Epiphany wrap-up & Shrove Tuesday

I'm so grateful for another year of WALKING EPIPHANY with you all. Thank you, each of you who contributed a guest post, for inviting us to tour your neighborhoods, and  join you in looking for the light of Christ hidden among the buildings and businesses, creeks and riverbeds, parks and vacant lots.  

Thank you, Erica Jarrett, for giving us a beautiful glimpse of the light shining among poverty, through the refugees living on the border of Texas and Mexico, and into your own playful home.  Thank you for the vivid reminder that Christ's presence transforms sacred places within suffering neighborhoods. 

WALKING EPIPHANY in the Rio Grande Valley (TX): neighborhood notes from Erica Jarrett

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Thank you, Wendy Wall, for reminding us that beauty is present even in the dimmed light of winter.  Thank you for embedding yourself in Alaska's beauty, and in her suffering, and sharing the living hope with all of us.

WALKING EPIPHANY in Juneau, AK: neighborhood notes from Wendy Wall


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Thank you, Bethany Hebbard, for making homes and stories to share with East Austin and all of us.  Thank you for modelling for us -- no matter the size of our home or prosperity of our neighbors -- we can not not have a spiritual center without a geographical one. 

WALKING EPIPHANY in Community First! Village (east Austin): neighborhood notes from Bethany Hebbard

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Thank you, Suzanne Day, for showing us the ways God has protected and enlivened your neighborhood so that no darkness can overcome the light.  Thank you for giving us such a lovely example of neighboring as an imaginative and artful act. 

WALKING EPIPHANY in inner city Rochester, NY: neighborhood notes from Suzanne Day

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Thank you, Kaley & Wes Ehret, for sharing the light of love and community in the back yards and front porches and suburban sidewalks of your neighborhood. Thank you for reminding us the upside-down, slowed-down economy of our neighborly Christ. 

WALKING EPIPHANY in suburban PA: neighborhood notes from Kaley Ehret

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Thank you, Crestview neighborhood, Austin, for being a place of community for our family the past (almost) three years.  Even though I never wrote an Epiphany post about you, we're so grateful for the quirky, hospitable community you've been for us.  

A random sample of our sweet little neighborhood during my walk last week.

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And, thank you to *culture is not optional for the gift of the daily asterisk* which helped inspire all of our guest posts to see the Light moving into their neighborhoods.

Thank you, too, dear readers for walking Epiphany with us. Now we enter the wilderness of Lent, and we are not alone. Today is Shrove Tuesday -- a day with a weird explanation, but mostly to eat pancakes before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday.

I'd love for you to join me the next 6+ weeks of prayer with my Lent daybook posts which begin tomorrow and continue until Holy Week. I've been preparing simple meditations following the daily lectionary that encourage us to Look, Listen, Pray & Do simple spiritual practices each day. 

If there's anything particularly helpful to you in these daily reflections, please do let me know.  I am always delighted to discover I've been able to encourage someone else as we turn our faces toward our good King Jesus.

Peace (and pancakes) to you, dear friends!

Tamara

A few reasonable words to start your weekend conversations. 02

Happy weekend, all! We're headed into a semi-normal weekend around here. Also, plenty of football. What are your plans?  

A dose of conversation-starters for all your weekend conversations. And if you and I happen to bump into each other in the next couple of days, I'd love to hear what you think after these reads! (or, you could always leave me a comment below!)

• A stunning essay on the beautiful humility of caregiving and how much God loves us, via Image Journal

• Free February Calendar Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper (which makes me want to shop Etsy for all the transferware) via Giants & Pilgrims

• Beautiful, even in winter. via The Box Canyon

• We've talked a lot here about Austin's new neighborhood for the chronically homeless. I found Portland's emerging solution to be somewhat similar to Community First! Village. I do think some of the differences in philosophy (e.g., the city of Portland does not allow residents of the tiny house village to stay longer than 2 years) via Yes! Magazine

• I'm as patriotic as the next girl, but this newly-formed Olympic team's going to be  hard to ignore in 2016! via The NY Times 

* You can talk about the Iowa caucus if you want, but maybe it'd be a good idea to read this first? via First Things

• Are you planning any sort of fast during Lent?  Apparently, a lot of people are, and here's a great suggestion from Pope Francis (especially if you're dreading giving up the regular sorts of things like chocolate or alcohol). via Time

• Five years ago this week, I wrote one of the early posts in my now-defunct Sacred Practice series. I also love that a book I talked about in 2009 and read in 2010 is going to (finally!) become a movie in 2016.  Just remember you saw it here first, folks!

