baking bread as part of my holy week prayers...

Entering the wisdom of Holy Week requires a significant measure of quiet: it must not be hurried. Church professionals, of course, rarely have a chance to let the small mercies of this week wash over them with cleansing and refreshment. Back in the day, I took a mini-retreat between Palm Sunday and Wednesday of Holy Week. The solitude was essential if I was going to listen to the story. And feel the bounty of its hidden generosity. And reconnect with its sorrow wrapped in love. Without sufficient walking around stillness, as the late Johanine scholar Ray Brown used to say, the climax of Lent would feel flat and obligatory rather than renewing.

Now, in this unchurched era of living as a mostly undercover monk - my version of Frere Jacques, if you will - I find there is sufficient stillness for my soul to be open to Holy Week. Yesterday, Palm Sunday, was given to listening to the songs and prayers of Christ's Passion. They called me to weep freely as the only fitting response. A hymn by the 12th century monk, Bernard of Clarivaux, put it like this in"O Sacred Head Now Wounded." 

Be Thou my consolation, my shield when I must die;
Remind me of Thy passion when my last hour draws nigh.
Mine eyes shall then behold Thee, upon Thy cross shall dwell,
My heart by faith enfolds Thee. Who dieth thus dies well.

Today I find a few insights from Henri Nouwen give shape and form to my prayers. The first speaks of the downward trajectory of Christ's ministry - the upside down kingdom - where the last shall become first and those who know emptiness shall be made full. In this, Jesus embodies his mother's early song that we know as Mary's Magnificat: "My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; because He has regarded the lowliness of His handmaid... God has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart, put down the mighty from their thrones and has exalted the lowly. God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty." (Luke 1: 46-55)

The late Henri Nouwen wrestled with "downward mobility" for most of his life. He knew the movement of his savior called him into a life of hidden acts of tender love, but his ego ached for recognition. Success. Importance. Thanks be to God that brother Henri shared his conflicts with us. In this we see that our own desires to be honored are natural albeit upside down to the world of Jesus. And thanks be to God that brother Henri experienced the grace of God's redemption towards the close of his life. Encountering both the mysterious love of God when he was at his lowest - as well as the constant presence of key friends who gave made God's presence during those desert days - empowered him to write: 

Indeed, the one who was from the beginning with God and who was god revealed himself as a small, helpless child; as a refugee in Egypt; as an obedient adolescent and inconspicuous adult: as a penitent disciple of the Baptizer; as a preacher from Galilee, followed by some simple fishermen; as a man who ate with sinners and talked with strangers; as an outcast, a criminal, a threat to his people. He moved from power to powerlessness, from greatness to smallness, from success to failure, from strength to weakness, from glory to ignominy. The whole life of Jesus of Nazareth was a life in which all upward mobility was resisted…The divine way is indeed the downward way."

Paradoxically, it was when Nouwen truly hit bottom professionally, personally, spiritually and emotionally that he was able to confess:

Our salvation comes from something small, tender, and vulnerable, something hardly noticeable. God, who is the Creator of the Universe, comes to us in smallness, weakness, and hiddenness. I find this a hopeful message. Somehow, I keep expecting loud and impressive events to convince me and others of God’s saving power; but over and over again I am reminded that spectacles, power plays, and big events are the ways of the world. Our temptation is to be distracted by them and made blind to the “shoot that shall sprout from the stump.”

When I have no eyes for the small signs of God’s presence – the smile

of a baby, the carefree play of children, the words of encouragement and gestures of love offered by friends – I will always remain tempted to despair. The small child of Bethlehem, the unknown young man of Nazareth, the rejected preacher, the naked man on the cross, he asks for my full attention. The work of our salvation takes place in the midst of a world that continues to shout, scream, and overwhelm us with its claims and promises. But the promise is hidden in the shoot that sprouts from the stump, a shoot that hardly anyone notices.

Liberating, yes? Redemptive, too. Yet the invitation into a downward mobility is in constant battle with my false self, that broken part of me that wants to be celebrated and recognized as valuable, that very real part of me that tends to resist silence. And that's why living into a spirituality of Holy Week requires stepping away for a time. Going to a quiet place to listen to the war within and recommit myself to trusting God's hidden presence. In an oblique way, the poet Billy Collins says something similar in this poem. 

Solvitur Ambulando
"It is solved by walking."

I sometimes wonder about the thoughtful Roman
who came up with the notion
that any problem can be solved by walking.

Maybe his worries were minor enough
to be banished by a little amble
along the paths of his gardens,
or, if he faced a tough one––
whether to invite Lavinia or Pomponia to the feast––
walking to the Coliseum would show him the one to pick.

The maxim makes it sound so simple:
go for a walk until you find a solution
then walk back home with a clear head.
No problem, as they used to say in ancient Rome.

But one night, a sticky one might take you
for a walk past the limits of a city,
beyond the streetlights of its suburbs,
and there you are, knocking on the door of a farmer,
who keeps you company on the porch

until your wife comes to fetch you
and drive you and your problem back home,
your problem taking up most of the back seat
and staring at your wife in the rear-view mirror.

And what about the mathematician
who tried to figure out some devilish
mind-crusher like Goldbach’s conjecture
and taking the Latin to heart,
walked to the very bottom of Patagonia?

There he stood on a promontory,
so the locals like to tell you,
staring beyond the end of the hemisphere,

with nothing but the cries of seabirds,
waves exploding on the rocks,
clouds rushing down the sky,
and him having figured the whole thing out.

It is time for me to bake some bread. For one who loves walking, bread baking is a good indoor, rainy day substitute. It affords me about four hours of being still. I must pay attention to the water and yeast if I am going to get a dough that will rise. I have to give myself over to living in another time zone that is not at all rushed, but built upon waiting - and waiting - and waiting. These closing words from Nouwen cut to the chase of what this week means to me.

The resurrection of Jesus was a hidden event. Jesus didn’t rise from the grave to baffle his opponents, to make a victory statement, or to prove to those who crucified him that he was right after all. Jesus rose as a sign to those who had loved him and followed him that God’s divine love is stronger than death. To the women and men who had committed themselves to him, he revealed that his mission had been fulfilled. To those who shared in his ministry, he gave the sacred task to call all people into the new life with him. The world didn’t take notice. Only those whom he called by name, with whom he broke bread, and to whom he spoke words of peace were aware of what happened. Still, it was this hidden event that freed humanity from the shackles of death.

credits: these pictures were taken today as the rain brought a type of waiting color to the early spring.