The Slow Way Newsletter: The Goodness of Friday
a weekly newsletter for all the frantic strivers, serial doers & weary achievers
unhurried thoughts
Christ’s Cross over this face, and thus over my ear. Christ’s Cross over these eyes…this mouth…this throat…the back of this head…this side…to accompany before me…to accompany behind me…Christ’s cross to meet every difficulty both on hollow and on hill…Christ’s Cross over my community. Christ’s Cross over my church. Christ’s Cross in the next world. Christ’s Cross in this world.
A Continuation of the lorica (St. Patrick’s Breastplate prayer) From The Celtic Way of Prayer by Esther de Waal
Daughters of Jerusalem
by Micha Boyett
A poem for the 8th Station of the Cross, from Luke 23
Blessed is the womb that never felt one tiny foot
press out and drag slow inside. The living lump
beneath skin, a curled child who begs to stretch.
Gravity presses even the unborn toward earth’s dust.
Blessed are the empty breasts, the woman
who never held the baby’s body against her own,
rocking in the late night darkness, eyes closed,
bodies alive, both clinging to the other for living milk.
Blessed are you, woman! The days are coming
when you will be called safe, you without grief
for the tender bodies or the world’s sharp corners.
Children crash and tear and never come home whole.
Blessed are you who grieve the teacher’s dying,
watch his moaning crawl along the broken road.
Blessed are you who weep for his blue-beaten body,
his wretched stumble under splintered wood.
Blessed woman, you who wail his torn flesh, its dangle
toward earth, you who grasp hope that he’ll summon angel
warriors, blast this barren hill with light, burn bright
this dried up death. Blessed are you who beg mercy.
Daughters of Jerusalem! It would be better if you’d never held
the living beneath your skin, known the weight you carried.
You point toward what is taken here: The Word that speaks
us into being is silenced. The celestial carrier of hope, emptied.
He speaks desperation. He dies his body. But he is pregnant
with mystery: he gathers the cosmic collection of every hopeless
sigh, every loss, every hatred formed against another,
every embittered soul, every unloved and unlover.
It enters him: the great hot chasm of sin. He opens his chest
wide to hold the oozing dark. Weep, you who cannot
undo the life you’ve made: the small hands, the legs
that wobbled and tipped toward earth. Grieve the children,
grieve the tree as it falls. Let the green wood
thump into the loose dust. Earth gives life green
then dries it brown. We take wood and form it
either to table or death tool. Who can say?
a slow practice
If your Holy Week has felt anything like mine you may be a little out of sorts. My family has rituals to mark this week. Palm Sunday, beans and rice for dinner Monday through Wednesday, a Maundy Thursday meal with our church, and a Good Friday noon service. None of those things are happening this year (for the second year in row). This week we're visiting family during spring break. Churches are closed. And all the traditions we've held to have felt far away. How do we practice this day of lament when we don't have community to practice it alongside?
One way to mark this day is to find space for your own personal Good Friday service. There are probably Good Friday services you can stream. I'll be tuning into my home church in San Francisco's Stations of the Cross service at 12 PST today. But if you can't get to a service, or stream one, find a way to pray through the Stations of the Cross during your lunch time. It may help you to walk and listen to a meditation on The Way of the Cross. I recommend Lissy Clark's wonderful podcast Contemplative at Home. Her episode which dropped two days ago is a wonderful companion for your Good Friday.
If walking with a podcast isn't your thing, or you don't have the time, take a moment to read through the stations of the cross. Choose one of the fourteen meditations, and take fifteen minutes to sketch that moment out. Perhaps you want to focus on the scene from my poem above. Or perhaps you are struck by another moment. Don't worry about your drawing skills. This is only for you. Let this sketching be a prayer, where you allow yourself to be present to Christ's suffering and the depth of his love.
After you finish your sketch. Let your eyes rest on it for a while, and ask God to help you see something new in this story. Hold the truth of that moment with you for the rest of this day and Holy Saturday. As you rise on Easter morning to celebrate, ask God to give you eyes to see the depth of all that has been redeemed.