From Robin, with Love
Interim Assistant to the Rector’s Blog
If I Am to Lay Low, Let Me Do So Gallantly
As some of you know, I tested positive for Covid upon my return from Toronto last Sunday evening, and I have had to remain at home to rest and recover. Sadly, this meant missing our Juneteenth Celebration, which ended up, from all accounts, being an inspiring and spirit-filled event. As the morning wore on, I held all of you in my heart from a distance, with gratitude for everyone who chipped in and made the celebration all that we had hoped it would be.
Expand Your Vision
As many of you know, we have been thinking about the value of questions during this season of Lent, and our readings from the gospel of John each Sunday have raised a lot of them. This week, I came across an article that invited us to be mindful of the kinds of questions we ask: some questions help us to learn, to grow, and to find the new place where we belong.
Our Questions Are Our Friends
As we have moved through our first week in Lent, I have cherished the conversations I have had with many of you about this season. Some of you have decades of memories that form the foundation of your Lenten journey, and others are experiencing the liturgical season of Lent for the first time.
HALT
Last night as I drove home from our evening Ash Wednesday service, I was listening to an interview on NPR's “Well Woman” show featuring three black women who had achieved remarkable success as entrepreneurs, even as they recognized the challenges they have faced in achieving balanced self-care. Anxiety, burnout, insecurity…all those things were hidden behind the veneer of being a “resilient, powerful leader.”
We Are Called to Say Yes
Like many of you, my heart is breaking for those who have lost their lives to the earthquake in Turkey and those who now struggle to survive in the rubble that remains. I grieve also for those who have lost their lives to war, gun violence, opioid addiction, and for those who suffer from hunger, economic insecurity, or any form of life-denying oppression.
Dear Friends:
In our Gospel reading for this Sunday, we will hear Mark’s version of Jesus’ forty days in wilderness. His telling of the story is very short. He says only that Jesus was tempted by Satan, was with wild beasts and was ministered to by angels.
I have always assumed that the wild beasts Jesus encountered in this story were dangerous, antagonistic creatures, symbolic of the obstacles and adversaries that threaten our wellbeing and get in our way. But this year, I spent some time with some alternative scholarship on this text that focuses on the Greek word for “with,” a word which connotes collaboration, communion, commonality of purpose. Jesus was “with” the wild beasts.
Could it be that these wild things Jesus encountered in the wilderness grew to be his companions, and not his adversaries? Could it be that reference to wild creatures is intended to remind us of the reconciliation depicted by the Prophet Isaiah in his vision of a “Peaceable Kingdom,” where the wolf lives with the lamb, the leopard lies down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together? (Is. 11:6)
Might this be invitation to us during this season of Lent to re-fashion our attitude toward the “wild things” in our own lives, embracing them as an opportunity for reconciliation, companionship, and peace?
With this in mind I offer you this poem by Wendall Berry, one of my favorites:
The Peace of Wild Things*
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.
May your first week of Lent be holy and blessed,
Amelie+
*Wendall Berry, in The Selected Poems of Wendall Berry (Kindle Version)