A LITTLE MARY OLIVER WITH OUR EASTER

 

Common Bluets on a Rocky Hillside

"The Veil"

There are moments when the veil seems 

almost to lift, and we understand what 

the earth is meant to mean to us -- the 

trees in their docility, the hills in

their patience, the flowers and the 

vines in their wild, sweet vitality.  

Then the Word is within us, and the 

Book is put away.

Mary Oliver is a mystic poet, open and attentive to the presence of God in the world.  She calls the earth "God's body."   To wit, "It is not hard to understand / where God's body is. / It is everywhere and everything."  "The Veil" is a poem that helps us find God.  When I am in the woods or Duke Gardens or where the ground is soft with pine needles underfoot or leaf litter, or when I spy those tiny bluets that are waving on their fragile stems amongst the spongy moss right now, I can feel the Word within us.  God becomes accessible in our daily rounds.    

Oliver lives by curiosity and her image of death is breath-taking.  "When death comes / like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, / I want to step through the door full of curiosity . . . ." Using biblical language, in the same poem she writes:

When it's over, I want to say all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. 

from "When Death Comes"

"I believe everything has a soul," she says.  Not a human soul, I expect she means, but its own soul.  The soul of something alive and precious to its Creator.  When we love the world, we please God and give God glory.  In the world's beauty we see the beauty of God.  If we all treated the earth as our sacred home, how healing that would be.  If we did that, we couldn't bomb our home into rubble or fail to respond to its needs. 

One more:

"In Blackwater Woods"

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it 

against your bones knowing 

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

Well, no words are truer than these.  We love what is mortal, ourselves and our dear ones, with our minds, hearts and souls.  Nothing is more precious than the body of someone we love.  We stay alive not only for our own sakes, but so as not to cause pain to those for whom we are the gift of life itself.  

But Christ also taught us to let go.  He was able to say, "It is finished" and relinquish himself to God.  Our faith helps us do the same.  Because what we have learned every Easter is that we move from our fragile mortality to our eternal immortality.  In the interim, I am grateful for Mary Oliver and her vision. 

Now, for all of life, let us give thanks.  

                                                                        HAPPY EASTER from Nina Naomi

 

EASTER

I'm so glad it's almost Easter.  The world is Easter-ready.  Today we saw two purple finches courtship-feeding. The male, a rosier shade, delicately passing seed to the female. She, assessing him as a mate for one sitting on the nest and needing a bite now and then.  He was proving his worth, I thought.  He wasn't letting her out of his sight.  He would be a good helpmeet.  

The dwarf red maple is leafed out.  The snap dragons wintered over and are radiant.  Forsythia are just shedding their yellow flowers for vibrant leaves.  Red bud are lining country roads. 

Sundays are marching to Holy Week and ultimately Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter.  I haven't been as attuned to Lent as I wished to be. I didn't go to mid-week Lenten services.  I have been following politics and nursing my getting-worse back. I didn't go to Friday afternoon Stations of the Cross. I worry about Gazans and Ukranians and Israeli refugees held by Hamas.  I worry about our country.  When that's too much, I do Wordle and follow college basketball.  Preoccupations and distractions.  

With all the suffering in the world you would think it would be easy to focus on Christ's suffering and death, but that's not necessarily true.  However, that's what our faith requires of us.  From Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, we move in step with Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem to the Last Supper, the crucifixion and the Resurrection.  

This is what we do.  We will be ready as we are every year.  We will recognize that the suffering Christ understands our own suffering.  We will know that we are not alone.  We will wait at the tomb and see it empty.  We will share an Easter breakfast with our church friends and hide eggs for the children.  We will pray for peace on earth.  We will align our own renewal with the renewal of the earth.  We will face all that threatens our world with the peace that passes all understanding.  That is what we will do. 

