Lazarus Unbound: Speaking to the Soul March 23, 2023

John 11:1-45

To the sound of distant weeping I exited:
“Eleazar, Eleazar,” my sisters cried
but the keen came as if from the bottom of a well,
recessing like a long, slow tide; fevered rasp
of buzzing insects in the sick room;
and my scroll was torn in half with what I thought
was finality.

All was still. I rose and spun
and I cooled like a stone skipped into a river
pain and broken body shrugged off, a spent husk:

At this point of the page I resume:
I had shed this tomb of a body and rolled back the stone.
In golden sunlight, walking under a canopy
of lupine-blue sky, hands at waist facing forward, fingers open
as bobbing seas of wildflowers
- anemones and poppies, rockrose, Aaron’s rod-
weave their stems around my wrists,
and I absorb the honeyed petrichor of a desert in bloom,
murmuration of sparrows from a wadi nearby

swallows swooping from the tops of locust trees.
The difference between a field and a wasteland is in the flowers.
All was rest. All was God. All was peace.

A kaleidoscope of colors and I am jerked back
by the voice of love, insistent.
From the depths he called me to rising with a voice tear-choked.
Then the longed-for renewal of breath back into a body
now stretched like a new wineskin across my soul.
I am a somnambulist, stumbling pale in my shroud
toward an aperture so bright all was white beyond,
heart pounding like a child’s eager fist at a door.



--Leslie Barnes Scoopmire, March 22, 2023


This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on March 23, 2023.

Scripture Reference: John 11:1-45, Lent 5A

Image: Jose Luis Castrillo, The Resurrection of Lazarus

Choosing Life by Grace: Speaking to the Soul, February 9, 2023

Deuteronomy 30:15-20



For the first 14 years of my teaching career, I taught 7th graders in middle school. I honestly loved much of it—even the dreaded “advisement” or “homeroom” class. One year, our teacher cohort designed some modules that taught logic and ethics, and those modules generated some of the best discussions I ever had outside of a reading class with that age of students.

I still remember this discussion we once after one of the kids asked whether, if you were forced to choose only one, you would rather be really kind or really intelligent. It was a great discussion—one that lasted most of the week.

I was surprised that—by a wide margin-- most of my students chose being really kind over having “high intelligence.” The consensus eventually was that you can overcome having high academic aptitude by hard work, but there was no shortcut to kindness.

One of my students put it this way: If one life is all we get, then we should live it in a way that our consciences are clean, and we have the comfort of knowing we are trying to be good people who don’t try to hurt anyone. Even if other people who are jerks seem to get away with murder, the fact is that there is almost always a lot of hurt behind their meanness, and that’s the real waste of a life. Without knowing it, she was describing the embodiment of grace.

This was from a twelve-year-old. And some people think middle schoolers are incapable of anything but emotional neediness. So wrong.

In our reading from Deuteronomy this Sunday, Moses is making plain the importance of choices and understanding the consequences of our decisions to this Israelites. Here, Moses reminds the Israelites that they have entered a covenantal relationship with God, and that entails blessings for obedience, but curses for faithlessness.

The choice before all of us, as Deuteronomy dramatically puts it, is that between death and life. This can be interpreted in a variety of ways. In the hands of preachers of my youth, this was part of what was known as “retribution theology,” where sin led inevitably to hell after death. Our relationship with God was based on a simple sort of justice: do good- receive heaven; do bad-receive hell. Then there would inevitably lead to a long list of “don’ts”—don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t swear, don’t wear slacks (for the ladies), don’t read Catcher in the Rye, don’t watch The Life of Brian—all would lead to damnation. Punishment awaited the slightest misstep. Yet misstep we did. The problem is that this system is simple, and God is not simple. This system has no place for grace. None of us are perfect. Yet, through grace, God loves us anyway.

