Virginia Tech

I received a beautiful, incredibly wise e-mail from the service-learning director at Virgina Tech today that went out to a list of service-learning practitioners. She reminded us all that the lesson in the shootings is not that we need to tighten security but rather that we need to find some way to open our hearts to the disenfranchised, alienated people in our communities. Keep doing the work, she wrote, that you already do.

I read this e-mail tonight at a prayer vigil on our campus. I thought the message was so thoughtful and so brave.

Sometimes at this point in the semester--not to mention this point in my career--I find myself impatient with my students, tired of attending to them. I snap at people who knock on my office door when it is closed. I ignore the student worker who comes in to organize my shelves of service-learning supplies for the week, mumbling hello but not asking how her weekend was. I get frustrated at the student who is failing, even though she's trying her best. I ignore the long e-mail from a student who wants to explain why she missed class--and to tell me something about her life in the process.

Today I tried to slow down--not because I worry that one of my students might murder more than 30 people, but because I think that in a way, we're all responsible for these murders, all of us who do not attend to those around us, who miss opportunities to be present. I don't mean that we should feel guilty--but rather that we should listen more deeply.

I spent 20 minutes just chatting w/ a student who has been in my class for this entire year about her major, about what she liked about UMM. I responded to a long e-mail that explained a student's absence, trying to be attentive to the student's panic and pain. I helped a failing student with her paper, careful to praise her for each small improvement in her writing.

I left school with more papers to grade than I'd hoped for; I'll have to go in early tomorrow. But I was present while I was at work in a way I haven't been in the past, and I left work feeling as if I had actually accomplished something that mattered, had found a way to attend to the day-to-day drudgery and to the people who are affected by that drudgery. I pray I'll be able to stay present.

Doubting Thomas

Psalm 118:14-29
Revelations 1:4-8
John 20: 19-31

The story of doubting Thomas relayed in John’s gospel has never held much meaning for me. Jesus shows up after his death in a small room where 10 of the remaining 11 apostles are hiding. He greets them, saying, “Peace be with you,” and he shows them the nail marks in his hands and the sword’s wound in his side in order to prove that it is truly him. (In contrast, Mary Magdalene believed as soon as she heard the risen Christ call her by name). Later, when Thomas shows up, he refuses to believe that the disciples actually saw Jesus. Jesus has to come back and show Thomas his side and hands all over again. For some reason, Thomas is singled out as especially doubtful, even though, according to this account, Jesus had to show his wounds to the other disciples as well before they believed they were truly seeing their great teacher.

It is not the idea that a man could come back from the dead that seems troubling to me. People who left this life have come back to me in dreams or, on a few occasions, during my waking hours. Sometimes they come back just to be present, to sit on the sofa as if to remind me, I am still here. At other times, they speak to me, and their words are often a mixture of words I’d heard them say in life and words that have meaning for my own life now. However, I never doubted who they were. They never looked different to me than they had when they were alive, though sometimes they were surrounded by or infused with light. So I can’t really understand why Jesus didn’t look like himself in these stories, or why the wounds would be the sign that finally convinces his disciples of his identity. These details are simply outside my experience.

But today I thought of this story as a kind of metaphor about how to mourn. As I hiked the prairie as attentively as possible on this first warm day after a long, snowy, cold spell, I thought that perhaps the story is supposed to teach us that our losses are never fixed or unchanging. We want to recognize the loss for what it is, for what it will mean to us, to literally put our fingers in the wounds that signify what we lost and how we lost it. However, we must understand that we will carry our losses for the rest of our lives. At each stage, their shape and sound and feel and scent will change. Sometimes they will be light as a small milk-pod hanging delicately on a branch; at other times they will shout out like a duck just shot by a hunter and fall to the ground, feathers soft and limp. Sometimes they will feed us; sometimes we must go hungry in order to feed them. Sometimes they will be in sync with their surroundings, like prairie grass in a fierce wind. At other times, they will be mown down, pushed into the soft soil by our own heels.

