Station IV: In the Silence of Grief

Scripture Passage: Luke 2: 7
And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

The hurt in Mary's eyes is evident.  This is her son.  This was the child that she carried in the womb, birthed into the world in the rough hues of that cold desert night shielded only by a stable, or a cave, or a grotto, or something of the like.  This was the child that she nurtured and saw grow into a young man.  This was the child that she never understood, the one who seemed to choose his own path, the one who even at a young age always seemed to have some sort of incredible innate wisdom.  This was the child that would rather sit at the feet of the rabbis, would rather soak in all of the eons of lessons, than play like the other children.  This was the young man that had made her so proud, full of compassion and empathy, always thinking of others, always standing up for the poor and the outcast.  This was the young man who had more courage than she had ever seen.  Where did he get that?  She remembers that night long ago in Bethlehem.  They almost didn't get there in time.  They almost didn't have a place.  But there he was.  Even the first time that she looked into his eyes, she knew.  This child was different.  Born of her and, yet, not really ever hers.  He always seemed to belong to something bigger.  But she could pretend.  She could think that he was hers.  And she could love him more than life itself.  And now, today, the pain is almost to great to bear.  It looked like this was it.  Was it all for naught?  After all, she herself had given up so much.  What meaning did it have?  Why was it ending so soon?  It couldn't be time to give him back--not yet.

This station is another one that is considered "non-canonical".  But we know that Mary was there.  Love would put her there.  Love would make her want to pick him up and hold him, cradle him like she did that cold Bethlehem night.  The station is marked with a relief carved in stone.  The church next to it still has the mosaic floor from an earlier Byzantine church that stood on the premises.  In the floor is an image of a pair of sandals facing north, supposedly marking the place where Mary stood in suffering silence when she saw her son carried on the cross.  

The Mary we know is usually silent.  With the exception of that story of the wedding at Cana when she told Jesus to fix the problem with the wine, she is usually depicted as almost stoic.  I don't think stoicism has anything to do with it though.  Mary's grief and pain were real.  When Jesus encountered her this one last time, they both knew it.  And they both felt Mary's deep, unending, nurturing love.  Perhaps that is what we are to glean from this--that in the midst of one's grief and pain and unbearable loss is the deepest love imagineable.  We see it in Mary and we know that at this moment, this is what God is feeling too.  After all, both have given themselves for the world and both are shattered  that the world is throwing their love back.  

At this point, nothing need be said.  The love is evident--the love of Mary, the love of God.  It is a love that we must experience--self-giving, suffering, silent--if we are to understand who God is and who God calls us to be.   It is the love that we are called to have for one another, a love that in the deepest of grief pulls us up and pulls us through, a love that would compel us to stand up for another, a love that, finally, creates room, a love that is of God.

So, in this Lenten season, let us, finally, learn to love one another. 

Grace and Peace,

Shelli  

Station III: Vulnerable

"Station III", painting by Chris Gollon
Commissioned in 2000 by
St. John on Bethnal Green, London

Scripture Passage:  Matthew 7:25
The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.

The third station of this Way of the Cross is the image of Jesus falling under the weight of the cross.  It is one of the non-Canonical stations and yet we know that the sheer exhaustion alone would be enough to make this a reality for any human.  That's right.  Lest we forget, Jesus was human.  God did not come to earth to live as a figure resembling one of our super heroes, above the fray, untouchable, undaunted by the difficulties of human life.  No, God came as one of us, struggling and vulnerable.  And as Jesus falls, we feel that vulnerability.  It is uncomfortable for us.  After all, if this one on whom we rely, in whom we place all of our hopes and our dreams, is vulnerable, what does that say about out own lives?

Maybe the crux of this Walk is that we ARE supposed to be vulnerable.  Living a life of faith does not place some sort of impermeable bubble around us.  Regardless of what many will tell you, walking this walk does not guarantee that you will be healthy, wealthy, and wise.  If anything, it points to our vulnerability in the most profound way.  As humans, we will at times experience sadness, despair, and the deepest grief imagineable.  We experience those not because we are weak but because we are real.  And Jesus experienced the same thing because he, too, was real.  And, when you think about it, what kind of God is it who will plunge the Divine Self into the deepest of despair and the vulnerability?  It is the kind of God that does more than pull us out of it but rather lays at the bottom of it all and cradles us until it subsides.  But we will only experience that when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, when we allow ourselves to be real, when we finally allow ourselves to need others, to let them in to our darkness.

