We are a people hungry for color. After spending nearly six months in Minnesota winter, white and gray are our daily companions. And while the snow was still in its dirty piles all around, the pandemic descended and we moved inside, looking out the windows hoping, praying for a spring that would bring multiple signs of hope. Green grass. Purple crocuses. The early yellow of daffodils. The red-flecked petal of bloodroot emerging. Color. If we could just have some color, we might be able to see another page of this sheltered existence in a new, more courageous light. 

Every year the Minneapolis Institute of Art hosts the perfect prescription to our deep desire for color when Art In Bloom takes up its fragrant presence alongside some of the museums most treasured art pieces. This weekend would have been that weekend when those known as ‘pedestal artists’ create an interpretation of paintings, sculptures, tapestries using flowers. I am mourning this yearly dose of beauty and creativity. Last year my friend Carol and I had the privilege of interpreting a piece called Hannukah Lamp and it was a treasured experience for me. But this year…the museum is closed…and Art In Bloom was cancelled. The color faded into the distance. There has been a smaller, virtual show online which is lovely. I am assuming those who have created these pieces worked alone or with someone else with whom they share a home. Because my friend and I had dreamed of our piece together, this virtual creation seemed impossible from our respective homes as we sheltered-in-place.

I am sure that there are as many ways of going about this creative process as there are pedestal artists. Carol and I had met and we had plans! We had ordered flowers, purchased vases,  measured and sketched and had an outline for what we were trying to portray. Just as last year, our way of interpretation was through metaphor. It is how we both think, I believe. Our art this year was a painting by Édouard Vuillard called The Artist’s Mother Opening a Door. In our conversation, we explored what doors really mean in our lives and the question: Aren’t all our mothers the original door-openers for us? With her very being a mother opens the door of herself so we might enter the world. And then there are all the other doors that mothers, fathers, siblings, friends, ancestors open for us so that we might move from one place to another. Doors are both literal and metaphor.

This led us to a poem by Marge Piercy, an American poet and novelist:

Maybe there is more of the magical
in the idea of a door than in the door
itself. It’s always a matter of going
through into something else. But
while some doors lead to cathedrals
arching up overhead like stormy skies.
and some to sumptuous auditoriums
and some to caves of nuclear monsters
most just yield a bathroom or a closet.
Still, the image of a door is liminal,
passing from one place to another
one state to the other, boundaries
and promises and threats. Inside to
outside, light into dark, dark into
light, cold into warm, known into
strange, safe into terror, wind 
into stillness, silence into noise
or music. We slice our life into
segments by rituals, each a door
to a presumed new phase. We see
ourselves progressing from room
to room perhaps dragging our toys
along until the last door opens
and we pass at last into was.

While Carol and I did not, as yet, get to create our interpretation of this painting, I was struck by the metaphor of doors and how these days of being inside our homes has offered the liminal wisdom of doors. We are indeed held in “a matter of going through into something else”, “passing from one place into another one state to the other, boundaries and promises and threats”. On a daily basis we do not know what the ‘something else’ is and the “boundaries”, and “threats” are held in “promises” we try to feel assurance in. “Light into dark”, “dark into light”, “known into strange”, “safe into terror”. All this sometimes within a mere hour. All the while “we slice our life into segments”, “see ourselves progressing from room to room”. Our hope is that at some point we will open the door, pass into a place where we can look back at the “was” of this pandemic and recognize there the mercy, wisdom and power of this time for how we will move into the present with understanding that is still mystery. 

Color. May we know it. May we see it. May it nourish us in these emerging days of spring. And may we continue to watch for the doors that invite us and walk away from those that do not bring life to us or those we love. Some time in the future my friend Carol and I have promised one another that we will once again meet and at that time we will create our floral art based on Édouard Vuillard’s painting. Until then, we live in liminal space between one door and another. 

***Special thanks to Carol Michalicek for the photo of The Artist’s Mother Opening a Door

Last summer I visited my family in Ohio. While I was there my nephew, who is a senior in high school came home with a t-shirt meant to set into motion this momentous life passage we have all anticipated. On the shirt was the message, “ 2020 – A Class with Vision.” At the time it was really just a very clever take on the diagnosis we all hope to receive at our most recent eye exam. We chuckled at the cleverness of it all. But I have been thinking much about that shirt over the last weeks. We have seen the mounting evidence that these young people, who started the school year with the simple hopes of completing not only classes but celebrating all the traditions that catapult them into their ‘what next?’, watch as those events fade into an uncertain future. Will prom happen? Will they be able to walk across the stage to receive their diploma? Parents, teachers, and students wonder how they will mark this passage without the well-practiced rituals they have watched others take for years. This is happening all across our country.

I have no answer to those questions and the outcome likely depends on where the young people live and the creativity of the schools and adults that have accompanied them on their journey so far. 2020 – a class with vision. Certainly, this year is not turning out as they and their families imagined. And yet, what ‘vision’ have they been given for how their life will emerge from this passage to the next? What do they see around them that is teaching them about the world they are walking into, are inheriting? How are they envisioning a future for themselves and those with whom they travel the planet?

