Wednesday in Holy Week...

Exhausted - that's the word that comes to mind for Wednesday in Holy Week - exhausted:  family, church, the world and all the rest. That happens sometimes, yes? Always has and always will and sometimes you just hit a wall and are reminded that God is God and you are not! (Such is the blessing of this season.)  Richard Rohr put it like this today:

I thank you for becoming weak, Lord Jesus,
so I don’t have to be strong.
I thank you for being willing to be considered
imperfect and strange,
so I do not have to be perfect and normal.
I thank you, Jesus, for being willing to be disapproved of,
so I do not have to try so hard to be approved and liked.
I thank you for being considered a failure,
so I do not have to give my life trying to pretend I’m a success.
I thank you for being wrong
by the standards of religion and state,
so I do not have to be right anywhere, even in my own mind.

And then something absurd grabs your attention - like the NY Times headline about Raul Castro nominating an 80 year old man as second in command to "rejuvenate the Communist Party - no kidding!  And something tragic grabs your heart - like the deaths in Libya - or the on-going nuclear nightmare in Japan.  And then something like a loved one's embrace gives you a moment of encouragement.  And something like community happens at Maundy Thursday practice so that beyond the tiredness and fear and pain, there is also an abiding sense that God really is God.

Mary Oliver put it like this in her poem, "Schubert."

He takes such small steps
to express our longings.
Thank you, Schubert.

How many hours
do I sit here
aching to do

what I do not do
when, suddenly,
he throws a single note
higher than the others
so that I fell
the green field of hope,

and then, descending,
all the world's sorrow,
so deadly, so beautiful.