Tag: vigil

Easter Hope Rising

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

The stories of Holy Week and Easter season carry such rich imagery and always seem to lend themselves to deep metaphorical reflection and visioning, for me. One doesn’t have to name oneself as Christian to draw from this deep well of living metaphor, or to see how it uncannily, without fail, reflects the troubled, complex, both/and state of (my) humanity and the world in these quarantine days – darkness and light, grief and grace, loss and abundance, co-existing all together, backlit by hope rising.

Something in me continues to love keeping the Easter vigil, especially in those deep wild still hours of the night, and even though we couldn’t keep the Easter vigil at our church this year, we had the invitation to keep vigil at home. And so I purposed to keep vigil through the night til the morning, through those deep wild still hours … Prepared candles and incense and a place to sit in silence and a place to write as the Spirit so moved.

And the Spirit so moved, in this way! This is a wrenching, raw cry from the deepest places of my heart and soul, bowed in grief, lifted in grace – for me and for the world, hope for me and you and the world.I hadn’t necessarily intended to share this poem publicly, because it’s so nakedly personal – these are some of my deepest aches, vanities, and longings, core wounds and spiritual struggles. The old patterns, old pains, that keep rising up as I keep peeling layers upon layers, seeking deeper healing, truer, freer living … this quarantine Easter season has brought so much to the surface, for me, for us all, for our world …
Yet it seems right to be open, if there is anything that may speak to other hearts, too.

With much love and hope, I bow and share this from the Spirit with you, beloved ones!

Rise, Leave the Graveclothes

It is time to leave the tomb
I have been there a while
Not alive but dead to life deepened
                        dead not alive
                        not alive, not risen
                        not living nor rising
In a tomb
                   I have been
It is time to arise
                   leave this tomb
                   return no more
                   to this place
Rise, leave the graveclothes behind
                   seal the tomb
                   return no more
                   to this death
 
Resentment, toxic envy
                  bitterness of seeing others
                  richly clothed in honor and influence
                  you have sought
                  but feel nakedly unknown
               Graveclothes
                                        nothing but graveclothes
               Rise, leave the graveclothes
                                        Seal this tomb
                                        free, walk in light
                                                  clothed new
 
Praise and honor craved
                    from some, stories
                    and needs carried
                    unmet, not to be met
                   still worn, worn to tatters
               Graveclothes
                                        nothing but graveclothes
               Rise, leave the graveclothes
                                         Seal this tomb
                                         free, walk in light
                                                    clothed new
 
Desires to have your words
                    known, esteemed, quoted
                    to carry weight in the world
                    and ring wild into the Night
               This want to be a thought leader
                              a spirit leader
                              a standard bearer of belovedness
              Graveclothes
                                     nothing but graveclothes
              Rise, leave the graveclothes
                                         Seal this tomb
                                         free, walk in light
                                                    clothed new
              Understanding, a mirror held to you
                                  you may fancy yourself
                                  prophet or poet
                                  mystic or mother to the world
                                  and wish this seen
                                  but these, small ego longings
                                  they are
              Graveclothes
                                        nothing but graveclothes
              Rise, leave the graveclothes
                                         Seal this tomb
                                         free, walk in light
                                                    clothed new
 
The trappings of ego, social norms
                   the pressure to be doing
                   creating, producing
                   squeezed by deadening belief
                   you are only relevant
                   in doing and known to be
                                                                      doing
                                                done, I am
               Graveclothes
                                        nothing but graveclothes
               Rise, leave ego’s graveclothes
                                             seal its tomb
                                             Free, walk in light
                                                        clothed new
                                                  Enfleshed grace –
                              Don’t you yet know –
                                         you are Relevant
                                         by being Risen
                                         awake, alive
                                         enlivened, enfleshed
                                                     Grace
 
Comparisons – of your children
                    to the shiny-ness of others’
                    children, achievers, actively known
                              much praised
                    names held in golden esteem
               Graveclothes
                                        nothing but graveclothes
               (and these – graveclothes
                         your children themselves
                         are not wearing
                         because you have well taught
                         them not to put them on
                                             so why must you!)
               Graveclothes
                                       nothing but graveclothes
               Rise, leave these graveclothes
                                         seal the tomb
                                         free, walk in light clothed
                                             Awake, alive, eyes clear
                              to see light embodied in your children
                                                  as they are
                                 love them into their authentic
                                                  best selves
                              and do not offer them graveclothes, of any sort
                                                     to wear
                                  or model for them graveclothes
                          Model for them the rising
                                             and the leaving
                                             of the graveclothes
                                             the sealing of the tomb
                                             the walking free, in light
 
Comparisons, self-condemnations
                     spirit-quenching judgments
                     robbing joy and justice
                     In blindness, holding onto
                                             unlit candles
                                light of others unseen, unhonored
                                your own light unlit
                                             un-risen, un-enfleshed
               Graveclothes
                                        nothing but graveclothes
 
Rise! Leave the graveclothes
               all graveclothes
               seal the tomb
Free! Walk in light, clothed
      awake and alive
                 Risen
 
Risen, enfleshed Grace
            dry bones enlivened
                  clothed in
                        Light
 