As mature persons of faith, we are invited into the reality that being a faithful person is worthwhile even if hard times befall you, because being a faithful person who lives a compassionate, open-hearted life is not just a reward but a life-giving gift. Choosing life means this: love God, walk in God’s ways, observe God’s commandments. And always, always be kind.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on February 9, 2023.

A Fortress Not of Stone

Psalm 27:1, 5-13

Into your courts, O Most Holy,
we come bearing our weights and burdens,
to cross the threshold and breathe in the cool air
redolent with tallow, incense, wood soap,

dust motes set ablaze and twirling
by colored grass and the breath of prayer–
a humble little church, carpet threadbare
from the tread of feet drawn to your radiance.

Your house, O God—
made not of stone or plaster,
but lyric of the human heart,
a refuge from all that assails
when we see beyond the skin that divides us
to the image of eternity with each one..

Here I see You, O redeemer,
in the beauty of your living temple:
in the sticky face of a child playing in the pew,
looking up to say “Amen;”
in the young woman whose very step across the threshold
is an act of bravery and resistance
to the pains yoked to her against her will
by those who thought themselves God’s anointed, praying
that this day she will be reminded of her beauty carved by your love;
the mother who has prays for her son awaiting diagnosis,
the young man whose job hangs by a thread,
the elderly father whose children do not call.

You call us to embrace of each other- that is your church.
To sing for those who breath is tight,
to welcome those seeking shelter,
to embody grace for the bowed down,
to flare with hope and tenderness for those casting off their burdens.
made free by your mercy.
In resting on each other,
we rest in You.
This is a fortress not of stone,
but of being a people for others.

You, God, are our sheltering fortress,
rock and refuge,
our dwelling place for all our days,
shelter in storm and trouble
made visible in the peace that we share.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on January 19, 2023.

At One With God and Each Other: Speaking to the Soul, January 12, 2023

John 1:29-42

In this coming Sunday’s Gospel reading, Jesus is referred to twice by his cousin John as the “Lamb of God.” The first time John adds the qualifier, “who takes away the sin of the world.” You might recognize the words from the “Agnus Dei,” which we sing or say at certain times during the year:

Lamb of God who takest away the sin of the world,
have mercy on us.
Lamb of God who takest away the sin of the world,
have mercy on us.

Sin is an injury or rupture in relationship, which creates an imbalance requiring atonement. “Atonement” is an interesting word—and very much misunderstood. Atonement is too often seen as a bargain that lets someone avoid the consequences of their actions.

Just the opposite.

Atonement is an action or attitude that seeks to provide reparation for an injury or wrong that has been committed. Atonement means making amends, and being willing to sacrifice in order to restore a sense of wholeness. Atonement allows for reconciliation when one person owes another for a wrong or injury they have done.

Consider the word with hyphens within it: “at- one-ment.” The suffix, “-ment”, is defined as “condition” or “the means of making or being.” So, the literal meaning of “at-one-ment” is “the condition of unity,” or “the condition of being ‘as one.’”

Injury or wrong creates separation. When someone has hurt us, that hurt creates a divide or a gulf between us and the other person. That gulf might remain indefinitely, unless the hurt or injury of the offended party is alleviated or tended to in some way. This can be something as simple as expressing remorse and apologizing, or it can include attempts to restore what was damaged: if kids vandalize playground equipment by spray-painting graffiti on it, their atonement for their wrong can include paint removal, repainting the equipment themselves, or paying for said repairs. But atonement goes deeper. It means we are at one with each other—the offender and the offended—and thus we would never think of repeating the offense, for it would be the same as hurting ourselves.

The goal of atonement is to try as much as possible to return to the condition between the guilty party and the injured party as it was before the act that was wrong. The goal of atonement, in other words, is not about blood sacrifice and substituting an innocent victim for a guilty one. The goal of atonement is reconciliation and repair. It is about choosing to avoid harming another in the first place, in imitation of Jesus as Jesus exemplified during his earthly life and ministry.