Our losses are a part of us; they are us. They are a part of our geography; they are our geography. When viewed in this way, losses teach us how to live. They teach us how to understand love, or rather, that love cannot be understood. They teach us that much of our lives are out of our control, but that we can be present to each feeling that emerges or re-emerges during our lifetime.

The story seems also to be about the fact that losses are not about a single moment in time, not about the wounds themselves. We sometimes hunger to touch our own wounds or the wounds of others right after a loss, thinking that unless we do, we are not truly present in our own lives or in others’ lives. But it is not at the moment of our wounding when we understand the most, but rather, later, when we are walking a prairie path on a warm, spring day.

And it is rarely in the moment of wounding that our friends most need us. I am learning through my close friendships that I am often more needed on an otherwise quiet, peaceful day than on the day a loss was first experienced; sometimes it is on days like this one, when the snow is finally almost-melted and we’ve thrown off our jackets for the first time, that losses come out of the deepest parts of ourselves and need to be shared with others.

The story also shows us that everyone experiences losses in different ways, and that the process of integrating a loss into one’s life varies from person to person. Mary Magdalene was comforted by the sound of her own name. Thomas needed to see the wounds, to know for sure that the body still held the remnants of a public murder. And the loss itself will take many forms—demanding at times to be fed (this happens later in the story), sometimes revealing the gory details, sometimes arriving as a light-infused angel with a message of hope. But all those who lost a teacher or friend in Jesus knew they had to find some way to continue to make his life meaningful through their actions. We are called to do the same, and through our actions, we show our faith.

Easter

This Sunday, in lieu of a meditation on the week's readings, I'm posting the service I led this morning at a gathering with friends...enjoy.


I am grateful for this opportunity to lead this service and thank Pilar for the idea. It means a lot to me to have all of you here.

Let me tell you a little about what this is going to be like. Last night when I finally sat down to write this, I realized it was not possible for me to write a service that was not grounded in my own spiritual tradition. But what I’m hoping to do is not to celebrate Easter exactly, but to walk you through some of the stories associated with the holiday in order to get at their universal truths. I hope this won’t be offensive to anyone. There will also be times when we are sitting in silence or when I am singing a hymn from my tradition; at these times, it’s up to you, and dependent upon your own spiritual practices, if you want to pray, reflect, meditate, or simply be attentive to what you’re experiencing.

With that, I invite you to be silent for a moment to prepare for a time of reflection.

[Silence]

Here is a reading to help us to get into the right mindset for this service:

[Reading # 16 from Tao Te Ching]

In the tradition in which I was raised, the Easter season begins on what is called Lazarus Saturday, the Saturday that falls one week and one day before Easter Sunday. In case you don’t know the story of Lazarus, here it is: Jesus heard that Lazarus, the brother of his closest friends, Mary and Martha, was dying. He had fled Judea before this because there were people there who wanted to kill him, but he chose to return to Judea to try to help his friends. When he arrived, Lazarus was already dead. Jesus wept for his friends who had lost their beloved brother, and then he prayed for the power to raise him from the dead. It’s clear from most versions of the story that he had no idea he actually had this power and that he asked for the miracle out of a desperate longing to relieve his friends’ grief. On this day in the Greek Orthodox Church, there is a liturgy that commemorates this miracle, but it is not the liturgy or the story that I want to focus on, but instead, what happens after the service. At that time, The women gather in the church kitchen and begin to boil several hundred eggs. They also wash the palms that have been ordered for the next day, Palm Sunday, and lay them out on the table. During the next several hours, the women dye hundreds of eggs, and also fold hundreds of palms into the shape of a cross. At the table, they sing and pray and gossip together. By doing so, they honor the deep, lasting friendship of Jesus, Mary, and Martha, a friendship that will be tested several times throughout the last week of Jesus’ life. In honor of this celebration, I have folded these strips of paper into a circle that represents the connectedness of friendship; choose one of them as they are passed around the table, and as you hold it in your hand, give thanks in whatever way you choose for the friends that have helped you to rise up out of the dark places in your life. As you do, I will sing one of the traditional holy week songs that honors the friendship Mary and Martha had for Jesus.

