of his disciples as a servant washes the feet of their masters... that he was betrayed by one of his own. We remember that he gave a final commandment to those at table with him... to love each other in the same way he had loved them. We haven't kept that commandment very seriously. I certainly haven't.

Most of my Lenten meditation this year has been on the fifth Station of the Cross: The cross is laid on Simon of Cyrene. I have tried to imagine every emotion Simon might have had in being forced with this obligation: horror, suppressed anger, repulsion, resentment, fear, relief... I can only imagine how he may have felt. But I know how I feel when I'm stuck with a dirty job I didn't ask for. It's been a good one for me.

from hero to villain

I've probably mentioned before that Palm Sunday, the way we do it in the Episcopal Church, has always been a sore spot with me. This might be because I was brought up in an assortment of Baptist-Congregational-Unitarian churches, where Jesus got the whole day to be the son of David, the hailed messiah. 

When I was little we marched around the entire block in the Baptist church, around the pews in the Congregational church; I can't remember if we marched at all in the Unitarian church, but the entire service was given over to hosannas and palm waving.

Not anymore. Now we re-enact a "Passion Narrative" (one of the Gospels) and it's actually called Passion Sunday. We speed through the hosannas and boom! it's time to crucify him. All inside of minutes. That's just wrong.

And yet... as our celebrant preached on Sunday, it mirrors life. It mirrors the mob mentality. I don't like mobs. Crowds either. They can turn on a dime for no apparent reason. And so, Jesus goes from hero to criminal in a matter of minutes. How easy this turning.

Our celebrant also examined the concept of of scapegoating... distancing ourselves from our own accountability for whatever may be wrong with the world. Yesterday I saw a news report about Obama telling the truth about the American mentality (he said we have sometimes been arrogant) and the news reporter jumped all over it. As Jesus was well aware, telling the truth is a dangerous endeavor.

But one thing she said struck me as especially important for me this year. That in the Passion narrative, especially this year's version from Mark, we are allowed to walk through all the experiences of humanity. The drama of the journey lets us (if we are willing) see ourselves in the story. Of course.

The parable of the prodigal son has always been like that for me... seeing myself in all those personalities (I always identify first with the older brother... no surprise there.) But never in the Passion narrative. We are all Judas, Peter, Pilate... at different times in different situations. It's a good reflection for Holy Week, I think.

waiting...

Jesus is laid in the tomb

This is the final image for my series Stations of the Cross. I started working on it several years ago when my church asked the artist's guild to create images for each of the fourteen stations. Mine was Station 11: Jesus is nailed to the cross. The scripture that accompanies this station specifically mentions that he was crucified between two thieves, and that was my focus for the artwork, an abstract that depicts the Christ only as a blur of red between two other colors.

It's taken me a long time to complete the series, and for now, at least, it is finished. You can view them all here. Scroll down and move back up to see it in sequence (if that's the way you like to do things.)

Good Friday

"Losing that job was the best thing that ever happened to me." "I'm not glad I got cancer, but it sure made me more appreciative of life in general." "It seemed like such a bad thing at the time, but in retrospect I'm glad it happened."

That's how we are brought up (as Christians) to believe in "Good" Friday. It was a horrible thing at the time, but the fact that it happened was good for us.

We recite a number of articles of faith in our religion... that Jesus was the son of God, the only one, born under peculiar and holy circumstances, that he suffered, died and was buried... that he rose from the dead and sits beside God, that he will come back... to judge whoever's left and those already dead.

But we go on to elaborate on these articles, (which were never part of what the disciples believed to begin with,) and we add more intent and presume a righteous understanding of who Jesus was, what he knew, and why he had to die for our salvation. We also presume that God wanted him dead for God's own purposes... whatever they might be.

Because of this righteous understanding of who God is and what God wants and how God works, we go on to draw conclusions that may or may not be true in the long haul. One in particular is that the New Covenant of Christ supersedes the Old Covenant that God made with Abraham, and later, Moses. If time is not linear to God then this cannot be possible. Christ made a new covenant with his disciples on the night before he died. He made it in the context of the Passover meal, in the context of the established covenant.

Jesus also shortened the ten commandments on two occasions: the first when he said, in answer to a question, "Love God, and love your neighbor." Ten distilled down to two. When he spoke to his disciples that night, he made it even simpler: "Love one another as I have loved you." Simpler maybe, but certainly not easier.

"Love one another as I have loved you." cannot possibly equate to kill the infidel, annihilate the heretics, burn, pillage and destroy. It cannot equate to judging people as believers vs. nonbelievers, Christians vs. Jews, Jews vs. Muslims, Catholic vs. Protestant, East vs. West, Democrat vs. Republican. (You get the picture.)

