Lingering

Author: Joanne Buchanan-Brown

I tend to live Holy Week often throughout the year. I am drawn to it over and over. Perhaps it is the intensity of it, the emotion. Or watching Jesus both active and passive in this embodied mystery. Or walking again with him the unimaginable road to the saving grace of resurrection. But whatever it is, every Lent I seem to relive memories of the Week from my childhood; the saints who have loved me so faithfully and have passed on come to me with questions about my life, and I find I must try to answer within myself.

The church I am currently serving as Interim Discernment Pastor in Aurora, Parkview UCC, has a love affair with the spirituality of fine arts, including poetry. Below, I share the poem I wrote for their Lenten Devotional booklet, and though it is a bit early for the chronos, calendar timing of Holy Week, Maundy Thursday is where I am loitering in my Lenten journey this year, in kairos, or time beyond time.

What about you? Where in the Holy Story do you linger?

Thursday

At night

In the church

The table seems different–

Dangerous, even.

The bread is not just bread

Nor the wine only wine

But the dimness of light

Casts over us the nagging question, the burning–

“Is it I?”

And the bread and wine become

The food of truth, the drink of conscience.

At night

In the upper room

In the Garden

In the darkness

It all became clear.

Jesus was quiet,

While the pounding of other hearts was deafening.

“Is it I?” still echoes in our bones and our breath

When we can listen…

At night

The question startles us awake.

Who will answer?

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