Jesus will take away the sin of the world, and people may understand it in two helpful ways. First, Jesus is the incarnation of God in humanity, both fully God and fully man, living among us and teaching us. Second, Jesus’ teaching is revelatory—he reveals God to us in a new way as the Son of God, and as we say each Sunday in the Nicene Creed, as “very God.” He helps us to understand how God wants us to live our lives—by modelling it himself. Atonement leads to nothing less than mercy, justice, peace.

Lamb of God who takest away the sin of the world,
Have mercy upon us.

No matter in what way you understand these phrases, we Christians see Jesus as the means for us to truly know God and to know how to live our lives, even though a hundred different Christians might interpret that second part a hundred different ways.

Lamb of God who takest away the sin of the world,
Grant us thy peace.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and cafe's Speaking to the Soul on January 12, 2023.

Image: part of a crozier with the Lamb of God from the Louvre.

Prayer as Protest: Speaking to the Soul for October 13, 2022

Luke 18:1-8

Jesus tells this story: A widow: without advocate, without protector, abandoned and abused, cried out through the teeth of outrage, refusing to subside quietly, cowed by an unjust judge’s contempt. Certain that his position of privilege would insulate him from her insistent demands for justice, he tried to break her with sneering silence. Only, life bursts forth from broken things: broken fields receive seed with grace, sprout and root erupt from broken seeds, broken clouds burst forth with rain.

Two laws are at war for dominance in our hearts: one the trellis for the climbing rose of mercy, the other the trickling vine that chokes and enforces a thorny wreath of oppression in order’s name, disrespectful, arrogant before God. Too often we see human law serve as a shield for predation, substituting punishment rather than justice. God calls us to resist systems that coerce rather than empower.

Too often when confronted with oppression and injustice, we ask why God allows such things to happen. What if we saw the persistent widow as God, and the unjust judge as human society? Think about it. Because prayer is a conversation between us and God, that reversal also works, and teaches us a lesson about prayer as a two-way conversation with God.

The gospel reminds us, prayer is a way to enter into the presence of God, to be surrounded by the presence of God. This is the kind of immediate experience needed to maintain faith, more than anything else, so that when Jesus returns, faith will be found on the earth. Jesus urges us to be persistent in prayer, but that doesn’t mean for us to passively accede to injustice. So let us pray unceasingly, with unfaltering faith—prayer as action, prayer as persistence, listening to God’s call for us to stand with the powerless, to protest with the voiceless, and to align ourselves with the law of love.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul for October 13, 2022.

Teach Us to Pry: Speaking to the Soul, July 21, 2022

Luke 11:1-13

Teach us to pray, they asked,
as the first evening star winked into view,
and the Teacher began:
Creator and Sustainer,
we center ourselves in your love,
remembering your gift of life to us. We place
ourselves within your tender embrace. Make us reverent
before the Holiness that sustains all that is,
and calls us Beloved.
                                Open
our hearts to the power of wisdom and compassion,
that the kingdom take root in each heart. We trust
your abundance is greater than our hunger;
we ask for today’s bread enough, and provision for
tomorrow. Nourish us
with your grace and forgiveness,
for we know our sins only too well.
                                Help us turn
away from sin
to a life of justice and pardon,
answering forgiveness’s gift with our own clemency,
that we may ourselves pour forth
that grace to those who have done us harm.
                              Show us the path
away from temptation, O Loving One, who
delivers us safely home,
whose reign and radiance and righteousness
are everlasting.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on July 21, 2022.

Between Two Fires: Speaking to the Soul, April 28, 2022

Simon Peter’s head was swirling with thoughts, and his heart was churning with emotion. He needed to get away, so he decided to say he was going fishing overnight. Of course, half of the other apostles immediately demanded to join him.

It was torture. All Peter wanted was to be left alone with his failures. Instead he spent all night listening to the chatter of his fellow-apostles, who didn’t seem to notice he wasn’t his usual, impulsive self.

