Coming Into Pain and Peace
Beginning with Breath: As you take several slow deep breaths, inhale for four counts, pause for four counts, exhale for four counts, rest for four counts. (repeat slowly x6) This is known as SOS breathing. When we focus on our breathing and slow it down, it tends to counteract stress and negative emotions that we are carrying. It is appropriate for the beginning of this reflective time or at any time during these days when we are weighed down by the emotional weight we are carrying. We can always stop and take a half dozen SOS breaths.
Song: “By Breath” by Sara Thomsen (bring it up on the internet if you are able, skip the internet ad at the beginning)
By breath, by blood, by body, by spirit, we are all one
The air that is my breath is the air that you are breathing
And the air that is your breath is the air that I am breathing
The wind rising in my breast is the wind from the east, from the west
From the north, from the south, breathing in, breathing out
By breath, by blood, by body, by spirit, we are all one (x2)
The water that is my blood, my sweat, tears from crying
Is the water that is your blood, your sweat, tears from crying
And the rising of the tide is in our veins and in the ocean wide
We are in the rising steam, rushing river, running stream
By breath, by blood, by body, by spirit, we are all one (x2)
The earth is dust, the earth is clay, flow’rs blossoming and fading
We are dust and we are clay, we are blossoming and fading
Every color, every sound, every place is holy ground
Oh, every living thing, can you hear it laugh? Can you hear it sing?
By breath, by blood, by body, by spirit, we are all one (x2)
The fire in my heart, my soul flame burning
Is the fire in your heart, your soul flame burning
We are Spirit burning bright, by the light of day, in the dark of night
We are shining like the sun, and like the moon, like the Holy One.
By breath, by blood, by body, by spirit, we are all one (x2)
The fundamental connection among us and all creation is crucial at this time of illness and isolation. It is a connection that comforts us but also requires our care right now with the restraint of social spaciousness. Even when we are six feet apart or further distant, remember tenderly the connection.
Opening Prayer: (read it slowly, I suggest aloud, and linger with it. Today’s prayer, “The Peace of Wild Things,” is from the poet Wendell Berry, and we use periodically at Mayfield.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Moment of Silence
Morning Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-14, John 11:1-27 (read aloud or silently)
Reflection: “Coming Into Pain and Peace”
Our texts this morning are meaty and long, and we are only reading about two-thirds of the gospel lesson, the portion our reflection will focus on. Each Lent there is a structure to the six weeks of readings whether we are in Year A (Matthew), Year B (Mark), or Year C (Luke). Materials from the Gospel of John are scattered out across the three years. The first Sunday of Lent is set in the desert as Jesus experiences forty days of solitude and temptation. The sixth Sunday of Lent, Palm Sunday, takes place in Jerusalem along the parade route while Jesus rides into town. The four weeks in between are quite different in Years A, B, and C. This year, Year A, has the most powerful metaphors embedded in its texts across weeks 2-5.
When we were still together on March 8, Lent 2, we heard Nicodemus’ haunting question about how could it possibly be that we are born again. He struggled, perhaps as we do, with the faithful opportunity that is always there each day to begin anew. The next Sunday when we were first apart, Lent 3, we were with the Samaritan woman at the well marveling over the mystery of living water. Last week, Lent 4, we beheld the gift of sight for a man born blind. And now this week, Lent 5, we hear the rattling, disjointed bones in the valley of Ezekiel’s vision and we meet Martha and Jesus on the road in the bottomless pit of grief after the death of her brother Lazarus. The sight of those bones no longer held together in a body or a community of bodies speaks to the separation we know in the present tense. Martha’s strong feelings of anger, despair, and grief, may well remind us of overwhelming feelings we experience in these days when Covid-19 rages across the globe. In Ezekiel’s vision we hear these words, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel.’ They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’”
In the meeting on the road between Martha and Jesus, two things happen that are critical. The first is that Martha is honest emotionally. She doesn’t wait in the house for Jesus to arrive. She goes out on the road where I hear her angry and grief-stricken, disappointed and demanding to know why Jesus was not there before now. Conversation ensues between them. He doesn’t tell her to be quiet. Their encounter allows for a container of time and space for everything that she is feeling and that is spilling forth from her. But it doesn’t stop there. The second thing that happens is that this conversation wraps around Martha’s clear confession of faith, “I believe that you are the Anointed One, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” There is only one other confession like this in the gospels, the confession of Peter. It isn’t necessary for Martha to choose one experience over the other in these moments. She can plunge into her emotions, her hopelessness, the pain of her dislocation from what used to be as she breaks open into a new expression of faith. She can do both. She can be both. And she does.
In this season of Covid-19, John Philip Newell has written these words referencing Hildegard of Bingen’s wisdom about holding space for both not one or the other — pain and suffering as well as glory and beauty.
Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th century Christian mystic, said that we
need to fly with two wings of awareness. The one wing is an awareness
of life’s glory and beauty. The other is the awareness of life’s pain and
suffering. If we try to fly with only one of these, she said, it will be like
and eagle trying to fly with only one wing. In other words, we will not
truly see. (“Heartbeat,” 3.24.20)
With the prophet Ezekiel and Martha of Bethany as companions at this point in Lent, we can acknowledge what is dying around us, where we are angry, when we are uncertain, how and why we are afraid in this pandemic. Time and space are allowed for that, but it isn’t all of who we are and how we are moving through the world. Wise contemporary guides encourage us to acknowledge on a daily basis all that challenges our hope and strength as well as the breadth of what holds us up and brings us joy, so that with Hildegard both our wings of awareness are in flight. Be mindful today of the people, the geography, the stories, the activities of your day that knit you together in wholeness, that put flesh on your creativity, and that breathe love into you. Recalling Sara Thomsen’s song and Wendell Berry’s poetic prayer, much of that occurs in the presence of the beautiful land we inhabit in northern Illinois. Peace be with you.
Morning Prayer (Whether you are by yourself or with others in your household, name as we do when we are together, those for whom you are particularly mindful this day. If you would like to email me any of your specific joys and concerns in prayer, I will share them in the next memo. Once you have given words to your prayers, utilize this Celtic practice of encircling those joys and concerns with these words:
Peace within you. Peace before you. Peace behind you. Peace beneath you.
Peace above you. Peace beside you. Peace every hour, day and night.
Song: “Now Thank We All Our God” (Martin Rinkart, Lutheran pastor and musician, 1586-1649). Rinkart was a musician and archdeacon in the walled city of Eisleben during the brutal Thirty Years’ War. He was one of the last ministers alive in the city who was available both to care for refugees and bury as many as fifty a day during the plague. This is a beloved song in the church. Listen to the internet recording by King’s College Choir Cambridge.
Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in whom this world rejoices.
Who, from our parents’ arms, has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us,
And keep us still in grace, and guide us when perplexed,
And free us from all ills in this world and the next.
All praise and thanks to God our Maker now be given,
To Christ, and Spirit, too, our help in highest heaven,
The one eternal God whom earth and heaven adore,
For thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.
Blessing: God Be With You (close your eyes for a moment envisioning our beloved circle of blessing at Mayfield.)
God be with you ‘til we meet again,
By good counsel guide uphold you,
With the sheep securely fold you.
God be with you ‘til we meet again.
God we with you ‘til we meet again.
Peace, Martha