Lent 5: The Rafters

I have a thing for churches!

Big or small, I enter them with eyes and heart wide open, trying to take in the space and feel what makes it sacred. In one of my favorite churches, and enormous cathedral in London, I remember looking up in the rafters and thinking I could see clouds. Maybe it was incense smoke from a past service, but I stared up at the rafters wondering what else was floating around up there. Were the words of sermons delivered long ago up there? What about hymns sung by people who live no more? Are the prayers offered – both aloud and silent – swirling up in the rafters? I don’t know, but I believe they are. Their echoes can still be heard if we slow down and listen.

I believe more and more that, like churches, we, too, have rafters. Into them go every experience we’ve had, everything we’ve been taught, and every prayer we’ve offered. If we take the time and look up into the rafters of our hearts and listen, we will hear voices from those who have long since passed. We can feel experiences, both pleasant and difficult, as if they happened moments ago, and we can see how the prayers we offered long ago sound hauntingly familiar to those we offer today.

The little boy playing with his dog in the backyard is up there in the rafters, so is the boy awkwardly making his way through high school and college. The working man, still wet behind the ears, is there, as is the bewildered father holding his newborn child. We often think such moments are a thing of the past but listen to the elderly woman at the nursing home who calls out to her husband and speaks as if they’re having their first dance at their wedding fifty-six years ago. The rafters hold everything, and sometimes they reveal their secrets through a dramatic event, a subtle touch, smell, or forgotten melody.

Lent is a season of reflection, and it seems a fitting time to pause and look up into our rafters. There’s no better time to listen for the voices of our past, the emotions we thought had disappeared with the seasons, and the people we once were. In them are the experiences had, songs sung, and prayers offered.

The least we could do is listen.

Lent 4: Partial Images

“We are all partial images . . .” Richard Rohr

There was once a show called, “Name that Tune.” Contestants would be given a note or two and had to see if they could recognize the song from which they came. Sometimes it was simple; other times it was close to impossible.

This morning, I’ve thought about playing the same game, not with songs but with artwork. What if we were given a glimpse of a few brushstrokes? Could we guess the painting from which they come? Certain paintings would be easy, others would be more difficult.

I’ve long known we were created in the image of God – every single one of us. We often forget it, and some people are easier to recognize as God’s image than others. It’s like we are all playing “Name that Image.” Each of us is a brushstroke or two and the hope is the larger painting will be recognizable through what partial image we offer the world. The thought is as inspirational as it is haunting. Do we offer God’s image to the people, places and things around us, or do we offer something, or someone, else? Can people and the world recognize God’s image through our words and actions? Can they see, though us, the larger image?

Sometimes it’s easy, other times it’s all but impossible to see God through us, but the remarkable thing is WE know when we’re being God’s image. Something inside of us, our heart or our soul, swells. It’s like we’ve taken a deep breadth of life, a big swig of living water. So, too, when we’re not our soul constricts and gasps for air. I think God designed it that way so we would know when we are being our true selves or not, when we are being living images or not. (We can see it when we are driving or checking out at the grocery store, when we are at work or play, when we are with loved ones or strangers, in a pew or voting booth.)

In this season of Lent, it’s a good time to look at our lives and consider what images we are bringing into the world. Although we’re only partial images, we’re enough. Who knows, someone might guess the larger painting just from seeing our brushstroke or two, and that, I believe, is why I think we were brought here.

Lent 3: Eyes wide open

Early on, I developed the strange habit of squinting my eyes whenever I had to deal with something unpleasant - like clean up after my dog, remove a dead mouse or bat. Somehow, diminishing my vision made it easier to handle such unpleasant sights. I still do it, and realize I also do it with other kinds of unpleasant things . . . like those within me.

I grew up in a serious, penitential, church where Lent and all its somberness fit right in. Forty days to look at those things that keep us from being who God wants us to be was an on-going feature of the congregation’s spiritual walk. As someone inordinately self-critical, looking at those things became second nature.

But I recently realized that I squint my eyes when looking at such unpleasant things. Somehow it makes whatever it is less frightening, or disappointing. Facing one’s self-centeredness, greed, judgment of others, anger, lust, dishonesty, pettiness, prejudice, can be overwhelming. No wonder so many people treat the season of Lent like any other.

For those who take the season seriously, however, such soul-searching, while hard, is important. That’s why some of us squint the eyes of our souls to soften the blow, ease the pain and disappointment, but doing so doesn’t change the reality. Just like the dog’s mess didn’t go away, nor the dead animal disappear, our character defects don’t disappear or change because we look at them with a diminished view.

No matter what we’ve done or not done, who we’ve become or not become, nothing separates us from God’s love. That’s what I’ve heard, so we can all stop squinting our eyes and open them wide. The sunlight of the spirit is burning bright behind such clouds. It’s time to look at them as God, in God’s time, blows them away.