All he could think of was the red glow of that coal fire, and the reflection of that glow in the faces all around him as he had denied again and again that he knew Jesus. And then the rooster had crowed, and his heart had sunk like a stone, and he had run away.

He would never forgive himself.

Jesus had made a terrible mistake in claiming that he, Simon Peter, could be the head of the group, the leader of the apostles. He couldn’t continue Jesus’s work in proclaiming the good news of Jesus! He couldn’t even stand up for what he believed standing on a side street with a bunch of strangers.

Dawn came and, on top of having to endure PEOPLE all night long in that little boat, they hadn’t caught a damn’ thing. It was hot, and it was still, and the beer had run out a long time ago. It was the perfect combination of conditions for someone determined to be miserable, and it almost gave Simon Peter a grim, black sense of satisfaction.

Then, just about dawn, some guy on the shore had started calling out advice—and if there’s one thing a fisherman can’t stand, it’s some yahoo giving advice from the comfort of shore. “Cast your net on the right side,” the stranger had called. Oh, sure, THAT must be the problem.

But they hauled the nets up, sorted and rolled them, and then cast them on the right side of the boat. For a moment, the nets just sunk out of view into the gloom. And then, when they started to haul it up, the resistance caused the boat suddenly to tilt to one side. As soon as they had shifted their weight to right it, John had yelled out that the guy on shore was Jesus. He sounded so sure that Simon Peter squinted hard at the stranger—and he recognized the slope of those shoulders.

Simon Peter’s heart leapt to his throat, and he did the only thing he could think of—he made himself presentable and jumped over the side. It seemed like it took just seconds to reach the shore. Dripping, he took the hand Jesus offered as he flopped through the rushes, but then dropped it like it was hot. He saw that coal fire burning merrily, and remembered.

He had no right to expect anything other than condemnation. He had denied his Savior three times to save his own neck, and he deserved nothing more than to be cast out.

Instead, he got breakfast. Breakfast, and forgiveness. There between the white-hot memory of two fires, and three denials.

It is in the ordinary that the true miracle of Christ’s love plays itself out for us in each moment, whether of joy or sorrow. We too often live between the fires of our past failures and our current temptation to take the easy way still. Yet we have all been called, like Peter, to proclaim our discipleship—and all of us have had times where we have failed. But not a word of blame is spoken by Jesus to Simon Peter, or to us. Just a simple question: Do you love me? And then he feeds us, body and soul.

Each time Jesus asks, one of Simon Peter’s three denials is blotted out. “Do you love me?” Jesus asks, and he already knows the answer.

“Do you love me?” Jesus asks us right now. Then let down your nets, and gather all you can. Draw the world to Jesus in your words and actions, and in your love most of all. Don’t worry about being overwhelmed, or about the net breaking. The net of faith is strong enough to hold everyone. Don’t worry about your own failures and shortcomings and doubts—know that you are beloved of Jesus, beloved, and worthy, and called.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on April 28, 2022.

The Song of Ruth: Speaking to the Soul, October 28, 2021

Ruth:1-18

 

          The voice I hear this passing night was heard 

                   In ancient days by emperor and clown: 

          Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 

                   Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 

                          She stood in tears amid the alien corn 

                                                - John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale."

We six came apart slowly,
like a child plucks petals from a flower.

First Elimelech, the father
whose name and protection showed me that
My God could be kind;
he left us not yet old. And we wept,
and tore our garments, wore
ashes like a waxen crown.
Yet we had each other,
Chilion and Orpah, Mahlon and Ruth—
and we girls embraced you, dear Naomi,
whose loving heart was a foreign land
that made us forget the cruelties of our youth.

I remember well
the day I entered your house;
the swallow had woven her nest on your lintel
and sang honeyed notes.
To be greeted with a kiss and a sweet
word from you, Naomi,
of pleasant face and lovely gaze, remains a balm
to one who had been declared
a burden by the one who bore me into this world—
I drew the first free breath of my life.

