Take up your Cross?

 Lent is upon us. I don’t know about you, but I look at others carrying huge crosses, and wonder how I got skipped. At this time in my life at least, I don’t suffer from a deadly disease that just isn’t going away, or not having a roof over my head, or enduring daily injustice because of the color of my skin. Am I alone in wondering about how I am to take up my Cross?

 Then it dawned on me that I might be missing what is right before my eyes. Maybe just being human is my cross. Some days it’s pretty heavy. My car door is frozen shut, and no amount of coaxing is going to unfreeze it so I can get to church. I wake up and just don’t have any energy today. Cramps in my legs kept me up half the night…I need to get a haircut…will have to wear my mask…and on and on. Nothing big, nothing momentous, just being human…and chaffing at its heaviness.

 The time after Christmas is like a light-beam shining on all the nooks and crannies of my soul. I blink often. All the little things of my little ‘hidden life’ come into view. Then comes Lent. It’s the time of spring house-cleaning of the soul. I stare at this Wild Lover ‘running’ toward the cross and wonder if he is out of his mind. But he is inviting me to ‘run’ with him…to actually choose my limited humanness, to bear it, grasp it, be bound to it as his infant swaddling bands wrapped him ‘round about. It is reaffirming my baptismal ‘yes,’ my going down into death with him, isn’t it…my ‘yes’ to all that weighs me down, all that is imperfect, all that is unfinished and waits with all my unfulfilled dreams.

 Nailed hands, feet fixed in place…his Body speaks when his mouth is still. I can’t do what I want to do, I can’t go where I want to go. Say ‘yes’ and embrace it…? That ol’ dead tree weighing me down bursts into bloom, and becomes a Tree of Life. Surprise! That’s how the story ends.

 

Are you out of your mind…

or just wild in-love?

Arms stretched wide…

to embrace all the mess…

me included.

Feet pinned down

so you can’t even search me out…

so I have to come to you.

And when I look you become my mirror

and there I am.