This week people have started sharing their senior pictures from days gone by on Facebook as a way to celebrate and be in solidarity with the Class of 2020. I have been struck by the faces of people from many decades smiling at the camera with the hope and possibility that is mirrored in most senior photos throughout time. Oh, the hairstyles can bring quite the chuckle but nearly every face carries the hope of youth and the longing for a future yet to be realized. I venture a guess that most had a vision for what their lives might become. For some it worked out just as they planned. For others, not so much.

As we walk these days of pandemic, aren’t we all in some way a part of the class of 2020? Regardless of age, we are making our way through a year filled with experiences most have never traversed before. Each day carries questions, uncertainty, fear, confusion. The days also contain hopes, possibilities, discoveries, creativity, lessons we had not considered. It is a year that asks each of us to be a ‘class with vision’. Vision for how to live more  simply, more justly. We are called to reach out to help those who need it, given the opportunity to listen  more deeply. And we are being offered the chance to be ‘a class with vision’, considering what the future is we hope to create after this is all over. 

Other signs, literal signs, are popping up to bring us into a greater awareness with high school seniors and what they may be missing. I saw this one on a walk yesterday: #allinthistogether. Yes, indeed. We are all in this together, regardless of age or economic status, gender, education, all the many ways we can think of to divide ourselves into categories. And the truth of the matter is that it has always been so. We are all, after all, spinning on the same big, beautiful planet. Most often, we just don’t remember that, just don’t behave as if this is the case. 

Poet Theodore Roethke wrote:”In a dark time, the eye begins to see.” We may look back on these days as a dark time. We may also look at this time as the time when we began to see. 2020 will not be over for several months. But this learning how to be ‘the class with vision’ will go on for some time. May our eyes…and our hearts…be open to what is best for the whole global village… and our Earth Home.  We are all in this together.

Friends: While it appears on the website version and Facebook post, apparently the link to Peter Mayer’s song did not appear on some of your Pause postings.

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaGnQc5Vmhs

Hope this works!

In the Christian household, this is the week we call holy. Holy Week. During these days leading up to Easter we attempt to remember the ways in which Jesus, someone who lived more than two thousand years ago, walked his final days, how he spent them, who he interacted with, how he staked his very life on his understanding of God’s presence in his life and the life of the world. Depending on one’s tradition and flavor of Christianity, the marking of these days look different but that doesn’t take away from the name: Holy Week. These days we name as holy move toward the holiest day of all, Easter. Again, depending on the faith community in which you travel, even if it’s only in a once or twice a year kind of traveling, the celebration of Easter has many traditions. 

But I think we can all agree that this year, 2020, will be a different kind of Holy Week, a different kind of Easter. This has had me thinking often this week of what we really mean when we call anything ‘holy’. I have been privileged to visit many places deemed holy. Cathedrals designed to point people toward an experience of what is Sacred, to lift them above the ordinary and strike their senses with something of the More. These places are often ringed with images in colored glass or artwork that attempt to tell stories of people’s sacred experiences. Stories of scripture. Angels. Saints. Walking through such places people often light a candle to mark that they have been in the presence of the Holy. I know I have countless times. 

Still other places, while not technically called holy, hold a place of holiness to many. Sacred landscapes that have been discovered, preserved, held in trust so we might be reminded of the Creator who breathed the Universe into being. We fulfill our role in that greater creativity by being witness, by standing in awe, by being bathed in Mystery. For me places like the Grand Canyon, Glacier National Park, the Isle of Skye, the island of Iona come to mind. These and so many more remind me that I am such a small player in the grand scheme of things and I would do well to tread lightly and with great kindness each and very blessed day.

These places are mostly empty now. Cathedrals, sanctuaries, some national parks have been shuttered as we try to do what needs to be done to stop the spread of an invisible menace that is killing many, causing suffering to others and those that love them, affecting us all in ways that are knowable and yet to be experienced. The ability to travel any place in search of ‘holy’ is impossible as we are seeking the shelter of our own homes, those places of ordinary, daily tasks of living. 

So, what is Holy Week this year? On Holy Thursday, Jesus gathered his friends and shared a meal, one that would be his last with those he loved. Before they ate he washed their feet to remove the dust, to show his love and humility. Never has washing been more of a saving, holy act than in these last days. Perhaps not feet…but hands, counters, doorknobs. Holy. Holy water. Holy soap. Holy washing.

On Friday, we would have gathered to remember and tell once again the story of how Jesus was tried and killed for his way of living out the love of God in the world. His suffering would be lifted up…will be lifted up…as we name the many ways people, all God’s people are living daily with the suffering of fear, pain, loss, grief, sacrifice, death. I only need look at the images of the workers carrying bodies from the New York City hospitals to know what crucifixion looks like. Holy. Holy caring. Holy exhaustion. Holy grief.

As we move toward Easter, the thread we cling to as we walk into the labyrinth of this faith story we honor this week, is that all that holiness leads toward a Home. A place where there is healing, hope, rebirth, resurrection, where the ‘we will get through this’ nods and says “Yes. See?” While it may not be accompanied this year with trumpets and bonnets and lilies, we can walk toward it with confidence because this is who we are and this is what we do. Our faith story includes those who have known hurt and healing, suffering and grief and have come to a place they call Home living one holy day after another. 

Holy Week? As any good Minnesotan would say, “You betcha.” Holy Week…holy days…holy moments…holy year. Here’s a link to Peter Mayer’s song that says it better than I ever could.