Your son beautiful and strong
as my bridegroom, my young stag
brought down by Death
the remorseless hunter.

The last, sputtering pillar of our lives
crumbled to earth that last day,
the day that Mahlon’s breath left him.
Chilion, too, sleeping in the dust
went down before his brother,
our wails keening like a skylark in flight.

“Turn back to your mother’s house,”
you told me, with tears
as bitter as the name you now claim.

My sister Orpah kissed you, her face lined with
tears tracing watercourses of the Negev, weeping
from the well of grief
you would think had run dry by now.
She turned her nape to us reluctantly, persuaded
by your pleas.

                           But not I.

The nightingale’s song lays a path
straight to my heart’s core;
I would rather
stand in tears in an alien field,
homeless as a nightjar, gleaning
for the reluctant scraps left behind
under your Law’s commanded compassion
than return to the cold dwelling of my birth.

Your heart is my mother’s house and hearth:
I who first knew kindness with you
will trace the arc of my life within your embrace
even unto Death’s final stitch in my winding-sheet. To you
will I cling beyond my last breath.

In the midst of your people
will I pitch my tent;
your God will I worship,
whose lovingkindness I know in your eyes.

I would rather shelter with you, rootless
under the cold light of foreign stars,
wandering without a doorway of our own
than be parted from you, ever. Your tenderness
the only inheritance I claim, your embrace
I will never surrender. With you
I will lodge in Bethlehem,
lay my life upon altars
to a God known only through your friendship,
and give you descendants dancing like constellations
to banish your bitterness,
to secure you a home redolent of bread,
abundant with the attar
of roses.

This poem was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul, October 28, 2021.

Therefore, The Grace of God: Speaking to the Soul for September 24, 2020

Exodus 17:1-7

As I was pondering this Sunday’s reading from Exodus, I was enjoying a rare afternoon to sit in my backyard garden. It’s the first day off I’ve had in a long while. I decided while I was sitting there to water all the different plants in the hillside garden around the seating area where I like to work. I made sure to fill up the birdbaths while I was at it. Then I just turned on the hose and let it start running down the hill to water all the hostas, ferns, and other plants that dwell under the canopy of trees in our backyard.

After about 10 minutes, suddenly there was great rejoicing in the Land of Birds, and dozens of sparrows, finches, chickadees, and wrens began to wing their way over to wash themselves in the birdbath and in the puddles of water on the ground. One of them even had the temerity to land on the empty birdfeeder, give me the stink eye, rap the base of the empty feeder sharply with its beak a couple times, and then flutter off in a huff, as if to say, “Get up off your duff, and get me some food, woman.”

Never mind that I had generously turned on the hose, which is what had drawn these birds here in the first place. Never mind that I had graciously filled the bird bath and emptied of all the leaves and other junk that accumulated in it. This bird was not satisfied, and he was letting me know it. Meanwhile, a gang of sparrows promptly and joyously splashed out all the water I had placed in the birdbath, and one of them flew to a branch over my head and started to shrilly berate me to refill it.

Are these birds never satisfied?

And the answer is: yes, and no. Once I started providing them with birdseed and water, they expect me to keep doing it. The nerve! That’s also the way it is when you help people, sometimes, too. There are some people in the world who, when you get into a relationship with them, it ends up being all about them. No matter how much you give them, they always want more. No matter how much you give them, they’re never grateful. They never seem to stop and think, “Okay, that’s enough.”

The Israelites are the same way. Over and over again, they claim to long for their days of slavery in Egypt over freedom in the wilderness. The more the going gets tough out in the Sinai peninsula, the more rosy their memories of their time in Egypt becomes.

Forgotten is the groaning that they raised up to God—groaning so loud that God could not ignore it. Nope, just like infants, the minute their tummies grumble or their mouths get dry, they turn and bite the hand that feeds them. Last week we saw God provide them with meat and bread, manna and quail that fell from the sky, and all the Israelites had to do was go and pick it up. Today, it’s water—or, specifically, the perceived lack of it. Gripe, gripe, gripe. Complain, complain, complain. I think that’s one of the reasons why, although it did them very little credit, the ancient Israelites liked to tell this story on themselves-- one of the side purposes was probably to explain just why they complained so much, as all of us do.

