Stand With

Faithful to God, Moses led his people from bondage into the wilderness of freedom. Yet, once freed, the people hungered.

Faithful to God, Moses led his people from hunger into a rain of bread from heaven. Still, once fed, the people thirsted.

Faithful to God, Moses led his people from thirst into a desert where water pours from rock. Even so, once quenched, the people quarreled.

Faithful to God, Moses cries out nonetheless, “What shall I do with this people?” Needful still, the people cry out yet again, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Shortly thereafter, Moses heads for the hills.

And there, standing for his people once more, Moses simply can’t do it any longer. The Word says Moses’ hands grew weary. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr’s favorite gospel song, he was tired, he was weak, he was worn. Faithful though he surely was, Moses could stand no more.

So his brothers pull up a stone for him to sit on. They move to his side. They lift his weary hands to God.

When he could stand no more, they stood with.

~
In an exceptionally impactful episode of the podcast This American Life (Episode 738: Good Grief! https://www.thisamericanlife.org/738/transcript) producer Bim Adewunmi speaks with racial justice activist Jeanelle Austin, who began tending the spontaneously erupting memorial at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, where George Floyd was murdered by police on May 25, 2020. Traveling from out of state to join in the protests, Ms. Austin tells of her response to almost being run down by a counter-protester:

The next morning, I said, yep, we’re not going to do that. I was like, I’m just going to do something more simple, but still profound, by keeping the memorial clean. And so I started waking up at 6:00 AM, June 1st, and started tending to the memorial. And I decided that that would be my protest.

She then describes some of what unfolded for her with that decision:

I saw people grieving. And I saw that because I was there, many of them would just tap me on my shoulder and say, hey, can I talk? Or one person pulled up a whole lawn chair and was like, I am going to hold you hostage because you’re there cutting plants, and I need somebody to talk to. Or some people just would come and just stand by me and say nothing. But because I was there, they just needed to be.

Ms. Austin remains the lead caretaker of the memorial, where she “guides a team of volunteers to stand in the unique space of preservation and protest.” She speaks of tending this place of outrage and grief as a form of social resistance and self-care. When it became too much to stand, she pulled up a stone to hold space in the midst of it all. She moved to the peoples’ sides. She held weary hands.

Where they could stand no more, she stood with.

~
A very short time ago I sat with a woman who serves ever so quietly in the senior community where I work. She moves so gently and attentively through this place that in some ways you might hardly notice she is there. Until you do. And then you would realize you see her everywhere: serving meals in the dining room, guiding the devout but unsteady to Catholic services, sitting with an inconsolable elder, drawing near in their wash of confusion and sadness.

As we sit, I learn of how she thinks often of her parents, now deceased, as she spends time in our memory care neighborhood. She speaks, ever quietly, of her love for them – her parents, and those too in whom she sometimes sees their gaze, feels their warmth. I hear of her time spent each week with a bed-bound woman who, though she declines chaplain visits, welcomes my friend and even speaks with her about God. What do you do when you visit her? I ask. My quiet friend tells me Nothing, really. I sit with her, mostly. Just sit with her. I marvel as I think of this, how this gentle woman comes every weekend to sit bedside with a stranger in silence. No one should be alone like this. She continues shyly, I just do what the Lord leads me to do …

She is, I thought, as invisible and as luminous as light. Words from my spiritual mentor from years ago come to mind, be transparent for the Presence of Christ. In this place full of our society’s “invisible people,” she too becomes invisible – transparent and luminous as Christ. Though she would be astonished to find herself here in these words, I am learning the way of Light in her presence.

When it becomes too much to stand, she pulls up a chair alongside. She holds weary hands. She lifts them up to God.

Where they can stand no more, she stands with.

~
As I write these final words, Ukraine is losing ground to Russia, the January 6 hearings are revealing the shocking uncertainties of the future of our democracy, and Black and Brown and Asian peoples continue to be under siege as the voices and violence of White supremacy surge. The pandemic continues, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, and gun violence is killing people everywhere. Everywhere. And faithful though we are, so many of us are finding our praying protesting and persevering hands are oh so weary.

Yet though it surely is too much to stand, we can pull up a stone or a chair alongside. Hold one another’s weary hands. And lift them up to God.

When we can stand no more, may we stand with.
Steady until the sun sets.

*Photo credit: Chimes and lanterns at the George Floyd Global Memorial. Photo by Ron Johnson

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It is only relatively recently that I have come to comprehend that it is in fact a season, a stretch of weeks in the church calendar strung between Easter morning and the day of Pentecost during which time the risen Christ appears to disciples and believers and strangers alike. 

