The Back Story

It was an ordinary day, in fact.

But at some point I wondered, Do you count the times when your thoughts are interrupted by a flash of pain so intense that you think you will not get to the next moment?

Karen commented that she wonders whether rituals like Ash Wednesday are perhaps made for those who need to be broken open to the hurt in the world. Perhaps. I know that I feel no desire for more of it.

Gabriele wrote a beautiful post in which she talks about a shift in her feelings about Ash Wednesday after years of avoidance.

Last week I responded to two questionnaires produced by graduate students studying parental loss to suicide. Both of them were designed for parents in the first two years of loss, and I gathered from the questions that the students have some kind of idea that the pain recedes by the end of the second year.

I think that they are going to find that they need to reframe their studies and start over,

But then, it does change. It does. And it must become fairly invisible.

Otherwise, why would you even ask how often a parent thinks about her lost child? Isn't "all day long" the obvious answer? No one will respond to any of the other choices on the surveys.

One of my professors was astonished when I explained, in January, that I had come late to every class in December because he insisted that we open the class by singing Advent hymns and I simply couldn't stand to begin the day that way.

A friend whose husband is close to death wondered what she would do with his clothing, and expressed some kind of combination of surprise and horror when I said that I haven't done anything about clothes yet. "It takes that long?" she asked.

The presenter of that webinar my advisor and I watched last week advised clinicians to rethink their assumptions about length and intensity of grief when it comes to parents who have lost children to suicide. I think that that suggestion applies to parents who have lost childen by any means at all.

And no, I didn't count the times yesterday.

But late last night I went outside to move cars around and there was a U-haul truck parked in front of one of the houses across the street and I felt a sharp breath contract my chest. We rented a U-Haul in Chicago that October to bring our son's belongings home. I have had the same reaction whenever I have encountered one of those trucks when I have been out driving. I have lost many of the memories of those few days, but the feelings associated with them are almost as strong as they were originally.

A U-Haul. Only the last of maybe a dozen things yesterday that stopped me in my interior tracks.

An Ordinary Day

This is one of them: I went up to the bakery/coffee shop, came home with an orange juice and a chocolate croissant, and settled back into bed to work on Sunday evening's service for the East Indian group that meets at our church. They want leftover love and valentines; I want Lent. So I am going to offer a short meditation on the daily examen as a spiritual practice that engages us with the love of God.

I cleaned the main bathroom and got started on the laundry, which I returned to off and on all day. Spent an hour reviewing one of the texts for next week's final.

In the middle of the day, in honor of, according to the paper, the first sunny day since the solstice, I went out for a walk in the cemetery, where the roads are fairly clear. The sky was BLUE. Anyone remember that? Between the snow and the fact that I have barely been out-of-doors for two weeks, it was a slow and laborious walk!

After my gourmet lunch of Ramen noodles, I settled in for some reading of the Reformed scholastics. Not an easy crew, those guys. I have reached the point in the 1600s where they are in a big debate over free will with the Jesuits. You'd think I'd enjoy that, right? But the truth is that I have no idea what either side is saying.

I've reached the tv stage now. The Quiet Husband is out at soccer practice, Gregarious Son is at work, and The Lovely Daughter and I are watching What Not To Wear.

And pieces of news today: I may have a new directee who wants to make the Ignatian Exercises, one of my favorite things to do. The Lovely Daughter got a second social work school acceptance. (!)

Tomorrow should be another ordinary day. I'm very good with that.



(Image: Cemetery Walk)

The Strangest of Times

Lent is a strange season for a Protestant seminarian.

My last class of the quarter met this morning. Last term my one third-year required course was in church and sacraments, a wonderful class in which our professor repeatedly nudged us to consider ways in which we might make use of Word and Sacrament in order to offer our future congregations more clarity with respect to who they are.

Over the winter the major requirement has been missiology, another terrific class, this time with the professor nudging us to understand the church as the community from which we are sent forth, as God is by nature a sending God. After class today I laughed as I told the professor that we are going to need 50-hour Sundays to accomplish all the things he and his colleagues are telling us we need to do.

As I drove home, I thought about the similar to-do lists that have been at least implied by our professors in theology, in Scripture, in pastoral care, in homiletics. The combination is daunting. I also thought about the very wise words a classmate shared with me a couple of days ago. She spent a couple of years between college and seminary in China and related that it has been said of such an experience that "People go there for a week and write a book; they go for a month and write an article; they go for a year and are silent."

It's true of anything, I suppose: The more you learn, the less capable you feel of instructing anyone else. We have been filled with words, and words about words, for nearly three years. We are Presbyterians, most of us, and we believe in the one Word, Jesus Christ, and in the Word of Holy Scripture, and in the possibility that our own words will make their own small contribution in service of the others. But we know that we are much like Americans who have been to China for a year, and should at least at times be reduced to silence in view of what we have witnessed.