In peace let us pray to the Lord.  Lord have mercy.  AMEN 

  

LIFE RESURRECTED

 

Isn't it wonderful that it's spring? I have been outside all week, enjoying the tiniest of wildflowers and the brilliant green of my woods.  Doug, the chipmunk named by our granddaughter, has been boldly darting from deck to spilled bird seed.  He is by far the cutest rodent we have ever seen. He was a regular last year and we were so glad when he emerged from hibernation.  Did you know that chipmunks make refuse tunnels so that their sleeping quarters are clean? We've been rooting for him against the hawks that circle. 

Plus Easter and Passover.  What could be better?  Two Holy Days  commemorating great events in each religion:  the Resurrection of our Lord for those who are Christian and the deliverance from slavery in Egypt for those who are Jewish--two days with ancient origins.  

Passover always falls on a Full Moon because of its place in the Hebrew calendar. Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox.  If the first full moon falls on a Sunday then that day is Palm Sunday and the next is Easter. This year Good Friday falls on the same day as Passover.  Sometimes  I have been privileged to celebrate both. There can't be a better beginning to the Easter Passion.

Obviously these are not historical dates, but that's just fine. I suspect that those who believe, of whatever faith, are not looking for literal confirmation of acts of religious significance.  Did deliverance actually occur when the moon was full?  Maybe.  It makes sense.  But does it matter?  We have been given faith as a gift, and as our heritage. There are pagan antecedents of Christmas too.  Religion finds its place in the community.  It has for centuries.  

So the two combine--spring and Easter.  New life and resurrected life.  Every year, in greens and yellows and purples, we see the manifestation of John Donne's statement:  "Death thou shalt die."  It's in my yard and in yours.  Amen.                    Nina Naomi

 

 

SEVEN STANZAS AT EASTER

 

John Updike wrote the most famous Easter poem of the second half of the 20th century.  If you believe, or want to, it is worth rereading.  

SEVEN STANZAS AT EASTER (1960)

S1                                   Make no mistake:  if He rose at all

it was as His body;

if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules

reknit, the amino acids rekindle,

the Church will fall.

If I'm not in a hurry, I find God in nature every time I walk outdoors.  But loving God's creation isn't a belief.  A belief is knowing that the tomb was really empty and that the man Jesus showed his pierced palms to Thomas.  Updike's "if" in line 1 is not hedging his bets, and we don't need to hedge ours.  

S2                                       It was not as the flowers,

each soft Spring recurrent;

it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled

eyes of the eleven apostles;

it was as His flesh; ours. 

His flesh rose and ours will too.  That's the promise of Easter.  We won't turn into Monarchs floating among the Lantana.  Our very bodies will walk (or stand or sit or lie) with the risen Lord.  

S3                                 The same hinged thumbs and toes,

the same valved heart

that-pierced-died, withered, paused, and then

regathered out of enduring Might

new strength to enclose. 

 More anatomy.  As His heart re-beat, so will ours.

S4                               Let us not mock God with metaphor,

analogy, sidestepping, transcendence

making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the

faded credulity of earlier ages:

let us walk through the door.

The Resurrection is not a parable.  Not a puzzling little narrative where one thing might stand for something else.  It is simply, literally, true. It needs no interpretation. Jesus rose from the dead.  That's why he is the Christ.  Take a breath.  Open the door to the room of faith and walk in.

S5                            The stone is rolled back, not paper-mache,

not a stone in a story,

but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow

grinding of time will eclipse for each of us

the wide light of day. 

It's all literal.  The wounds, the death, the grave, the stone.  And next comes the angel, literal too, wearing a garment that somebody wove!  No one imagined the angel.  We don't need our imaginations here. 

S6                                And if we have an angel at the tomb,

make it a real angel,

weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,

opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen

spun on a definite loom.

S7                           Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,

for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,

lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are

embarrassed by the miracle,

and crushed by remonstrance.  

I remember (always) when our son died.  Instead of harming my faith, his death made it more logical.  We wouldn't be created in all our complexity to end on the 9th Floor of Duke Medical Center.  Now that would be ridiculous, not eternal life.

