Alleluia, Christ is risen

Thanks to all who have taken part in the blog: writing, reading, commenting, praying.  It’s made a huge difference to my Lent, and the resulting joy of Easter.

Till next time…

Alleluia!

Alleluia, alleluia!

He is risen!

(if you haven’t said He is risen indeed, Allueluia, alleluia then go back to Episcoal training school, I joke).

Easter Sunday is always a day of happiness and rejoicing, Jesus has risen from the dead, but it didn’t start happy. Why? Well Mary and the others who arrived at the tomb that first Easter day would have been upset and sad, firstly because Jesus had just died two days before but then what’s this? An empty tomb, that was the final straw, I would have hit rock bottom at that point. Take a moment for Mary, she had to suffer watching losing her son lose his life but now she was faced with no body to mourn over.

We all know it happily didn’t end this way, take a moment today for Mary and the others in their moment of extreme sadness that turned to extreme joy.

Alleluia

Beauty and sadness

 

 This afternoon I went for a short walk in Greenbank Garden (NTS).  Easter Saturday is a day to spend in the quiet of the garden.  Looking at the Lenten roses I was struck (as always) by their beauty.  Today it seemed to me that they were bowing their heads in sorrow - an appropriate response during the time of Lent.  But, their beauty will continue to give joy in the risen life tomorrow.

Jesus is Laid in the Tomb

Let’s forget it now,

And all go home.

He is buried and the stone is in place.

His family is in tears, his friends are lost.

This time it is really over.

…

Lord, it is not over.

‘You are in agony till the end of time,’ I know.

Men tread the way of the cross in relays.

The resurrection will only be completed when they have reached the end of the way.

I am on the road; I have a small share of your suffering and the others have theirs.

Together we help you to carry the burden that you have assumed and made divine.

There lies my hope, Lord, and my invincible trust.

There is not a fraction of my little suffering that you have not already lived and transformed into infinite redemption.

When the road is hard and monotonous,

When it leads to the grave,

I know that beyond the grave you are waiting for me in your glory.

Lord, help me to travel along my road faithfully, at my proper place in the vast procession of humanity.

Help me above all to recognise you and to help you in all my pilgrim brothers.

For it would be a lie to weep before your lifeless image, if I did not follow you, living, on the road men travel.

From Prayers of Live by Michel Quoist

End Game

My dead son lies in my arms. I should be wailing for him, but every inch of me is dry. My throat is closed, my eyes swollen. All day, standing in the hot sun, watching, watching. I can on longer speak, or wail or cry.

I prayed as I have never prayed before – ‘God, let him go fast, let it be over soon for him.’ I prayed for my son to die. Part of me, terribly, did not want him to die, not even then. Part of me wanted to go on standing in the baking sun, hurting so much that I did not know how I stayed alive, and he wracked, past screaming by then, ragged breath dragged in and out, flies settling on him – a tiny part of me wanted to go on like that, just so he and I were still alive on the same piece of ground. But the rest of me wanted it over, and I prayed and prayed for his death.

I offered God everything, in saying yes. I knew I did. And he took it, and he kept on taking. He has taken everything, and he has only left me pain. I don’t know how I keep breathing when the pain is as great as this. How can God do that? I did not think he would do that.

My son was so beautiful when he was a little boy, so beautiful. He always feared physical hurt so terribly; to think he ended like this, his life torn out in agony. And soon I will lose even his poor body. Important serious men are waiting to take even that from me. John is standing, water in his hands. How can I drink, and relieve my thirst, when my son had been so thirsty and I could not give him water?

Yet John will take my precious son from me, and he will walk me away, and make me drink, and wash my filthy body, and I will do it because I promised, and my promise was the only thing I had to give, the only tiny comfort. At the end, as at the beginning of it all, my promise was the only thing I had to give. I have given everything, and I have nothing left to give.

Night Watch

Is it here, God, in this garden
where the light wind stirs the leaves
silvered in the hard blue moonlight
- is it here that we must struggle
in the dialogue of self with self?
But the words are hardly spoken
when the vast and swelling ache
- a kind of joy, but of such sharpness
that I gasp, and words are stilled -
of the God so close within me
grows and self is marginalised,
pushed towards the edge of being
so that all I know is Him.
In this sudden fiery knowledge
friends who cannot understand
seem ephemeral and tiny –
Pray, I tell them, watch and pray,
as it comes upon me fiercely
that the end is here, this night,
that the God I carry in me
brooks no shrinking from this goal.
Now my soft palms spread in pleading
look so gentle, feel so dear
and this vulnerable body
breathes and weeps in dread of pain,
till the world turns and the strangers
bring this night watch to its close
and the brother’s kiss of greeting
a last gentle touch of love.