Silence. It is a subject we have not formally explored in these three years. And here it is Lent again and it seems to me that the only genuine response to make is one of silence. Silence before the great and terrible mystery of suffering. Silence in the face of a God who shares in the most human of experiences with the purpose of shattering its power.

I do not expect, not yet this year, to be prepared for suffering to be demolished. Easter will, once again, come far too soon. And I will not look particularly silent on the outside; I have too many responsibilities that preclude an outer demeanor of contemplation.

But inside, I am already gone: way, way down into the silence of Lent. It will seem like a noisy season to me in the exterior worlds in which I spend my time, worlds which will be filled with music and preaching and teaching and other forms of oral expression, all of them in dissonant contrast to the silence of the interior world I carry with me.

I am watching the men's Olympic figure skating finals as I write this. It occurs to me that these athletes, surrounded as they are by crowds and cheers and applause, must also enter deep wells of silence, invisible to the rest of us. Perhaps this season of my life is my own personal Olympics. On the outside: focus, determination, an endless series of tasks.

On the inside, the silence that offers the space for possibility, for hope, for encounter.

Ash Wednesday Prayer

VI.

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.


(from T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday)

Lent

I've been attending the New Members' Class at my field ed church, and today a young lady, a high school student who's planning to join the church with her mother, drew me aside and asked me to explain what Lent is and to give her some suggestions for participating in it.

Two weeks ago, my best friend at seminary asked whether I wanted to join her at the church we went to two years ago for the Ash Wednesday service. I quickly said yes, remembering only the next day how traumatized I was by last year's service at my home church, when I had realized too late that I did not want anything to do with those ashes, since I have an urn full of them in my own home. I have not yet decided what I am going to do this week.

At any rate, Lent is coming, and it is going to pull me into its vortex, regardless of what I say or do about it. Last year I posted my response to the first reading; I am going to have to give some thought to what, if anything, has changed with the passing of another twelve months.

Jan has posted a wonderful selection of resources for the upcoming season. I haven't looked at all of them, but so far I especially like this little calendar from Explore Faith.

My Jesuit list:

from the Jesuit Retreat House in Cleveland,

from Creighton University;

from the Loyola Press Ignatian Spirituality site.

It all comes down to the same two quotes I was thinking about as Lent loomed on the horizon a year ago:

You cannot conceive...nor can I or anyone -- the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.

~ Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Holy Saturday

Space Window, Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (Washington National Cathedral)

"Is the Christ of the Gospels, imagined and loved within the dimensions of a Mediterranean world, capable of still embracing and still forming the centre of our prodigiously expanded universe?"

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

Early Morning Observance

I started my Maundy Thursday by driving across the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge toward sunrise on the beach at Assateague, with Bach echoing in the car and birds beginning to awaken on the darkened marsh.

As the sun bubbled over the Atlantic, flocks of willet and sanderlings sparkled out along the edge of the foam, and the just-past-full moon hung above the inlet.

My drive back was marked by scores of shorebirds wheeling over the marsh, a posse of Sika deer stopping to stare, and a loon floating serenely in the early morning sunshine.

An awesome day on the calendar beginning with such fragile beauty on the coast.

Art Break Inside Break: Mary Magdalene

Taking a Break Until After Easter ~

Photographs and Healing and Lent

I got my first camera for my ninth birthday. A little Kodak Brownie. I still have some of the snapshots that I took with that camera. I should not have put it away. There was a long period in my life when I didn't take pictures, and I deeply regret that oversight.

Once I picked up a camera again, I couldn't stop. My cameras have been with me through the best and the worst and the mediocre.

One of my Lenten promises to myself was to work on the last four years of disorganized photos. The advent of digital media has resulted in a new formula for chaos in my life. When I used film, it was easy ~ I reached number 36, rewound, and took the cartridge to the photo store or the darkroom. I have files and files of negatives and duplicate prints, and bookshelves neatly lined with albums. A few things are a little bit mixed up, but not too badly. I could organize the entire collection in less than a day of I had to.

But digital! Now there are little cards of varying sizes lying around, and piles of developed pictures, and FILES of pictures. And there's Photoshop ~ the possibility of creating and recreating an unlimited variation of images which reproduce themselves into more piles and files.

So. . . I have made what some people might conclude is a well-meaning but more New Year's than Lenten resolution to take care of all that. It's not that sort of resolution, however.

It's ultimately a resolution about healing, well in keeping with the journey of Lent. We go into a dark place and we are made whole. We retreive the visual reminders of what was, and what we hoped would be, and what would not be, and we imagine the restoration that will come.

