Words of Keeping

God of the glowing and the knowing and the growing, break forth within me as I breast this day.  Break forth from all the stony wastelands, the dead dreams, the ancient aches, for this is the day of Easter and the breaking of the grave.  This is the day of your body burning anew in the quick pulse of life that is now synchronised with eternity, a beat that is burnt into the rhythm of the world, into tortured hopes and wasted years, into my heart and all filled with yearning.  This is the day when the wave crests quietly, ready to roll and flood and fill and burst dangerously, wiping out the old with its deluge of delight, with the surging and excitement of a force that cannot be tamed or held hostage but that breaks forth in the power of life.

We get it all wrong, think that the strength of stone and the force of punishments, threat and revenge are the victors, the necessary armouring to protect our fragile beings.  But near the path there is a tiny shoot emerging, green leaves I could crush in my hand that have eased their way through stone.  And that other stone that was rolled away in another garden wasn’t the triumph of punishment and fear but their breaking, the energy of love, the example and offering of a new beginning.

Easter Saturday and all is quiet, the clouds holding the sky like a muffler.  The colours of the flowers are dimmed, there is a snail sitting on a leaf of the wallflower and gulls fill the interstices of the silence with their warnings.  It is the waiting day, the day when the broken egg of dreams has seeped away and all hope seems hidden.  It is a day when the grief and questions of yesterday cannot run their measure but sit tight on the chest like a box.  For it is Sabbath, it is God’s day, and he has the key which he will turn at first light tomorrow.

What do we do with waiting days when we cannot rush to the scene of our sorrow?  Do we pummel the air with words, or wrap the blanket of emotion around us like a skin?  Can we attend to anything, or are we trapped in a timewarp like a tunnel, waiting to touch the source of our pain, to bathe the body of death with our perfume?  Can we feel the God who holds us, sharing our tears, offering the cauterising of peace if we would accept it?

When our interior world is in melt down we don’t easily see the external, we walk in our wound not in the world.  But there is a hospital for the heart that can help hold our pain, the scent of the wallflowers like a salve, the yellow carpet of primroses like a basket for the heart, the fresh green growth a promise of life and strength and new tomorrows, a prescription for hope.  The birds keep watch for us, and we can wait held in the web that is our life here, and that strings our heart to heaven.

Oh, what a thing that Jesus should die, for me, for us, for all who were slate-grey stone towards him, to die for hardness, for sticky selfishness, for hate and desire and fear and all the cocktail of emotions we use to abuse the paths of peace.  How could he make such a dirty thing come clean, what is this strength of love that can hold evil and death and be transformed not tarnished?  How did he feel when he held each of our wobbling hearts and knew their pain and their recipes for disaster?  How could he love so much that there was no crack, no room for revenge?  How could he be about such a big business as saving the world, and still be there for his friends, for us?  Is this how it starts?  The small local loves that don’t crowd the heart but furnish it with care for the more?  Is that why we can feel it now not as an equation of justice, but as a tender trusting of love?

How long will it take to know the depths of this love?  After I’ve fashioned a new heart for myself, a new path to pursue, there’s still more, always more, encroaching on staleness, unsettling any resting place that has become too cosy a home, for it is not finished, there is always more.  Love doesn’t stop and stagnate, it moves and laughs and lives and calls and heals in ever bigger circles as we set our inner compass to follow its way.

Spring will be so good this year, breaking open the heavy pall of winter that weighs its grey cold on the landscape, on the soul.  It will call awake the greens from their hidden palette, and the daffodil flushes of gold that mimic and foreshadow the warm waters of sun.  It will shake and awaken the somnolence of roots, of buds, of earth that have been stilled by the chilled blanket of winter.  It will call awake the senses, shut up in scarves and hats and houses, and move us all from dormancy to vibrancy, thrilling with the new surge of life. 

The crocuses are here already, but this year they are the purple funeral robes of winter not the first flush of spring.  The delicate blossom that usually adorns our tree out front in early March is weeks late.  There have been sunny days, there are buds beginning to break on the flowering currant, there are daffodil leaves poking tall through the hard soil, there is light filling the later afternoon corners.  But I won’t be fooled.  Spring isn't here yet for there is no change in the air, no shaking out of winter’s coat, no quickening of tempo, no intimations of warmth.  Winter still sits heavily here like a guest overstaying its welcome.  This is not spring.  But how wonderful when it finally comes.

It is light now when I rise, a pearly haze of pre-dawn glimmer that lets me see shapes without needing a lamp.  By the time I come down into the garden the day has broken fully, but no sun to be seen, just a blanket of grey filling the sky and the lattice of trees.  It is so wet everywhere, puddles and pools on any surface that will hold them, and drops lining every branch.  Each day we think Spring might start to approach there is another flurry of sleet or snow, another blast of air from the Arctic.

The birds aren’t put off by it, the morning is filled with their song.  And crocuses are pushing up regardless among the scattered brown leaves in the wet lawn.  Was this once the norm?  We have got used to milder winters, and bees buzzing and blooms appearing at the end of February.  If we lived in Canada we would have adjusted to long winters, but here we struggle, longing for the breakthrough of warmth and the rolling back of winter.  It is as if the winter has parked itself in our souls, and we feel as dreary as the grey days.

What is to be done?  Let’s light fires to drive away the grey.  We have a wonderful wood fire newly working this winter that cheers as well as warms.  And there are books to be read, people to be loved, long stripy socks to be worn, indoor projects to be done, all lighting inner fires of joy that will see us through to Spring.