My guess is we have no idea what happened on that first Good Friday, nor why. We have background, a few "facts" as recorded by early historians. We have the stories told by his followers, and they will always contain some grain of the truth. Probably more important, we have the example of his disciples who afterwards, were willing to die the same awful deaths their Lord had died. They understood the new commandment.

I'm not sure we do in this generation.

Palm Sunday

I was brought up in the Protestant tradition where Palm Sunday was the day for marching bands, palm waving and hosannas. It was not to be confused with the events that occur just a few days later.

Imagine my horror the first time I experienced Palm Sunday in the Episcopal church... where the service starts out with a parade around the chancel, but then things get very ugly as the Passion narrative is read (or worse, acted out.) I was flabbergasted. "Give the man a few days to enjoy the ride," I thought. Betrayal and death will come soon enough.

I've had to endure many a Palm Sunday since that first one, and I have to admit the tradition has grown on me. Ask anyone who's life has changed in a matter of minutes. They will tell you that security is an illusion, that all we truly have is the moment we're living in.

For us to go from "Hosanna in the Highest!" to "Crucify him!" in less than fifteen minutes, then, is not so unlikely.

I have avoided crowds most of my life. They scare me. There is a crowd mentality that takes over and it can be nasty and unpredictable. In Jerusalem the crowd was swayed to blood lust. Those who would have been sickened by it probably stayed home. There were several Palm Sundays in the beginning of my life as an Episcopalian that I found one reason or another to stay home too. But showing up is important. Showing up and standing up for what we believe is probably one of the most important choices we can make. Even if it seems to make no difference at the time.

Holy Saturday

Saturday. The day after... the day that life goes on.

Those in shock from their awful grief closed the blinds and laid low, but the rest of the world was back to business, business as usual. The markets were open, a new curtain had been installed in the temple, and the total eclipse of the sun was yesterday's news. Some soldier had a new tunic; the rest a pile of cleaning rags for polishing their weapons.

Life goes on. Nobody is indispensable, and the death of one rabble rouser had changed nothing for Rome's mighty empire. So they believed.

Jesus said: I tell you for certain that a grain of wheat that falls on the ground will never be more than one grain unless it dies. But if it dies, it will produce much wheat. If you love your life, you will lose it. If you give it up in this world, you will be given eternal life. — John 12:24-25

What beautiful words... words of encouragement and promise. Do they really stick? Do they sink into our consciousness and direct our choices and decisions? I don't think so. We point to Jesus and think: all very well and good for you, you rose from the dead. You were special. Yet none of your disciples rose from the dead when they were martyred for your sake. What about that?

What about that? Many Christians cling to Christ's resurrection as a hinge to hang their faith upon. Yes, Jesus died, but he rose from the dead! Yet the risen Jesus was not the same man who died. Nobody seemed to even recognize him until he spoke their name or did something familiar that jogged their memories. He had changed. He appeared and disappeared, walked through walls, and eventually he left them again. In a cloud of glory to be sure, but he was still gone.

So if we don't get to do all that too, then what do those words mean? In The Universe Story, the sacrificial nature of creation is heavily emphasized. Something or someone always dies so that something or someone else can live. The grass eats the sun, the cow eats the grass, I eat the cow... but it's much more complex than where we live on the food chain. Jesus spoke in riddles about holy mysteries too vast for us to understand. Perhaps his rising from the dead was simply another parable. Some believe it was his reward for being obedient, but it may have been just one more example of the mysterious grace of God.

Good Friday

Loss... whether it's expected or sudden, it still upends me and leaves me reeling. Death, whether I knew it was coming or not, still overwhelms me and turns me inside out. I "function well under pressure" I've been told. What that means is I go on auto-pilot. I am an adequate doing machine, but I have submerged my being... to keep it safe.

I imagine Mary Magdalene as more authentic in her being than I. I imagine her keening at the tomb, helpless and lost. In this image I made for Holy Week she holds the crown of thorns on her knee. It is still flecked with Jesus' blood from where she had to pry it from his head. The thorns press through the material of her robe and her blood mingles with his, but she can't feel any of it. She clutches the cloth she used to wipe his face before she had to leave... leave him inside that dark place.

Maundy Thursday

When I was a kid, I thought they were saying Monday Thursday and I couldn't figure it out. Why would Thursday be on Monday? Later I thought maybe Maundy was like laundry... since it was foot-washing day. It wasn't until I took Latin in high school that I learned the term novum mandātum new mandate... the new commandment Jesus gave his disciples when he'd finished washing their feet. The Medieval English word for mandate is maunde, leading to our derivation: Maundy.

"Love one another, just as I have loved you." In other words, I've been acting as your servant, not your Lord. I've been treating you as my Lord. Get it? Of course they didn't get it. We don't either.