Let's have a wonderful death and resurrection.  Happy Easter!  

                                                    Nina Naomi 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IT'S HOLY WEEK. THIS YEAR IT'S NOT THE SAME.

Duke Chapel, Durham NC

It's Holy Week.  Normally I am looking forward to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter.  All good services.  Each a little different than the other.  The striping of the altar, the Crucifixion, a day of waiting, then the Resurrection.  A lot of silence during Holy Week.  A lot of contemplation.

This year it's not the same.  At least today, Monday, I feel like it won't be. Of course maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe when Thursday comes and I follow our service on-line it will actually feel like the day of the Last Supper, the day of the first communion.  "Take, eat.  This is my body.  Take, drink.  This is my blood."  Even though we can't take communion except from prepared packets available by drive-through.  

Maybe if I listen to the Friday service in the dark it will feel like Tenebrae, the service of darkness where candles are gradually extinguished, leaving only the Christ candle to be carried out of the sanctuary symbolizing Christ's death; followed by a loud noise, the slamming of a large Bible symbolizing the closing of the tomb. Maybe I can somehow replicate leaving the church in silence in my home.  

Of course on Sunday I can't parade around my home in my Easter clothes (today is the first day in 3 weeks that just for a change I didn't pull on jeans).  There won't be a congregation singing "Jesus Christ is Risen Today," though the organist I'm assuming will play it.  There may be some Easter lilies in the background of the video but we won't be able to smell them.  We won't share an Easter breakfast or watch the children hunt for eggs.  

Still, as I write this I am changing.  I can feel it.  Writing can do that.  I find I am picturing each service, each part that I will miss.  The foot-washing on Maundy Thursday, reminding us to serve each other in humility.  The pace of the Good Friday service:  hymn, lesson, candle snuffed, lights dimmed, repeat.  Slower and darker untill we tiptoe out in silence.  The hiatus of Saturday when Christ lies in the tomb.  The newness of Easter morn that matches the bright green spring leaves in my little part of the world perfectly.   


The self-isolation and my classes on meditation have brought me closer to God.  My Prayer Journal the same.  I read this morning that we bring our suffering to God and I agree.  I am more likely to think of God out of need than gratitude.  Gratitude takes practice.  Need doesn't.  Usually I write in my Prayer Journal because I have something I desperately need to tell someone; only God will do.  God keeps our secrets.  He listens.  Now when I open the Prayer Journal--take off the rubber bands, slide out the pen--my breath slows, I am focused.  I know what's coming.  God will be there.  Maybe that will be true of the services this week, on-line or not.  I can still hear the organ, still hear the words.  Maybe God will be there.  After all, God often finds me in this house.  

Perhaps this has been a prayer.  AMEN.              Nina Naomi

The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani

IN THE MOOD FOR BEGINNING FRESH?

It's almost Easter.  Today is Holy Saturday, for Christians a day of waiting while Jesus remains in the tomb.  The crucifixion of Good Friday is over.  At sundown the Easter vigil begins, the wait for the Resurrection.  A lot happened on this day over 2,000 years ago.  Just as a lot happened yesterday on the Friday called Good.

Tomorrow is a day for new beginnings. Easter always is.  Everyone has ordered lilies to adorn the sanctuary, many in memory of loved ones who have died, us included.  I have a ham in the fridge waiting to be baked,  Easter baskets shopped at Five Below filled with non-traditional things like sound-activated LED lights and a hands-free iPhone neck mount (for the teenagers) and chocolate. Yesterday we had readings about the Stations of the Cross and left the church in silence. We sang the hymns sung only once a year yet known by heart. "Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded," a bit gruesome, like hanging on a cross.  The church lost power because we were under tornado warnings, but it didn't matter.  Darkness was good.   