And not one of them is found rejoicing. 

I get it. While I have sung my share of Easter morning alleluias, secretly I mostly didn’t feel them. I would wonder about my apparent lack of joy on this great holy day. Despite my love of God, was my faith insubstantial? Was my devotion superficial? The reality was He is risen! just rushed too quickly past the sorrows I was still bearing from holy week; hands raised in He is risen, indeed! could not touch my broken heart.   

It did not soothe Mary’s wailing, even as she sat at the very opening of the empty tomb. Neither did it release the disciples’ fear and disbelief as they shut themselves in behind barred doors. It did not settle the hearts of the pair of arguing believers as they turned their backs on Jerusalem, began their long walk home to Emmaus. 

I had finally found my people.

Strewn along that stretch of days between the empty tomb and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all peoples were the heartbroken, confused, exhausted, withdrawn, and grasping-for-faith lovers of Jesus. People whose love and longing had tumbled them shocked and stumbling into the sacred journey that is grief. 

And Jesus met them there.

Almost twelve years ago, through a series of unfathomable signs and blessings, God led me from the urban streets of Houston to a house on nine acres of trees (and a pond) in a town of 2,000 persons and at least as many cows, horses, goats, donkeys, and dogs. One of those dogs, a beautiful black lab stray we eventually named Rogue, welcomed us to this new land by dropping a litter of three puppies in the shaded place where the previous owners had stored their tractor. While her two siblings found other homes, the runt of that litter claimed us and ours. We named her Fiona.

In the months and years which followed, Fiona protected our home, oversaw the arrival of the many other strays and rescues and pups which eventually settled into a pack of eight – yes, eight – dogs, and my own development as their human. She was protective and patient, easy-going and steady, and in her dog-is-God-spelled-backwards way over the years she taught me a great deal about how to become those things, too. And over the years, through stunning spring days and astonishing hurricanes, through losses of jobs and relationships and the beginnings of new ones, through lots of life and through kind of a lot of death as well, Fiona was there. With me. No matter what came and went, Fiona met me there.

Until this Tuesday.

In this stretch of days between Easter Sunday and the celebration of Pentecost just around the corner, Fiona’s last day of life with me arrived. When she looked at me with those eyes, letting me know it was time, despite my tearing heart I laid with her on the grass, told her it was ok to go, that I would love her forever. She held my gaze as death came, and I held hers and met death with her there. 

And even though I knew she would not live forever, would not be with me forever, I have nonetheless been tumbled, shocked and stumbling, into the sacred journey that is grief. As I empty her half-full water bowl or take my first walk without her, I cry my grief-love along the path. And I try to remember that along with Mary, the disciples, and the heartbroken, confused, exhausted, withdrawn, and grasping-for-faith lovers of Jesus everywhere, I am not alone. I remember Jesus arriving in Mary’s grief, calling her by name: Mary; Jesus arriving in the disciples’ grief: fear not, I am with you; Jesus arriving at the side of Thomas in his grief: here, touch my hand. I remember Fiona’s last night full of kisses. Jesus arrives in my grief: love abiding with you always is why I came.

I breathe deeply into the love which abides. 

No matter the sorrow, the heartbreak, the loss – wailing on our knees, numb and hiding behind closed doors, or taking our first morning walk without our beloved dog by our side – this is the season for remembering: on the sacred journey that is grief Jesus does not rush our alleluias, he loves us right where we are – and always meets us there. 

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“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”

“I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

– Luke 19:37-40; Liturgy of the Palms, Common Lectionary Year C

Stones crying out was the only thing that ever-made sense to me about Palm Sunday. Made sense in the way the ashes and desert wandering with Jesus made sense; the ritual of Lent speaking in the wordless languages of the senses, our bodies marked by the mystery of God’s creation and our createdness. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust …

And while the artistry of the season’s liturgies can be stunning, piercing my amnesia and reawakening the sharp ache of my longing my longing my longing for a God whose longing for me is so unfathomable that I turn my face toward a million lesser things and sorrow silently, so silently I can almost (almost) believe comfort is to be found in forgetting … for me it is the daily liturgy of trees and birds, sky and silence, deer and crocus – the dust of the earth and the crying stones – that most artfully speaks the wordless languages of return.

And oh, how I have needed to return and return and return again this Lent.

Seeking Respite

I fell into the lament and austerity of this season like I was stumbling into a lover’s arms, sobbing and seeking respite from the incessant and impossibly escalating not-God-ness of our present world. Disease and destruction, lies and violence, everywhere another and another and another unnecessary death. I needed to find the quiet place again. I needed to be found again. I needed God to be the only true thing again. And then from the heavens the snow fell. I could breathe.

