Palm Sunday

And why sorrow, too, is a gift.

“I am the sort of Christian whose patriotism might be called into question by some on the grounds that I do not take the United States to be more beloved of God than France, let us say, or Russia, or Argentina, or Iran. I experience religious dread whenever I find myself thinking that I know the limits of God’s grace, since I am utterly certain it exceeds any imagination a human being might have of it. God does, after all, so love the world.” — Marilynne Robinson, from “Wondrous Love,” in When I was a Child I Read Books

This is Holy Week, a time when I, like many Christians (or people loosely affiliated), remember that we ought to be in church and now is the time to repent, literally and figuratively. And so, like many families I know, we came this morning, fractious, bedraggled and grumpy, to the Cross, praying that we might be better than we have been as of late. I wish it weren’t so, and that I could tell you we are very regular attendees at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, where my parents were married nearly 60 years ago, that my two children are ever the exemplars and always dress and act appropriately in church, and that my beloved feels quite the same way I do about how to spend our Sunday mornings, but it would be a lie. And my mama always told me Sunday is the worst day to tell a lie.

I confess I have struggled as of late to feel my faith, to feel the presence of something like God in my everyday life. Beyond the ordinary stresses of raising two small children, working, writing, teaching, buying a new home, and still navigating a pretty big move across country and all that comes with it, I encounter the wider world with a heavy heart. Try as I might to feel joy and to enjoy the bounty and beauty of my own life, I am riven with guilt and grief over the immense suffering in the world, but particularly in Gaza and Israel. Driving home from school with Jonah and Olive, I turn on the news because I am obsessed with knowing all I can, only to quickly turn it off again, sickened by what I hear and ashamed that I am unable to bear witness to it. The war rages on in that place, children starving to death, parents awaiting the return of their sons and daughters, dead or alive, it seems the same now. I don’t want my own children to hear what is happening and to become afraid. Of course, we talk to them, we try to teach them that the world is a broken place, and that it is particularly so right now, and that children suffer, not having a home or food on the table or parents to comfort them. But we shield them an awful lot, too. One thing for which I am so grateful is the way people out here on the east coast are just more alive and awaked to what is unfolding in the world, more engaged politically, in a way that, it did not quite seem to me, anyway, they are not back in Telluride. And I count myself in that, too—I am embarrassed to look back and think how checked out from the world’s strife and suffering I was while I was there, always absorbed in my own survival and, to be honest, just having a fun time. Of course, obliviousness is not true of everyone there, just as awareness is not true of everyone here. But, at least it seems to me, in this place we have landed, our community is daily grappling—through art, music, protests and demonstrations, conversations with neighbors, lessons in school and public lectures and roundtables—with the particular war in the Middle East and with the countless wars, big and small, that separate us and bring suffering.

My nerves are so raw these days, because I am so aware of all the suffering. And while that comes with its own challenges, for me and my family, I think that is a normal response if one is paying attention.

It is because I feel so unmoored from my own faith, and in need of a peace that all the yoga practice in the world just will not bring, that I return to the Church, over and over again (and because it is a habit of mind and being simply ingrained in me, and that is fine, too). For reasons that I will never be able to say clearly to you, I find comfort there in a place of worship, with people who may not have all of the answers but are searching just like me and believe that there is hope in a world yet to come and a God who loves us just as we are. Can you imagine? Just as me and my family were this morning, each of us with our own little sorrows and failings.

On Palm Sunday, we are reminded, as the Reverend said this morning, that very often in life things can begin so beautifully, so perfectly, only to turn out so awfully. But, crucially, we do not say, as people of faith, “in the end.” Because it is not the end of the story. True, we are days away from the death of Christ (you might say, the end of goodness and the purest kind of love if “Christ” does not quite suit you), and so our hearts are filled with a deep sense of dread and sadness, because we know that political violence will bring the reckoning that it always does, and that it will remind us of the awfulness of which we are so capable. Humanity at its absolute worst.

And, yet. Holy Week is also a time of great hope and deep faith in a time of darkness, and that mirrors so much of our lives right now. Hoping in a time of darkness is fundamental to the human condition, you do it in your way and I do it in mine. One reason, though, why people come to the Church this week, I think, is not out of a sense of obligation or guilt or even habit, but because we know that we will be brought some bit of good news, (or Good News, if you like). We will be reminded of and brought together by the most incredible stories ever told, stories that, as Marilynne Robinson has written, “tell us that there is a great love that has intervened in history, making itself known in terms that are startlingly, and inexhaustibly, palpable to us as human beings. They are tales of love, lovingly enacted once, and afterward cherished and retold–by the grace of God, certainly, because they are, after all, the narrative of an obscure life in a minor province.” And it is a love that, unlike mine most days, knows no limits. I want that. I want to feel it and to give it, each and every day. And I am reminded of its possibility, if not reality, in this world during Holy Week.

I don’t know about you, but I sure do need that right now, in this time of darkness and when all hope feels lost.

More is needed for those suffering in Gaza and Israel, to be sure, than our having been reminded of a love so great that it can intercede in unimaginable ways and change the course of history. But it’s a start, and an important one. Because I know I cannot meet that suffering, and truly see it, unless my own faith is somehow deepened, and I am made strong enough to carry it. And that is exactly what is meant to happen during Holy Week, a tremendous deepening of one’s faith.

So, here I am, returning to it once more, hoping against all hope.

This afternoon, after returning home from church, at which my children had been somewhat at odds with one another, bickering as children are wont to do, I sent them to their separate rooms and asked them each to practice their respective instruments (the worst kind of punishment, no doubt). After some time, Olive came out of her room and asked if she might go into Jonah’s room, and when I asked her why and what she intended to do with Jonah, who was, by some small miracle, actually practicing his piano, she said: Oh nothing. I just want to be near him. And so she did. She sat quietly on his bed for nearly 20 minutes, while he played on, just smiling and listening. As I live and breathe. The very same child who, hours earlier, attempted to use her palm as a weapon against the brother she now sat before in complete awe and adoration.

During this special time, I pray that we may all be reborn, as children. To love one another, against all odds, forever and ever. Amen.