Here's my happy playlist to get you in the mood for our next holiday:  For my funny Valentines playlist on Spotify.  What songs do you think I should add? 

If all else fails, here's the "Prevent Small Talk Question of the Week":

Repeat the following quotation to people you meet over the weekend, and then ask them to share some of the greatest lessons they've learned from hard experiences in their lives.

On the blog last week:

• Epiphany, week 4: promises to all nations, hope to all peoples
• Epiphany, the Presentation (Candlemas)
• What I'm Into Lately (January 2016 edition)
• What's In the Book Pile for 2016
• WALKING EPIPHANY in inner city Rochester: neighborhood notes from Suzanne Day
• WALKING EPIPHANY in suburban PA: neighborhood notes from Kaley Ehret

Retrieve Lament: a summary and a poem

This morning, I sit shiva with your stories -- the seven from last night, the six shared here during Holy Week:

Brian Murphy (Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.)

Annie Crawford (Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.)

Chris Pousseur: (Woman, behold your son!)

Rachel Brown (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?)

Les & Renee Aylesworth (I am thirsty.)

Paul Van Allen (Into Your hands I commit my spirit.)

Last night we attended the Good Friday service that Christ Church holds together with the hospitable Hope Chapel. On Thursday,  we wash feet and eat the Lord's supper before stripping the altar bare.  On Friday we sit in the dark, sing a few hymns and listen to stories.  Suffering stories framed in with the seven last sayings of the dying Christ. Each storyteller practicing the vulnerability of the exposed Christ, lifted up for all men to see the glory of the Father.

Today I share again what I wrote two years ago.  

Father, into your hands I commit my spirit 
         Tamara Hill Murphy, Holy Saturday 2013

Because I've heard -- and haven't seen--
I know the end of the story.
Someone said this means we'll be 
stronger
than the twelve.
Because I know the end of the story, 
I have a hard time seeing
grief.
It's too easy to skip that day
and say
Sunday's coming!

I need to hear middles of stories.
So I can see.  Maybe not hear or
see, but feel.

In the dark church last night, the woman
following her walker to the podium, she
told us she lost the ability to hold onto things
so a man carried her words to her (later, in the dark,
I saw him put the straps of her purse over his own shoulder).

She lost the ability to hold tightly
but not to laugh, or 
be held.
Another woman told us her mama's deathbed was the first time she said
"Your love was enough, mama." 
And then with a last look, two women
beheld.

The middle of the story for the twenty-something,
perched on a stool as if her body were so light it might
slide onto the floor, assaulted by uncommon infection and
the still-celebrated church man whose side of the story weighed
more than her 
body.

All week I heard stories here --
some beginning, some end, some
middle.
The middle of Sharon's
story, so nearly-capsized,
she must speak in boat metaphors (as I have just done).

In church, the six-foot-six bald man raised
up the microphone to get it close enough to his (surprisingly) 
quiet voice.
I  thought about Sharon then, when the man told his story with
boat metaphors -- the rolling on the floor in anguish 
like a riptide
of leukemia engulfing
his six-year-old
little girl.

The safe harbor of hope where
she just turned nine.

Still, I listened to the stories all week, the ones
that remind me grief is not terminal.
The woman who made us laugh at Parkinson's, the mama who cried tears for 
her preschooler to catch -- a too-soon old man growing young again,
watered by his mama's tears.

The boy sitting on a bar stool drunk on his daddy's words,
This is my son.  Pass him the peanuts.

The story of the cool cloth
on the orphan's forehead, the poem finding hope in 
hanging by a thread.  
The airplane confessional, a woman committing
her mother's spirit to the sky --
maybe looking out the porthole window,
hoping to cross paths up there in the clouds.

The six-foot-six man standing on the church carpet like a blue wave,
shouting into his tall microphone so that we jumped from our pews --

Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!

And I didn't see Jesus' friends catch him -- raggedy and shredded --
off the wood.  Gauzing him up like a 
bloodied toe.
Burying him deep into virgin ground.
I didn't see it with my own eyes, only heard.
Maybe that's why -- when the scared story teller asked last night, 
"Christ Church will you catch me?"
I said -- Yes! As loud as I could so she could hear me.
But also, maybe, God,

to remind you in case you forgot -- 
what with your back turned and all --
that's what Good Fathers --
brothers
sisters
friends
airplane strangers --
do.