[Verses from Good Friday Lamentations here]
Lazarus Saturday weaves into Palm Sunday, when Jesus returns to Jersualem, where he will die. His movement through the people who wave palms and shout their praises reminds us of the Passover, when the Jews, after 460 years in captivity, crossed an ocean of loud, towering waves in order to find their homeland. Let us reflect now on what home is for us and remember those who do not have a physical or spiritual home in whatever way we choose. As you do, make creases in your circle at the points that are marked. Your circle should transform into the shape of a home.

[Silence]

On Monday and Tuesday, we hear a series of parables that focus on the virtues of patience and hope. They are all, in one way or another, about waiting. We remember on these days that the Jews waited 460 years to escape slavery, that our own Greek ancestors waited 500 years for freedom during one of Greece’s occupations. I’m going to pass out these eggs now to symbolize the things we must wait for, the things that do not come easily—the loss that must be mourned, the gift we wish to accept that has not yet been offered. These eggs symbolize all that we wait for; all that we could easily attempt to rush through. The nourishment they have the potential to give us is enclosed in a hard shell. However, if we were to break the shell too early, we would not notice the eggs’ beauty. If we bit into the egg too quickly, we would not notice how the taste of the egg white compares to the yolk. From poet Adrienne Rich:

Even to hope is to leap into the unknown,
Under the mocking eyes of the way things are.

There’s a war on earth, and in the skull, and in the glassy spaces,
Between the existing and the non-existing.

I need to live each day through, have them and know them all,
Though I can see from here where I’ll be standing at the end.

[Silence while each participant takes an egg]

Finally we come to Wednesday, when we remember the woman who poured expensive perfume over Jesus’ feet and wiped it with her hair. There are many versions of this story. In some, the woman was a stranger who was asking Jesus’ forgiveness for an unknown sin. In others, she is Mary, his closest friend, weeping because she knows his life is nearing its end, because she realizes he has chosen a path of hardship rather than the easy path that would have allowed him to save his life. Either way, the act was planned and committed with the deepest devotion. Either way, the woman was acting out of a deep integrity, knowing who she was. In her poem “Song,” Adrienne Rich reflects on this deep sense of attention, of knowing oneself:

[Read “Song” by Adrienne Rich, from The Fact of a Doorframe]

On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday morning, we commemorate Jesus’ suffering, death and burial. We remember that his disciples fled from his side or denied him, while Mary, Martha, and the other women who were close to him stayed at the foot of his cross. We reflect on all our losses, and we’re invited to move through them slowly and hopefully, singing together. In the end, we’ll be home again, but that home will look different than it did before. Now, tear open your strip of paper at the place where the tape is holding it together.

[Pause to let them do this; give more instructions if necessary]

You are not destroying your home; rather, you are opening it further. It is no longer the smooth circle you remember or the roof you recognize, but instead, a narrow strip of highway you are traveling. There is no escape from change; you can choose only how you will respond to change. There is no escape from making a mark on the world, from shaping it in some way; you can choose the way you will shape it. There is no escape from feeling the world deeply, from being part of it. From poet Marge Piercy:

[Read “The Blessing of the Day”]

[Sing verses from Lamentations]

And then we come finally to the Passover, the Resurrection, the moving across the water, from darkness to light. On this day, Mary and Martha and other women who were close to Jesus go to the tomb to dress Jesus’ body with myrrh and spices. They are the only ones left; the disciples fled during the resurrection, and even the man who kindly laid Jesus’ body in a tomb is gone. They find the tomb empty, and an angel tells them to spread the word of the empty tomb. They flee in fear or joy, depending on the version of the story.

