AnderspeaK
April Is The Cruellest Month.
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
These words, from T.S. Eliot’s famous poem, “The Wasteland,” strike an odd tone for the coming of springtime. The cozy hibernation of winter is ending, and the world coming back to life sounds—from Eliot—like the nasty pins-and-needles feeling you get in your arm. While your arm is asleep, you feel nothing; as it wakes, it’s all noise and sharp ginger ale from shoulder to fingertips.
Why the sullen tone? How can someone describe the delicate beauty of blossoming flowers as “breeding lilacs out of the dead land” as if they were tiresome or unwelcome?
So much of our health and happiness are dependent upon our perspective. Eliot seems to have eyeglasses smudged with grease and coal soot, staining the glory of spring with dark distortions. Christians can do the same, and it can overtake our perspective before we know what’s happened.
At one level, we certainly get it—we know that joy is the mark of gratitude for God’s grace. We know that healthy Christianity looks like love and graciousness. No one has ever recommended ridding a worship service of music and singing. So we’re clear: we know that when we are walking rightly with God, our perspective is rosier, lighter and predominantly positive.
At another level, it’s possible to allow pain, doubt, confusion or sin to invade our perspective to such a degree that God’s presence feels dangerously distant. We may think the right thoughts about God, hold the right opinions about Scripture, and otherwise remain faithful to our Reformed, Presbyterian line, yet at the same time feel darkened, worn, bored and distant from God’s Spirit. It is possible for a negative perspective to eclipse a positive one.
What do we do about it? When spring looks more like dirt, slugs and insect larvae than blue skies and lilacs, does it mean we lack faith? Does it mean we’re not good Christians anymore, or that God’s Spirit has left us to attend to others? Of course not, but neither do we fool ourselves into believing that our present lens—dark though it may be—is permanent, nor is it the only lens among lenses.
Sometimes the human heart feels the cold darkness of winter—it might even feel like winter is going to last forever—but things change: spring comes, the lilacs bloom, the clouds clear, and blue skies shine sweetness and light like a great chorus.
When April feels cruel, remember: we have options. Find a friend. Better, be a friend. Pray for blossoms. Pray for God to give you a new lens. Pray with a sister or brother until their light rubs off on you. Sing until it comes joyously. Sing thanks until you feel grateful. Sing side-by-side with others whose positive tune will help to shape yours. Confess your heart to a trusted friend, and let the dirt and darkness be spilled until you are empty of it. Receive grace. Count your blessings again and again until the smudge clears, the coal soot fades, and April once again smiles at you.
Finally, if you’re one of those naturally upbeat, positive, never-understood-T.S. Eliot-anyway Christians, then be willing to spend some empathy on those who are depressed; and not from a rosy distance. Get close enough to feel your shoulder under their cross. God gives us his joy in order that we might share it with those who need it more.
Easter Reflection from Jerusalem
Limestone gravel presses into my shoulders and down my back; I know it will be some work brushing the rock dust off of my jeans. My feet reach the end of the long, narrow niche and all I can see is darkness. The air is dank, cool and musty--almost mildewy--but I am lying in a holy place. I close my eyes, lying as still as a corpse and begin to imagine Easter morning--THE Easter morning--early before sunrise.
This is Jerusalem. More technically, we are just beyond the walls of what was Jerusalem of Jesus, where a garden owned by Joseph of Arimathea once spread beneath the Mediterranean Sun. Golgotha is nearby--a limestone quarry carved around an unworkable hunk of rock where Romans would crucify their political enemies. Still, there were pockets of limestone that were easy to be worked. Perhaps Joseph was beginning a group of tombs that would one day serve his entire family, or maybe he would build it first and sell it later, but only two, long niches--like twin torpedo bays--had been carved before they had to be put into service, both suddenly an unexpectedly. In any case, the rest of the tomb was never built. No preparation area, no extra niches, no benches--just the two niches and a short tunnel leading out to what was then the garden.
It's not even part of the tour, this anteroom of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Pilgrims stand in Disneylandish-long lines to duck into a small shrine purporting to be the actual burial place, but it was identified in the 4th century and hardly fits the description of an "unused, newly-hewn" tomb. Tons of marble, elequently carved, frame the traditional spot. Candles and oil lamps have coated the ceilings with decades--no, centuries upon centuries--of dark, greasy smudge. It is so much more likely that we are in the right place.
I stretch my arms up to pull myself of the death-niche and see the light behind me through the limestone tunnel and realize that Jesus would not have had to climb out this way. He would have burst up in resurrection transformation, not crawled out to the tomb opening. Even so, I stand in the the light of the antechamber and imagine Mary and the other Mary looking around. I can imagine the boy dressed in linen speaking to them. I can see Mary Magdalene mistaking Jesus for the gardener--right here!--and my heart and soul are set ablaze. I am standing front-and-center stage in the place where it all really and truly historically happened. We are all all of us struck, stricken, enlivened. It is as though we were all bells and never knew it until that moment we were lifted and struck, and with joy and holy terror heard the ringing for the first time.
The realization that sticks with us is a different one; namely, the knowledge running deeply within our minds---as deep as the ringing of the bell itself--that this is just a place and that place doesn't matter. Jesus is risen. He is not "here." He is every bit as much in Upland as in Jerusalem. This Easter, may we all awaken to that reality and climb into its light, and hear the ringing of the bells that are our souls, set pealing by the good news that death is no more. He is risen. He is risen indeed!