Here we go again

  • bleeding-heart.jpgIt’s been muggy and damp here. Spring has offi­cially come and I’ve got the steamed up win­dows to prove it. And of course I’ve got new growth muscling its way out of the tan­gled detri­tus of my dis­rep­utable gar­den. I thought it was nice for the Bleed­ing Hearts to bloom just in time for Holy Week. They’re such a cheer­ing sight and there seems like some­thing por­ten­tious about see­ing the clus­ter of bright heart-shaped flow­ers with the petals that look like droplets com­ing off each one. Since they make their appear­ance so early in the sea­son, the Bleed­ing Hearts are my annual invi­ta­tion to say, “Here comes spring again.”

    I’m prob­a­bly hav­ing some­thing like the same feel­ing as we approach Holy Week. There’s so much to think about, so much to take in. So much to hope you get right, so much to try not to freak out about if you don’t. You don’t want to lose sight of what’s impor­tant, but you know you prob­a­bly will from time to time. You start to feel that pulse of the church cal­en­dar grow­ing louder every day, set­ting the tone, telling the story as the Cross begins to come into sight: glory, prov­i­dence, betrayal, aban­don­ment, inqui­si­tion, ridicule, bru­tal­ity, tor­ment, death. And then … glory again — this time, glory enough to blot out every­thing before it and every­thing after.

    Can I avoid the sense of hav­ing been through it before? I don’t want to make some tor­tured effort to pre­tend like I don’t know what’s going to hap­pen. I’ll join in on the responses, we’ll all sing the hymns. Though some prim­i­tive part of me doesn’t want to fol­low Christ through His pas­sion, I will because I know I have to.The words pre­scribed by the Church have more than enough of the proper awe, won­der, jubi­la­tion, sor­row, pen­i­tence, but will I lis­ten to what I hear/chant/read, or will I be unable to for­get the usual things for the sake of one unusual week? I’ve noticed that if you aren’t fully engaged in Holy Week, even the blaz­ing trum­pet blasts of Pascha won’t ring quite as much as they could.

    I want to keep it real, to use a hideously overused phrase, and I got a bit of help from a read­ing from Mpn. Anthony Bloom’s “Liv­ing Prayer”. I thought I’d pass it along, in case I’m not the only one who’s won­der­ing if she’d be one of the 10 wise vir­gins or maybe the very bummed out 11th one. Mpn. Bloom is talk­ing in regard to prayer, of course, but it car­ries over very well, I thought:

    We usu­ally live some sort of reflected life. Not only are we a vari­ety of peo­ple suc­ces­sively under var­i­ous cir­cum­stances but also the very life that is in us belongs so often to other peo­ple. If you look into your­self, and if you dare to ques­tion how often you act from the very core of your per­son­al­ity, how often you are express­ing your own self, you will see that it hap­pens rarely enough. Too often we are immersed in what is hap­pen­ing around us, all the unnec­es­saries we gather from the radio, tele­vi­sion, news­pa­pers, but dur­ing this period, these few min­utes of con­cen­tra­tion [in prayer], we must shed every­thing that is not essen­tial to life.

    Then of course you run the risk of remain­ing bored with your­self; all right, be bored. But this does not mean that there is noth­ing left in us, because at rock bot­tom we are made in the image of God, and this strip­ping is very much like the clean­ing of an ancient, beau­ti­ful wall paint­ing, or of a paint­ing by a great mas­ter that was painted over in the course of the cen­turies by taste­less peo­ple who had intruded upon the real beauty that had been cre­ated by the mas­ter. To begin with, the more we clean, the more things dis­ap­pear, and it seems to us that we have cre­ated a mess where there was at least a cer­tain amount of beauty; per­haps not much, but some beauty. And then we begin to dis­cover the real beauty which the great mas­ter has put into his paint­ing; we see the mis­ery, then the mess in between, but at the same time we have a pre­view of the authen­tic beauty. And we dis­cover that what we are is a poor per­son who needs God; but not God to fill the gap — God to be met.

    So let us set out to do this and let us also every evening of this week, pray a very sim­ple prayer:

    ‘Help me, O God, to put off all pre­tences and to find my true self.’


    Related posts:

    1. O Heav­enly King …
    2. The scary Mary prayer
    3. For­give us our tres­passes more than we for­give those who tres­pass against us …
    4. Feed­ing your­self, feed­ing others
    5. Two thoughts about time

    March 30th, 2007 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • Cyril 03.30.2007

    Great writ­ing Grace! I’m so look­ing for­ward to my first Holy Week. See you soon.

  • Grace

    Excel­lent! I for­got that it’s your first one. Then by all means for­get the “been there, done that” tone of the pre­vi­ous post. No one can tell a story like the his­toric Church. If you lis­ten, you’re bound to have some of the poetry in every ser­vice that stays with you for a long time after­wards. I hope you have a blessed Holy Week!

    (I also hope all of our palm fronds don’t start whip­ping around and smack­ing us in tomorrow’s pro­ces­sion. It’s got­ten pretty darn windy! Good thing we don’t have to keep can­dles lit.)

  • Mimi

    I love Bleed­ing Hearts! And, what a lovely post, thank you.

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