Spring abounds and unbinds!

Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!: The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let hinm go." John 11:42-44 This weekend at Orkney Springs, the sun finally emerged on Sunday out of the rain, mist and fog of Friday and Saturday. On Sunday morning, I was at Shrine Mont Retreat Center at the end of the Women's Retreat. We gathered at the outdoor stone shrine for Eucharist. The altar area of the shrine is a stone archway that ressembles a stone tomb. As I stood in the "opening" of the tomb and heard this gospel read, I started to feel as though spring had come and, in my soul, some new freedom was awaiting to be born at Easter. The weekend was about telling stories of our mothers, grandmothers and other important women in our lives. My daughter Anna was a presenter and talked about Barbara Swain. She particularly recounted Barbara's image of being Xena, Warrior Princess as she fought her illness of the last year. On the altar that Sunday, there was a picture of Xena, Warrior Princess that someone had cut out of a magazine. Sometimes we all--men and women--need to channel that warrior within to come out of the tomb of our own suffering. But we need not just our inner warrior but also the help of our communities of support to unbind our bands of cloths. It's time to let our wounds heal in the light and air of day. That's what it felt like on Sunday---coming out of the dank, dark tomb and into the fresh air. Ready to be unbound and ready to live again. Holy Week is the time to unbind our wounds through the story of Jesus' passion. To experience through his suffering and death, our own woundedness and vulnerable places in our lives. Time for those parts of ourselves to see the light of day. To be unbound. To come to Easter Day squinting just a bit from the bright light of God's healing love, but ready and willing to be healed. To move on to new life. Thanks be to God for spring. Spring abounds and unbinds!

Fear of Sacrifice

For I solemnly warned your ancestors when I brought them up out of the land of Egypt, warning them persistently, even to this day, saying, Obey my voice. Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but everyone walked in the stubbornness of an evil will. Jeremiah 11 In the Daily Lectionary, we are solidly in the early chapters of the prophet Jeremiah. As those who were at Evening Prayer on Tuesday know, Jeremiah is prophesying directly and forcefully to the wayward people of Israel. This Friday and Saturday, I am facilitating a Vestry retreat for another parish in the Diocese of Maryland. We will be talking about goals moving forward. In order to do that work, we need to talk about what we are willing to change in order to allow forward movement to happen. Often the fear of change leads to sin. We fear sacrificing well-known and comfortable ways of living. Our comfortable ways become our weaknesses. And when we rely on our comfortable weaknesses, we often sin against self and others. In his book Keep Going: The Art of Perserverance, Joseph Marshall tells another story from his grandfather Old Hawk. This time on new ways and change: Old Hawk gestured up at the tall, old cottonwood tree towering above them. Its girth was so large that a grown man could not put his arms around it. Old Hawk's father had planted it as a sapling in 1896, the same year he had received an allotment of land from the government. "This tree," he said, "has stood guard over our family all its life. Strength is what I feel each time I look at it. Yet, there have been moments when its great strength was also its weakness." "That is hard to believe," said his grandson. "It's the biggest tree for miles around." Old Hawk pointed at a thicket of chokecherry shrubs in a dry creek not far away. "Look there," he said, "those chokecherry trees are small and weak in comparison to this cottonwood. But when you were a child, they survived a tornado without losing a branch. This old cottonwood, on the other hand, lost several branches. Do you know why?" "No," said his grandson. "Because, in that instance, the cottonwood's great strength became its greatest weakness. It stood up, but it could not bend with the wind the way the chokeberry trees could." "Sometimes we give into our weaknesses." Lent is about recognizing our weakness and choosing to bend with the winds of change that usher in our future life. I know we all have lost some branches in life's storms from refusing to bend just a bit.