“the dead shall rise again
whoever says
dust must be dust
don’t see the trees
smell rain
remember africa
everything that goes
can come
stand up
even the dead shall rise”
~Lucille Clifton, The Raising of Lazarus

I woke this morning to snow falling outside the window. The trees once again are wearing a glistening coat of white looking like a scene held captive by the White Witch from C.S. Lewis’ book, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. I was reminded of the first Easter I lived in Minnesota, seeing the little girls in their springy dresses and hats, their little white shoes shuffling through the equally white, slushy snow. I want to believe that Easter fell much earlier in the year than April 24th but I could be wrong.

Even though the snow might douse our spirits today, I am making the commitment to keep my mind on what is being reborn. Our garden is a visual reminder. Tulips,irises, and other early bloomers are undaunted as they make their green way in the world once again after being held in darkness and cold for so many months. The lovely little warbler that snuggled in the branches of a tree outside our living room window this morning is another. He had the same dazed look we did as we watched the flakes falling. I saw an earthworm wriggling on the pavement trying to make his way to the now thawed ground, ready to do the work he is created to do.

There are also people I know who are experiencing a kind of rebirth after what seemed like a slow walk through a dark valley. Those who have known the full throttled pain and uncertainty of illness are now on the other side of despair, filled with a hope they thought might be lost forever. Still others have moved through painful job and relationship conflicts and are arriving at new places of understanding and commitment. What seemed like never ending dust has become something that is breathing new life. This is the wheel of life at its full spin.

Some spring seasons simply take longer to grow into their fullness. This spring is one of them. Just like some of us who need more patient nurture and support, this spring is inching into existence at its own labored tempo. And yet by day’s end the snow will likely be melted and gone into the on-going process of watering the sore earth. As humans short on patience, our work is to watch and wait and notice the tiny glimpses of new life wherever we see them.

And in our noticing take a moment to be grateful. Very, very grateful. Snow falls. snow melts. But a grateful heart is something to hold onto for dear life.

For those of us who make our home in the Christian household, as writer J. Philip Newell calls the Christian tradition, this is the beginning of Holy Week. During this week we come to the of end our forty days of Lent and begin to focus on the final days of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a week that holds different experiences for different people. It is filled with a dramatic telling of Jesus, gathering with his friend’s,his acts of servanthood to them, their sharing of a final meal, his ultimate betrayal by one that sat around the table. The scripture that will be read will be heard and interpreted differently by individual hearers in an effort to understand once again what this life, lived more than 2000 years ago, has to do with our lives today. Those who have studied and read much will bring one lens to the telling while those who find themselves hearing the story again on Easter Sunday much as they did last year will experience it quite differently.

For those of us who find themselves reading, studying and thinking about these sacred texts more than perhaps others, it always brings an opportunity to be confronted once again with fullness of this story. Yesterday as we waved palms and heard the telling of Jesus’ entry into the city of Jerusalem on a donkey, I was given the opportunity to reflect on this story in yet another way.  I was reminded of a process I learned from author and cultural anthropologist Angeles Arriens for approaching any situation, any meeting, indeed even any given day. It a fourfold way of making sure one is true to one’s self. Her invitation is this: “Show up. Pay attention. Tell the truth. Don’t be attached to the results.”

On the surface it sounds so simple. But when I have chosen this way of being in a meeting, for instance, I find out quite quickly how much I have a need to control what actually happens! When this process is played out from that angle, the truth telling becomes stilted toward controlling the conversation, paying attention goes out the window as I wait to make my point rather than listening to the other and showing up becomes primarily a way to win my desired outcome.

So yesterday as we once again told this story of Jesus heading out into what was to become the last days of his life, he chose to be his true self. He entered the city in the humble way he had moved through the country side as healed and taught and told of God’s movement in his living. He most likely knew he was entering hostile territory but he knew what he had to do: Show up. Pay attention to the people and the way he knew God to be at home in the world. Tell the truth about the injustices he saw and the power that was being misused. And, in the end, to not be attached to the results. It proved a faithful but risky choice.

