The wilderness is often a landscape of profound loss. Standing at the tomb of Lazarus, we see a Savior who does not offer easy answers, but who kneels in the dust and weeps alongside us. We learn that our laments are not an exit from faith, but the very ground where God meets us.
Name what has "died" or feels heavy. God meets you in this grit; trust that God kneels in the dust with you.
Ritual action: Find a small, jagged stone. Carry it in your pocket to feel its weight. On Sunday, bring it to the sanctuary to place in the communal landscape.
Mary Oliver
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
Mary Jane Oliver was an American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and the National Book Award in 1992.