By Andrea Lingle

For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. But you refused. Isaiah 30:15

What do you do with Jesus? Lent is a season of reflection, confession, and penitence. As penitents, we have walked deeply into ashes and doubt, sorrow and regret, rest and forgiveness. We have walked through the gates of Jerusalem shouting in jubilant confusion. What do we do with Jesus? He is an insistent question echoing through the centuries. What do we do with the hero that did not escape? What do we do with the God who died?
Lent fits me well. I am well suited for introspection and sad songs. I find myself standing on the edge of the palm-scattered road into Jerusalem, asking for everyone to please keep their voices down. I am sure we could all just sit down and talk this through. No need to get excited.

Exuberance is not my natural state.

Holy Week is an odd time. We are asked to enter into deep suffering, abandonment, and sorrow all-the-while knowing that it didn’t stick. Death, the great finality, lost its grip on Jesus. The Great Confuddlement: the life and death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

Today I wrote through my favorite Writing Practice prompt, What my shoes say about me…, and in so doing I found myself scribbling down something along these lines (exact quotes are difficult with Writing Practice as it is largely illegible):

I love being.

I love what it means to be here struggling through life. I love trying to make connections, wallow through doubt, ask questions, breathe (I really love breathing), eat. I love being. Like the taste of flake sea salt melting on the tip of your tongue just before eating warm potato chowder. I love being. Like the smell of spring onions and cut grass. I love the frustration of never enough time or energy to finish the books or the laundry. I love the rhythm of washing dishes and the relief of hand lotion.

Holy Week insists that that which is deepest in all creation participates in the struggle of being. Grace is the impulse that reverberates through the growing leaf and the dying tree. Grace is found in the ash and the seed. Grace inhabits the joy of being.

Writing Prompts:

This week all prompts are quotes from Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli.

• “What does it mean, our being free…” p 72

• “We can always be wrong…” p 69

• “Our reality is tears and laughter…” p 75

• “It is not against nature to be curious…” p 77

• “After having traveled so far…” p 65

• “A raindrop contains information on the presence of a cloud in the sky, a ray of light contains information on the color of the substance from which it came…” p 70

• “Here, on the edge of what we know…” p 81