I am going to take this fourfold lens into my experience of the fullness of this Holy Week. I am going to pay particular attention to the words we read, sing, and say, listening for the authentic message that invites me to walk the Way of Jesus in the holy and not-so-holy weeks of my own life. And in the final analysis, I think that is the point of this walking, this observation of this week which leads us toward Easter.

“Light cannot see inside things.
That is what the dark is for:
Minding the interior,
Nurturing the draw of growth
Through places where death
In its own way turns to life.”
~John O’Donohue

These words begin a poem by John O’Donohue, beloved Irish poet and gentle theologian. The poem is simply called ‘Light’. Perhaps I am very aware right now of images of light and dark as I prepare worship experiences for Holy Week and Easter. These mind pictures come in a different form during the season of Lent than they do in Advent, the season that precedes Christmas. In December, darkness and light are clothed in the realization that the winter darkness is surrounding. Though the Winter Solstice promises the return of the light and the Christmas story speaks of the Light of the World, the light and dark we speak of in Lent is different. The real meaning of the word Lent is ‘to lengthen’ and that has now become a daily experience. In truth the light is lengthening each and every day. As Goethe said on his death bed,we also declare: “More light!”

I am aware of this lengthening of light not so much because of the actual sunlight but because of its effects. This morning I sat having my breakfast and looked out our kitchen window. Within one day, the tulips and daylilies have been drawn out of the darkened earth several more inches than yesterday. I stared in wonder. It made me long to have the entire day to simply sit and watch. Might I actually be able to watch the slow, Zen-like movement toward the light?

Next week we will once again tell the stories of the final days of Jesus’ life. These tellings contain the joy of human friendships and the depth of compassionate service to others. They are full of prayer and healing and embracing the immense gifts that remind us of what it means to walk life’s path. The stories also show the darker side of humanity. A lust for power, a fear beyond reason, the need to extinguish what is misunderstood and threatening. All this leads to a tragedy that could have overcome those who had shared Jesus life and ministry, those who would, in the final telling, agree to continue to walk in his Way.

But this story continued to ‘lengthen’ and continues to lengthen still as those of us who try to walk in his Way give new birth and meaning his actions, his words. In the darkness of a tomb something continued to be drawn toward light. Like the plants now being drawn to the ever-warming sun, a nurturing toward growth was born. Some two thousand years later we continue to proclaim the story that has shaped a people, given them hope for a future, helped healing to continue, offered a way of life that longs for the re-creation of the world.

O’Donohue ends this poem with these words:

“And when we come to search for God,
Let us first be robed in night,
Put on the mind of morning
To feel the rush of light
Spread slowly inside
The color and stillness
Of a found world.”

The nurturing toward growth for those who walk upon the earth and those who make their home in it must contain both darkness and light. In these ever lengthening days, may we offer our gratitude for the darkness which holds Mystery and the Light that continues to coax the world to be reborn.

Over and over and over again. Day after day. Year after year. Life after life.

In all the flurry moving toward this year’s late Easter, I have managed to allow half of April to fly by without noting that it is National Poetry month. I have never been sure how these proclamations occur. Why April instead of, say, November? Who decides? What goes into any month being given over to a particular distinction?

Make no mistake about it. I am all in favor of a month dedicated to the art of poetry. Truth be told, these days, I find more wisdom and clarity in poetry than in most other forms of writing. There is something about the spare nature of poetry that is able to get at a particular feeling or experience. With all the information that can flood our ears, our eyes, and our senses, it is refreshing when a poet takes only a few lines and several well chosen words to speak a truth, to describe a beauty, to tell the truth of a story.

