Category: Reflections

Reflections

Daffodil Prayers

What do we do when chaos and crisis disrupt some of our most familiar and stress-settling life rituals?

Everyday rituals and rhythms anchor our lives.

So what do we do when chaos and crisis disrupt some of our most familiar and stress-settling life rituals?

Many of my colleagues–liturgical theologians and practitioners and religious leaders–are asking this question as COVID-19 ravages our communities. Is it possible that in my Christian community, we may find ourselves planning virtual Palm Sunday and Easter services? Other religious communities are facing their own versions liturgical and ritual disruption. How can we stay connected–in the marrow of our bones, if you will–while keeping the recommended social distance to protect the health of all of us?

I am impressed and intrigued by the creative and courageous efforts leaders are making to livestream worship and prayer services. I am also struck by how quickly schools, families, businesses, and others have begun to fashion new rituals of connecting, learning, working, and even playing that can serve as anchors–even if they are temporary–for people tossed about in the stormy waters of this historic moment.

We humans are a resilient bunch and can and do find ways to care for one another even from a physical distance. And I have a feeling that when we look back on these strange days, we will experience a deep satisfaction in our determination to be community to and with one another. (And those of us who are live streaming novices may experience more than a few chuckles as we remember our awkward Facebook fits and starts!)

For now, I continue to seek moments of everyday sacramentality in my own backyard–those moments when I become aware of God’s presence in daily patterns of work and rest and even in painful rituals of waiting and wondering.

I am also keeping in prayer and in mind those who are made even more vulnerable by this crisis than they already were to hunger, isolation, and violence.

I first drafted the following poem awhile ago and felt a prompting to revise it this week. This spring’s daffodils have reminded me anew of the promises and presence of God we encounter in creation’s rhythms. Perhaps as we journey through this present wilderness, we can offer up our prayers as the daffodils do, seeking each day to renew our faith in God’s grace and peace.

daffodil prayers

“Dip your aching toes
in cool waters,”
said Summer to the
wilderness
wandering
woman.

“Tease your tastebuds
with blackberries. Lay
your weary body down
on gentle meadow
grass. Breathe in the
soft sweetness of coral
honeysuckle where
hummingbirds drink
and dance.”

“Blush with pride,”
said Autumn
to the old maple tree.

“You earned it. You
shaded the little girl who
held summer stars
in her eyes
while she
sat beneath your branches
and read
and read
and read
once upon a times into
dreams into
fierce hopes for the future.”

“Bend toward hope
when icy winds blow,”
said Winter
to the fragile-seeming ones.

“Bend, but don’t break.
You are stronger than you know.
You are resilient.
You are enough.”

“To push your shoulders
up, up, up,”
said Spring.

“Up through still-cold
greening sod to
fragrance the dawn
with daffodil prayers.

Sacred Scatteredness

Living by faith in such a time as this is perhaps more a radical exercise in lavish broadcast sowing than in precise and planned row by row planting.

Listen! A sower went out to sow.

Matthew 13:3b

As this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains and being gathered together became one, so may your Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom . . . 

from The Didache, First Century, CE

I decided to plant radish and lettuce seeds this week. Nothing out of the ordinary about that for me. Sheila saved seeds from last year and ‘tis the season. What makes this ordinary activity extraordinary this spring is the backdrop scenery of spiraling graphs and avalanching news reports and stumbling spirits as COVID-19 raids our individual, communal, and global lives. 

Often during crises, a sanctuary for troubled hearts is an actual church sanctuary. Many people in my Christian tradition as well as in other spiritual traditions find solace in gathering together in person to pray, worship, sing, laugh, and lament. We experience strength in numbers, hope in the embodied knowing that we are all in this together—

except the embodied knowing–meeting together in physical church buildings
–is not a safe option for everyone when a virus like COVID-19 is on the loose in our midst. 

So we are scattered. Sunday sanctuaries are empty. Many preachers are preaching to empty pews or peering as they pray through digital looking glasses to connect with their communities. 

I celebrate the persistent creativity of so many pastoral leaders who sought on Sunday to offer a hopeful word through social media resources. I am also aware of how isolated and even afraid some people feel as public health leaders urge us to flatten the Covid-19 curve through social distancing. (Even these terms are novel to our everyday vocabularies.) 

We are scattered. 

Seeing this sentence on a friend’s Facebook feed on Sunday sparked a memory for me. In 2011, then Dean Gail R. O’Day spoke to graduating Wake Forest University Master of Divinity students about sowing seeds. She based her remarks on The Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13. The image she lifted out from this ancient story has stayed with me:

A farmer, or an urban or suburban gardener, fills a bucket with seeds, reaches into the bucket and grabs a handful of seeds, and then scatters those seeds broadly and widely across the terrain. 

from Gail R. O’Day’s remarks at the Wake Forest University School of Divinity diploma ceremony, May 2011.

That commencement day, Dr. O’Day focused not on the soil in the parable (as so many interpreters do) but instead emphasized the radical generosity in the sower’s actions of broadcast sowing.

Jesus calls disciples to imagine the kingdom of God as  a landscape planted by a lavish, generous sower—who is unstinting in her broadcast sowing of seeds that may grow to new life.  The kingdom of God is shaped first by the unrelenting determination to sow seeds of new life . . . 

“Ministry,” Dr. O’Day said, “is the ultimate exercise in broadcast sowing.” The ministry we all have to offer is “to reach down into the store of gifts that we have received. . . and throw seeds of hope and possibility out into the world where they can grow to new life for all.”

We are scattered because of an unexpected virus. But we are not alone. We are connected, interwoven as a human community in ways we perhaps never before realized or imagined. What if there are equally unexpected possibilities sown into these days. What if our lives–our persistent faith and kindness during these days–are God’s seeds, God’s hope and grace, being broadcast across diverse media throughout our towns and cities.

I am praying in these uncertain days for those in our communities most vulnerable to the virus. Economic inequities and other vulnerabilities become even more accentuated in times like these. I pray, too, that God will give me the wisdom to look for and embody in my actions what Dr. O’Day called “the joyous surprise of an unexpected glimpse of the kingdom of God” during these days of scattered sacredness. 

Living by faith in such a time as this is perhaps more a radical exercise in lavish broadcast sowing than in precise and planned row by row planting. Maybe I will forego my usual radish and snow pea plumb lines and broadcast some seeds this spring. And as I do so, I will offer up to prayers for communal and global recovery and healing. 

Beneath Our Feet; In Our Hands

Jack Frost is curled up,
Napping in my bones.
Backyard grass crunches,
Frozen beneath my feet.
Summer sunflowers hibernate,
Silent in my heart.

Could it be—
When I hold this dried out husk
Springtime rests on wintertide fingertips?
Infinitesimal harbinger of arugula and radishes;
Holder of stories–fields plowed,
Dirt collected under ungloved fingernails.
Death—in autumn–
Birth–in spring–
When tender-strong seedlings
Unfurl from soil-stained shells,
And push up through the earth
Hungry for the sun—

Dirt weeps sometimes too,
And calls to us: We are stronger than we imagine.
Justice—in wilderness places—
Freedom—in a kernel—
An orchard redeemed—blossoming
Sweet succulent promises of life overflowing.

So we take our shoes off to
Absorb holy ground nutrients
Beneath our feet.
And we water with salt-seasoned tears
This garden we hold in our hand.