We catch the slip-sliding spirits falling out of the suffering.
And hand them over to
be held.

Since it's only Saturday, and we haven't yet 
really seen the Sunday (haven't beheld him in the clouds),
all we can do now
is hope you'll open your hands

and catch us from the
ground.

Retrieve Lament: Paul Van Allen (Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.)

"Once, ritual lament would have been chanted; women would have been paid to beat their breasts and howl for you all night, when all is silent.  

Where can we find such customs now? So many have long since disappeared or been disowned.  

That’s what you had to come for: to retrieve the lament that we omitted." 

             -- Ranier Maria Rilke, from Requiem For A Friend

Each year during Holy Week I ask friends to share a "mourning story" from their own life as a way to help us see Christ in the midst of suffering. Each story reflects on one phrase of Jesus' dying words. We have only just begun to know the Van Allen family.  I'm so glad that we entered each other's lives in time to wait for Henri together.  May his brave life remind us all that in the "wild uncontrollable adventure of being born", what have any of us to but to commit ourselves into the hands of often hard to see -- but never distant -- Father.

Waiting for Henri

I find Jesus very easy to follow in theory.  Its when he wants to go somewhere specific that I start having problems.

December 2nd, 5am: I’m inexplicably unable to sleep and find myself reading The Road to Daybreak by Henri Nouwen.  He talks of God’s call on him to leave the intellectually stimulating environment as a professor at Harvard Divinity School to go and live in a community of disabled people.  He describes himself as going “kicking and screaming.”  The coffee and the unusual silence of our house help the words slow down a little.

December 2nd, 4pm:  We receive a phone call from the birthing center saying that the genetic test results for our expectant baby boy just came in and we needed to “come in immediately” to talk about the results.  We knew immediately that this means Downs Syndrome.

We have two beautiful daughters Ava (7) and Layla (6).  Layla came into the world without any observable trauma and yet an MRI when she was three showed damage on both sides of her brain.  She is considered intellectually disabled and speech impaired.  Her disability meant the end of our life in China, our home for the previous 11 years.  The cost and the blessing of Layla frame the news we receive.

In the movie The Green Berets John Wayne is a seasoned Colonel leading missions in the Vietnam war.  In a scene boarding an airplane preparing for a parachute mission John Wayne comments “Colonel Kai you haven’t said a word all night.”  “You know why?” interjects a third officer.  “He’s never jumped before.”   “Oh, first one’s easy” John Wayne responds.   “Its the second one that’s hard to get ‘em to make.”

This is our second jump.  Our minds are a rush of resetting expectations.  The amount of diapers we will need to buy probably just tripled.  The decimal point on medical bills moves to the right.  I see a fork stuck in the hope that we will ever return to our globe trotting international life.

December 2nd, 8pm  we have tickets to Handel’s Messiah.  We keep our babysitting and our plans to go.  The tenor sings “Comfort ye my people…prepare ye the way of the Lord.”  This is getting a little too real.    I feel my soul kicking and screaming.   I sense that this is one of those points where my expectations that Jesus follow me are exposed and He puts the original offer back on the table.  “Follow me,” I hear Him say.

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March 31, 15 days before Henri's arrival

Waves of apprehension and anticipation are swelling each day closer to your arrival (scheduled for April 15th!).  As I take time in the early mornings to consider your coming I can’t help but wonder if I’m ready to welcome you with grace.  C.S. Lewis talked about the stresses in our lives that turn the lights on in our basements and expose the rats of sin…our grossest moments.  I’m looking forward to meeting you Henri but wondering if I’m ready to meet myself in the context of your needs and a deprivation of sleep.

I wonder too what you are getting yourself into.  In God’s mysterious and inexplicable ways he has taken mine and your mother’s broken DNA and woven in an extra copy of the 23rd chromosome into you.  The grief that that news brought us has been gradually replaced with expectation of blessing.  The stories that surround different boys, girls, men, and women with Down Syndrome that have come our way since your diagnosis have been consistently stories of childlike and irreplaceable joy.  Life has its costs and its benefits and the thing about believing in God is that we look with faith for surpassing blessing.  Life is not a zero sum game for those who love God.