This depiction of Jesus falling under the weight of the Cross affirms that vulnerability is part of us.  It also compels us toward the vulnerable, the hurting, the outcast, for it is there that we will find in ourselves empathy and compassion, and, finally, a Love greater than we thought we could have.  If we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we will be able to see the same in others.  We are not called to become a Super Hero; we are called to cross boundaries and be Christ for others when they need it the most and, perhaps with even greater faith than that, we are called to let others into our grief and pain.  We are the ones who both lift the fallen and allow ourselves to be lifted.  Sometimes we will fall.  Sometimes life will hurt.  But we are never there alone.  But it takes great faith to know that.

Jesus will fall two more times on this Walk.  Life goes on.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli  

Falling in Love With God

Lectionary Passage: Song of Solomon 2: 8-13

To read this passage online, go to http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Song+of+Songs+2:8-13&vnum=yes&version=nrsv

Do you love God?  Sure you do!  That's the whole point, right?  But here's perhaps a harder (or at least a weirder) question:  Are you in IN love with God?  After all, being "in love" seems to be something so profoundly human, so earthy, so "fleshy", so intimate, so private.  It’s more than just loving.  It’s more than just being together.  It’s almost a completion of who you are called to be, an entirely different way of being.  It really is more about being one than being two that love.  We proper Western Protestants understand loving God (and, certainly, pleasing God).  But do we let ourselves fall, with utter abandon, into love with God?    The Old Testament passage from this week's Lectionary selections is from the wisdom writing known in Hebrew as the Song of Songs.  It's not the usual fare for our lectionary.  I mean, it borders on what is sometimes characterized as almost erotic imagery and it doesn't even mention God.  So, as you can imagine, there were lots of debates about whether or not it belonged in the canon at all.  The matter was settled by Rabbi Akiba, the great teacher and mystic, who said this: “The whole world is not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the Scriptures are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies.   The Holy of Holies?  Wow!  We'll have to think about that one.  I mean, really?  We struggle with that, as if our relationship with God should be proper and acceptable, as if it should be reverent of the One in whom we live and breathe and have our being.  So what is reverence?  Is it standing away, removed from the One whom we revere?  Or it is realizing that every molecule of our being desires to connect with God, longs to return to the One who created us.  Or maybe, just maybe, it's falling in love with God.   Implicit in this poem is a sort of pining absence, a longing so deep that the poet cannot be complete without the One that is loved. I think that’s the way we’re called to be. I mean, think about it, we were created in the image of God, made with a shape and a sense into which only God fits. And we struggle. We struggle to find what fits into that shape. And in the absence, in the longing, we finally find that Presence of God, we finally find that One in whom we are destined to fall in love. Seventeenth century mathematician, Blaise Pascal spoke of it as a “God-shaped vacuum” in every human, a hole that only God could fill. It’s like being in love.

Like I said, this poem is not your usual reading from the Bible. There are no parables, no words of judgment, no promises of future and unrequited redemption. Rather, there is presence; there is reverence; there is a depiction of the most joyous and incredible love imaginable. It is flirtatious, and playful, and filled with utter joy. It is the very love of God. And the poet depicts it as transforming, a veritable spring at the end of winter, when life bursts forth from lifelessness and literally consumes death.  (Sounds like resurrection to me!)

Perhaps it is the language that makes us bristle, that makes us squirm a bit in our pews.  Perhaps we are even a bit uncomfortable with a God who is so intimate, so a part of us, that falling in love is all we can do.  Perhaps we really haven’t thought through what it means to be created in the image of someone else.  It means that we have to let ourselves go, that we have to become who God called us to be, that we have to realize that there is something more, that WE are something more, that we are created in the image of our Beloved, that we are created to fall in love with God.  It is about completion; it is about wholeness; it is about being who we were created to be.  It is about falling in love with God and falling into God.

Our lectionary probably doesn't do us any favors because it doesn't even allow us to finish the poem.  The next four verses go like this:

O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely. Catch us the foxes, the little foxes, that ruin the vineyards— for our vineyards are in blossom.”   My beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures his flock among the lilies.  Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle or a young stag on the cleft mountains.

My beloved is mine and I am my beloved's.  That's a whole lot different than an image of a seemingly-removed deity sitting up somewhere waiting for us to get our act together and catch up.  And it flies in the face of us spending our earthly lives wallowing in chaos and muck, hoping against hope that we will finally rack up enough points to make it to heaven someday.  Once again, it's present tense.  We are God's and God, in a show of grace more amazing than we could ever sing, becomes ours.  We are not just called to love and support and please God and try to figure out who or what God is; we are called to let ourselves go, to fall into love with God and fall into God with utter abandon and profound joy.

Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, turn, my beloved…My beloved is mine and I am [my beloved’s].  Thanks be to God!

There is only one love.  (Teresa of Avila)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli