They say that just beyond the gates the garden waits,
earth’s bones will bend to angel hands beneath the land,
and fountains of the deep will sing: “unleash the springs!”
While we are weeping at the sting of absent breath and hope deferred, Remember death has been interred: The garden waits beneath the land. Unleash the spring!
“If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.
Why is it that I hold the spring in such suspicion? I have given up on the hope that life will lift up its tousled head and throw the covers back with a fruity yawn the size of an open grave. I am Midwestern enough to eye the sky and tut-tut about snow, to keep my coat on its hook by the door. I am wounded enough by the purloined promises of buds sewn shut to play the skeptic when they bloom.
Unbidden, then, this delight when the sun strikes my eyes, when the first great green middle finger pokes its way up through the sod. It’s been so long since last year that the first warm day smells of birthday cake, and the little things crinkle in the field like gift wrap.
And every murmur stills to silence at a single daffodilian bow crowning the package,
How do you keep
showing up
each day, when each day
is bereavement?
How do you lift your head
at the sight of the cold and beautiful light
standing like a child
by the foot of your bed
in need of you,
needing you present,
as she always does,
to feed and clothe and hold her close,
to keep the monsters back,
to guard the door?
How do you go on
when you wish the light didn’t need you
to illuminate the world?
How do you rise
every time the sun rises,
to face it and the shadows it creates
as one who willfully worships,
in adoration
of All that is beyond and above and within you,
All that you will never understand
and yet trust for your very life?
How do you face yourself
and the shadows you create
that bend backward to the earth
like westward crops at nightfall,
to fill and fade and fall again?
How do you take and eat
when you long ago
gave up birthrights for bellyfulls,
when you can just about taste the bread
but cannot lay your head on the breast,
when the wine smells of blood
and the blood savors like wine,
when you hunger to bear
children like the pregnant earth,
yet remain empty?
How do you
then live?
ii. It is a cold and beautiful light that pierces the eye, the hand, the side, and comes away red with life, coursing over the dawn of a soul in baptismal torrents.
Dive deep into the
waiting well, the warm and terrible darkness
gushing forth,
the life that we struggle to grasp,
that grasps us, and holds us under.
Somewhere in the crimson sea
we will lose all will to live,
and die instead.
iii. So I ask the greenshod world “How is it that you come alive again?”
And it answers me:
“Smell the air, feel the soil, taste the
deepening springs beneath.
Would you not awake
to such liquid light?
Would you not leave your winter
and take new garments
upon yourself
at such a call?”
And outstretched arms
beckon me in, blooms releasing
the incense
of a long and faithful sleep.
“Come to the spring
with us, drink deep and be merry
once more,
for hope lives
and lives again.”
We are feeble,
dust and droplets and germs
with face masks on guard against
all the fears populating our world.
We lash out and reach out
and sometimes both at once,
not really knowing
what we do or don’t do,
not really seeing what we need
or what harms us –
children all,
sequestered in a global sickroom
with an IV drip of articles
and campaigns and quests
to keep us well.
And I am sitting in my home,
looking out
at a world returning to the wild within,
tied to filtering screens,
and suddenly so weary –
stretched thin by all the things I must do
the responsibilities I hold heavy
as a follower, a lover,
a human.
But on sunny days,
(and more of these are dawning)
the window is open,
and the air coming in is cold and fresh,
carrying bird song on its back
and wildflowers in its wake.
And I feel then
as though the world
is a winsome place,
infected, yes, utterly plagued
by songbirds,
and though beauty may exhaust me
(as it should)
I will not stop breathing it in.
I have to constantly remind myself of this. I have to muscle my way through the grey days, through the grasping cold snaps in February and March, through the frosts that kill the early daffodils before they can even bloom. Midwest winters can be brutal. I get glimpses that winter’s hold on us is loosening with the “false springs” we get sometimes: a warm weekend, or a day when the sun shows it’s weather-beaten face. We all collectively lift our faces to it, close our eyes, and nod in gratitude. We take a deep breath, preparing to go under again for a few more days. Winter isn’t easily beaten here.
Spring is the season of resurrection and new life. But the weeks before things really start to burst and grow are, appropriately, Lenten in their scope. We work the ground, we plant the seeds, we remember that we are dust, and we look expectantly to the life we are promised. So even in a season marked by life, we are scarred by death.
When I wrote some of the primary poems in this season for the book, I was thinking through what it means to encounter death as a resurrected person. When I met Christ, the first thing He did to me was to kill me, and He’s been putting me to death ever since. Unless I realize my death, I will never realize my life. But beyond the metaphors, I was encountering the very real sting of physical death at the time. What did this resurrection, which waits and waits and waits yet again to bring about our rising, have to do with this everyday reality? What kind of hope is this that only shows its face in glimpses and slivers?
So in some sense, writing these poems was a way to know death, to remind myself that grief is not an end in itself, but a way of life. This was my way of embracing the thing I hated, but not without the hope that was coming – however far away – relentless as the encroaching sun at the end of winter.
And with these poems came songs to sing in the night.
So friends, you who are weary of winter and ready for some light and warmth, here it is: poem by poem, song by song, the spring season of SOLACE.
(You can pick up a copy of the book at my shop or on Bookshop.org to read along)
TRACKLIST: 1. chicago in season ii / Chicago (Sufjan Stevens) 2. invocation / The Matins of St. Clare (Respighi) 3. stay with me / Monarch (Zach Winters) 4. nestling / How Can I Keep From Singing (Audrey Assad) 5. receive / Hero Over My Head (Kings Kaleidoscope) 6. spring cleaning / Freedom (Tim Fain) 7. elements: the taste of earth / Digging in the Sand (Josh Rouse) 8. elements: the smell of smoke / Golden Embers (Mandolin Orange) 9. elements: the sound of air / Sound (Sylvan Esso) 10. elements: the impact of water / The Cure for Pain (Jon Foreman) 11. a leaf, taken / Leaf (Nick Box) 12. nadia / Light a Candle (Andy Gullahorn) 13. triptych for Holy Week: absentia / Tourniquet (Breaking Benjamin) 14. triptych for Holy Week: limbo / Rattle (Penny and Sparrow) 15. triptych for Holy Week: absolutio / His Heart Beats (Andrew Peterson) 16. (soon) / The Lord Is Coming (Scott Mulvahill) 17. majestic / This House (Sara Groves) 18. blackbird / Blackbird (The Beatles)