Our life before kids and for a few years after your sisters came was marked by adventure and global travel.  That phase of life seems to have come to a screeching halt, and yet as I wait for you I sense an adventure coming much greater than the mountain roads of the Karakoram or island hopping in Indonesia.  G.K. Chesterton called out the shallow sentiment of the adventurer who elevated tiger hunting in India which was a chosen and somewhat controlled adventure to the wild uncontrollable adventure of being born:

“There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap. There we do see something of which we have not dreamed before. Our father and mother do lie in wait for us and leap out on us, like brigands from a bush. Our uncle is a surprise. Our aunt is, in the beautiful common expression, a bolt from the blue. When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world that we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.”

Henri, I can’t wait for you to be born and to share life with you.  I hope you will learn to like baseball and Chinese food.  I’d warn you about your crazy sisters and the love they are getting ready to smother you with but you’ll figure it all out in time.  When we pass the peace in church my favorite part is reaching down to your mother’s tummy and saying “Peace of Christ” to you.   You are most welcome to our family be it fairy-tale or misadventure. There is a Storyteller at work who is hard to see but who does not stand at a distance.  

Peace of Christ to you, Henri.

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Paul Van Allen and his wife Lisa live in an uncool neighborhood in Austin, Texas where they are waiting for Henri along with Ava (7) and Layla (6). They moved home from Asia in 2012 after their younger daughter was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy. Paul studied theology, speaks Mandarin, loves Texas skies, Austin cuisine, and his local Anglican church. he is tinkering with a new blog at www.hardbreakfast.com

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Jesus gave us a litany of last words as a Sufferer; we refer to them as the Seven Last Words of christ. The deathbed words of the Suffering Servant provide a framework for the stories of lament we share here this Holy Week.

I count it a high privilege to know -- at least in small part -- the mourning stories of the dear ones who will share here for seven days.  Their lives walk the path between celebration, yes, but also suffering -- illness, relational disillusionment, anxiety, joblessness, death of loved ones, death of dearly-held dreams.  Their stories have helped form me in my understanding of suffering and I believe they could also encourage you too.  

Retrieve Lament: Les & Renee Aylesworth ( I am thirsty.)

"Once, ritual lament would have been chanted; women would have been paid to beat their breasts and howl for you all night, when all is silent. Where can we find such customs now? So many have long since disappeared or been disowned.  

That’s what you had to come for: to retrieve the lament that we omitted." 

             -- Ranier Maria Rilke, from Requiem For A Friend

Each  year during Holy Week I ask friends to share a "mourning story" from their own life as a way to help us see Christ in the midst of suffering. Each story reflects on one phrase of Jesus' dying words.  The man who wrote today's reflection was a God-send to us when we were first figuring out how to be parents to teenagers - befriending our oldest son at a key time in his life.  We've grieved Renee's illness from a distance and have grown in our ability to understand what suffering-bourne love looks like -- in marriage, in family, in community.  Christ died fully human -- with every bodily need made evident in public.  The same Christ who told us to give the smallest gifts to the most vulnerable people, was Himself given cruelty when he asked for liquid relief.  May each time we give drink or food or comfort in His name, we relieve a little bit more the suffering, thirsty Christ.

A journal entry upon the one year anniversary of Renee's stroke:

I can't even begin to describe what this year has been like.  The ups and the downs, the highs the lows, the fear, the worry, the pain, the grief, the loneliness, the despair, the despondency, the frustration, the anger, the everything negative emotion you can imagine.  Yet somehow after hitting all these emotional and physical potholes along the way; some that threatened to completely engulf us - we have made it!

In our darkest days, there has been light.  Sometimes, oftentimes, just a sliver - but enough to keep going; to keep hoping.  The darkness can never overpower the light; and we have lived that this year.  In those early days when we weren't even sure if Renee would move again, let alone walk or talk; all we had was hope.  A hope that didn't generate from within us, that was manufactured or conceived by some superior ability of our own; but from somewhere, from Someone else.  From Jesus, who then placed it in us.  In our profound weakness and groanings, He instilled hope within us.  There have been days, many days, when hope faded, that it seemed like futility; but because of Him, somehow it came back - and has carried us.  Anyone who has gone through a major trauma in life and who knows Jesus can understand and probably say Amen to that.

And it has been your prayers that have kept us going.  Not that they are magical, but because you brought us faithfully to the throne of grace, for us to find mercy and healing and provision - God responded to those prayers.  I've been reflecting lately on what prayer is; what it does and how it does it.  I don't really have a lot of answers, because God maintains a certain level of mystery, but I know prayer works.  So I keep praying and trusting that His desire and plan will be done.

