That Inbetween Place

Easter is that Inbetween Place.  Well at least to me.

That place when I have to drop the carefully accumulated husk of constructed religion that somehow grows like limestone coating throughout the year and stand cracked and broken in a place where the light pours in. The encapsulating darkness is smashed suddenly against the hard horror of Good Friday.

But it is not that new place where faith flourishes and grows.

Easter is Inbetween.

Maybe there is a joy is being cracked open, it lets the light in.

Kindness

I find myself facing Holy Week with a certain degree of trepidation. Again. My life has been chequered deep hurts and the pain and betrayal of our Lord in the final days of His earthly life are hard to bear, too vividly easy to imagine. It always seems like a time of unmitigated horror. No kindness to be found anywhere. Yet today a Buddhist friend arrived with a small beaded angel as a gift. To remind me, she said, that despite the grimness of Holy Week the angels watch, as they must have watched Him. Even when He was in darkness to deep to see them.

And I wonder how I often I miss the kindnesses shown me because I am so wrapped in my own misery.

Here was a hand that reached out to care, even in the midst of her own lack of understanding of my own recoil at what must come.

Holy Week

Everyone in my small faith circle seems to be focused on Holy Week.

To be expected I suppose. If you are Christian then, as St Paul puts it, our faith is a folly without the Resurrection and we are to be pitied.

But to get to the Resurrection one has to get through Good Friday. The death. Unimaginable cruelty. Abandonment. The Chosen One dying just like a common criminal. Like no one special. It doesn't help that I recognise my own behaviour in that of the disciples. I don't even have the lofty moral high ground to distance me from the gasping pain of it all.

I can't hide as I am reading the narrators part for Good Friday's Gospel. I will be in the midst of it. A front row seat to the most gruesome and tragic show on earth.

Today though I have been finding small pleasures where I can. Breathing in the fragrance of magnolia, the taste of cheesecake and the hug of a son and the gentle love of my husband. Building up courage and strength for the horror to come.

Hearing

It is only hearing the reading this morning that something entirely new (to me) occurred to me.

The gospel has the story of the grain of wheat dying and being buried in order to bring forth new and abundant life. This particular image has always been, to me, one of rich, dark earth nurturing the seed within it. The soil holding the moisture and regulating temperature so that the conditions are right for the seed to germinate and flourish.

Could it be that the darkness I find myself in is just rich dark soil nurturing me?

Letting go of having to know

I have spent so long walking in darkness, so long desperately wanting  to walk in the light that it has not occurred to me to simply walk in the darkness. I have never considered that perhaps the One who holds me in the palm of His hand can see in the dark. Acknowledging this would mean, of course, trusting more and since trust is not one of my strengths this might be easier said than done.

My spiritual director suggests that is it simpler than I am making it, and that it is more a case of letting go of having to know. None of us really walk knowing what is happening or what will be around the next corner, so all of us walk in darkness to some degree, that the small light we are given does not really push back the greater darkness that surrounds us. He says that perhaps I should stop holding my breath against possible further awfulness and just be where I happen to be more.

The thing about this Jesuit way is that it unseats the ingrained habits of a lifetime and takes me entirely unexpected places.

Language

I am finding that this process of finding a new perspective under Ignatius's guidance is changing the language I use to myself and to others and that is very strange.

Under the, not always so gentle, paring away of old attitudes I discover that all I really want to do is fall more and more deeply in love with the Lord. I learn that I am drawn into the Lover of my Soul and that I want so badly to cease any resistance to that drawing. But while the habit of resistance dies hard I begin to believe that in my experience of that Love. In odd moments I fall into a breathtaking continuing experience of God's expansive Love. Perhaps the words are "ever expanding Love."

These are words that might describe something that was half hidden and certainly mostly unconscious in me but is becoming more exposed. But they are certainly words I would not have used a few months ago.

Bees in a bucket

Yesterday we were invaded by a swarm of wild bees who had moved (the bee man thinks) from their rural home to find water. Most likely they settled in my garden because it is organic and lacks artificial fertilizers and chemicals. The bee man came at dusk just as light drizzle set in to gather these bees and take them to one of his hives where they will be safe from extermination and allowed to live bee lives. Carefully he manoeuvred his plastic bucket up underneath them, gave the branch a smart tap and in they dropped neatly as you like.

Hastily he put the lid on as the bees hummed at being disturbed then he disappeared into the evening taking the bees to their new home on the bus.

As he left I found myself thinking that this man's passion and deep love for his bees was something very special and that I had been blessed by the bees visit and in meeting with him.