Sometimes, we focus on what we don’t have instead of what we do. Here are the Israelites, freed from slavery in Egypt, moaning about how their every need isn’t being taken care of while they are traveling back to their homeland. We are an unhappy, discontented, grumbling people at times. Our reading from Exodus today is one of an Old Testament genre called “murmuring stories.” These are stories in which the people “murmur”—in our text, it is rendered as “quarreled,” but it seems that misses the flavor. “Murmuring against” someone is so much more suggestive of that tendency we all have to mutter just audibly enough to be heard, that passive-aggressive tactic that allows one to later deny that she has said anything at all. Murmuring of this type is filled with negativity, ingratitude, a simmering resentment. Freedom includes responsibility to look at our situation with clear eyes. And the first step is to be glad that we are free.

And it is here that we perhaps can consider our own similarity with those Israelites in the wilderness. We are more than six months in to this pandemic, and we are just as much lost and disoriented in a wilderness at were the Israelites in this story. It’s so bad that we are looking back longingly at the time before this pandemic—even those of us for whom the situation wasn’t all that great. At least it was familiar.

The uncertainty we have been thrust into is very real. The anxiety that hangs over us is very real. The shifting sand beneath our feet, the changing situation from day to day with no obvious end in sight. And the more the clamor in our heart and head increases in volume, the harder it can be to hear the still small voice of God murmuring in our ears.

But it’s also true that with those birds, that with those Israelites, and even with us, the complainers can seize the attention and seem to be a bigger presence than they are. And once we realize that, we realize that the narrative doesn’t have to be surrendered to the murmuring crowd. That there is a thread that can be pulled loose and be used to anchor a counter-narrative. A narrative of resilience, of community, and of faith. From the hard rock of our hearts, the water of gratitude can flow.

It’s at this time that we have to interrupt the downward spiral that seeks to grip us; to still the cacophony in our heads and hearts. To reset. And it starts with something as basic and necessary as the breath, and remember its connection to the spirit. To look beyond the narrative of hopelessness and look back to see a record of endurance and resilience. To see how far we have come at this point, and look for lilting notes of grace that run as a counterpoint to the basso profundo of despair. To see the flickering light of those small gifts that we have overlooked along the way, even something as simple as signs of community when people of good will take care of each other, when we’ve seen people recognize strangers as neighbors and companions along the way. Sharing each others’ burdens.

We’ve gotten this far by the grace of God and those of good will who reflect it and magnify that same compassion outward. It is then that we can acknowledge our uncertainty, but still see the glimmer of hope that can be used to light our way forward. To go from, “There, for the grace of God… “ to “Therefore, the grace of God.”

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on September 24, 2020.

Prayer 2717: The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

O God of All the Nations,
with one voice we join in the song of all creation
in worshiping and praising you
on this day You have made.

Our hearts are filled with wonder
at the abundant grace with which You sustain us,
calling us to unity and kinship with all that is:
Your hand has shaped the mourning dove
and the human heart, both of equal size.
May our hearts take flight
to the glory of your gospel, Lord Christ,
and be filled with the Spirit you breathe upon us
so that we may be inflamed by love and justice
for the lifting up of the Beloved Community
You call us to embody.

May we bear your yoke with honor,
sharing each other's burdens
and caring for the oppressed and the weary
as You did, Blessed Jesus,
with gentle hands and a healing heart,
looking with love on the cares and the beauty of the world.

Loving One,
gentle us and center us within You,
that we may act out of our hope
rather than our fear,
and out of our faith
rather than our contempt,
holding fast to your promise of life abundant.

Spirit of God,
bless us and guider steps today,
and grant your peace to those we now name.

