Easter Sunday came and went with its signature beauty, wonder, and exhaustion. My grandmother used to make sure that there was a nice Easter dinner prepared for the family, and this is a custom that, every year, I tell myself I'm going to observe. I also tell my son this every year (he is 31), and he reminds me that in his lifetime we have never had Easter dinner, and that I will not make it again this year. His prediction, based on his lifetime of watching his minister mom, was as follows: I will come home from church mid afternoon on Easter Sunday, get into the recliner, and slip into a Holy Week/Easter worship-induced coma. In this altered state of consciousness I will dream in large psychedelic Easter symbols and keep waking up thinking that I have to go and lead a service someplace. I will mumble incoherently about flowering crosses, babies and bunnies and may even say something both odd and memorable (due to its oddness). I will have no interest in Easter dinner. By Monday, most of the stress hormones will have burned off and I'll be feeling more "normal." On Tuesday I'll be ready to cook Easter dinner, but won't cook it because it is Tuesday, not Easter.
He was mostly right. The part that neither he nor I expected is that Easter came and went, but my heart stayed in Lent.
Sometimes the heart doesn't read the calendar.
Lent brought with it some unexpected personal grief work and an equally unexpected personal reality check that was neither welcome nor pleasant. Enlightening? Absolutely! Growth-promoting? Without a doubt! Welcome? Hardly.
I talk often (some might say ad nauseum) about the importance of growing edges, but here is their problem: They hurt. Pain-free growth is a myth. The liberation that comes from awareness has a cost, and even when we are willing to ante up, we often forget that sometimes the cost is dear.
For a brief second I almost lost patience with my heart for putting temporary roots down in Lent when the rest of me wanted to drag it kicking and screaming into the joy of Easter (you will be joyful)! But instead, I opted to show the same compassion to my heart that it would show to any grieving person I know. I gave it love and warmth and space - and some structure (routine is good). And I took it back to the most healing place I know - a loom.
I have a really cool project on my large Macomber - a double-sided blanket woven in the style of the old Grandholm Mills of Aberdeen Scotland. My mother-in-law gave us two of these blankets when we were married, and I always marveled at the differing color patterns on either side - one blanket where each side looks completely different, yet is the same blanket. It has become my "both/and" blanket (for banishing either/or weaving)! It took a bit of time to figure out how to weave it, but I was pleased to see that I can still find my way around a loom!
The weaving goes very slowly because it involves three shuttles, and I can only see the color combinations of the side facing me (consequently mistakes on the back side are not seen until it is too late to correct them). Much of this blanket is woven by faith and trust. Every once in a while I pass a mirror under the cloth to make sure something ghastly isn't happening on the side that I cannot see. So far, so good.
The experience of weaving this both/and blanket is a bit like moving through this time of grief and loss - letting go, acceptance, faith, trust, and learning to see and appreciate the beauty that unfolds at its own pace, in its own way.
It is a gift to allow life to unfold this way, growing edges and all. No judgment. Heaps of compassion. And a favorite loom holding a mobius blanket.
Leaning into Easter while standing solidly in Lent,
Kim
No comments:
Post a Comment