A Clearing Season - Consecration

“If we want to know what salvation and life truly meant to Jesus, and therefore what they must mean for us, we will have to go all the way to a hill called Calvary.  We will have to stand in the shadow of the cross.  Only there will we encounter the sacred in its most painful and powerful reality.  Only there will we discover the deepest meaning of this clearing season.”

Houston to Atlanta.  The long six weeks of traveling every single week in North America and South America is finally over.  I’m home.

As I thought about writing my sixth and final installment of my Lenten Journey, I realized I was completely empty.  I was tapped out.   After five weeks of committing to writing about my Lenten Journey each week, I had emptied my heart and my soul, and I had nothing left to give.

I also had driven myself into a deep state of depression.  For me, it wasn’t entirely unexpected.  As I wrote about last September in my blog post “I Feel Like I’m Dying Alive”, depression is a devastating disease for so many.  When I wrote my blog post, I described my brother Bill, and I described my son Patrick, but I was also describing me.  The good news for me is that I know myself, I recognize when I’m in such a state, and in my own way, can deal with it and fight through it.  While many would and do ask the question, “how can you possibly be depressed?”,  read my post from last September, yes, it makes no sense, but that is the reality of depression.

The truly good news in all of this is that through my emptiness, I was ready to be filled again.  I also had heightened senses to experience some incredible moments through our church services, adult education and the reading this week.  My challenge is to try to put it all together in a cohesive message that captures the beauty of Palm Sunday and the days leading up to the Crucifixion.  Where to start?

Let’s start with the church service.  I’ve always said my favorite service of the year is Maundy Thursday, but I’d probably have to say Palm Sunday is also near the top.  I love the celebration, the children singing, entering the church waving palm branches.  It’s exciting, but nonetheless, you know what’s coming, so it’s bittersweet.  That is the “profound mystery of Holy Week”. 

The sermon was incredible, but our Senior Pastor Chris Henry never disappoints.  The quote above comes from the sermon, and quite honestly, there were so many quotable moments in the sermon.  If you read my blog post from last week, you know that I’m “challenged” by poverty, by being in the midst of the slums.  My level of guilt gets the best of me, and I get far outside my comfort zone, and struggle to just breathe.  As Chris noted in his sermon:

“We’re going to need to pay attention for the presence of God in unexpected places.  Those on the periphery.  The outcast and the refugee.  The addicted and the down-and-out.  The fearful and the mourning.  The people we most want to ignore.  If the kingdom of God is to be found anywhere among us, this is where to look … in the forgotten and difficult and challenging places.”

As I have shared before, I strongly believe I was in the presence of God once through the eyes of a lonely, old man that I couldn’t give the time of day.  The pain that I experienced from this encounter has never subsided, I recognize I have a lot of work to do.  I’m not good with those who are on the periphery.  I need to pay attention to the presence of God where I least expect it.  I need to see and experience it on the streets of Providence, the streets of Houston, any city I frequent, no matter how difficult that is for me.  That is my reality.  I need to change.  As Dave Carr says so eloquently, “we need to walk our faith”.

Adult education was another amazing experience.  This week we discussed death, and so many people had such beautiful stories to tell about people close to them dying.  I was awestruck as I sat there listening to so many personal and beautiful stories about people losing close relatives and the experience they went through.  There was a constant theme woven throughout of basic principles in life of “love is all that matters”, “living life to the fullest”, “doing everything to love God and to love our neighbor until your last breath”, and finally, and I loved this one, “death ends a life, not a relationship”.  Since our theme is Celtic spirituality, we focused on the mystery of death and the fact that we need to trust in God in both joy and sorrow.

We also discussed the struggles we have with death, particularly untimely death.  It is much easier to celebrate the life of a person who has lived a full life than it is to celebrate the life of someone who has died tragically, or has died very young.  In these cases, we tend to mourn more than we celebrate.  It brought me back to so many years ago, when my brother Bill committed suicide.  It’s not easy to celebrate a life when the life was ended in such a way.  I still remember at the time, Laurel’s sister Kathy was dying from cancer, and my Mom said the day after Billy’s funeral, “It’s so sad, she wants to live so badly, and can’t, and he had a life, but didn’t want to live it.”  This life experience has given me a passion to never have to experience suicide within the family again. 

