And so we cry out this morning, as our kind have cried for centuries on every Easter morning:

Christ has died.
Christ has risen
Christ will come again.

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Amen.

Holy Saturday….Always that has seemed to me to be the strangest sort of name to put on this day. Holy? What is holy about utter silence, utter stillness, utter death? Hallowed, yes; but not holy, at least not yet, not for a few more hours. And so today I am caught all day between two tensions. I remember the horror and grief of yesterday, and I yearn toward the release and relief of tomorrow.

Yesterday, a little after two o'clock, I did as I do every year on Good Friday. I put my communion kit in the car, along with two heavy-duty ziploc bags and a garden trowel, and I headed out from my house to Ruthe's.

Every Wednesday when I am in town, I do the same thing, of course, because Ruth is house-bound in a wheel chair and I am the Lay Eucharistic Minister from our parish who takes the eucharist to her. Or that is how things were in the beginning, years ago. By now and after all these years of Wednesdays together, she is as near to me as any human being could ever be, short of marriage or kinship. We are friends at that subterranean level where channels flow quietly, watering both our souls.

So, other than the fact it was Friday instead of Wednesday, only two things were different about yesterday. The most obvious one is the business of my packing a trowel and plastic bags in with the normal eucharistic tools. The second is less obvious, but equally significant.

On Wednesdays, when I am to go to Ruthe for us to celebrate the mass together, I tend to show up sometime between three and three-thirty, depending on the load at my office and how many phones calls I can lay aside in order to leave for the day. On Good Friday, though, the timing must be as precise as it is random on other days of the year. On Good Friday, I have to be to Ruthe's in time for us to get her out onto the side deck of her house.

Charles, Ruthe's husband, built this small bit of quietness for her years ago. There's even a carefully pitched, sloping ramp so we can roll her chair down to the deck with minimum difficulty. And once we are there, we are no more than eight or ten inches off the ground itself, which is what matters. It matters because Ruthe's wheel chair, a plain yard chair for me, and a garden table-altar set for the eucharist have to all be in place by fifteen minutes before 3 o'clock. It is at fifteen minutes before 3 o'clock, at fifteen minutes before the ninth hour of the Roman day, at the quarter hour before the hour of His death, that we begin the words of the holy meal.

"The Lord be with you," I say.

"And also with you," Ruthe answers.

And so it was yesterday and so it will be for many ages to come. We moved through the words of the mass and through the sharing of the bread and wine. We said our closing prayers; and while Ruthe watched, I sat on the edge of the deck and began to dig a hole just where the front of the deck meets the edge of the walkway. It never has to be a big hole. That always surprises me, just as it did again yesterday. Such a small hole in the huge earth…six, eight inches deep and no more than another ten or so across.

I brush the earth from my hands and turn back to the altar-table. Its few vessels have to be wrapped back into place in my communion kit, and the linens folded away for some other time. Then I take out the sacks, and Ruthe sucks in her breath sharply, her eyes tearing just for a moment as she watches. I lift from the kit the small glass container that holds the reserved, consecrated wine and the little brass box that holds the reserved, consecrated wafers. It is the only physical access we have, she and I…the body and blood of Jesus…and we will not have even them for these three days. I put the wine in one bag, sealing it carefully against damage during the time of its burial. Then I do likewise with the coffer of bread.

While Ruthe watches, I set the blessed elements deep into the small hole, trowel the earth back over it, take up the flat rock Charles has set there for us, and then tamp it securely in place. As the rock bites into the new-turned ground and as the clock strikes three, I say the words. Every year and always the same. I say: "Jesus of Nazareth is dead." Then, saying no more words even of farewell, I roll Ruthe back up the ramp, and I leave. The only relief in our parting is that the trowel still sits waiting in the corner where the front of the deck intersects the line of the sidewalk.

So all is quiet in Lucy, Tennessee this sad day. My kit is empty, any communion impossible, lacking as I do, all the things necessary to effect it. And all will be quiet until tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow morning, God being willing, I will get up at six, dress in jeans, and head to Ruthe's. She will be waiting for me on the deck. If it is chilly, as I think it is going to be tomorrow, she will be wrapped in blankets; but she will be waiting, though she may not be alone. Sometimes, a neighbor or two will also be sitting there too, all of them silent in the early dusk.