So, while I still don’t have the answer to the ‘why April’ question, I have made my own conclusions. The month of April is so full with blossoming and new life it could easily be overdone by, say, National Novel month or National Sermon month. How quickly any writer could fall into a wordy frenzy describing the crocuses gleaming purple along a white picket fence. How risky it might be to allow the speech writers to take over the month proclaiming how the ice slowly turns black, begins to recede from the shores of lakes and finally disappears altogether at some central point as it hovers over the depths of frigid waters. And could a journalist give adequate expression to the sheer wonder of deep, green,velvet grass as it emerges in full force from beneath the black crust once known as snow?

No. Poetry, for my money, is the only use of language that can adequately tell April’s story. The sweetness of a well crafted line. The beauty of a few well honed words that feel holy in your mouth as you allow them to roll around forming glimpses of springtime memory in your brain. Perhaps April also is poetry month because so many famous poets have written about this spring month. Poets like Laurie Lee:

“If ever I saw blessing in the air
I see it now in this still early day
Where lemon-green the vaporous morning drips
Wet sunlight on the powder of my eye. ”

Or Edna St. Vincent Millay:

“April this year, not otherwise
Than April of a year ago,
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;
Hepaticas that pleased you so
Are here again, and butterflies.”

In observation of April as Poetry Month I have just purchased a little book written by one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver. It is simply called A Poetry Handbook and is a guide to writing poetry for we wannabe poets. There are still enough days left in this glorious month for creating a few poems of my own. I will try to lay aside my tendency toward over-stating and wordiness. Instead, I will practice observing the unfolding world around me and choosing a few words, a very few, to tell the story of April, this very blessed month.

Do you have a few lines of poetry in you to honor the glory of April?

There are courageous, daring people who will go to great lengths to spread a message. Some of these messages come in the form of what some people would name graffiti, words painted on highway signs hung far above moving traffic. When I see these words suspended in mid-air, many in languages I do not speak,I try to imagine when these words were painted. How did the writer make their way to the precarious precipice with a spray paint can in hand? Was someone hanging onto them for dear life while they wrote their message for the world to see? How were they not seen, perhaps arrested? At what time of day or night did this happen without being spotted? Did they dangle upside down, held by their ankles by an accomplice, chosen to be the writer because they have the ability to form letters backwards or inverted?

Over the weekend I came upon one of these highway messages. This one did not take such acrobatics. Its message did not use paint but what appeared to be strips of cloth woven through a freeway overpass bridge made of chain link fence. Carefully threaded through the links of the hard metal, in neatly created third-grade cursive writing, were three simple words:”Let it go.”

Let it go. Seeing these words made me smile, made my shoulders relax away from my ears, allowed me to take a little deeper breath. Let it go. I imagined all the people who have traveled and are traveling past this message even as I write this. People who need to have someone say these very words to them. People who are clutching the steering wheel too tightly. People who are clenching their jaw, grinding their teeth unknowingly as they hold onto, what? Fear? Dread? Anger? Hurt? Failure?

I know these people because,several times a day, I am one of them. In an effort to create a life, I can try to control so many things, things over which control in only in illusion. And because that illusion becomes the focus of my attention, I can send messages to the muscles in my body to “Hold on”. Hold on. I am going to conquer this. Hold on. I can make this come out just like I want it to. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” says Joseph Campbell. This is a difficult message for most of us. Yet so many of the world’s faith traditions carries this very wisdom. The season of Lent has this letting go at its center. We read the sacred texts that tell of Jesus’ eternal letting go into the living out of God’s call in his life. His works of compassion, mercy, healing and hope led to events over which he had no control. His life was a continual letting go into love. And so it is with each of us.

How does the message ‘let it go’ sound in your life today? How do these words come into your eyes and ears and find a home? What needs ‘letting go’? What is really at stake in doing so?

Someplace in the two cities I love there lives a messenger who has less fabric than they did a week ago. They used those pieces of cloth to send a message to all who need it, to all who will listen,to all who will answer its call.

I am grateful.