Last year and this year Passover fell on Good Friday. Last year we shared a Passover meal with Jewish friends.  It was a perfect transition--service at Friday noon, Passover meal in the evening, Holy Saturday then Easter Sunday.  This year again it's a special time around the world.  If you are one of these religions I hope for you all the blessings of your faith.  For me that means chastened, watchful, hopeful, attuned to grief yet waiting on tiptoe in anticipation of resplendence.  Spring must be a metaphor for all this!

In my mood for beginning fresh I've turned to Mary Oliver.  Many of us feel that poets know more about us than we do ourselves.  The only other poet Oliver reminds me of is Emily Dickinson.  Christian imagery everywhere, but not confessions of faith, not like we see in Dante or Milton or Hopkins or Donne or the other great Christian poets.  If you feel like reading about her, try "Why We Need Mary Oliver's Poems" by Debra Dean Murphy in The Christian Century, April 13, 2017 (www.christiancentury.org).  In the meantime, here's an Oliver poem that I think offers just the freshness we might be longing for this special time of year.  

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 

are moving across the landscapes, 

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

 the world offers itself to your imagination, 

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things. 

 

  

EASTER IS ABOUT DYING AND RISING. SO IS LIFE.

Last Sunday was Easter.  How was your week?  Your month?  Ours has been up and down.  Two weeks ago over Palm Sunday weekend we attended the funeral of a dear friend, my age. Friends for 20 years. Is there anything harder than the death of a friend who is our own age?  Sudden, no illness.  Her husband left a widower without warning.  Although my friends and I are mostly past the age of dying young, that was no consolation at the funeral.  Nor does it seem to console as we continue to miss her.  

Then as Holy week progressed, we spent Good Friday with three grandchildren who had the day off school.  They are at the age where fart jokes are THE BEST!  Forgive me for mentioning these ridiculous sounds in the same paragraph with Good Friday.  But I know everyone remembers this stage.  Or is in the midst of this, with nieces, nephews, children or grandchildren.  One grandchild found great obnoxious-sound-makers for the others.  The pièce de résistance of the Easter Baskets.  And of course Alexa, the far-field voice control genius, is the wonder woman of disgusting noises and follow-up descriptive comments.  We listened to her while we played card games, doubled over with laughter.  A silly day.  Then we hit the road.  I hope the children settled down for their evening service. 

Pieta, Michelangelo

Good Friday for us usually culminates in a Tenebrae Service of Darkness where the candles are extinguished one by one until only the Christ candle is left.  It too is removed and a loud noise of a book slamming shut follows.  Everyone leaves in silence.  But this year we shared a lovely Seder celebrating Jewish Passover at the home of friends.  We learned how to repeat longer and longer incantations in one breath.  We drank 4 mandated cups of wine--how relaxing is that?  We welcomed Elijah.  We all felt so uplifted.  Then . . . .

On Easter Saturday we received word that another dear friend has breast cancer.  Found in a routine mammogram. She saw the radiologist yesterday and will see the surgeon next week.  Later the same day another beloved grandpa in the family was rushed to the ER.  He spent his Easter in the ICU.  Three stents and angioplasty for a heart that had seemed perfectly fine.  

So Easter is about dying and rising and I feel like that is what we do.  At the funeral of our friend her young granddaughter honored us with her beautiful God-given voice singing "And He will raise you up on eagles' wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun.  And hold you in the palm of His hand." ♬  I hope you know the melody.  

The Seder was the perfect segue into the Resurrection. Easter we spent alone with church, brunch and a day outdoors.  

Isn't life like this?  We have wonderful times then a reminder triggers something sad, a disappointment or grief.  Right in the midst of happiness.  Or the other way around. We're stuck in an involuntary repetitive thought when something lovely intervenes, something simple like a fragrance or the sight of spring blooms or a boy with his dog.  


I am not a philosopher or theologian. I have no moral or wisdom to offer. I am just an observer.  But I see dying and rising everywhere.  In our love for one another.  In nature.  In our goals and dreams.  In our health.  In the poetry I read.  And this week in Easter.  Do you see it too?   With blessings for us all, Nina Naomi