In the blessed emptying of everything around me into the soft and luminous white, the snow-silence was a lullaby to my heart. Though the world continued its raging, while walking the snow-felled forest, bathed in holy hush, God breathed the breath of life in me once more. Everywhere beauty. Everything beautiful. Black-brushed hawks painting their circles above the bare and reaching branches, sky washed in blue. The tiniest red berries cascading along a whisper of vine, unspooling into impossible loveliness along the snow-drifted trunk of a downed tree.

One day at a time in the blessed empty fullness of winter’s Lent, God called me home again in the wordless languages of Creation, making beauty everywhere – even of fallen things.

Miraculous Wordless Voices

As Palm Sunday draws near, the snow is melting. The gentling winter is waking raucously into birdsong and pouring rain. Browns and greens – mosses and lichens, buds and shoots – line the forest path singing their own songs of life of life of life! Everywhere ferns most ancient unfold their glorious fronds, so delicate, so graceful, so shockingly enduring. The whole noisy crowd joyfully praising God in their loud wordless voices for all the miracles they have seen: Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest! This is God’s world, from beginning to end. While I cannot fathom it, God is in it all. God is with us all. At the base of the stump of a huge tree fallen long years ago, a tiny fern frond unfurls through the crust of ice. In the fading quiet, the revived stone of my heart cries out.

Just another miracle of the God who makes beauty everywhere, even of fallen things.

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It is the morning after Ash Wednesday. I wake exhausted and broken-hearted, ash-grit still marking my forehead; some stray bits smudged during sleep form a darkened edge just below my left eye. I look as if I slept in ashes, which I have. This new and terrible war has spilled into my sleeping hours for days now. I cannot eat. I weep. I am grief-stricken.

Jesus meets me in the ashes.
Even now. Even now.

I was given the gift of Lent when I was an unchurched seminarian in a congregation located in the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York City. When I was serving in my first pastoral role there several years later, it was in the Ash Wednesday “liturgy of the ashes” that Jesus sought and found me, exhausted and broken-hearted, in the terrible wake of September 11th, 2001.

Jesus met me in the ashes.
Even then. Even then.

And while the reality at the core of my life is that Jesus has sought and found me over and over again, it is also a truth of my journey that I struggle to stay. I wander. I run. I stray.

It is not that I lose belief in God, it is not that I lose faith in Jesus. It is that I lose my way: I lose sleep, I lose track of time, I lose my mind. I lose heart, I lose the thread, the words to the prayers, the way back home again. In the words of the first “old hymn” that ever spoke to me – a very old and traditional Christian hymn which to this day cannot fail to bring this still hesitant religionist to tears – I am “prone to wander, Lord I feel it; prone to leave the God I love.” 

It is not lack of love, but rather my fragile capacity for bearing great love in this broken world, for this broken world, that sends me wandering, running, straying into the land of despair, grief-stricken with dimming hope. It is that I stumble on the path of return, stumble as I discover I must turn again and again and again toward God with my shattered heart, toward Jesus with my ashen face. It i the only way, every time. Even now.

The small wooden bowl of ashes rests in the palm of my left hand as I make my way through the gathering of residents in the startlingly lovely chapel of this senior community. The large stained glass imaging of Jesus at prayer outside at night, soldiers approaching in the distance, sleeping disciples to the side, is brilliant with unexpected late-afternoon sun. Meditative instrumentals play softly, sweetly interspersed with unbound words from a resident whose dementia gathers her words only to shower them like confetti or rose petals, a happy littering of tumbled blessing and praise. Though her phrases fall like beads from a necklace suddenly unstrung, her worship is utterly coherent; it’s as if she has become so fluent in God’s language that the grammar of an earthly tongue no longer suffices.

Silent a moment, she turns her face upward to receive the mark of the cross. Closing her eyes, she raises her hands in alleluia, smiles as I brush a curl of grey from her forehead: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In God’s image you are made, and by God’s grace you are restored.”

A few crumbly bits of ash fall lightly into her lashes; her eyes flash open. “Oh in my Jesus you beautiful are!” For this moment I am washed in the holy wonder of repentance; within the space of a breath, I am returned. I see her. She sees me. I see Him. He sees me. “Jesus sought me while a stranger, wandering from the fold of God…” He to rescue me from danger interposed His unbound love.

He is returning us Home through the ashes.
Even now.
Even now.