Some believe this story has something to do with what will happen to us after we die, but I think instead that the story’s lesson is altogether different. It is a story about deep friendship, about being present at even the most sacred passages in each others’ lives. It is also a story about wonder. The man whose stories have shaped so many since his death lives on in some way in each of us who are willing to pass on good news, however we ourselves might understand that news. In other words, what is the message we have been given to share with others, and how will we live our lives so as to share it? Passing on good news and being present in each other’s lives is sometimes hard work, sometimes scary. At other times, it is the simplest thing we can do, but we must first put aside our other tasks and run joyfully into this new, more important task. In the tradition in which I was raised, we pass the light of the Resurrection in order to signify our desire to spread the good news. Let us do the same.

[Sing Thefte lavete fos]

[Sing Christos Anesti]

[Read Mary Oliver’s “Making the House Ready for the Lord” from Thirst]

Now, crack your egg w/ the person’s next to you to symbolize how we nourish each other in love.

Blessed be the waters that rage behind us.
Blessed be the land that opens before us.
Blessed be the hard shell of our impatience.
Blessed be the white grief and the yellow joy that nourish us.
Blessed be the work of slowly opening.
Blessed be the places we can’t open.
Blessed our leaving and our returning.
Blessed our mourning and our healing.
Blessed be the good news.
Blessed be the tools and the work and the rest.
All the rest.
Blessed be.

Do You Not Perceive It?

Isaiah 43:16-21
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 11 and John 12: 1-19
Luke 19:28-40

I am responding to both the readings from this week and last week in the UCC lectionary and the readings from this weekend in the Greek Orthodox tradition. Together, they seem to hold the same theme of a combination of renewal and inevitable danger, extravagent love and irrational hate. In the Greek Orthodox tradition, yesterday was Lazarus Saturday, the day Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. In Greek Orthodox churches, there is a liturgy in the morning, and afterwards, the women (it is usually women) gather to dye the Easter eggs and to fold the palms into crosses. I loved Lazarus Saturday as a child; I loved the smooth palms in my hand, and I can still remember how to fold them.

In John's gospel, this miracle was both the last straw that led to Jesus' death and the event that prompted the crowd's response during the triumpant entry into Jerusalem that we celebrate on Palm Sunday. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the Greek Orthodox honor the parable of the ten virgins and the annointing of Jesus' feet with oil (the gospel from last week in the UCC lectionary).

But it was the readings from Isaiah and Philippians that touched me most deeply in my meditations the last two weeks. "Forget the former things," the prophesy says. "Do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?" And Paul, recounting his journey from persecutor of the church to its leader, writes, "Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal...".

The week before the resurrection, we get a little taste of what it will be like to praise joyfully; the miracle of Lazarus and the triumphant entry are like small glimpses of the resurrection. They sustain us as we move into Holy Week and experience Jesus' betrayal and horrifying death, reminding us that a "new thing" is coming. To this day, even after seven years here, it seems odd that I am not able to go to church each evening during Holy Week--and this year, for the first time, I won't be at a Greek Orthodox Church for Easter. I am beginning a new thing, in the pre-adoption process, and Easter weekend will instead include a gathering with friends, a short service I will lead, and another visit from the social worker who is writing my home study. Although I will mourn not singing the resurrection song at midnight with other congregants who have waited through Lent for the light to emerge from the darkened tomb behind the altar, I am at peace, at least party because I think my decision to keep "pressing on" toward this "new thing" is in line with what I'm being called to do at this point in my life.

And in the last two weeks, there have been other reminders of new directions, of beginning-agains. I spent last Saturday at a homeless shelter in the Fargo-Moorhead area with a small group of exchange or international students from China, Korea, and the Ukraine. We made a meal of fried rice and other Chinese dishes I can't name. I loved helping them cook; they moved around the kitchen with great authority, improvising the entire time; no recipes, and each decision sudden. The shelter is small, housing 10 men, and it includes a progressive program designed to help launch them toward self-sufficiency. Each night, a small group comes to the shelter to cook and sits down for a family-style meal with the men at a long table; these students are studying American social issues in their English language class, and this is one project they will do related to American poverty. The men were overwhelmingly grateful for the meal, and the dinner conversation went relatively smoothly.

