praying the stations of the cross now...

How did it become Lent 2020 already? I cherish this season but this year I am moving so slowly that while my head wants to get into it, my heart and soul are resisting. I feel like this short prayer from Pádraig Ó Tuama's setting for the Stations of the Cross cycle is all I can do. From the sixth station - Veronica wipes the face of Jesus - I pray:

Veronica,
your story is doubted
but valuable.
You did what you could
even though it was very little.
May we do the same
even when we doubt.
Amen.

Ó Tuama describes his commitment to praying the stations of the Cross like this in his blog: In the Shelter:

For years I did the Stations of the Cross every day. I find in them the hope to live courageously when everything, even your own self, fails. In the midst of the difficulty of the time the Stations recollect, I find echoes of a life lived well, a life that was open to the surprise of the unexpected, the truth of a story. I also hear echoes of the impulses towards my own violence and blame mechanisms. For Good Friday, I wrote some collects, to go with the Stations. Some are below. For art, I recommend the gorgeous paintings of Sieger Koder whose religious art can be found at PB&M.

Everything about these prayers and the accompanying art work are disturbing. That is, perhaps, why they speak to me so profoundly: these are agonizing times for all of us regardless of gender, class, race or political commitment. So many of us are bone weary and disappointed with our politics, our leaders, our options, and ourselves. We are not who we want to be at this moment in time yet we can't seem to do otherwise. Every day what I read from friends through the lens of my quasi-monastic bubble evokes exhaustion. We are sick and tired of being sick and tired, but there is no end in sight: the suffering endures, the hatred deepens, the alienation accelerates, and our ability to make sense continues to evaporate. 

So, like Ó Tuama, i want to pray these stations now, not in anticipation of Holy Week, but now as an embodied confession that this is the moment of trial, betrayal, emptiness and an unresolved darkness. Our trip to B'Town is back (thanks be to God) on despite the threat of illness because we grieve being apart - and it has been too long. When I return I must add the stations of the cross art work from Ó Tuama's prayers to my study so that I, too, might enter into them every day. Maybe multiple times each day.

O God of the ground,

whose body was - like ours - from dust,

and who fell - like we fall -to the ground. 

May we find you on the ground

when we fall.

Oh, our falling fallen brother, may we find you, so that we may inhabit our bodyselves. 

Amen.

credits: http://www.padraigotuama.com/news/stationsofthecross