Amen.

Prayer 2617: Fifth Sunday in Lent A

Almighty One,
we trust in your steadfast presence.

Show us your ways,
and teach us your paths,
O Lord Most Tender and Loving.

We know you are creating within us
new opportunities to share your love
and embody your gospel in the world.

In trust and assurance,
we wait upon You, O Lord,
to find that You are already here,
whatever the tide may bring.

You, O God, hold us tenderly;
your steadfast love is with us in the depths— 
the depths within us, 
and the depths that surround us.

Make us fearlessly faithful 
that we may proclaim your truth
and be your steadfast disciples in the world.

Amen.

Scripture reference: Psalm 130

From Season to Season: Speaking to the Soul October 3, 2019

It’s the first week of October here in the Midwest, which means that the leaf mold has started to spike and the trees have started to turn color, but it’s 95 degrees during the day and mosquitos still torment. We are told that it is autumn, and there is pumpkin spice everything, including, upon my honor, pumpkin spice mac and cheese, which would cause my sainted Okie Granny to haunt any of her grandchildren who brought such a concoction into our homes. 

Yet many of my friends are happy, eagerly anticipating sweater weather—but it seems that the seasons refuse to cooperate. And to be honest, our readings in the lectionary on Sundays the last many weeks have not actively been designed to contribute to joie de vivre—and just at the time when church program years start up and visitors dot our pews. I sometimes get a glance of the shocked looks on their faces as the readings roll out their depictions of anger and destruction. 

But scripture, at its best, both encourages and indicts. What speaks to us one moment can seem maudlin or saccharine or occasionally even out and out infuriating at another time. Different seasons in our lives sometimes bring us to encounter these texts in different ways. 

When I was in college, I had a poster in my dorm room of Eccelsiastes 3:1-8, written in calligraphy. Yes, I WAS that much off a Bible nerd, even one with a salty vocabulary. But also, college was, as for many of us, a time of great adjustment and stress. It was a season of growth and change, which is why Ecclesiastes 3 was so comforting to me. Ecclesiastes' wise observations provided a calming reminder to me when I would start feeling overwhelmed by all the things I had to do and learn as a first generation college student who was in three music ensembles and also working part-time at several different jobs. 

I thought of that poster again after thinking about the pretty brutal readings we have heard in the lectionary on and off for the last few weeks. Dire warnings from Jeremiah all the back through September about desolation, cursing, with talk of being joyless, and grieving starting off our readings on Homecoming Sunday! This Sunday we will hear Zion described in harshly denigrating terms, and hear Psalm 137 simultaneously describing devastating grief for Jerusalem from a position of exile and oppression-- and at the very end wishing a most violent fate upon the children of Babylon. 

"To everything there is a season," muses the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, "and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to plant, a time to pluck up hat is planted; a time to weep, a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and time to dance...." Grief and anger side by side--- millennia before the birth of psychology, the truth that diverse emotions jog along side by side at times, and at other times they are piled atop each other like strata in a canyon. The Bible reminds us that the so-called "five stages of grief" are not encountered in a linear fashion, like beads on a rosary, but rather often carom off each other like a pinball. 

Haven't we all experienced emotions as strong as this? That's where our scriptures are a treasure for their acknowledgement of the unvarnished truth of human life in all its messiness-- and of how God, too, experiences anger and pain and suffering as well as love and delight and always, unfailingly grace and forgiveness. One of the great treasures of Biblical literature for me is that is relentlessly real when it comes to human emotion, reminding us of God's presence with us in good times yes, but especially in trials. 

And that's something for which we all can give thanks, even as we hear scripture readings that are less-than-rosy in their outlook. The reminder that there is a time and season for everything helps us to treasure those parts of scripture that boldly proclaim anger and helplessness as much as gratitude and triumph.



(This was first published on Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on October 3, 2019, as well as as met priest's reflection in the St. Martin's Beacon newsletter).