After the meal, as the students were gathering their belongings and saying their goodbyes, I went out to the porch while some of the men had an after-dinner cigarette. "Is this part of a class or something?" one of them wanted to know, and I said, yes, a class on American social issues. "What are they learning?" he asked, and I told him they were reading about poverty, trying to understand how there could be homeless people in the richest country in the world. "Talk to the ten men here and you'll get ten different reasons why we ended up this way," one of them said. "Me, I fell off the wagon, lost my job, and here I am." He went on to talk about how he had regained his job and recovered his sobriety thanks to the assistance of the staff at the shelter. "I should be out of here in another couple weeks, I hope," he said. The next morning, when I read the words from Isaiah about focusing on the future, letting go of the past, I thought of him.

A gay man in our small town managed last week to get together several GLBT people in the region, most of whom I'd never met. I talked with 70-year-old gay farmers about what it was like to be out in rural Minnesota in the 50s. I felt terrible that I didn't know these people after living here for seven years, despite my attempts to meet people in the community who are not affiliated with the college. I thought again of this "new thing" that was beginning, this coming together of people who had, perhaps, only one thing in common: the fact that they had a coming out story to tell. I hope to get their stories written down, though the men may not agree; some came to the gathering but would not wear the name tags provided. They needed to be anonymous to feel safe. And it's no wonder: this week, there was another hate incident on campus. It may not be the 1950s, but there are still people filled with irrational hate who plan and execute hateful acts in the same way that those responsible for Jesus' death planned for a long time to find some way to crucify him. We fear people who are not like us; we fear anyone who seems to be a threat to the status quo.

When Mary pours expensive perfume over Jesus' feet, Judas rebukes her, saying that the perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor. But Jesus says, "You will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me." I have had trouble with these words over the years, but I also love the image of Mary on her knees, doing this intimate and beautiful thing to prepare him for his burial. I've come to terms with Jesus' words here by realizing that Jesus loved extravagence as much as he loved service; he knew when it was time to enjoy a good meal and when it was time to fast in the desert. He knew when it was time to act bravely against those in power (by saving the woman about to be stoned, for instance), and when it was time to pray alone in a garden. Maybe his story in its entirety is more about living a balanced life than it is about sacrifice, about living with integrity in each moment, having the strength and confidence to be authentic. After all, it was his grief that raised Lazarus from the dead; he chose to go back to Judea despite the fact that people there wanted to kill him in order to mourn with Mary and Martha. And later, when grief turned to joy, when he entered Jerusalem to face his death and the Pharisees asked him to quiet the crowd who were shouting blessings, Jesus said, "I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."

I think of the joy I have felt these last few weeks as I've completed pre-adoption training and begun my home study, imagining the child that will someday share my home. I think of the grief I felt these last few months as I've talked to a friend recently diagnosed with AIDS, responded to an e-mail from a student whose baby is in the ICU, talked with a friend in the process of transitioning from female-identified to male-identified about his family's hateful response, responded to yet another hate incident on campus. I don't always know how to hold both grief and joy in my life simultaneously, but I am learning to slow down and be in the moment, to stop over-working and over-thinking and over-worrying. This is a gross oversimplification, of course, of the rich scriptures of these last two weeks; but I hope to learn to listen for stones that have potential to shout out praises, to believe in each small miracle that can and will be fulfilled--that my friend will live the long life ahead of him with dignity, that my student and her boyfriend will raise a healthy baby, that my friend's family will understand his process and support his journey--and to be present in the grief when those miracles aren't enough, just as Jesus was present to Mary and Martha's grief, and just as Mary and Martha were present for both his death and resurrection. Perhaps if we're present in the moment we can see each "new thing" that comes with clarity. When God asks, "Do you not perceive it?" I hope to be able to answer, "Yes."