Launching Holy Week

Holy Week

I have decided a good way to get started with this blog thing is to blog for Holy Week. I've never done much with the days between Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday. This year my church, All Saints, is having services every night. I hear an award is on the offing for the person who attends the most services, so how can I resist.

The first being the dramatic nature of Holy Week for me last year. During the Palm Sunday service the fire alarm in the parish hall went off and fire trucks came. Singing Ride On Ride On with a dalmatian looking at us made it almost seem like a donkey was there. I didn't think much about it as March Madness and the NCAA final games for men and women occupied the early part of the week. I went out to see the women's final game with the person I was dating at the time. At the end of the evening there was a storming out into the parking lot and driving off in a huff event that left me stunned at first. Wednesday I attemtped to work and go to an IYG event in the evening, where a great conversation with our program coordinator gave me a vocabulary to address my relationship frustration of going from full-time to part-time girlfriend. During the event I received a text from a friend asking me to help with some house stuff on Saturday; however, I planned my 23 mile marathon training run for that day. I later offered to take Thursday off work and help her understand. I spent a beautiful Thursday on her roof sledge hammering her fireplace chimney. She was more than happy to let me sledge hammer while she carted off bricks. Her contractor had said there was no way we could get it down to the roof line in a day. The next morning when he came, my friend said to him you were right. He started to nod to which she responded we got it down to the ceiling. I also spend Friday helping to dismantle the inside part of the fireplace. I worked during the day and went to church in the evening. Saturday I ran 23 miles. Luckily there isn't kneeling in the Easter vigil service. My memories of the time are as much of physical activity as spiritual enrichment. It did note it was a good way to bury a relationship. (If only the story had ended there).

So this year I'd like to have a more spiritual orientation to Holy Week. With exception of work, I don't have other plans for the week. I hope I can make the space to keep the time sacred. I had pre-cursor with the funeral I attended Friday. It was a truly beautiful and moving service. A funeral is a chance to remember the resurrection. Although the Alleluia was buried under a chapel altar for Lent, the word was brought back into play during the funeral. Unlike a Taize service I had been to Sunday where the use of Alleluia felt bad, it felt so appropriate. We keep Holy Week to walk the walk of the cross with Jesus, yet we do know the outcome. On Monday night I spent time with an icon of the resurrection. What was drawing me was the women watching Jesus suffer on the cross. It was in part wonder in how they could watch his pain in light of my own difficulties sitting with people who are suffering / dying. It also occurred to me they did not know the outcome. How much braver and courageous they must of have been to walk through the final hours of Jesus's life and death not knowing something more would come after. In some ways don't we all face situations where we sit and wait or even take action uncertain of the outcome. I wonder how would life be different if I was or we were certain. I am reminded of a sermon I heard on Thurs by Erin Hoagland. She started asking who was afraid of death. She talked about Jesus's death and ended on the note that love not death had the final word. How would life be different if any of us was sure in times of uncertainity that love would have the final word ?

The damn birds

This morning, March 19, 2013, I woke up really missing my Dad.  In learning to live with grief, I’ve mostly come to accept that is going to happen from time to time without delving too deeply into why now, why today type of questions?  It wasn’t close to any milestone events.  I did note it was my niece’s birthday, so I think about family a little more on such days.  Other, more significant days have passed without such an emotional response.  Then I wondered if it had something to do with being at a vestry meeting last night, a common experience the two of us now share.  It is something I wish I could talk to him about.  When I got to the daily office and it was the feast of St. Joseph, something clicked. It struck me that it would make sense to feel that loss of my own father on a day when we are celebrating Jesus’s father or stepfather depending on one’s perspective. I decided breathe and explore this a little further.

            When my Mom was moving to a smaller unit in her life care community in 2011, she need to downsize and asked my brother and I to select some items of my Dad’s for our own homes.  I had wanted my Dad’s toy circus wagon, a Hudson River oil painting, and a print of Cranmoor farm.  (Cranmoor farm in Toms River, NJ was the property that became both the ground for the church in which I was raised and the country club where I spent my childhood summers).  On the morning I was set to leave, my Mom asked me about six Mark Catesby bird prints. (Catesby was a naturalist who travelled in the colonies and draw birds and fauna, considered a forerunner to Audubon).  Although valuable, she was having difficulty with the idea of sending them to auction.  I wasn’t sure I wanted them, but unlike my brother, I did have space to hang them in unadorned hallway. 