The Maundy Thursday service was a very different one for me, but it was such a special night.  Our church had separate services in people’s homes, and we had the opportunity to worship with several Shallowford families at Davis and Kay Stewart’s house.  We congregated, we shared, we got to know many people we hadn’t had the opportunity to meet before, and we ate (a lot!).  Then we celebrated the Last Supper in an intimate setting, as we prepare for the crucifixion that lies ahead.

Finally, Holy Week isn't complete without Good Friday.  We went to the chapel at Shallowford at noon, and experienced the emotionally-draining story of Jesus' betrayal and death.  It is such a moving passage in the Bible, and it is so painful, but necessary, to read and immerse yourself in.  

As I reflect on this week, I have to also share some of the reading from “A Clearing Season” and what hit home for me.  The first one is easy, the reading proposes that “we endure Lent’s process of subtraction because it opens us wider; the process of subtraction brings us closer to God, where true life is to be found” and “…trusting beyond reason, beyond our senses, that God is working powerfully in and through us”.  As best I can, I’m trying to endure the Lenten process, or more appropriately, embrace the Lenten process.

But what really hit me from the reading was the central theme of what is wrong with me and what needs to change.  Thy will be done.  As I’ve shared before, when Patrick hit his low point, and we were right there with him, I’d go for my runs in the morning, and I’d pray and cry and plead with God, “please help him, please take his pain away, please save him.”  I was never, ever able to bring myself to the ultimate prayer, the most important prayer, “thy will be done”.  As the reading this week so beautifully notes, “Thy will be done.  In relation to our ordinary, workaday lives, these may be the most revolutionary words we will ever say…  The prospect of relinquishing our lives to God’s will can be terrifying, as it may have been at first for Jesus on that night of prayer in the garden.  But this fear comprises part of a holy moment; it is endured and transcended so that God’s will may be done.”

As if I needed further reminder, but then again, I’m sure God knows my head is stuffed with fluff, and I am stubborn, I received the notice of the Maundy Thursday service at United Theological Seminary.  President Kent Millard would be preaching on “Thy Will Be Done”.  But, of course.

As we discussed in Adult Education, as humans, we want to believe we are in control, and I suffer more than most with this.  Death is the ultimate sign, we aren’t in control.  While I may believe that the reason I’m able to fight through and overcome my times of depression is all about me, I’m pretty certain, it’s all about Him.  And I need to let go and understand, Patrick’s fight through this is also all about Him.  Providence.  As I’ve said it before, maybe this is where Patrick comes to find God again.  In the ghetto, in the slums, with those who are on the periphery, with the people we want to ignore.

Just a few more things and then I'm done.

Clinging Cross - I guess the excitement of Holy Week moved me, I gave out three Clinging Crosses this week.

Jeanne Thrift -  As I've said before, Jeanne is one of my dearest friends at WIKA.  She is an incredible person, and yes, she is very much a beautiful child of God.  Jeanne has been enduring a great deal for many years, but more so lately, with her daughter Holly's battle with Cystic Fibrosis.  I can't imagine enduring this battle from Holly's perspective, but also from the caregiver's perspective.  My heart breaks for them.

BJ Grooms - BJ works at WIKA, and recently returned from hip surgery.  BJ has an unbelievable smile, and an infectious laugh.  I so look forward to seeing him anytime I'm in town, he brightens my day.  He also knows sports better than most people, so I love to hear his thoughts and predictions on bowl games, the NCAA tournament, just about any sporting event.  BJ is simply full of life, and when he talks about sports, he just exudes life and excitement.

Jeff Poynter - Jeff is the Business Administrator at our former church, First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville and also a dear friend.  Jeff and I became close when I served as the Chair of the Finance Committee at church.  I will always remember and continue to quote Jeff on what he said when his Mom died years ago.  He referred to it as "graduation day".  And really, that's what it is, isn't it?  We are constantly on a learning path, and we are never completely there, until we reach graduation day.  I miss worshiping with Jeff, but I will always appreciate his friendship and his leadership.

As I noted at the beginning, I love Palm Sunday.  A tradition of course is the great anthem, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross".  Our choir did a beautiful job with it, and of course, left me in tears.  As a final thought for Holy Week, here is the last stanza:

"Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small,

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all."