Juxtapositions

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Last Wednesday, I told a score of people or more that they were going to die. “You are dust,” I reminded them, “and to dust you will return.” And I marked their faces with ash.

In the line was my youngest child. She knelt near the centre of the altar rail, and we shared a brief smile. She was just off-centre enough that I felt justified moving away and leaving my rector to mark her face, to remind her of her mortality. We both know it, but I was grateful not to speak those words to my daughter. A mother should offer life, not death to her children, no?

On Saturday, I walked the Stations of the Cross at Trinity Cathedral in downtown Cleveland. A priest and artist, the Reverend Thomas Faulkner, had interpreted the stations through sculptural installations; shocking, visceral, prayer-provoking. The penultimate station places the body of Jesus in the arms of his mother. Above the old stone font a photograph of a famine-stricken mother in a USA t-shirt cradled a starving, dying child. Underneath, around the font were piled soft, fat pillows dressed in white. On Sunday mornings, the children play there. They climb on the wall where photograph hangs, and peep through the open stonework at the people in the nave. They clamber around the font to see the stones from the River Jordan in its basin. Their voices carry.

Looking at that mother and her child, who is surely now dead, looking at Mary’s heart broken, the space was haunted by those living children, ghost images delighted at the discovery of the soft, fat, white pillows.

The following day, I was back at Trinity to pick up my daughters, son, goddaughter, their friend from Happening. One of my former Sunday School students greeted me with a warm hug. These young people were overflowing with love, joy, hope and faith. They were spilling it over one another, baptizing one another in friendship and fellowship found.

This morning, that student’s local high school is on the news for all the wrong reasons. Pain, anger, sorrow and blood were spilled there

Please pray for the child who has died. Please pray for his family. Please pray for those injured and their families. Please pray for those who would hurt others out of their own pain or any other reason; may God touch and turn their hearts. 

Please pray for all our children: the living and the dying; the beloved and the hopeless; the joyful and the fearful; the hungry and the satisfied; and pray for their mothers and fathers, too.

*A second death was confirmed early this morning, Tuesday February 28th, and a third later the same day. May light perpetual shine upon the boys who lost their lives; may their loved ones be comforted. May God bless and keep the community of Chardon in its time of suffering.

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The slow fast

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

The slow fast ekes out

each last bite of emptiness,

hungry for desire.

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Fasting = Feasting on Life

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Last night, as we finished serving the people, I looked into the chalice and made a quick decision: contrary to our usual practice, the remaining consecrated wine would be sent to the sacristy to be consumed or reverently disposed of later, instead of being finished straight away and the chalice cleaned at the altar.

I had been fasting, and I had to drive home. I was faced with evidence of abundance in the midst of hunger: too much wine to drink on an empty stomach.

Ash Wednesday reminds us of our mortality – “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return.” It is a day of fasting, but the fast, paradoxically, can remind us all day long that we are alive.

If – and the “if” is vital and not to be taken for granted – we are usually well-fe, then the deliberate practice of courting hunger provokes in us an awareness of our bodies as living, desiring, hungry. In the midst of death – ashes and dust – we realize how hungry we are for life.

Then we are offered bread – not just bread, but the bread of life. And we are offered wine – not just wine, but life blood.

In the midst of our fast, we are offered it in abundance.

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Based on a true story

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Wednesday’s child

The pale girl carried a dark bruise so fresh I flinched,

my breath drawn pity and a rush of outrage.

I wanted to hold a cold hand to her brow.

I wanted to grab her mother’s arm, demand to know how

she could let this violence fall .

The girl hit me with a hard stare.

I mumbled a smile, shuffled away with a guilty face

and grains of shame and grit in my hair.

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An untitled, unfinished poem for Transfiguration Sunday

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

One on the plain, with water and a dove

falling from the mouth of God, feathers chalking words

onto the sky, its beak a piercing kiss;

one on the mountaintop between the cairns,

with fiery Spirit, lightning bright and thundering love,

hailing acclamation …

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Year B: Last Sunday after the Epiphany

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

When I told my youngest child that my mother had died, she said, “But she was supposed to get better!”

A week or so later, when I was talking to my father about talking to an old friend, he asked, “Was he surprised to hear it?” “Not really,” I told him. My father sighed. “I suppose I was the only one taken by surprise, then.”

And I wondered, was I the only one not lost in denial while she was dying?

