RISE

The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. (Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams)

There’s something new on the nadamore landscape today: something standing tall and strong in place of yesterday’s dirt. Something that didn’t used to be, yet feels like it always was.

As announced by Monday’s hopeful chorus of early spring peepers, the ground was finally thawing. While we walked on the soft and sometimes muddy trails  near Krumwiede Forest Reserve that afternoon, the music of the tiny frogs inspired us to begin the project we were waiting for.

First, the clearing of the land. We spent the rest of the week removing dead trees, stumps, fallen logs, rocks and other natural debris that cluttered the area. We welcomed natural breaks from hard labor whenever the chainsaw needed to be sharpened or lubricated and when the wheel of the wheel barrow needed repair. When the land was finally clear, we removed several feet of dirt below the surface of a four foot area to create the large foundation hole.

Now, on this Easter Sunday morning when Christians around the world celebrate the suffering, death and rising of Jesus, something new stands within the soil of nadamore, securely anchored in the empty space. We can see it from our great room window……..facing east, nestled among the trees, poised to ask a silent question over and over:

How does one appropriate the mystery of Easter, this path of death and new life, within one’s own life?

We discovered RISE in 2018 while casually browsing the website of an artist from Massachussets. We weren’t looking to buy, but couldn’t resist when we found ourselves besotten with the tall corten steel sculpture. Its shape, texture and color felt good, hopeful and life-giving in a way for which we had no words.

RISE was delivered to nadamore in early December 2019 on a day so cold and slippery that the UPS truck needed chains to get out of the driveway. RISE stayed in our pole barn through the rest of the winter until now, when it was finally time to find its proper outdoor place.

We’re looking forward to witnessing the seasons as they change around RISE. Right now, the early spring landscape is still bare. In a few weeks however, surrounding trees and shrubs will burst into shades of green and various native flowers planted last fall will blossom. They too, share the path of death and  new life.

When we first imagined RISE at nadamore, we didn’t know it would inspire the logo of our website. We didn’t know RISE would make its outdoor appearance on Easter weekend with COVID-19 stalking our planet. We didn’t know that on this Easter Sunday, a day that points to life, we would all be facing such collective disruption, grief, suffering and death.

As we celebrate Easter during this time of global death and uncertainty, we can’t help but wonder: Are we, the people of this earth, being called toward new ways of relating to each other? To ourselves? To the environment? To God, or the more of which we are a part? Are we being summoned to embody a new kind of life? Life characterized by  love, compassion, social and economic justice, non-violence and ecological integrity?

What if this COVID-19 catastrophe is offering us a new vision of hope?

Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann says we cannot receive what is new without relinquishing something of what is old. He encourages us to ask this question:

“What do you need to relinquish in order to receive that which you cannot yet imagine?”

Its not easy to let go of what we hold dear. It takes courage to allow the clearing of our internal landscape; to be emptied of illusions, attitudes and patterns of behavior that are in the way; to let things re-settle inside of ourselves.

Jan Richardson, writer artist and ordained minister in the United Methodist Church, points us toward hope in the form of this blessing:

Blessing for a Broken Vessel
Do not despair.
You hold the memory
of what it was to be whole.

It lives deep in your bones.
It abides in your heart
that has been torn and mended
a hundred times.
It persists in your lungs
that know the mystery
of what it means
to be full,
to be empty,
to be full again.

I am not asking you
to give up your grip
on the shards you clasp
so close to you

but to wonder
what it would be like
for those jagged edges
to meet each other
in some new pattern
that you have never imagined,
that you have never dared to dream.

Copyright: Jan Richardson, Circle of Grace (Orlando FL: Wanton Gospeller Press 2015)

On this occasion of Easter 2020, let’s help each other learn what it means to embody the great mystery of Easter in our lives. Let’s challenge each other to live differently and trust that goodness will prevail, beauty will shine. Let’s face the morning sun together and live within the hope we can imagine.

V.

 

 

Vicki Vanderkwaak On April 11, 2020   /   A Place