Liturgies for Lent: The Garden

“The more we inhabit silence, the better our hearing becomes.  When we step back into the noise of our world, our hearing is a bit more fine-tuned and more likely to catch God's whispers.  In this way, we learn to stay alert and awake."
-Enuma Okoro

Image by Whitney Leigh Carlson. This image is from a series of Holy Week Art cards for sale here.

Scripture for reflection

"They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch.”

Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Simon,” he said to Peter, “are you asleep? Couldn’t you keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

Once more he went away and prayed the same thing. When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. They did not know what to say to him.

Returning the third time, he said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”
-Mark 14:32-42

"In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit intercedes for us through wordless groans."
-Romans 8:26

"This is why I wait upon you, expecting your breakthrough,
for your word brings me hope.
I long for you more than any watchman
would long for the morning light.
I will watch and wait for you, O God,
throughout the night."
Psalm 130:5-6

Meditation: On grief

To be human is to grieve.

Here we find Jesus, in a garden, grief-stricken, to the point of death.

All he wanted was for his disciples to keep watch with him.  Jesus withdrew three times in this text to pray, to ask that this cup might pass from him, his prayers, utterances and wordlessness, groanings too deep for words.  Barbara A. Holmes in her book Joy Unspeakable describes a moan as " the birthing sound, the first movement toward a creative response to oppression, the entry into the heart of contemplation through the crucible of crisis," a prayer that Jesus embodies.

And then to his dismay and disappointment, when he made his way back to his friends, he found them sleeping.  Perhaps his disciples were unfazed by what was happening, because they did not yet grasp the gravity, the anxiety that was riddling through their Lord, or wonder why.   

Jesus was inviting them to enter in, to bear with, to witness and mourn alongside, to sit shiva with him.  Shiva is an ancient Jewish tradition in which the mourner is held in the presence and silence of another.  Peter, James, and John however had so self-protected, they had cut themselves off from the spiritual realities in front of them, and fell asleep.  They were caught unaware, dumbstruck, and thus could not keep company with their Rabbi in his darkest hour.

The more I live, the more I'm convinced that prayer is paying attention, an invitation to stay awake.  We pay attention to our experiences, our bodies, our desires, our emotions, and within them, we find the hiddenness of God.  This attunement to God in ordinary, everyday moments opens us up to the world around us, a world aching to be set right.  Prayer is a receptivity to what is, to deepen ourselves in the present moment, to breathe in sacredness.  And prayer can be a practice of entering into lament, noticing injustice and oppression, anything that beats back against God's future, and bearing witness.

Grief is complicated.  In Western cultures, we're taught that grief is linear, that it has a defined start and stop.  But grief in fact is circular, a returning to, an invitation to move through our bodies' need for release.  Writer and speaker Kaitlin Curtice, an enrolled citizen of the Potawatomi nation shares, "Grief is a thing we don't understand, a presence that seems to journey alongside us our entire lives, weaving in and out, around and with us."  

Those intimately acquainted with grief know that it does not give prior notice of its arrival.  It is there, and at once we must attend to it.  Grief is both physical and visceral, an expression of love that ebbs and flows with the tides.  When you are under its hold, you don't know when you'll be able to come back up for air.  And like a miracle, you breathe again. 

I am grateful for the companionship we have in grief, for the people who are willing to walk alongside.  I will never forget the time I was held at the altar of our church during intercessory prayer by my cousin Elly, right after our grandmother fell very ill with sepsis and pneumonia.  I had made the trip to Minnesota not knowing how much time we had left, not ready to say good-bye.  She noticed my anguish, our griefs mingling, holding me silently so I didn't have to go it alone.

In the final days with my grandmother, she taught me that dying is most deeply a labor of love. It is the liturgy of mourning, a work of the people indeed. It is holding on and letting go all at once. It is offering the ministry of presence, of patience, of love in the waking and the resting, the rising and the sleeping. There is a holiness to keeping vigil, nursing body and soul, breaking bread into tiny pieces, feeding hunger, quenching thirst, singing softly, reading the psalms, and spilling tears as they come. I was struck by my grandmother's gratitude for the simplest of requests, for water and Kleenex, massages and movements, smiles creased, though she could barely speak.

Even in dying, there are whispers of thanks.

Even in sorrow, a garden blooms outside our window.

Even in silence, there is Presence, deeply acquainted with grief.

We water the ground at our feet-
and stand in awe at the tears turned to tendrils, poking through the places we never expected.

God meets us in a garden.  Will we come awake and keep watch?

Welcoming prayer practice

I invite you to take a deep breath, wherever you are.  Our emotions have so much to teach us, and Jesus models staying with difficult emotions so well.  What are you feeling right now?  Anger?  Sadness?  Joy? Grief?  Anxiety?  All of it?  When you were little, what did your parents teach you about what was okay or not okay to feel?  What about your faith community, or school?  It is critical to grapple with these messages before we begin, as shame loves to creep in a space we declare as non-judgmental.

1) Sink in. Feel the feeling.  What emotions, thoughts, sensations, judgments are coming up for you?
2) Accept.  Name it.  Welcome the fear, anger, resentment, etc.  Let God sit with you in it.
3) Let go.  Release the emotion, thought, sensation back to God to gently take care of.

When I have practiced praying with my emotions, I recommend setting aside time to really stay with what comes up.  Sometimes emotions can be hard to identify.  Be curious about what they may be connected to.  Pay attention to other emotions that are layered beneath that may be surfacing.  All of it is welcome.  Compassion with and toward ourselves is so healing.

Poem of contemplation

Vinegrowing God, keep us awake
Watchful though weary
As our eyes grow heavy,
We wait with you