Except, of course, I was as lost as the rest of us. A week before she died, I was at a wedding, dancing and drinking and laughing. My friends commented afterward on what a good time I seemed to have had, never noticing that this was me, shouting into the wind; this was me, raging against the dying of the light; this was me, living defiantly in the face of death:

“You know, she’s dying.”   “I know. Shut up. I’m going to dance.”

While accompanying Elijah on his farewell tour, Elisha found that his denial came under challenge everywhere he went.

They kept asking him, “You know he’s as good as gone, right?” and Elisha said,”I know. Shut up. I’m going over there.”

Obstinately loyal, stubbornly loving, Elisha would not leave Elijah’s side. Elijah asked him, in so many words, “What do you need in order to let me go?”

“Give me yourself to hold onto, so that I will always remember what this feels like, to be with you,” Elisha might as well have replied.

And when Elijah was gone, he tore his clothes.

Perhaps that is why this mountaintop mystery is one of the few gospel stories in which Jesus tells people not to talk about a sign or a wonder that has surrounded him with revealed glory, and they actually obey. The disciples do not tell what they have seen on the mountaintop, because telling it means letting Jesus go, letting him go to Jerusalem, letting him go to his death.

Because they did not want to lose this feeling, of being close to him, being in his presence:

“I know. Shut up. I want to build a booth.” –

and they did not yet know about his unreasonable and irrepressible love for them, for all of them, which meant that he would return to his friends and to his Father, and to us, even from the grave.

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Creating Love

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Like a table spread in the desert,

a sheet of sand, shifting,

alive with irridesence,

moving grain against grain,

rubbed smooth by one another;

like a table spread in the desert –

an oasis for a parched mouth,

ripe figs brush the tongue –

intoxicating,

unexpected sweetness.

My love spreads a table in the desert;

she soothes my skin with fine sand;

he slakes my hunger with the fruit of the grain

and feeds me red wine.

My cup runneth over.

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Year B Epiphany 6: people first

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

I mentioned earlier this week the ecumenical lectionary group that I am blessed to attend each Tuesday morning, and my colleagues’ influence on my understanding of this Sunday’s readings.

A few days later, I am still grappling with one of the effects of hearing, instead only of reading, this week’s lectionary selection.

In my NRSV copy of the Gospel, a leper approaches Jesus: “If you choose, you can make me clean.”

I heard another read the NIV, in which a man with leprosy approaches Jesus.

I commented at the time about the difference in language, and I noted my preference for the “person-first” construction of the NIV. But,

thinking further, using a person-first translation does not restore the image of the man who comes to Jesus. Still, all that we know about him is his defining disease and his hope for healing and restoration. Unlike Naaman, who has a whole career, family, access to the king, companionship, power – oh, and a nasty skin disease – this man is, however we introduce him, a walking symbol, not a character in his own right, but a symptom of a system broken by dis-ease, disconnection, disappointment, refusing to despair.

In which case, is it in fact more appropriate to use the symbolic language of the NRSV than attempt to construct a character out of person-first language?

What do you think?

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Year B Epiphany 6: Who does he think I am?

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

 I’m not preaching this Sunday, but I did attend my regular weekly appointment with an ecumenical group of local preachers yesterday, and this is what struck me when I listened to the reading from 2 Kings (once more realizing that hearing the scriptures is a different experience from reading them … but more about that, perhaps, another time), and the responses of my colleagues, for whose insights I am grateful.

The story of Naaman’s healing has a surprising number of characters: Naaman, the soldiers he oversees, his wife, her maid (‘stolen” from Israel), the king of Aram, the king of Israel, Elisha, his servant, Naaman’s servants, three rivers, horses, chariots…

Some of these characters have no expectation of influence or power. Some have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. Guess which are the most influential!

It’s not a straightforward divide, though, between powerful and powerless, I think. It has a lot to do with understanding the source of our power, our strength. Power itself is a neutral concept: it is a tool without moral agency of its own which can be used and wielded for good or evil; which can be grasped or gifted. It can be an illusion, if we believe it to be an inherent aspect of ourselves instead of shared understanding of how we have organized ourselves, subject to critique and change and ultimately belonging to God: “Thine be the kingdom, the power and the glory.”

