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The Still Days

After the service of Holy Thursday, lights dim to shadowMichelangelo_Merisi_da_Caravaggio_-_The_Entombment_-_WGA04148, and sound ceases: no organ, no bells, no singing. We mark the three-day passion, death, and entombment of Jesus in silence. In earlier times, these were known as the Still Days. No sound until Easter morning, when we, like Mary, will discover that Jesus has risen from the dead.

Yet until we learn that, time is interminable and still. The three days that mark the nadir of the liturgical year for all Christians are days of betrayal, agony, suffering, death. How could that be? Jesus’ followers must have wondered at the terrible turn of events: a close aide betrays him, his frightened friends scatter and hide. The man whose words drew crowds is tortured and crucified, bearing a painful and humiliating punishment that brazenly trumpets the mightiness of the Powers That Be over the lowly people to whom Jesus gave bread and hope.

We reflect on this on the still days, in the quiet. We are alone; where is the Lord? They have seized him, they have murdered him. Stillness is the frame for tears, anxiety, fears, despair. The minutes of the still days stretch on. The sun will not set; sleep will not come.

As a follower in mourning, what would I have done? Walked, I think, down dirt paths and byways, trying to hide, in order to be alone and weep, trying to somehow run fast enough to run back into the past, before the horror happened and the world was not rent, like the curtain in the temple. On the still days, sorrow muffles any feeble words that might offer consolation but utterly fail.

We wait in the still days for the time to pass, the air to move. We wait for nothing, hearts broken, numbed, dazed, cried out.

What next? No answer. Only stillness.

Resurrecting That Old House

Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” John 2:19

That old house has finally sold. It’s been empty for a while, and what used to be a grand old place on West Main Street now looks more ramshackle than rambling. It’s a big red brick place, a relic of Richmond, Indiana’s, 19th century economic glory and also a street side memento of the family that once lived there and likely hosted grand gatherings. The house looks like it’s easily suffered years of neglect. I’d like to interrogate it: why are you empty? What were you like before?

The whole place takes up an acre in the city, along a busy thoroughfare. Most of it is a yard so overgrown with woods and weeds it resembles the forbidden forests of fairy tales. One year I saw plenty of poison ivy. This year I have seen a collective of cats. I’m guessing the Enchanted Forest hosts a feral colony that can live there discreetly and safely. I’ve even heard the cats live in the house, which wouldn’t surprise me; it would certainly have enough bedrooms to accommodate an extended feline family. There are still curtains on the house’s front window, a leftover touch of elegance, an intimation that light and hospitality once were there and can come again.

It will take work for that old house to be resurrected. These past two weeks at seminary while studying the subjects of poverty and justice I’ve seen photos of Resurrection City , the tent city erected on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 1968 by the Poor People’s Campaign begun by Martin Luther King Jr. It is both a good idea and a rough place there at the intersection of hope and faith, a fixer-upper in a less well-heeled neighborhood of the Kingdom of Heaven.

In the pictures I’ve seen, Resurrection City looked pretty depressing, a shanty town. If it had beauty, I guess you had to know where to look for it or know how, through a very active imagination. Dr. King certainly knew; his mind’s eye opened by God, he told us he had seen the Promised Land. In the speech he delivered in Memphis the night before he was assassinated and months before his campaign marched on Washington, he saw something very few others could see. ,Beyond the Memphis sanitation workers strike, beyond the snarling dogs and fire hoses and jail cells of the civil rights movement, he could see the kingdom, because, like Moses, he had been to the mountaintop. The rest of us lack imagination or are hustling along in our lives. Some are angry; others lack faith.

I wonder where the flowers were in Resurrection City. Cities need little details to make them livable and pleasing: cats padding around at twilight, flowers that bloom welcome, kids playing. Did those city planners want only to tell the truth? Truth is not always beautiful; sometimes it’s simply the medicine you need when you’re sick, bringing healing and tasting bitter. If Resurrection City was a failure, perhaps it was because they didn’t plant flowers. They certainly planted seeds. How long, oh Lord, till those seeds flower?

Thank You Note, late winter

Thank you for juicy bright oranges on winter-gray February mornings.

Thank you for the chimes ringing in the stiff wind that blows a little good.

Thank you for seed catalogs that burst with the promise of later bloom.

Thank you for stopping the snow before it got too heavy to shovel.