©C.M.M.
I wish I knew how to post this so that the previous post came after it chronologically, but I don’t. It was written during the Maundy Watch last year. (done. KB)

the place where truth is

All the trial narratives of the Gospels come to place one single charge against us: we choose to be somewhere other than where Christ is. Each Gospel in its own way challenges us to step down from the tribunal to stand with him. For Mark, we must stand in the lonely moment of ‘useless’ witness. For Matthew, we must distance ourselves from the expertise and the religiosity which make us strangers to God’s surprises. For Luke, we must find a voice for and with those who are locked out. Finally, in the face of John’s narrative, we must decide not simply which ‘kingdom’ we belong to, but which world we are going to live in: the world that is made sense of by the vision of the creator’s self-gift or the world that defines itself against its maker and so breeds refusal and rivalry in all its dealings.

In each Gospel, what focuses and grounds the challenge is that the trial brings to light not so much a set of facts about Jesus, but the truth of his identity - as the one who is entitled to say ‘I am’; as the embodiment of God’s Wisdom; as the centre of a moral world at odds with the world with which we are familiar; as the place where truth is.  Faith in Jesus is not bound first to the establishing of facts about him - remember how briskly this is disposed of by John in his account of the trial before Annas. Concern with such fact is and must always be related to who he is and what must be said about his identity as a whole. However much we know about Jesus, the verdict on who he is can only be delivered if we are willing to move, willing to be on trial both with him and before him. We cannot properly say who he is unless we have stood before his tribunal and discovered from him something of who we are.

- from Christ on Trial by Rowan Williams

Journeying in Holy Week

I first started going to church when I was in my late 20s. My very first experience of church was High Scottish Episcopal with bells and smells and all the drama I could have asked for. And I loved it.

I vividly remember my first Holy Week. Each night I went to church and watched the story unfold. Outdoor processions waving palms; listening to the harrowing story of the Passion being sung; compline; footwashing; the stark stripping of the altars; the Watch at the Altar of Repose; Confession; walking the Stations of the Cross; three priests in black throwing themselves to the ground on Good Friday making me gasp; the Veneration of the Cross; the preparation of the church on Holy Saturday; and then the Vigil of Easter at midnight with fire and light and water and alleluias. That first Easter I was so happy and I believed.

By the end of it all, I couldn’t believe how emotional and tired I felt. It was as if I had been to the theatre every night for a week and been traumatised by what I had seen. That first Holy Week has stayed with me ever since. The smells of incense and a myriad of candles; the images and lack of them; the taste of a ‘dry mass’; the dark and the light.

The following year, as Holy Week approached, we were sitting in the pub after church. I asked if there was a book I could get that would explain it all to me. This year I wanted to be prepared so that I knew what was going to happen. A few people shook their heads and muttered that they couldn’t think of a book that would help and then one man said, “Yes, I know of a book that would tell it all.”  I took out my filofax, got my pen, and said, “OK, what’s the name of this book?”

“The bible,” he answered wearily.

Preparation

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth -
it’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it’s you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you.

- Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours, trans. A Barrows & J Macy

Gesthemane

“Stay here while I go and pray”

“My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch”

*ring….ring*

“Dad? Yea it’s me”

“I know, I know, you’ve told me before, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will” He notices his friends are not awake.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes”

He rouses Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”

He went back to talk to His dad.

“No the others were asleep, they can’t stay awake, I just wanted a chat”

“I know it’s the same thing, I’m tired and I know my time is close”

“Guys! What are you doing? Stay awake with me!” They said nothing, they had nothing to say so he returned to his for a third time.

“Ok, sorry. Just help make me strong and prepare those I’m leaving behind to cope.”

“Most will be fine, I’m most worried about Simon Peter, he might lose the rag a bit, I’ll make sure John and James look out for him”

“I’d better get back to them, I’ll see you soon.”

“Love you”

He returned to them a final time “Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up! Judas my betrayer is approaching”

Church today was a great service but I found it odd in a way, we start it very happy with Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem and move towards the sadness and pain of approaching crucifixion