I started this afternoon with a half-finished album of the canoe trip that my father, stepmother, and sons made to Algonquin in the Fall of 2004. When they returned from that trip, we insisted that my stepmother get herself in to see a doctor. Her cheerful good humor was tinged with a disturbing undercurrent of exhaustion and an ominous hoarseness and, after she and my father drove away, the boys confirmed that she had given out easily every day of their trip.

I knew before she ever got to the doctor what the ultimate diagnosis would be, God help me, because of the internet. And eventually I made the first Algonquin album for her, hoping that she could enjoy it before the cancer closed in on her.

I'll never know what she saw when she looked at these images. But here's what I see:

How MUCH she and my father loved each other. What a gift they were to each other, those people with so much loss behind them, who reached out with such enthusiasm for what life still had to offer.

A grandson, completely but only temporarily derailed by the low water levels that forced more portaging than paddling. One of two boys whose willingness and good humor enabled their grandfather and his new wife to enjoy one last backcountry trip together.

A North Country sunset. You can hear the loons as you wait for the stars. The sunsets are still there, and the stars, and the loons will be back soon. There is healing to be found in all of that.

Photographs for Lent. For the Easter that awaits.

In Extra-Ordinary Time

I wanted to go to an Ash Wednesday service today. My own church's service is at night (which I don't much like ~ it seems that we're saying, "OK, we'll do this, but late enough that no one will see us") and I have a class on Wednesday nights.

Then I discovered that my old Methodist church has a service at noon, so I thought I'd go over there.

And then I spent some time agonizing over whether I wanted to spend the afternoon teaching my Jewish students with ashes smudged on my forehead. Most of them would be merely curious, and supportive rather than offended. Many of the teachers, perhaps the opposite. I finally decided against it. If I worked in a secular environment, my solution would be different. During Advent, I wrote about going to a church meeting one night where one of the gentlemen had come directly from work wearing a Christmas tie. That would not have happened in my workplace. My workplace is a community and a home for people whose beliefs, and contextualization of their their beliefs, differ from mine.

I don't know whether or not I was right. One of my colleagues, headed for her UCC service tonight, agreed with me. Another, a rabbi, said he was genuinely sorry that we felt our observance might be offensive to others.

Result: No ashes on my forehead. Ashes in my heart.

(Image: Armenian Temptation of Jesus).

Time and Lent

I am finding that, as Lent approaches, my outlook and approach to life are becoming increasingly fragmented. Usually I can laugh off the general chaos of my existence and attribute it to Adult ADD, or to my proclivity for procrastination. But this year I am not feeling so good-natured about the circumstances in which I find myself.

In part because, although the house is in relative order on the surface, there are still endless piles of papers and books to be dealt with.

In part because I had a disorienting conversation last week, the effects of which are proving to be rather lasting.

In part because the icicles are going to pull down some of the gutter and soffit and I am going to cry.

In part because I keep getting older and more dissatisfied with my appearance (read: weight).

In part because it has come to my attention that whatever choices I may or may not have for whatever is or is not next in my life will have disclosed themselves by Easter.

So. I have a plan. I figure Lent is only 46 days if you count Sundays, 48 if you start today, before Mardi Gras. Even I can keep my act together for that period of time. Maybe. Possibly.

I plan to work on my photo albums, which are four years behind, because that is a positive and concrete thing that I can do.

I plan to remain calm and composed in the face of difficult conversations and falling-down houses. Last night I listened in for a few minutes to a parenting class at church. The speaker was unexpectedly oustanding, and emphasized that one of the main attributes of an effective parent is composure. (This caused me to lean over to our minister and remark that the problem is that our parenting starts with labor, an event at which composure is not featured. Still, composure is good.)

I plan to eat carefully, because those Weight Watcher ladies intimidated the hell out of me the one time I went, and I want so much to get rid of much of my wardrobe and make purchases designed for delight rather than disguise, and I want my blood pressure to go down.

I plan to address the uncertainty in my life by focusing on the uncertainties of Lent itself. I am going to read and pray with Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter, recommended here. And I am going to reread and reread Beginning to Pray, which I think I found here, and which is one of the best books I have ever encountered.

And I am going to ponder how I manage my time. Not in the usual time-management sense of all those Seven Habits kinds of books found all over the place. But in a sense of time as a holy space and a way forward. Time as where I am. There is no doubt an element of self-preservation in such an attempt, as I am hoping to avoid total disorientation and despair in April. But I think that, overall, a look at time in midlife is a good thing. And, as a consequence, the Prague clock, as photographed by my sons, will make periodic appearances. You can learn more about the clock here.

And I am going to stick with one of my favorite Jesuits and what I have come to call the Grand Canyon Prayer.

So. I have a plan. I am composed and I have a plan.