  • The stolen child of Israel was powerless in the house of the army commander who had torn her from her family and home amid who knows what brutal violence. Yet she remembered where power comes from: she referred to a prophet, a man of God. He was a channel of God’s power for her people. He could make life better in the new household in which she was living.
  • Naaman and his king together believed that they had the power to command an outcome. They used the kind of influence they understood – personal prestige, money, politics – to attempt to sway their recent enemy to help them.
  • The king of Israel demonstrated the pitfalls of believing too deeply in your own personal power. When he was asked to do something which he couldn’t do alone, he despaired. For him, if it was not within his power, it was impossible, and ruinous.
  • Elisha understood that God used him to demonstrate a proper use of power, whether to distract an enemy, heal a beloved son, feed God’s people, or soothe the skin of an army commander. He reassured the king to rely not on his personal properties but the relationships that God had made available to him.
  • He chose not to appear in person to Naaman, but directed him to the river which represented a boundary in the relationship of the people of Israel and God; a watershed; a thin place.
  • Naaman did not understand that this prophet was not slighting him by not appearing before him, but was indicating that the power to heal was not his personal property, but a gift of God. Naaman was affronted. He was used to better treatment and proper acknowledgement. Even from a postition of petition, he wanted to wield power.
  • His servants, used to taking the road of least resistance, as the powerless often practice, said, “What’s your problem? Why go looking for difficulties? Take the gift that’s offered.”
  • God healed Naaman.

There is a lot more to the story of Naaman, Elisha, his servant, their countries and kings. It’s (always) worth reading around the passage. Naaman, for example, still after his healing wants to hold on to the power that he has experienced in his own body, still not understanding that it is not personal property to be bartered or sold (2 Kings 5: 15-19). Elisha’s servant falls into a similar trap (2 Kings 5: 19-27). Elisha continues to hold out against abuses of power when he diverts the king from committing an offence against his enemies when they are at his mercy (2 Kings 6: 8-23); the situation remains fluid and never easy to paint without shades and shadows as the kings and countries trade power, influence and violence between them.

The powerless people – and Elisha – derive their power from knowing that it comes not from their situation or position, but from God. Since each of us is beloved of God, since we each have the same value to God as God’s own creatures and children, in the context of the kingdom, the power and the glory, we each potentially wield the same influence. When we forget from whence it comes, when we grasp it for selfish or self-promoting ends, our pride is liable to come before a fall. Yet even to Naaman, gifts are given, first of healing, then of exasperated patience: “[Just] Go in peace!” (2 Kings 5:19)

And in the Markan gospel, Jesus is revealed as the One who embodies the power of God …

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Monday morning mammogram

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

This post is belated. I didn’t really start my birthday this way; it was last Monday that my day began with that ritual that makes women of a certain age cringe in sympathy. 

Actually, I am not bothered so much by the pain (this time was better, perhaps because of the new machines at my radiology department of choice); nor the strange peekabo gowns (you really just have to get over yourself).

My problem is my own body: it seems to confound radiologists. They almost always need to follow up: “we don’t think there’s anything to worry about, but we suggest an ultrasound, an MRI, a vacuum extraction biopsy …”

It’s anxiety-producing, it’s time-consuming, and it’s expensive!

Actually, the first time a problem presented itself, it was free. My National Health Service doctor, while simultaneously describing her “suspicion index” as “low,” referred me nonetheless to a rapid diagnosis clinic. I clung to my toddler and sobbed. She prescribed a cup of tea with a friend.

Everything, thankfully, was fine. It always is. No matter how many concerned sets of hands I pass through, the outcome (so far) is always the same: benign. I don’t even sob any more, although I do seek out extra cups of tea with friends.

This time around, though, I had a thankfully easy Monday morning. No extra films, and a phone call before the end of day from my primary physician’s office: “Benign.” I could breathe once more.

For me personally, then, the question of breast cancer prevention, cure, screening, what-have-you, is all to do with good, conscientious, kind and careful advice and advocacy, screening, reassurance and referral. I am glad that these things are available at little or no cost to my sisters who do not have my ability to pay for the upmarket, new machines at my radiology department of choice. I am glad that Planned Parenthood, for example, exists.

I am particularly pleased with my local chapter’s response to last week’s highly publicized reports of wrinkles in their relationship with one high-profile breast cancer research and prevention charity, as reported in Cleveland’s Plain Dealer:

As far as a future relationship with Komen, there are no hard feelings — at least in Northeast Ohio.

 “I personally plan to recruit a team to walk with them(in the Race for the Cure) next fall,” Broderick [Tara Broderick, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Northeast Ohio] said. “We’re really going to support them.”*

Walking the talk, and working together for women’s health: who can argue with that?

 

*http://www.cleveland.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2012/02/what_do_you_think_komen_revers.html

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