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The room is unremarkable; the women gather slowly. This one enters like a child, eyes wide and blue as blue, holding the hand of a volunteer. Just before her arrival another woman shuffled in on her own, settling into one of the sturdy lounge chairs; her face is soft and distant, as if recently wakened from sleep.

One by one, until the small gathering area in the memory care portion of the nursing home is a collection of walkers and brightly colored sweatshirts and cardigans warming grey and silver and white-haired women smiling tentatively or looking about anxiously or simply sitting silent and still.

We begin with “Jesus Loves Me,” Reba McIntire’s version and then her “O How I Love Jesus.” The third song is “How Great Thou Art,” and then another and then another, are lifting their hands, the deeply carried words rising with improbable ease to their lips. They sing. We sing.

“How great Thou art, how great Thou art…”

No longer tentative, or anxious, or silent, music returning words thought lost to voices turned beautiful by praise, we sing. We all sing.

The air about us comes alive; light shifts, sound shimmers. Eyes meet, joy is freed; our half-hour Worship Circle flows song by song into more than an hour. Women who often cannot or do not speak sit alongside sisters usually too agitated to stay gathered, just singing and singing and singing.

These women, daily and terribly quieted and disquieted by the devastation of dementia, simply and truly sparkling.

“One more! One more!” The hymns became childhood songs and childhood songs became folk songs and folk songs became Christmas carols and Christmas carols became Christmas hymns and then I found myself sitting in the presence of five “demented” woman as they began singing “O Holy Night,”

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth;
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
‘Till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn;

Fall on your knees, Oh hear the angel voices!
O night divine! O night when Christ was born.
O night divine, O night, O night divine!

Everything else fell away; holiness a rushing Presence all around. And I heard them: the angel voices. And everything in me yearned to fall, fall, fall, to fall on my knees.

I prayed thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou thank you as the women sang on O night divine, O night, O night divine in that unremarkable room where Christ appeared and all souls felt their worth.

And I wept.

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The pack is kind of a canine United Nations, rescues all, with representation from the Great Pyrenees, the Labradors, and the Rottweilers, along with the Australian Shepherds, the Chows, and the Cattle Dogs. Only one is smaller than 40 pounds, and of course she is the fiercest one of all.

 We greet the morning as dawn breaks in sets of two or three or four, doggie tails invariably wagging and mine generally a little less so – however they do coax me into wonder more days than not. Together we head out into the woods, wagging or not, to welcome the day in the company of trees. It is the trees who speak to me of the world we share, who beckon me toward the durable poetry of God’s Creation.

Change

It was the early days of October when I began what has become this reflection. Fall had just begun falling. The season which speaks change like no other losing her first gold and orange and bronze promises of loss; our daily trail scattered with leaves of autumn beauty. The trees from which they fell offered their timeless wisdom: let go, let go. For a week or more we walked in and then out of the woods, marveling at the colors, emerging bejeweled with leaves.

Then two things happened, both unexpected and earth-shaking and as natural as the world.

First came the news that a longtime spiritual companion, whose presence on the planet has definitively shaped my own, was preparing to die. His cancer had come suddenly and fiercely, and though my friend’s own storehouse of fierceness was prodigious – a minister, a professor, an author, a husband and father, a leading light in the world of affirming therapeutic care for gender-creative/ transgender children and youth as an out transman himself – he wanted me to know that he knew it would soon be time for him to let go … let go. He was heartbroken. I was heartbroken. We were all heartbroken. And the leaves continued to turn their glorious colors. And then fall to the ground.

The second thing was the forest’s offering a homily on falling into resurrection.

After having made the first trek of the morning with Ellie, Harley, Chance and Fara, my chest aching with the press of sadness, I was returning to the woods with Jack, Layla and Fiona. I remember noticing the air was very still; the brand-new sunlight slipping silently through the eastern edge of trees. Then a sound like a volley of gunshot split the moment open. Turning, the four of us watched in awe as one of the towering trees in the old-growth forest fell majestically through the air to crash with breathtaking finality upon the earth.            

Life and Death

Less than thirty minutes prior, my booted feet, the pack’s mudded paws, had trampled noisily along our familiar path blithely unaware of the great tree’s readying for surrender; the many-colored reminders of the season of letting go unheeded underfoot.

Then there we stood in wonder and shock, tracking the twelve or fourteen feet from our trail to the massive trunk, thinking on life and death and one day here and one day gone and how everything eventually falls to the earth.

Our morning walks bring the pack and I to and from the great fallen tree resting into the leaf-laden ground. The darkness hours have lengthened. The forest offers its hard solace, speaks to me of how the soil is made rich with sorrow, how grief nourishes to the deepest roots. How this venerable tree is making life again already in a million unseen ways.