Renee has made incredible strides this past year.  As we've been in this new world of stroke recovery with aphasia (which I've discovered it's own animal), we've met people, mostly over the internet who have and are enduring similar things, but are farther down the road to recovery.  They have encouraged me that Renee appears to be making great progress; and coming from them it carries a lot of weight.  Even this morning is another example.  She wanted to know who was coming today to be with her.  Since she can't come up with sentences on her own yet (she can repeat and practice ones I show her), she usually just says a word.  With much learning and context, I can usually figure out what she's trying to say.  When Renee wants to ask a question about anything, she will say "Where?"  I know it sounds weird, but that's the world of aphasia and stroke recovery - "where" has become the catch all word for all interrogatives.  This morning however instead of saying "where" and me trying to figure out what the question is that she is actually asking; she said "who".  For a second I just stood and stared; then I realized that she was actually asking "who?".  Who was coming today?  I know it's just one little word, but that little word now has the capacity to be built upon and dramatically increase her communication and our understanding!  Thank you God!

I've tried to detail and let you know how Renee has progressed this year so that you could rejoice with us.  It has been awesome knowing that there have been so many people cheering Renee on; who have rejoiced in her victories and have wept in our sorrow.  As God has never left us alone, He has often made His presence known to us through people - through you.  Many of you were and some still are people we've never met - yet you have become family to us.  You have loved us.  You have personified what Jesus said in Matthew 25...

35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

I grew up poor, but I have never known such need as this past year: emotional, spiritual, physical.  And Jesus used many of you to meet many of those needs.  You have provided meals when there was no way possible I could prepare a meal, you bought our growing kids clothes when there was no way I could go shopping for them, you have provided time so that I could go to work and have peace of mind knowing that someone was home with Renee and the kids.  You send cards and gift cards, and Christmas presents.  People opened their homes so we had a place to stay other than the hospital.  You visited Renee, even making a 3 hour drive to the hospital or flying across the country to do so.  And the list goes on and on and on...

I've said this before, but the things I've seen this past year are things you read about or see on a talk show; yet it has happened to us.  In the midst of the worst, we have seen the best.  Yet, as yesterday reminded us, we still need you.

Please continue to pray for us.  For no more seizures, for no more strokes or clots or anything damaging to Renee's already fragile brain.  That she is able to continue therapy.  That "who" turns into "who's coming today?" and her ability to speak is restored.  That our daily needs continue to be met.  That there is someone to be with Renee and the kids for every spot we need filled.  That her right side continues to improve with both ability, agility and sensation.  That Renee's cognitive awareness and mental processing increases.  For no more headaches (she has one today) or worrying symptoms.  That our kids continue to be great kids and do well in school and life.  That I am able to bear the burdens of dad, mom and caregiver.  That we make Jesus proud and are an example of a life well lived for Him.  That Renee is completely healed and restored.  And so many other things that come up.

There's one more thing I ask that you do - rejoice with us!  Renee is alive; my beautiful, wonderful wife, the mother of my 5 awesome kids is alive - and that is worth celebrating.

The road continues to be hard and long and dark, but I'm confident that better days are ahead and there will more many more opportunities to celebrate.  Thank you again from the bottom of this exceedingly grateful husband's heart.

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On February 26th at 2:25am Les was awakened by Renee restlessly moving.  At first he thought she was just moving closer to get warm.  He turned the lamp on to find her eyes open, but unresponsive.  He shook her, calling out her name, but she just would not wake up.  He noticed that as she was trying to grab a hold of me, she could not use her right arm.  

Doctors discovered Renee had suffered a severe stroke caused by a spontaneous carotid dissection. The inner lining of her artery had torn, causing the blood flow to slow and form a clot.  Parts of the clot broke off causing the massive stroke which has left her unable to speak or move her right side.

 Renee is only 38 years old and has 5 kids: Ivan aged 14, Maris 12, Anaya 6, Haven 4 and Aviah 20 months.  Les and Renee live with their family in Newark Valley, NY.

You can follow Les & Renee's journey on their Caring Bridge journal.  

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Jesus gave us a litany of last words as a Sufferer; we refer to them as the Seven Last Words of christ. The deathbed words of the Suffering Servant provide a framework for the stories o lament we share here this Holy Week.

I count it a high privilege to know -- at least in small part -- the mourning stories of the dear ones who will share here for seven days.  Their lives walk the path between celebration, yes, but also suffering -- illness, relational disillusionment, anxiety, joblessness, death of loved ones, death of dearly-held dreams.  Their stories have helped form me in my understanding of suffering and I believe they could also encourage you too.