Lockdown, locked in, isolated.
Physical distance, social distance, zoom fatigue.
So has been and continues to be the experience of many this strange year.
This is the second piece of poetry I had published in Stimulus magazine earlier in the year.
It is called 19/20 (as in Covid19 in 2020)
may we all carry the weight and wonder of being incarnate for others.
Miriam Jessie x
Culturally I feel like I am ill equipped for grief. Grief and death are events to be wrapped by professionals and delivered in a short period of time before everyone is encouraged to get on with it.
I look at some of the beautiful cultures around me and how they enter into grief and death, how they sit in ashes (metaphorically) and how their community of loved ones enters with them.
This Easter I am trying to hold space for the grief of Saturday better. To not avoid the grief but to be present to it and in doing so to be more human.
These strange times we find ourselves in confront us with many emotions that have been able to be ignored in our usual busyness.
Below is a reflection to participate in – holding space for grief and for Jesus on this Easter Saturday.
Hey Lovelies,
I spoke at our church Advent service on Sunday night and I closed with this prayer. May it be a prayer for you this season too.
May we each of us be carried with care and love through this season.
x
God we stand at the edge of this season of wonder. All around us there are noisy carols playing, and family expectations, and things that demand our attention.
Jesus some of us feel as though we have been in the desert for a long time and we’re beginning to wonder if that star has made us a false promise. We’re tired, we’re disappointed, maybe we’re even angry and fearful. Remind us God that we are called to a stable not a palace. Remind us God that we are welcome however far we feel from you tonight.
Holy Spirit – would you breath on us tonight. Would you help us to lay down the burdens we have and hear your voice encouraging us in. For those of us who are stuck in the palace would you give us courage to leave and seek the real king.
In this moment God we hold someone we love before you who seems far away, maybe we even hold ourself as someone far away and we carry them in our heart with us to the stable.
God would you give us back a Christmas of wonder? Would you forgive us for forgetting and make our memories bright with all that you are.
God we give you permission to surprise us again. Help us receive you and love you this Christmas.
For you Jesus are our greatest gift.
Sometimes we forget that God is the the God of the all of it.
We think that the ‘spiritual things’ are the important things – these are the things that should fill our lives, our contemplations, our focus.
We wander away from wandering in the perfect garden He created. We forget that it was He who came in the cool of the evenings to wander with us.
Wander – a physical activity
in the garden – a physical place
we limit our world instead of living it limitlessly.
There is not separation between the physical and the spiritual to God. This is the God who made with his very hands the beings we are. Surely when a potter casts a mug, adding details, smoothing out the lip just so and glazes it in in all her favourite colours – the potter is not only interested in the tea she will drink from it. The form and the function fit together and both lend beauty and delight to the other.
There is no secular and spiritual activity to the One.
God is in all.
The mountains and the feet that walk them.
The laughter and the belly it springs from.
The hands and the bread it bakes.
All of it generously handed to us – a gift to enjoy.
… and in all our wisdom
… in our considerable position of privilege
we deny the very gifts we were given and search instead for some strange ‘spiritual zone’ in which to function.
So instead of exploring all of life with the life-giver
instead of living abundantly with arms wide open inviting Him to see us loving it
we cloak ourselves in an awkward mantle and pretend we are only interested in the ‘spiritual’ – as we have defined it
in doing so we limit his Presence in all of it
we shut out his Peace for all of it
we miss out on hearing his Delight in the abundant life he offers to us
The whole earth, the micro, the majestic, the mundane and the marvellous – he is in The All of It.
All of it from him to enjoy, all of it for us to share together.
Miriam Jessie 