A few weeks later my most amazing friend died. He was here when I started this writing. And now he has returned to the earth. As we turn for home each morning, I breathe the forest’s wisdom and know– with Eli’s life the Creator is making life again already in a million unseen ways. The leaves continue to shower their falling making beauty everywhere.  

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.
– Isaiah 61:1-3

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When I first met my neighbor David it was a few days after moving into our home near a forested State Park in Michigan. I was awash in kitchen items recently dumped from boxes onto counters and table-top, all silently clamoring for sanity and order. It was a perfect time to grab my cup of tea and sit awhile with David instead. 

It was the first week of January. To this recent transplant from Texas the snow piled everywhere was stunningly beautiful. David had painstakingly made his way across our two yards without his walker to knock loudly at my back door. Risky and determined and (I now know) utterly typical for this man who has become a bearer of deep blessing in my life.

We quickly discovered we shared birthdays in the month of December, a rapturous love of nature, and an irreverent sense of humor.

Over the course of a get-to-know-you chat that lasted several hours, David spoke of the enduring effects of his time of service in Vietnam, both on his body and in his family of brothers. He recounted his strategies for learning to live with the daily pain of injury-related spine surgeries; how he wears his heavy-duty snow suit even while inside during the winter “so everything doesn’t freeze up in there” and keep him from being able to “get around.”

“I’ll tell you one thing, Kris, one thing I learned real good over there: if I’m alive, it’s good. I really mean that. Every day: if I’m alive, it’s good. Because it’s either bad or it’s good. You can go either way, Kris. For me, I choose good. That’s what I choose, every day: good, I’m alive. Now let’s live.”

I think often of David’s words about choosing good, choosing to be alive every day. I have come to know what this looks like for him as I witness his measured walk to the wood pile; his purposeful splitting of one, two, three larger pieces; his back-and-forth journey to bring the firewood into his house for the week; his vehement refusal to let our other neighbor John help him out.

“There’s a million things I can’t do anymore, man! Stop trying to take away things I can still do! One day I won’t be able to do it! But for now, for God’s sake let me be my own man!”

In the months since our winter meeting, our friendship has grown through the spring and into summer. The warmer months are kinder to David’s body. Just last week he brought me cucumbers from his garden. A few weeks back I watched from afar as he mowed his lawn; I could almost feel his pleasure from across our two yards. Then he headed over and mowed mine. I knew better than to try to stop him.

Good! I’m alive. Let’s live.

Just when I thought this gritty, determined, rough and worn man – who by his own account “isn’t an easy son-of-a-gun” and has given two ex-wives “good reason to call it quits” – couldn’t break my heart open to life any further, he casually dropped a stick of dynamite in there and lit it with a canary-yellow bike.

A canary-yellow tricycle to be precise. Two days ago David rode past my house, slowly but with the brilliant majesty of a royal parade, on his new yellow tricycle (complete with rear basket and a handle-bar bell). I stood in my driveway looking at his back steadily easing into the horizon, his legs methodically cycling, that yellow the happiest color I have ever seen, and wept, just wept, with wonder and with joy.

I had just been turned inside-out with blessing. By a Vietnam vet rolling past my driveway on a yellow tricycle. By the radiant goodness of this very life exploding into irrepressible hope, no matter the everydayness of death.

In her luminous book on the subject of blessings, Jan Richardson shares:

The secret of this blessing… is that it is written on the back of what binds you. I found myself enchanted and compelled by the power of a blessing: how, in the space of a few lines, the stuff of pain, grief, and death becomes the very substance of hope. I wanted not only to know more about that place; I wanted to live there.

Likely unbeknownst to us both, David has been giving me a master class in learning to “live there,” in the space where the stuff of pain, grief, and death becomes the very substance of hope.

Every day: if I’m alive, it’s good. Because it’s either bad or it’s good. You can go either way, Kris. For me, I choose good. That’s what I choose, every day: good, I’m alive. Now let’s live.

In Deuteronomy 30:19 Moses speaks of it this way:

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants …

With his “The Blessing” singer-song writer John Waller adds:

Let it be said of us, while we walked among the living,
Let it be said of us, by the ones we leave behind,
Let it be said of us, that we lived to be a blessing for life.

Living to be a blessing for life requires not that we deny the realities of death, but rather that facing them we choose to live – to live there. There in the driveway, where ordinary life and everyday death roll by with canary yellow wheels bearing blessing which can break your heart open to life again. And again. And again.

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