Rise!
          Leave the graveclothes
               of this past life
                                             (death)
               of what was thought normal
                              but was
                                             death
          These graveclothes, they are
                              but tatters and they stink
                              Shake them free
                              dust, they disintegrate
                              shake the dust free
                              rise and walk
                              Return no more
                              to this death
                              Risen, return to life
 
Things that have been thought normal in this world
                       scarcity, lack, greed
                       busyness and exhaustion
                       body and soul and earth depletion
                       unkindness and heart blindness
                       violence and war
                       inequity and injustice
               Graveclothes
                                       nothing but graveclothes
                       that are and belong
                                                               to death
               Let us all rise, leave these graveclothes
                              Seal the tombs we have made
                             for one another,
                              seal them
                              return to them no more
               Free, let us walk in light clothed
                              together Risen
              

Awake

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

Every year, my church holds an Easter vigil, beginning on Good Friday evening and extending through Easter Sunday morning. I’ve discovered I quite love the midnight to 4 a.m. hours – how quiet the church is at those hours! The little chapel area becomes a place set apart in space and time, with darkness and stillness of the night draped around …. a cocoon of calm.

I feel a fondness for that chapel – it has often been a retreat place for me, even in the midst of busy days, to come and find a bit of respite, to re-center. Not only to pray or meditate, but to think, to write, even to engage in an activity as mundane (and non-sacred seeming!) as work documentation – or to play the piano (which is one way I re-center). For me, it is a ‘thin place’ – places infused with the sense of the sacred, places that offer an invitation into reverence and renewal, places where the veil that often lies between everyday existence and Ultimate reality lifts or even dissolves …

The saying ‘thin place’ comes from Celtic wisdom tradition, where it is said that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance narrows. The boundaries between heaven and earth collapse, dissolve … or, perhaps more accurately, our sense of those boundaries collapses, dissolves. Our perceptions change, deepen – or we see beyond our usual perceptions, see beyond our illusions …

It seems to me that not only are there ‘thin places’, there are ‘thin people’ (no, I don’t mean physically thin!), ‘thin friendships’ – people and relationships that are like spiritual conduits, that help us come closer to the sacred, that invite us to go deeper in our spiritual journeys, that support and enrich, challenge and teach us.

And … ‘thin times’. Those midnight hours seem like ‘thin times’ to me … hours where I can let go of time, hours that become timeless, because the rush of the world is stilled. Hours where the sacred feels wide open to me and I feel wide open to it, hours where the boundaries and barriers fall away, and this world/Ultimate reality blend together. (Not that they don’t anyway, but there are times and places it’s more discernable or we’re more open and prepared to discern it).

So the midnight vigil hours in the chapel are the profoundly holy convergence of a ‘thin time’ with a ‘thin place’!

For my vigil time, I brought along with me my old ‘spiritual journal’ (which has received little attention from my pen for a long time) in case the Spirit brought me words. And as I played the piano, words indeed came … “May we not be afraid to be awake … May I not be afraid to be awake”

I have always loved the times when I sat down to write and the words wrote themselves … coming to my hand not from my mind but from somewhere deeper, from the soul, and coming into my soul from a yet deeper Source.

I share these words here just as they came to me then at 4 a.m., without revision, these words that are truly not mine. And whatever they might mean to you is yours!

May we not be afraid to be awake

                awake to ourselves, our pain, our need

                awake to one another

                awake to our own suffering

                             to others’ suffering

May we not be afraid to be awake

                to see the crosses that are present

                                                                in the world

                            the crosses of suffering

                            the crosses of injustice

May we not be afraid to see

                to see the crosses we bear

                the crosses others bear

                the crosses we have given others to bear

May we not be afraid to take

                to take up our crosses and walk

                to take away our crosses and walk

                to take away the crosses of injustice

                                           the crosses we have given others

                take away these crosses so that others

                                           may walk

                              We may walk together

May we not be afraid to see the suffering

                to be with the suffering

                to be awake to the suffering

                                            to be there

                                            present

                                            awake

                                            seeing

May we not be afraid to feel

                to feel the pain

                                our own pain

                to feel the pain

                                our neighbors often feel

                the pain of their crosses

May we not be afraid to be

                to be there

                to be with ourselves in our own Gethsemane

                to be with others in their Gethsemane

 

May we not be afraid to bear a cross of love

 

May we not be afraid

                to be there

                where there are crosses

May we not be afraid to be love

                where there are crosses

So that only love, only Love

                may be where there have been crosses

It’s so powerfully real to me that we must be willing to be with the pain, our own and others, in order to move through it and heal the suffering.

This thought, I think, has broad applicability, across many personal situations and relationships, across many societal issues.

Do we want healing? Justice? If so, are we invested in what the process means?

Because it does mean being willing to be awake, wide awake, to the pain of others – to say, the grief from relationship loss, the distress of poverty, the pain from accumulated wounds of racial injustices – before we can begin to understand better the suffering others have endured. To not be afraid to be feel the pain and discomfort that the awakening of deeper understanding and compassion can bring. To not be afraid to feel, to see, to be – to be humble, to be love.

To be wide awake to the pain, suffering, brokenness in the world is also to be wide awake to Love, to belovedness. Love is also in the world … but Love needs us to be awake to it so that we can embody it in the world.

May we not be afraid to be awake, to be wide awake in love to Love!