There is no word spoken, no greeting, no exchange between or amongst us as we wait. We wait, of course, for first light. We wait for the dawning. And before the sun breaks the horizon, but just as the rose light signals its coming, I will pick up the trowel at last and begin to dig. As the sun breaks across the horizon, I will lift out the holy bread and wine, and say, "Christ is risen!" loudly enough for the whole world to hear me, should it be listening. And Ruthe, along with others who may have come, will in turn shout back, "He is risen indeed!" Then we will open our sacks and spread our feast, and feed one another in the promise of Easter and with the food of faith.

We will weep a bit, but not with bitter tears. No, these will be tears of joy and relief that this time of awful interruption is over for another year. And we will remember and tell each other about other Easters and sometimes even, when she has been feeling well enough to make them, we will share a warm hot-cross bun in Ruthe's kitchen before we scatter to our various families….

…but always - always - it goes with me. Always, in Easter memories, there lingers that haunting taste of this day--this Holy Saturday--when there is nothing.

May God have mercy on all our souls.

As I was nearing the end of the months of compiling the Sayings of Jesus into the The Words of Jesus volume and, even more, during these last five or six weeks since it has been published, I received, and have continued to receive, some fairly thought-provoking questions. I have received enough, in fact, so that I have been able to discern a certain consistency or pattern in what reporters and other folk are interested enough to ask about with predictability. And number one on the list of faq's is the question: Which of the Sayings of Jesus did you find most surprising?

Now that's a very reasonable question, except that I can't exactly answer it, at least not in any straight-forward way. Much of the difficulty, I think, is that my answer, although it is very clear to me, is nonetheless not a very impressive one. That is, the Saying that most surprised me is one that I have known all my life and paid little or no attention to. Beyond that, it is only four words long and has absolutely no immediately apparent theological significance as such. To say the least, it would not convert souls or re-arrange doctrines, in the usual sense of those processes. It did, none the less, grab hold of me, as if I had never seen it before; and it also changed Jesus for me.

The Saying - it is Saying 57, Book IV - is spoken after Jesus has been on the cross for a few hours and is nearing death. Looking down from that place of torture, He sees His mother standing nearby, watching Him in extremis, and He says, "Woman, behold your son."

Always before, to the extent that I had thought about it at all, I thought what I had been taught to think, namely that He was saying to Mary something to the effect that she, as a widow who was about to lose her oldest male child as well, must now turn to the apostle John for protection and support. Now I don't think so.

It is true that immediately after speaking those words to Mary, He looks down upon those gathered beneath Him and says to John, "Behold your mother," as if He were consigning Mary to John's care….which, in fact, is pretty much what I think He was doing with John. I'm just not nearly so sure as once I was about the "Woman, behold your son," words.

There is a particularity, an intimacy, an intensity to His calling to her directly, and it rests in that word, "Woman." Woman. He does not address John by name, nor does He call Mary, "Mother." No. This is starker than that. And contrary to all the neatly sketched out conclusions I have heard in sermon after sermon about how perfectly lovely it was that even dying like that, Jesus could still be concerned about his mother, the truth is that what He actually says is not just stark. It is also singularly without affection. Woman, behold your son.

She had known from the beginning that it would come to this, or to something like this. From His conception there had been the prophetic knowledge that she was privy to, and an instrument of, something upon which time and space would both pivot. Even Jerusalem's most ancient and beloved priest, as he held her infant, had turned to her and said, "A sword will also pierce your soul." So she had known, and now she stood beneath His dying form feeling at last the sword of Simeon's prophecy.

But He tells her something else, something that is caught between the two of them in an intimacy beyond that of all the rest of human affairs. He is not saying, "Look at John now for help." Why ever would He say that to her? He is saying instead, "Look at Me."

Look at Me and understand, Woman, that your job is done. You have done it, and it is done….well done, Woman."