Thank you for cats that lounge in the afternoon sun, relaxed.

Thank you for the citrus-scented steam hovering over the teacup.

Thank you for the light in darkness, warmth in cold, simple in complicated, silence in tumult,

Every blessed day.

Amen.

These Shoes Are Made

The Buddha was asked, “What do you and your disciples practice?” and he replied, “We sit, we walk, we eat.” The questioner continued, “But sir, everyone sits, walks, and eats.” The Buddha told him, “When we sit, we know we are sitting. When we walk, we know we are walking. When we eat, we know we are eating.”

–Thich Nhat Hanh*

I think about shoes a fair amount. I don’t collect them like Imelda Marcos, the Philippine dictator’s wife, did. I don’t have room nor do I really follow this year’s shoes or clothes or handbags. But in my calculus, shoes are a little different than the average consumer possession. My shoes have to fit me well and comfortably (my feet are narrow), they can’t be made by teenagers in Asia who don’t make very much money for their work, and I prefer nonleather because I’m a vegetarian. I will also confess to some vague fashionista sensibility, albeit Quakerly; I avoid sensible shoes that proclaim just how dowdy and eco-friendly they are.

I always look around carefully when I need a new pair, and have over time become flexible. It’s hard to find nonleather shoes that meet the other two criteria, despite diligent hunting. I recently took an ethics course at the seminary I attend, which has turned out to be very useful for everyday life. Through it I learned how to analyze what good things were at issue (all three of these criteria) and what my choices were (leather or cloth, more or less affordable), weigh all that, and then choose.

I took the course at a graduate school away from my home, and for my trip I brought along three pairs of shoes: boots (the day I left the snow and cold were so awful they closed the interstate); flats (pretty, practical, and made of expensive leather); walking shoes.

The walking shoes belonged to my late older sister, Barbara. When we sorted through the clothes she left (and she didn’t have many pairs of shoes either), I had a clear memory of these on her feet as she came to my house for a holiday dinner. The shoes made me imagine her being alive and able to walk into my house again. So I took a few pairs of shoes and shirts to keep her close to me in a sense and to walk a mile in her shoes. Literally. They were free, they were made of cloth and quite gently used, and they were comfortable. Perfect. I snagged them, cried the first time I put them on, replaced the flimsy black laces with neon pink ones, and wore them.

They’ve held up well, and I’ve walked miles in her shoes through several seasons, a few different cities, and a couple seminary courses. Most recently I wore them while studying in Puerto Rico. I figured they would be good hiking shoes for El Yunque National Forest, lighter to pack, and an irrational yet convenient way of bringing her along to share the adventure. El Yunque is the only tropical rain forest in the US forest system. It rains a lot (an average of 120 inches a year), and so the ground is usually wet, and mucky-muddy at its wettest. I liked the feeling of nimbleness the shoes gave me on sometimes slick paths. But they weren’t the best choice to negotiate off-path diversions – let me see, what is THAT flower? – unless I was willing to risk treading in the mire.

Lured by exotic blooms, I eventually succumbed to temptation and plunged in to the mud to inspect the flora more closely. The shoes may be ruined, I reasoned, but why not sacrifice them to the gods of El Yunque, one of whom is Yuracan, the god of hurricanes. At journey’s end, the mud clung stubbornly to my shoes, and I decided to bring them home to see if they could be saved by diligent cleaning. To my surprise, they cleaned up well, and now await new destinations.

Have I baptized them in mud and made them mine? At what point do memories fade or mutate? Do these shoes remind me of my sister? The mud and flowers of a tropical rain forest? Or are they just shoes, with neither memory nor meaning attached?

I have done walking meditation in the style of the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh around my neighborhood and at a Buddhist retreat. You wouldn’t think it could possibly be challenging to put one foot in front of the other, step after step, something people have a lifetime’s experience of doing. But walking with conscious awareness is different and can be difficult.

Breathing in, I breathe in memories;

Breathing out, I let go.

Breathing in, my sister walks with me;

Breathing out, she is with the communion of saints.

Breathing in, I can remember the blooms of a rain forest;

Breathing out, I see the sidewalk beneath my feet.

Breathing in, I walk to a destination;

Breathing out, I walk with God.

*Source: The Long Road Turns to Joy: A Guide to Walking Meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh. (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1996