We have a pig in our neighborhood. I am not talking about any of our human neighbors but a literal pig. Actually, this pig lives several blocks from our house near our son’s former middle school. But I think of it as living in our neighborhood since its home is on a street I travel quite often. From a distance,when I first saw this creature, I was certain it was just an overly heavy, gray dog. But upon further examination, I saw that it was indeed a pig. This discovery came sometime last year when the weather was nice. I would often walk by and see it lounging in the sun, just outside the back porch door, much like a dog would.

I have to admit to thinking about, even worrying about this pig over the winter months. I did not ever see it outside in the several feet of snow that surrounded its house. I never saw a path where it might have walked outside. Instead, the snow piled high around this house as it did all the others around the city. But I knew, someplace inside that house, a pig lived. I wondered how comfortable a pig could be confined to a house for so many months. Frankly, I never thought about the people inside, also confined to four walls, four walls that also housed a pig. My imagination ran wild with scenes of what it might be like to coexist with a pig as the snow continued to fall and fall.

But, joy beyond joy, today as I made my usual way past this pig-holding house, my wonderings came to an end. There, lying in the brilliant sunshine like the swine royalty it is, was the gray pig basking in the freedom of a spring morning. I pulled my car over into the bike lane and simply smiled at this sleeping wonder. Like many of us he had emerged into the new season a bit rounder around the middle. He looked happy and content to be outside once again.

Now I am not a person who takes much to animals inside the house. We have a cat and have had dogs, even a mouse once, and a few fish with short lives. But I cannot imagine what it is like to live with a pig. I am not making any judgments about it. I am simply intrigued. What is it like to be making your morning coffee and have a pig saunter by on its way for a drink of water, a bite of breakfast? Does the pig curl up at the feet of its master or mistress while they watch television? Does it hurry to greet them when they come home from work? So many questions.

I don’t know that I will ever have any of my questions answered but I do feel a sense of relief to see the pig free at last. Seeing the pig I was reminded of Wilbur the pig in E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web: “Why did you do all this for me?” he asked. “I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.”
“You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. “That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die… By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heavens knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.”

My prayer for this neighborhood pig sprung from its winter prison is that,like Wilbur did for Charlotte the spider, it has brought joy to its home companions. Like most of us, it is once again breathing deeply of the warm air that is full of the promise of new life. Over the next few days, even more snow will melt, and the sun will continue to coax the crocus, daffodils and tulips from their winter beds.

Keep your eyes open. Pigs could be coming out to sun themselves!

Have a warm and wonderful weekend…….

“God said,”I am made whole by your life. Each soul,each soul completes me.”
~Hafiz (1320-1389)

Thumbing through a monthly devotional magazine I receive, I saw this quote gracing the page. It was the only decoration for the page, a centerfold actually. No other words or adornments. Only these 15 words, a kind of 14th century Tweet. Hafiz, the Muslim poet known for his earthy, beautiful poetry of his experience of God, sent this out into the world for us to ponder, to try to make sense of in our own experience of the Holy One. It also seems to me a kind of challenge.

What might our lives me like if we believed we somehow completed God? What might our choices of daily living be if we believed that our actions made God more visible, more complete, in the world? How might we fashion our national lives if we knew our decisions, our legislation was a way of completing God, making God more whole?

Of course this very statement represents a theological understanding of God that will challenge many. This God of Hafiz’s experiences is not static, not bound by time or a particular telling in any sacred text. This is a God who is always growing and changing, becoming more with the birth of each day, each soul. This image may be difficult for some to embrace. Those whose faith is founded in a God who spoke once and for all will have trouble with Hafiz’s concept.

As I read his words I thought of the artists I know who express their living through painting, composing music, sculpting, dancing, all the many art forms. If pressed I believe many would say their creative work adds an element to their wholeness, completes them in some way. Why should the Creator of All not be also completed by the ongoing creation of the world and all it contains? Each creature, each plant, each tree, each sunrise and sunset somehow paint God’s Presence more completely to those who are looking, to those who have eyes to see.