This afternoon we'll reenact the foot washing among ourselves. We have no Mother anymore to wash the feet of her sisters (I don't know that she ever did); now everyone chips in. The one who just got washed washes the next in line. It works pretty well and seems to be moving for both participants. It's an odd time, and peculiar to each sister. Some splash you a couple of times and are done, others scrub... or caress gently, some even wash between the toes. (It's hard not to giggle if you're feet are ticklish.)

Then the solemn Eucharist begins: The last supper of our Lord, where some believe the institution of Holy Communion was launched. I've never quite bought the fact that the words "This is my body, broken for you... whenever you eat it, do it in remembrance of me." was meant to be an institution. It sounds more like... whenever you eat bread (or anything for that matter,) remember me... and by the way, remember that new commandment I just gave you.

Wednesday in Holy Week

Not much time to post today.

Wednesday is always busy for me; I am supper cook and doorbell queen on Wednesday. Add to that, confession with my spiritual director, preparations for tonight's Tenebrae service, setting up the altar of repose (for tomorrow night's service,) some last minute printing jobs for Easter cards for my sisters, and a Lincoln Center program waiting in the wings... the evening has not even begun and already I am pooped.

As I peeled and sliced the onions for our soup tonight, I thought of the Marys shopping at the market for the Passover preparations. Were they also rushed to finish everything before tomorrow night's feast? Cleaning the room, decorating, cooking all the special foods in the proper way. I thought of my friend who used to make the best onion soup when we lived at Melrose, wondered how she's doing in her new community this year...

Choir practice is at 4:00, then Evening Prayer, supper and the mad scramble to get the chapel ready for Tenebrae. Most windows are covered in blackout curtains, those with heavy drapes are pinned together. Wax paper is laid on the altar (in case the tenebrae candles should drip) the candles are arranged. One sister is polishing the two candleabras now... I wish her luck. It took me two days to polish them the year I was stuck with that job.

The Tenebrae service is ancient. Candles are extinguished one by one until only one is left and then even it is carried away, out of the chapel. All wait in darkness (pitch black supposedly, which is why all the Exit signs are covered up, and the windows draped.) At some point there is a huge thud, and the one candle returns. Light to the world in its darkness. It is one lone flicker in the vast sea of darkness, but it has not been consumed or extinguished. Everyone leaves in silence to carefully find their way out.

Tuesday in Holy Week

As an artist, I find I cannot always keep in sync with the seasons, especially the Christian liturgical seasons. I have to draw (or in my case, composite) what the spirit leads me to... often after the season has passed.

For several years I've thought about doing a series of abstracts for Lent on the stations of the cross. I've never quite been able to get my act together to complete the project... I have one image I really love (station eleven) and have used it a couple of times when only one was required. The rest have not come as easily as that one.

This Good Friday my friend will be preaching on the dialog between Jesus and the two bandits crucified with him... part of the "Seven Last Words" liturgy. We often have conversations about the topic he is to preach on; it's part of what we do as friends. It occurred to me that dialog is from station eleven. Small world.

Our celebrant last Sunday preached about the sometimes helpless fascination we have with grisly death, whether it's brought on by the force of nature or caused by humans... any catastrophe, and we'll continue to watch the reruns on TV, over and over again.

Holy Week is a kind of rerun. We are morbidly drawn to the story of the unraveling of Palm Sunday's great beginning... of how it all went downhill, ending in Jesus' grisly death on Good Friday. But today is only Tuesday. Perhaps tonight is Bethany night, a party in full swing, when Mary anoints Jesus with the expensive perfume and Judas adds one more item to his growing list of grievances. But we've seen the video clip already... we know what's coming, and the tension is building. It's harder to breathe than it was yesterday.


Station Eleven: Jesus is nailed to the Cross
When they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him; and with him they crucified two criminals, one on the right, the other on the left, and Jesus between them. And the scripture was fulfilled which says, “He was numbered with the transgressors.”

Desert Day

On the Monday in Holy Week we observe something called Desert Day.

Monday is normally a rest day for the community... a day off, to catch up, sleep late or visit friends outside the convent. There is no schedule on Monday and, for me, that is its greatest appeal. We are still expected to recite Morning and Evening Prayer on our own, but saying it at exactly six-thirty am is not required. Ah... heaven.

I'd never heard of desert days before coming to the convent. The term isn't in wikipedia, maybe we made it up. What it implies... is although today looks like a normal rest day on the surface, nothing is normal. The galaxy poises itself for the cosmic turn of events that will be remembered and acted out this week.

God will renounce his power to rule.

Time warp

Palm Sunday... the time warp begins.

I've heard this coming week called The Great Week, Holy Week, The Week From Hell. It has been many things for me, but it has never been "great". In the years that I took the week seriously, it was profound, distressing, comforting, agonizing. But there were those years I deliberately passed it by... went straight to the jelly beans and marshmallow peeps without a single thought of crucifixion or resurrection. So what's the difference?