            My Mom had made me promise that if I took the prints, I would hang them. Not too long after I returned home, I had some friends over to help me get them on the wall and properly aligned.  I was surprised to learn that one of the six prints was in a smaller frame then the others.  It was so uncharacteristic of my German; love for order, cleanliness is next to Godliness, father to have tolerated that.  I even remember as a kid when he had the prints sent out to be cleaned and re-matted, so am particularly curious as to why the discrepancy. My mother was unable to shed light on the mystery.  Nor did she even recall that one was smaller.  I don’t know that they had been hung as a group since being in the dining room of the house I lived in until I was 11 or so.  I suspect my Dad had done what I did, have the smaller one strategically located over a light switch.

            Once the prints were decorating my hallway, my fondness and attachment to them grew.  Although I had lived in the house for 12 years without them, I almost couldn’t remember a time when they weren’t there.  I also learned that I spent more time walking from my office to the bathroom or kitchen then I knew.  Some days I would linger in the bathroom, phone in hand, so I could look at them longer while listening to people babble on some or the other conference call. I affectionately referred to them as the damn birds. I would describe my relationship with them as passive, but they were always there.  Perhaps, somewhere in my psyche, it reassured me my father was still around too.

About a year later, I began to consider purchasing a new home; where I would put the damn birds became a factor in my decision-making.  I was selecting an open concept home with no hall.  The seller suggested the sunroom as an option, but my knowledge of archival preservation was still intact enough to want to keep old prints away from that much light.  Then I discovered the basement option added a beautiful hall with a French door opening into the basement.  It even had a light switch in just the right place.  I was sold.  I even bought a book of the prints, so I could have bookstand at the end of the hall and have almost an exhibit type space.  I symbolically hung the birds on the third anniversary of my Dad’s death. It looked beautiful.

As I settled into my new home, I began to miss the constant presence of the birds.  Sure the Hudson River oil painting is prominently located over the fireplace, but that painting was more about the kind of art I like to have around; the tranquility of the water scene.  I liked the table with the circus wagon and other artifacts that represent a blending of my father’s circus things and my own animal mementos, but even with his picture, that display has never carried the same connection I feel with the birds.  The Cranmoor farm piece was really my mother’s print.  Since I had invested so much in creating this sacred space for the birds, I was loathe to move them.  With the exception of less than daily trips to the basement, seeing the birds requires an intentional visit.  I hope that does not reflect a change in my psyche about my father’s presence.

I wonder about Jesus and his earthly father, whom we don’t very much about.  Did he grief Joseph’s passing?  Matthew 12:46-50, does not leave me with the impression has family of origin concerned him.  Yet it is hard to imagine a loving, compassionate deity in human form not experiencing grief over the loss of someone who had a profound impact on shaping his life.

I was raised with the church as a big part of my life and the life of my family.  Both my parents served in the church community in different ways and ensured, sometimes to my chagrin, which my brother and I participated as well.  I never really knew the extent of my Dad’s faith, like did he have it, or did he think going to church was something you were supposed to do.  Not very long ago it dawned on me he must of have had great faith to face his death with kind of courage he displayed.  A recent death in my own church community has provoked some of my own thinking about my mortality. I only hope I can face my own death with that kind of courage.  I hope that my own fears of being alone with no one to care for me, physically or emotionally, will be replaced with an ability to lean into my faith and trust God to provide.  I also need to start to live life now with the same kind of courage.  It seems as appropriate time as any to begin a blog I have long considered writing, entitled longing and belonging.

As I have welled up with tears a number of times while writing this, I reminded of my Dad’s final speech to my family… We are going to do with this grace and remember no blubbering.  My mother later claimed he may have said that, but we never agreed to it.