Just briefly, from that cross, God stops long enough to say to His creature, "You have done what was required."

It is finished.

Jesus, as the Passover meal was ending, said, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you. But not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, 'I am going away, and I am coming back again to you.' If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.

"From now on, I will not talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over me; but I do as the Father has commanded me so that the world may know that I love the Father."

Jesus then said, "Arise, let us be on our way."

Saying 49, Book IV
THE WORDS OF JESUS - A GOSPEL OF THE SAYINGS OF OUR LORD

Lent ends today; or more correctly, this is the last, full day of Lent. Tomorrow is Maundy Thursday, and tomorrow night at sunset, Lent gives way to the Triduum…to the three days that are the culmination of Lent.

Tomorrow night, Christian around the world will commemorate the Last Supper, the final Passover meal that Jesus ate with His disciples in the Upper Room. At the commencing of that meal, we are told that he removed His outer garment, took a basin of water, and then washed and dried the feet of all His disciples in sign and symbol of how they--and we--are to be with one another. Taking up his outer garment again, He sat with them at table, instructing them, counseling them, preparing them for what the next few hours were to bring.

Then, taking the bread from the table, He broke it and gave it to them, saying the words: Take, Eat. This is my body broken for you. After that, taking up the cup, He gave it to them saying: This is my blood shed for you. Drink you all of it. After that, they left together for the Garden, where He would pray until such time as the betraying Judas and the Temple guards would come looking for Him, and the events of Black Friday would at last be set in motion.

Tomorrow at sundown, Christians will gather in their churches and holy places to read those words again. Some of them will also stop and wash one another's feet in re-enactment of what the Christ Himself did. All of them will observe the Lord's Supper together. Then, in stark silence, those serving at the altar will clear away the vessels that have held the wine and bread. They will take such bits and pieces of consecrated bread and wine as may be left and lock them out of both sight and reach in a niche or sanctuary in the chancel wall.

They will clear away next all the cloths and fair linen that have draped the altar, bringing basins of water to wash the altar down, as people watch, many of them crying. No part of the sacred meal may be left. All trace of it must be obliterated. The altar of God's presence is closed while all of Heaven and earth together mourn what is being recalled. Last, the priest or pastor extinguishes the sanctuary light or lamp. It will not burn again until the Easter Vigil when, just after midnight, the cry will go up: He is risen! He is risen indeed!

Between those two things--between the extinguishing of the Sanctuary lamp and the Easter cry of resurrection, there will be no music played in sacred space. There will be masses said, no weddings celebrated, no baptisms performed, no funerals conducted. The Church has lost her Lord to death, and she can neither be nor do without His sanctifying presence.

Friday, Christians will keep vigil, reading and praying both in their homes and, by rotation, in their sacred places. Many will gather with one another from noon on Friday until three o'clock in order to keep watch with Him during the last three hours of agony on the cross. By three o'clock, though, He has cried, "It is finished," and there will no more. There will be nothing. Nothing until the midnight which heralds the coming of Easter.

I will be here in this place with you as we enter the Triduum, but I will not speak then of Lenten things. Nor will I be able to say then, as I still can today, how much I have treasured this time with you and how deeply I have appreciated your comments and e-mails and notes. It is a good thing that we should have walked Lent's long weeks together, and I am grateful. I won't be talking here after the Triduum and Easter Sunday, obviously, but I hope you will join me from time to time at www.allthewordsofjesus.com . The commentary there, though hardly daily, concerns itself with the Sayings of Our Lord, just as the web-site's url suggests and--most important--everyone's contribution to the conversation can be heard and shared there.

Many long years ago--meaning well over a quarter of a century ago--I wrote a book about Lent entitled Final Sanity. It and/or pieces of it have been re-printed so many times that I don't even have a record of where and when, except to say that it was re-published in toto by Loyola Press some three or four years ago under the title, Wisdom in the Waiting. I love that title, Wisdom in the Waiting. I can say so because it was not my idea. But I also love the phrase "Final Sanity," because that's what Lent really is to me.