Today we will walk out our door and into our lives. These lives will hold joy and sorrow, pain and ecstasy, challenge and triumph, the mundane and the mediocre. But, along with Hafiz, I believe we will be about the work of completing God. May each of us walk with purpose and humility knowing we are a part of something so much larger than the appointments we have made, the tasks we must complete, the chores we must accomplish.

We are helping bring to wholeness the face of the Holy in the world. May we be blessed with every breath.

“Spring shows what God can do with a drab and dirty world.”
~Virgil A. Kraft

This is that rare time in Minnesota when the sun can be shining and the warmth of spring is creeping into the greater part of each day while piles of still crusty, now black snow lies in piles on boulevards and street corners. I am looking out my office window right now at two such piles, still over five feet high and ugly beyond belief, that are not giving up the ghost to the emergence of the new season. They are holding on for dear life.

In addition to these horrible piles there is also the leftover stuff that somehow got swept up in the wind, the snow plow and the fury of winter.This ‘stuff’ includes discarded bottles of all kinds, wrappers from every manner of junk food, little bits of a fender or headlight lost in a collision of icy conditions. These are the normal things. There are also other odd things like the tiny tennis shoe lost perhaps in a mad dash for the car as snow took its owner, or its owner’s parent, by surprise.

Yesterday I saw a blue latex glove, several pens and cigarette lighters, a tiny, puffy black mitten, a pair of sturdy boxer shorts.  After a while it gets embarrassing to look down at people’s lost things that are now emerging from the mounds that have kept us company these many months. Perhaps the most depressing are the Christmas decorations that now stand askew. No white, shimmery back drop provides a context for the manger scenes, the Santas and the sad little reindeer. A few days ago I even saw a plastic ghost holding a jack ‘o lantern head. It had finally made a post-snow reappearing act either very late or very early for next Halloween.

Aside from the sheer messiness of this not-quite-spring experience, I have to admit to being intrigued by this leftover stuff from the season and its holidays gone by. It reminds me of all the ‘stuff’ of my own life that I sweep under the rug, under the piles until something melts and they reappear, whether I like it or not. I think of the grudges, the frustrations and the outright anger I manage to hide beneath a smile or words that have been chosen to not give away my true feelings. I am reminded of the garbage I carry from past wounds, from destructive behaviors or deep hurts that can stay hidden until just the right situation is created to bring all those old pains to the light of day. Any of this sound familiar to you?

Maybe this is, at least in part, what Lent is about. We have the opportunity during these 40 days of reflection and spiritual searching to, slowly, allow the melting of the ice we can build around our true selves. As we face our wilderness companions, things that may not bring us life, practices that keep us from being a reflection of God in the world, we often recognize the junk that is hidden beneath the cold, hard surface with which we have been surrounded. As we walk further into the light, with the lengthening of days and the promise of the new life of Easter, we can anticipate what a spring clean up might look like: Prayers are said. Shoulders relax. Truth is spoken. Forgiveness is offered. Kindness becomes a gift. Hope is found. Justice becomes a priority. Love becomes more than a word.

Our days are becoming warmer and warmer. Rain is promised for later in the week. The clean up is beginning.

Today can only be described as gray. The skies are gray. The roads and pavements are gray. The now seemingly ageless snow is gray. Driving around this morning as I did my usual pattern of Friday errands, I looked around and thought: This is what the color gray looks like. This is the definition of gray.

I walked into the house after this thought and walked directly to the bookshelves that holds the dictionary. While it may be easier to look up definitions online these days, I still love the weight and the feel of Webster’s New World College Dictionary. Online dictionaries parcel out the words one by one, giving you only the definition of the word you have entered. The fullness of the heavy Webster’s allows you to make no mistake about all you do not know. For instance, looking for ‘gray’ allows you to also see ‘gravy train’ which precedes it and ‘gray-back’,’gray-beard’, and ‘gray eminence’ which follows. Opening the dictionary can lead to long, endless hours of exploration and humility.

