Recreation of the Heart

Laughing on Good Friday

How can we do it it?
Enter the Good Friday service with somber faces
Hear the story of the crucifixion—
Of our Savior’s pain, death, and suffering,
And then just walk out and go to the ice cream parlor?
How can we do it?
Savoring our heath bar sundaes
Laughing so full of sugar

Could it be
that we never really enter into this suffering?
That our cushioned lives won’t allow it?
Or is it that our faith is segregated off from the rest of our lives?

Did the disciples smile on Good Friday?
Did they enjoy a good meal?
Did they notice flowers growing or the sunsettng?

How can we do it?
Upon the death of a beloved one
Have the audacity to smile the same day
or laugh about something stupid we heard on NPR?

Is the sadness not great enough?
Or is it our humanity?
That we can’t help but live for the beauty in the mess?

Could it be that we are wired for resurrection?
That we are unable to live even one day in just death?
That even the saddest person in the world
Delights in his cup of coffee.

Overheard at Starbucks near school:

An 8 or 9 year old Asian school girl chatting with her college aged babysitter:

Girl: What are you doing?
Sitter: Buying tickets?
Girl: What for?
Sitter: Remember I told you about my boyfriend? Well he’s graduating from the Army. And I have to buy tickets. The tickets are getting more expensive by the minute.
Girl: What’s the Army? Is that where you shoot people?
Sitter: Hopefully he doesn’t have to shoot anyone.

If there is something holy here, I will find it.

The moon is up. So is the sun. The moon is a 3/4′s moon, round, with the craters very much visible in this morning hour. It seems so small, but really I am the small one.

Insides me, there is something smaller—a growing baby 1 pound, 7 ounces, 15 inches in length. The baby is visible this morning, showing up in round shape, too.

This morning the cold winter breeze knocks the wind chimes together in a delicate clanging, makes the long bush branches flutter. On the tree, whose limbs are flailing brilliantly, hangs just one leaf, like a forgotten ornament.

I do wonder how the bush, the wind chimes, the tree like being knocked about. But the wind is not something you so much control as lean into.

It is winter now in Maryland. Its been a long time coming; we have had many warm spells. There is now, though, a raw feeling of winter. The trees are naked. If we stop to take a breath in and out, we can remind ourselves of the many gifts, the many blessings we would otherwise miss.

In my life, there are many new things budding in the dead of winter. To fully take them in, I’m going to write. I’m going to “taste life twice.”

Here’s to a new year of doing just that.

The other day, the Commonwealth of Virginia declared and set free an innocent a man who had been behind bars for 27 years. I am 27 years old.

In my life I have done many things
I have travelled to Mexico, France, and Guatemala
I have eaten leisurely meals in nice restaurants by the water
I have lounged at the beach and splashed in the water
I have ridden my bike miles and miles and felt the exhilaration of the sun and the sweat
I have marched the streets of Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and New York.

27 years.

When I scramble out of bed
When I’m sorta out of my head
My feet no longer touch the ground.

I am sailing, surfing over the pavement
As I drive, I search
For a song to quell the storm

Then, it’s through the tributaries and
Diving in at the right spot.

All this
Only to find I can’t find myself
That I feel a wave of worry
My thoughts toss this way and that

And so, it’s quite surprising
When I do notice
In the fall sunlight
With orange and gold leaves streaming down
Out of the corner of my eye
Two people hugging each other
so tight
It must be love’s embrace
that even now I can’t escape.

An excerpt from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s work. Solzhenitsyn was a famous survivor of the labor camps in Siberia. In his struggle to understand his suffering, he began to make peace with the fact that whether or not he understood it, it would still exist. And from that he gained an insight:

From then on I felt that the solution to suffering is this: that the meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul. From that point of view our torturers have been punished most horribly of all: they are turning into swine; they are departing downward from humanity. From that point of view punishment is inflicted on those whose development…holds out hope.

Looking back, I saw that for my whole conscious life I had not understood either myself or my strivings. What had seemed for so long to be beneficial now turned out to in actuality to be fatal, and I had been striving to go in the opposite direction to that which was truly necessary for me. But just as the waves of the sea knock the inexperienced swimmer of his feet and keep tossing him back onto the shore, so also was I painfully tossed back on dry land by the blows of misfortune. And it was only because of this that I was able to travel the path which I had always really wanted to travel.

It must be beautiful there.
The music is rhythmic and bouncy, the flavor of tahini and lemongrass.
Women have rich, long, dark hair, but its hidden.
So you can only imagine how beautiful they are.
The language here is inspired, more than just words. Salaamu ‘Alaykum.
I want to understand the sensuous and sacred language,
To speak it myself.

The daily tasks of most women around the world
sweeping, washing clothes, caring for the children
are done with infinite grace
submission to God

I would put on the hijab an join this world.
To be Muslim for a day, at least.
To be pure.
To have a life of furtive prayer, bowing toward Mecca five times,
if only for a day.

I would go to the baths
And figure out how to sway the men
this way or that

Inside, I might be dying
to get out
to be free,
and then I would write.

I have just finished reading What Is the What a story recounting the journey of a “Lost Boy” of Sudan. In the final pages of the book, Dominic, the narrator, says, “Sometimes I have to forgive God when he takes some one I care about from the earth.”

In reading this book and another one (Say You’re One of Them), I have been drawn into another world where people who are trying to live faithful, decent lives run into continued prejudice, violence, inequity.

There is a real life combination of luck, wisdom, and mercy that allows Dominic to survive, but in Say You’re One of Them (a work of fiction) the author doesn’t give you that.

And I don’t blame him. In the story of human struggle, we do not get the ending we need or want. This is a deep sadness that most of humanity must carry.

Oh, how we do our best to avoid pain or suffering, to drown out real conflicts here or abroad.

Oh, to live a real life, a life that lives the joy and the suffering.

I will remember this suffering,
I will find myself at the end of my rope daily.
And then fall down on my knees.
For Somalia.
For Haiti.
For Libya.
For Sudan.
For Iraq & Afghanistan.

God forgive our warring ways.

I thought of my move to Greenbelt, MD in terms of simplifying. Of a step toward being Amish.

I am reading a book called Amish Grace right now and learned that Amish these days often have a phone located outside their house so that it doesn’t disturb their life inside the home.

About a year ago, Alex and I stopped getting Internet in our home. We have been internet-free at home since June of 2010. It has changed the way we spend our days and our time together. It’s quieter, there are fewer distractions.

So, today, I headed out to the public library and logged on with my computer to do my emailing–a necessary and generally enjoyable part of communicating with folks in my community. But, in the library, instead of staring at a computer screen by myself at home, I ran into 3 friends from church.

I wonder what my next step will be?