What I want to do now is perhaps a presumption on my part. If it seems so to you, then I hope you will either forgive or just simply ignore me, as seems best to you. But for all practical purposes, today is the last day in Lent 2008 that is not more or less regimented by liturgical circumstances and considerations. And I can not bear to let it all go by without at least telling you what I thought, and still think, Lent is also about.

Imagine, if you will, that the time is the early 1980's and the scene is The Farm In Lucy where Sam and I are raising, children, cows, and mayhem in equal proportions. Imagine, and then come along with me:

Last night there was a storm…a cold front shifting suddenly and dropping onto us with ferocity and winds that bent down the pine trees along the fence line. Sometime after I went to bed, it tore open the pasture gate; so we awoke this morning to bitter cold and a scattered herd. Two pregnant heifers in the front yard, six more in the garden eating up what was left of the turnip greens, and seven others, mostly yearlings, playing at some kind of heifer tag in the windy orchard.

The mud from last month's snow was three inches thick. Even frozen, it came laughing up to suck off our boots. We slopped and fell and prodded swollen bellies until, ourselves covered with ooze, we fell onto the broken gate and laughed our laugh to the gray dawn skies and the startled blackbirds. We drove the last ones through finally, my son and I, and repaired the gate right enough, coming in out of the cold with feet so wet and frozen that we couldn't feel them and with our nightclothes covered in half-thawed manure. We stank up the kitchen with the good stench of late winter and of the earth when it is resisting one last cold front with the heat of coming fertility.

Later I stood at the spigot and washed the mud from our boots and felt again, as I do every year at this season, a grief for the passing cold. Looking across the pastures to the pond below, I knew it had indeed been the last storm before the spring, and I wanted to run backward toward the early morning, towards the winds and breaking limbs of last night.

"Lenzin" our German ancestors used to call this season, and since then we have called it "Lent." It is a time when Christians decorate stone churches with the sea's color and wrap their priests in the mollusk's purple. It was once a time when all things passed through the natural depression of seclusion, short food supplies, and inactivity, a time when body and land both rested. It is still, in the country, a final sanity before the absurd wastefulness of spring.

Each year at this time it is harder for me to desire butterflies and lilies, even to wish for resurrection. Each year I come a little closer to needing the dullness of the sky and the rarity of a single redheaded woodpecker knocking for grubs in my pine bark. Each year also I come a little closer to the single-mindedness of the drake who, muddy underside showing, waddles now across the ice to the cold center water to wash himself for his mate, all in the hope of ducklings later on.

Through the thin, sharp air I can hear the younger children in the barn. They are building tunnels again, making forts from the dried bales of hay. From the yapping I know that even the dogs can join in the intricacies which imagination has contrived. The five-year-old chases field mice as her brothers build. She will catch another soon and drown it in the water trough with unsullied sadism, feeling only the accomplishment that comes from having helped to keep her part of the world in balance.

In the summer, the mice will leave, going back to the fields again, and she will take to pulling everything that blooms instead, bringing them all to me indiscriminately. The tin-roofed barn will be stifling, and the forts will have all been eaten. The boys will be picking beans and complaining of the itch from the okra leaves, being themselves too hot and tired to desire anything except nightfall and bed. The drake will have a family, which he will abandon to the mate he so much desires now, and the woodpecker's carmine head will burn to tired tan. The farm in the summer becomes like the city is all year…too much color, too much noise, too much growing, too much hurry to stave off loss and destruction, too little natural death and gentle ending, too little time for play, too little pointless imagination.

I can remember many summers now; it is the singular advantage of years that one can do so. And I remember that once summer comes, I spend it wallowing in the easiness of it; the excess of its fruits and vegetables, the companionship of its constant sounds as the hum of insects and Rototillers gives way in the evening to the croaking of the frogs and the raucousness of the katydids. I remember also that I begin early, in that green time of summer, to dread the stillness of the coming cold; to fear the weariness of winter menus, the bitterness of breaking open pond water for thirsty cattle and of packing lunches--interminable lunches--for reluctant children on their way to school.