Gray: a color that is a mixture of black and white, dark, dullish, dreary, dismal. Gray:Old and respected. Gray:designating a vague, intermediate area, as between morality and immorality. Who would have thought the definition of gray could be so wide, so far flung?

As I reflected on the gray of this particular day it might at first seem to be best defined by the first meaning….dullish, dark and dreary, someplace between black and white. Certainly the atmosphere is hanging low and the skies show no sign of a brighter more colorful light. But the gray of this day also points toward the age of the winter that has gripped us here in the Midwest. A winter that arrived early and is staying late. It has been a winter that has caused us to respect the push and pull and power of the seasons.

However, this gray day might also be described by the last definition…..’designating a vague intermediate area.’ Those of us who find our home in the Christian Household are mid-point in the season of Lent. This season, defined by wanderings in the wilderness and an anticipation of resurrection, might be described as gray. Lent represents a mixture of black and white, of making our way, of longing for the rebirth we know is possible but not yet visible.

Someone said to me yesterday that they believe people need Easter more than ever this year. It is not only the dull, steadiness of the weather but perhaps also the heaviness of the world’s turmoils that led to that statement. I will agree. We are longing for a movement from this blend of the vast extremes of the color palette. No more mixtures, just pure, brilliant color. No vagueness but a sure and certain promise of rebirth.

These gray days provide an opportunity for reflection and anticipation of all that is yet to be. In Revelation, John writes:”See, I am making all things new.” I am holding on to that promise with both hands.

Have a blessed weekend….

Over the last two days I have been in northern Minnesota at a clergy retreat. We were blessed to have been staying in a condo overlooking Lake Superior. To watch the play of light on the lake at various times of the day was a great gift. The coolness of color in the morning sun gave way to brilliance by noontime. As the sun began to sink farther into the horizon the richness of the many possible shades of blue began to wash the sky.

Yesterday morning I was laying in my guest bed looking out at the morning sky as orange,peach,pink and yellow wove a pattern resembling a swirling silk necktie along the horizon. I was laying there simply allowing this gift of color and silence to awaken me to another day. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a figure moving as if in slow motion, like a mime walking an imaginary tightrope. I moved to a seated position in the bed sitting cross legged as in meditation. Not more than six feet from the sliding glass door of my room stood a deer looking straight into my watching eyes. Trying to take on this creature’s ability to stay still, I quieted my muscles and my breath until we were both simply being, looking at one another face to face. There was no fear in this wild creature who must know instinctively to fear humans. In that moment of staring into its beautiful, brown, unblinking eyes, I had the overwhelming feeling of being connected to a fellow creation in a deep way. It was a truly holy moment.

After several minutes of this encounter, the deer was joined by another and they walked slowly off into the woods toward the lake. I wracked my brain trying to remember the Mary Oliver poem where she writes so beautifully about a similar experience. I cursed myself for not memorizing those poems I love so much, for not being able to pull them up at will for such a time as this. But then I gently realized that the experience I had just had perhaps needed no words to define it. It was simply a true moment of being.

Back home I went to the bookshelf to look for the poem. It is called “Five A.M. in the Pinewoods” and in it she describes what may have been a dream about an encounter with two deer or a real experience. The poem ends with these words:

This is a poem about the world
that is ours, or could be.
Finally
one of them -I swear it!-
would have come to my arms,
But the other
stamped a sharp hoof in the
pine needles like
the tap of sanity,
and they went off together through
the trees. When I woke
I was alone,
I was thinking:
so this is how you swim inward,
so this is how you flow outward,
so this is how you pray.

Yes. Those were the words I was looking for to express my face to face encounter. I am glad to have found them. But what I am remembering are the beautiful, brown, unblinking eyes and the place they have made in my heart.