Borne Away

Were you there when the sun refused to shine?


Something about last night was expiation and epiphany at once for me, inexplicable (though I’ll try here, it will be a laboured effort--forgive me for not quite getting the right words together). A year ago I was in pain, physically and emotionally, on this same night: Good Friday. This year, in an instant, in a song, in the sharing of sacred space with my family and friends, I felt something heavy lifted off of me, borne away.

This moment, mysterious, moving through me like nothing else--transformed.

Finding joy where you don’t expect it sometimes seems a given; some joys seem sweeter when you do find them out of place: a flower growing, pushing itself up through everything to find air; the scattered rays of sunlight through darkly clouded sky; the last parking spot yielded to you.  Then finding joy in the midst of ceremony, allowing it to walk up to you and make its acquaintance--that’s something else.

On a night like Good Friday, what those of us who partake in ceremony find is really a funereal march, but one which leads to a kind of freedom from agony that’s in direct contrast with what seems to be going on.  The celebration becomes like every way we try to understand when the sun refuses to shine in our own lives: we share it (tell our story), lean on each other, look to the breaks in our sorrow, see them in light of all else (not invisible, but real, sorrow to be acknowledged).

In waiting for what happens next, be it good or bad, there’s reassurance for me--I feel it like the embrace of a parent in forgiveness when you have done wrong, and with simultaneous discipline, merciful, gentle. I’m still kicking a bit, like a toddler, but I feel that gentleness, and satisfaction in the love which surrounds me.

May it be.