But for right now it is Lent, and for one more snow I can luxuriate in the isolation of the cold, attend laconically to who I am and what I value and why I'm here. Religion has always kept earth time. Liturgy only gives sanction to what the heart already knows.

My father was an academic all of his adult life. He started his career as the entire faculty and administration of a tiny, rural school and ended up as the Academic Dean of East Tennessee State University, a position he held for almost two decades before his retirement. The undergraduate, master's, and doctoral level education necessary to the leading of that kind of professional life was expensive, however, even in the early twentieth century when he was trying to obtain it.

As the fifteenth child in a family of sixteen, he had understood from the beginning that while he might expect some financial help from his family, he had best be prepared to hustle the lion's share of the requisite funds for himself. Accordingly and by his own admission, he went looking early in life for something he could do that was both lucrative and still flexible enough to not interfere with class schedules and academic calendars. At what exact point he figured out that music was the answer, I never knew; but he did. I never knew, either, how old he was when he determined that he needed to know how to play a piano and, having so decided, managed to earn lessons for himself by yard work and fast talking, but he did.

I don't think the result would ever have been regarded by an accomplished professor of piano as being of concert quality, which was all right. All my father wanted to do--at least originally--was play piano bar well enough to take in significant tips in the speak-easys and honky-tonks. But because Sunday was also a free day academically and because he was going to be in church anyway, he also wanted to be skilled enough to hire out as the pianist for a decent-sized church in the urban areas where universities are normally located. He succeeded in both venues, never apparently remarking, even to himself, upon the dichotomy between honky-tonk all night on Saturday and the chancel all morning on Sunday. What mattered to him was that it worked and allowed him the funds with which to do his real work.

Over the years, of course, he ceased to play publicly. First, in the bars, for reasons of reputation and professional politics. Then, in church, for as a devout Presbyterian, he wanted to worship within his own communion. And then too, as a persuaded Christian, he spent all the Sunday mornings of his full adulthood, not playing the piano, but teaching Adult Sunday School, serving as church elder, and frequently performing as the guest preacher somewhere or other. The result was that by the time I came along, all of his piano playing was for Mother and me….and then, increasingly, for me.

It broke his heart that I had no ability at all for playing or even for singing; but his heart was somewhat repaired by the fact that I loved passionately to hear him play, especially when he would play the old hymns of his earlier career and would sing the words as he played. He was a tall man--6 feet, 4 inches--and his voice was in proportion to his size. I can remember when, at about six and a half, I perceived for the first time that I could "feel" his voice as well as hear it.

But the years rolled on, and by the time I was ten or so, he had developed arthritis. I don't think it ever pained him in the way that that disease process pains many people, but it did cripple his hands beyond any hope of music-making. He would sit at the piano, rub his hands together and then one with the other, shake them, and then try; but he would miss the notes or slur a timing or simply not be able to strike a chord powerfully enough. The loss was more painful to him than arthritis itself could ever physically have been.

Yet to the end, there was one hymn or song he would not give up. Mangled or not, less than perfectly delivered or not, he always played it, every Christmas and every Easter. He played it and he sang it and he rejoiced in it. All of Holy Week, he played it until I, tone-deaf and musically inept as I was, could even sing it with joy. It was "The Holy City" by Frederick E Weatherly and Stephen Adams.

"The Holy City" was originally written and scored by Weatherly and Adams in 1893, and one does not hear it sung much anymore, if ever. What it meant to my father's generation, I shall never know, of course, other than to know that it was very important culturally as religiously. James Joyce, for instance, even uses it in Ulysses as well as again in another fragment, Stephen Hero. For me, its importance is my father, obviously, and the dear way of the song's coming into me. Entering Holy Week without "The Holy City" is an impossibility for me. It's just that simple. But there is one other reason for my re-printing it here.

Yesterday, I wrote about my great admiration for, and rejoicing delight in, N. T. Wright's volume, Surprised by Hope. It is not lost on me, however, that the grandeur underlying the lyrics of "The Holy City" is the grandeur underlying at least part of Bishop Wright's theology. May we all find joy in both.