The difference is always what we bring to it of ourselves, where we are at the particular moment in time. Some years I could bring nothing. That's just the way it was... and God did not stop the world to get my attention. My experience has been that God is much more patient and much more subtle than that.

I once railed against the God I perceived in the image of indifferent father, as his only son was slaughtered. That image changed last year when I finally was able to translate the scenario in a new way. (Here's the post)

Years ago... a Palm Sunday service did send me into some kind of time warp. I was in a dark place that held no physical form except the palpable sense of emotion... that emotion was grief, grief caused by a great loss. Someone I knew, someone I loved was being taken from me and I was helpless to do anything to prevent it.

Where in time was I? Was I at the crucifixion? Or was it somewhere else on that blending wave of chronology? In the Scottish Highlands at the time of the uprisings? I will probably never know, but I know that mark of recognition was burned into my soul that day. I wasn't too happy about it either. I think back on the subsequent Palm Sundays when I skipped church for fear of a repeat, or something deeper, something worse.

Fear, the most insidious and devastating of emotions... it either paralyzes us or calls us to violence. The Scripture says: perfect Love has no fear. The reverse is also profound: perfect fear has no Love. Jesus exemplified that perfection of Love, and we in our perfect fear had to kill him for it.

Holy Saturday...alternate realities

I remember moving through the days after my mother's death, on autopilot. I didn't make my bed, I barely ate, or when I did, I gorged on Kryspy Kremes. I went to work, but didn't accomplish much. But my mother was 78, I'd known her all my life. She died of a stroke, not at the hands of executioners. I wasn't even at the hospital when she died. I woke up with a start at midnight and looked at the clock. Twenty minutes later the floor nurse called. It was over.

There's nothing holy about Holy Saturday. Those who loved Jesus would have been in shock today. If they had slept at all, they would have woken up to remember that the nightmare of yesterday was not a dream. He was dead. It was over. What's so holy about that? A few centuries later we can sit out the day with anticipation while Jesus cools his heels in the tomb. Tomorrow is Easter. As Paul Harvey used to say, we know the rest of the story. They didn't.

While I have experienced loss, for me to put myself in their shoes creates an alternate reality. I've mentioned a Palm Sunday meltdown I had years ago. That was an alternate reality. I was in the church and then I wasn't. I couldn't see any details of where I was, couldn't hear them. All I knew for sure was something very bad was happening to someone I loved and I was helpless to do anything about it. The emotions were horror, guilt, grief... all rolled together. Multiply that by a hundred and you may come close to what Jesus' mother felt.

So today... while I wait outside the tomb, I'm thinking about alternate realities. What kind of world would have played it out differently? How would it have looked? The new string theories suspect as many as twenty-seven dimensions to our world we can't even imagine, maybe more. Those with paranormal abilities have a personal sense that there's more to life than we admit. Shamans know it. We track time as a linear progression, but I have experienced moments when time slowed down or stood still. Time warps and closes in on itself. Deja vu tells us this has happened before.

But if time progresses in a linear fashion, then one change may affect all the subsequent results. Imagine a world full of sin into which Jesus is born. His cousin John has set the path: repentance. Jesus begins his ministry and the miracles themselves are enough to get the Pharisees' attention. If this man can raise people from the dead, we need to listen to him. Even if we get killed by the Romans, he could bring us back. We need him to teach us what he knows. No betrayal, no crucifixion, in fact, the movement of compassion spreads. Even the Romans see how corrupt they have become and set about mending their ways. No fall of the Empire... it dissolves peacefully as the kingdom of God works in the hearts and minds of the human community. Yeah, right.

Okay then... imagine this one. I have (so many times) questioned God about the way He handled the crucifixion. The curtain in the temple was rent? That's all you could do?!? They probably had a new curtain up the next day.

I never got an answer to my question until now. No, that's not all He could do. In another reality the first soldier to wield a hammer was struck by lightning. And the next. They ended up tying Jesus to the cross to get him hoisted. But the heavens opened and a voice thundered... "What then will the landowner do to those tenants? He will come and destroy them and give the land to others." And the earth quaked and angels came, and all Jesus' bruises and cuts disappeared and it was judgment day for the earth. Like that one any better?

Why didn't you do anything, God? Because he asked me not to.
I beg your pardon? That's correct. Do you really think I was indifferent? That I didn't watch the whole thing in horror myself? I would have done anything for my son. Whatever he asked. I would have destroyed the world with fire and started over. But he asked me not to. He asked me to forgive them.

"Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."
Oh. I forgot that part. Well, I didn't forget, I just didn't know how all of reality could turn on three words... one request.