THE HOLY CITY

Last night I lay asleeping.
There came a dream so fair.
I stood in old Jerusalem
Beside the Temple there.
I heard the children singing
And ever as they sang,
Me thought the voice of angels
From heaven in answer rang:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem!
Lift up your gates and sing
Hosanna in the highest
Hosanna to you King!

And then me thought my dream was changed.
The streets no longer rang.
Hushed were the glad hosannas
The little children sang.
The sun grew dark with mystery,
The moon was cold and chill
As the shadow of a cross arose
Upon a lonely hill.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
Hark how the angels sing!
Hosanna in the highest!
Hosanna to your King.!

And then methought my dream was changed.
New earth there seemed to be.
I saw the Holy City beside the tideless sea.
The light of God was on its streets.
The gates were open wide,
And all who would might enter
And no one was denied.
No need of moon or stars by night
Or sun to shine by day.
It was the new Jerusalem
That would not pass away.
It was the new Jerusalem
That would not pass away.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem!
Sing for your night is over!
Hosanna in the highest,
Hosanna forever more!
Hosanna in the highest,
Hosanna forever more!

Today is the first day of Holy Week, though actually, it's also a bit more than that: Palm Sunday is an interruption in Lent that manages somehow to lop off the next three days of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from the rest of Lent and then leave them, in a manner of speaking, just hanging there like a dangerous cul-de-sac of distraction and lost focus. But be that as it may, the triumph that Palm Sunday re-enacts is also a powerful counter-point to what lies ahead before week's end. Palm Sunday's re-enacted drama of Jesus' Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem is for us Christians only a dress rehearsal of what will occur when the Christ returns as Lord of the New Jerusalem, of the new Heaven and Earth.

Such talk as this has not been much engaged in of late, of course. Understandably, there's a certain squeamishness on the part of many Christians when we are forced to get down to the brass tacks of what we believe. Some--many, perhaps--of the fundamental elements of basic Christian thought are as susceptible to ridicule as they are hard to defend with logic. Moreover, we live in a christianized culture where one can function quite easily and fully without ever having to parade the defining particularities of one's faith around for all to see. In truth, a lot of us out-right cringe at those Christians who do insist on over-much public display and parading of doctrinal positions. And then there is always the unfortunate fact that talk of end-times and second comings has been conducted, for the last forty years in this country anyway, not with dignity and prayer among the faithful so much as in popular books best known for their horrors and their ability to chill and thrill.

I'm not sure of the rules of blogging…or even if there are any operative rules at all. But I am reasonably sure that most folks who bother to read a blog would prefer for it to contain content itself rather than refer to content that is located elsewhere. By and large, I think that's a pretty good and fair principle, if not a rule; so I try to adhere to it…but just not today. Today I want to talk about content to be found off-site and elsewhere. Today I want to talk about a book.

Talking about books is what I used to do for a living, more or less. It is certainly something I still do a lot of in conversation and lectures. But rarely, if ever, in all these many years of talking and writing about books, have I found myself so stunned and so persuaded by a book that I hesitate even to discuss it, lest I err by omission or, by some misstep, deter another from reading for him or her self. Surprised by Hope by N. T. Wright, however, is such a book.

Released in this country in conjunction with Lent, Easter, and the Great Fifty Days that follow, Surprised by Hope is a crystal-clear, powerful course-correction for all of us--Christian or otherwise--who think that eternity is somewhere "over there" or "in the sweet by-and-by." It is a sobering call for Christians to return to the basic operating principle of a redeemed creation whose redemption began on Easter, is presently in process, and will be completed with the final Triumphal Entry. It is also somewhere between a death knell and an impediment to a whole lot of 19th and 20th century conversation about how life for the faithful is only a matter of journeying to somewhere else through a vale of tears and temptations that are to be passively endured.

In other words, and in my opinion, if you want to know what Easter is about, get yourself a copy of Surprised by Hope and hunker down for the read of a lifetime....literally.

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday. That means the beginning of Holy Week or, put another way, that means that Lent--and death and winter--are effectual almost over. Tomorrow will be a time of celebration that, in essence, refuses to look dead-on at what will happen five days hence. Rather like the proverbial ostrich sticking its head in the ground to avoid visible and impending doom, we will hide our souls in palm branches and drown our sure knowledge of future things in rousing hymns. It is really only the three days between Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday that still can break our hearts or deter us from our intentions. It is only those three, long, dreadful, last days of Lent that whisper on the other side of Palm Sunday and would, if they could, daunt us.

I began life as a poet. Or more accurately, I began life as a lover of poetry, primarily of its music more than of its truth. My father had the most sonorous of voices, and his rendering of the 19th and early 20th century English poets was as filled with splendor and wonderment as ever any poetry was. So perhaps I fell in love with poetry because I was more than a little in love with my father and his golden, well-tutored voice. I honestly don't know about that, but I do know that I began my writing life, hoping to be a writer of poetry, of the kind my father could and would read aloud.

I never achieved that goal, but I have over the years recorded my own seasons in the medium of poetry, despite the fact that is and was in large part closed to me. In particular, when I come to this day in the Church's year, when I come to the distracting raucousness of tomorrow and the dead, sterile dreariness of next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I pull out and read again what once I wrote about them. Here, then, are the words that finally captured, for me anyway, this last few, weary days of Lent.

LENT'S LAST DAYS
St. Anne's Parish - Lucy, TN - 1981

We must think now
in this time of a dying winter.
We must stop
and we must consider-
what is this sleep
we fear to enter?
We must think now
and we must consider
what it is
that we must consider
while the wind still sweeps
the gutters and the streets
now in this time of an ending winter.
When the mind sleeps,
the spirit wearies and grows bitter.
We must stop now
and consider
before the lilies rise,
why the god denies
an easy sleep.
We must stop now
And we must consider
what it is that can be lost to us
if the will should blanch and wither
now
in this time of a dying winter.

Phyllis Tickle
-----

When I die, I would have it said of me that I have lived a thankful life. I didn't know that when I started out. Reared in the middle-class work ethic and on the American principle of individualism, I thought that I was supposed to produce something tangible--some kind of "product"--that would show I had been here and done my job, whatever that job was.

Obviously, as a female, I was supposed to produce children, including going through all the procedures necessary for doing that job legally and responsibly. (God knows, with seven children in our fifty-two years of marriage, Sam and I can check that one off the list as fully done.)

Then I thought as well that I was supposed to belong to some group or institution or profession to which I could contribute and from which I would receive some overt, demonstrable acknowledgement that I had lived, worked and, of course, produced. I suppose I did that, too, at least in so far as teaching and writing and the Church are professions and institutions. And I have loved it all. Heavens, I still love it all. But I don't think I am because of any of it, or in terms of any of it, or even for the sake of any of it.

I should have known better right from the start, of course, despite the work ethic and the culturally-endorsed glories of individualism. I was reared Presbyterian, and I certainly was taught better.

I laugh now and say that I got over being Presbyterian when I was seventeen; and that is true. The first thing I did when my mother left me as an entering freshman in my new dorm room was to go straight to the student co-op and buy a pack of cigarettes. The second thing I did was to betake myself to the first Episcopal Church I could find and ask for instruction in whatever it took to learn to worship God that way.

I gave up the smoking years ago, but I have never looked back on the Anglicanism part. Yet even so, there are some things about Presbyterianism and those first seventeen years of being one that I am adamantly, sometimes even tearfully, grateful for, not the least of them being some sections of The Westminster Confession.

The Westminster Confession, Presbyterianism's great statement of faith and doctrine, opens with the question: What is the chief end of man? It answers that question by saying: The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

How as a child and then as a young adult or, later, as a mature one, I could have failed to perceive what those words meant is beyond me. But better late than never…and no more fitting time than the closing days of Lent to admit that in the closing days of a lifetime, I think the old Westminster Confession had it right all along. For all the Lents and years left to me, pray God I shall live as one who does indeed know at last that our chief purpose is to glorify and enjoy Him forever. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.