Seven years ago, my newly-wed husband and I spent our first night in our brand-new home. It was the day before Memorial Day. We were still painting and had not properly "moved in," but I wanted to stay because we had heard the Richmond Memorial Day Parade went right by our house.
I will never forget my excitement waking up that morning. The parade didn't start until 9am, but I didn't know that. From 6 o'clock on, I kept running to the front door, watching the neighbors setting out coffee for their son's karate school, jumping up each time an unusual vehicle went down the road . . . I was terrified of missing the parade! My husband seemed simultaneously amused and annoyed.
Finally he agreed it was time to go out, and we sat on the steps of our vacant rental, cups of coffee in hand, and watched the parade. All 20 minutes of it. The
middle and high school band, the fire trucks from a three-town area,
the Boy and Girl Scouts, a team of draft horses. I was like a kid in a candy store.
That parade has somehow become a mark of our life together. The next year we sat on the steps with our blind/deaf Australian Shepherd, Nyssa. The year after that we added our Newfoundland cross, Jynx. Then it was Ranita. The next year, Chinchita. We haven't missed a year. I refuse to miss "my parade"!
Last year, both kids were aware of everything, eager to pick up the bubble gum thrown in our yard, despite the fact that Mommy was absolutely NOT letting them chew it yet! Their excitement reflected mine. We were so happy.
It felt significant, then, when this Memorial Day dawned and the sun refused to shine. Rain did not fall upon the ground, it pelted it, viciously at times. I was disappointed. No parade. No floats. No horses. No music. No treats.
Strangely enough, I also felt vindicated. I felt as if God himself were sharing in my broken home, my broken family, my broken heart. It was as if he was meeting my need to have the world realize this year was different . . . and to have them join in my suffering. How could we have our cheerful, happy, delightful little parade when my perfect little family of four was now a shattered family of three?
It's melodramatic to write these things, I know, but those of you who have been through something similar will be able to relate, I think. Sometimes the sorrow is so deep you really do want the world to sorrow with you.
So in my line of Memorial Day Memories, this one will stand out in stark relief as the year my husband left me. The year without music. The year without sunshine. The year without a parade.
Even as I grieve, I believe that this moment belongs to this year alone. I believe next year will be different. I believe the sun will shine again. I believe the music will play again. I believe the parade will go on again. And we will be happy.
Powerful and evocative, thanks for sharing this memory. I am confident the final paragraph will prove prophetic.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Duane! That's very encouraging!
DeletePowerful and evocative, thanks for sharing this memory. I am confident the final paragraph will prove prophetic.
ReplyDeletePart 1:
ReplyDeleteYour exuberance for the parade is like a cup of cold water in a dry and thirsty land. We need more than the "practical" heaping up of the works of our hands, and the greatest clarity really does come with that cup overflowing with praise and wonder--the kind of wonder you express so articulately.
I have pondered the temple worship and festivals of Scripture for a long time: the sacrificial system involved a lot of feasting, and forced those offering sacrifices to eat them by the second day, as if to maximize the number of family and friends at table. There was both solemnity and celebration: consciousness of sin's desolation apart from God, and consciousness of exultation and festive fellowship in seeking His face, in listening and following.
In meditating on the Scripture, I have discovered the word "praise" conveys far more than mere accolades. It connotes the joy one finds in another: in God and His people. The consummation of joy in freedom to live and love rightly, expressed in the passover meal, is solemn more in the sense of singular joy free from distraction, rather than in the servile “solemnity” typically assumed by pietists. God frees His people from "the sacrifice of fools," to "serve Him without fear," reveling in Him as a treasure beyond measure, until their "cup runneth over."
We need festival. We need parade. We need to see the world is not built on the sandy foundation of man's squalid aggrandizement and achievement, but on God's overflowing song of creation (Prov 8, esp vss 30-31, Job 38:4-7). We need you to remind us. I need you to remind me.
Consider all the personal pronouns involved in expressing delight. Your use of "me" in the sunflower stand goaded me a bit, until I reflected on the sheer quantity of first person pronouns in the Psalms, especially Psalm 23.
The Psalms a a primary commentary on the Law, and draw their revelry and reverie from the Law's own delight in festival and freedom.
I have been digging deeply into the Law lately, and found it really does signify both perfect freedom and the Spirit of Life. I am troubled by the institutions of government and church in our age, which have blatantly trampled the Law's most basic precepts, subjugating rather than cultivating men and women toward reveling in God and His works. It is worth considering that God's destruction of both institutions, signified by the fallen towers of Isaiah 30, is prophesied to take place with festivity: tambourines and harps (30:32, an allusion to Miriam and the women in the Exodus). God wishes to free us of Cain's imprisoning structures in order to unfetter our hearts and minds to be fully responsive to Him, to be free to revel in the "I and thou."
The context of that revelry is rain, agriculture, and husbandry: open fields and flowing streams(30:23-26)--living, responsive revelry rather than dead, despondent structures. While there will initially be a temple for annual convocations (Ezk 40-48), the everyday gathering for reverie and revelry will be vines and fig trees (Mic 4:4, Zec 3:10). No wonder Christ calls us to pray that this mountain (city of man) be cast into the sea:
"Though hail flattens the forest
and the city is leveled completely,
how blessed you will be,
sowing your seed by every stream,
and letting your cattle and donkeys range free" (Isa 32:20).
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteYour struggle against the demands of productivity is closely related to your penchant for revelry, and has a firm foundation in Scripture. Scripture frames work in terms of wisdom (Isa 28), responsiveness within God's responsive world (Hab 2:21-22), and a parade of of revelry (Amos 9). Civilization (Cain's city of man) squalidly frames it as productivity, which must be measured, brick-by-brick, like the building of a certain tower of confusion ("babel")--a dead edifice which effaced many a man and woman, just as those measured bricks of Egypt effaced the Israelites.
One might give Exodus a subtitle in defiant response: "Til We have Faces." Notice the contrast of Moses speaking with God as if face-to-face versus the driving whip of overseers on the backs of the Israelites--the contrast of turning towards and turning away is critical, especially as God calls the Israelites to turn their back on Egypt for good, and commit to seeking His face: intimate instruction vs task-master-driven productivity.
Productivity, measured brick-by-brick in the dead edifices and idolatrous contraptions of man, distances us from field and flower, stream and cloud, and for what?: superfluous inventions and distracting folly. For all the towers and invented idols of man, rob him of his connection to God and Creation, and are therefore destined for the fire (Hab 2:3, Jer 51:58). Note how the distorted "Protestant work ethic," as Max Weber observed, has produced a world as ugly as Babel and Egypt, where people have devolved into considering life as an accretion of "the abundance of things," things which are not only consumed by moth and rust, but consume the possessors and drive them to restless striving.
In contrast to productivity stands the testimony of Scripture: "It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep."
God's call to work is a call to act in faith, seeking His face in each day's labor, because only His Wisdom guides our work perfectly, and only He can establish the work of our hands (Psa 90).
You do well, therefore, to revel in a sunflower stand and plunge your hands into the soil, finding joy in work consecrated by wisdom and delight. Even your mud mask brings a beautiful clarity and simplicity, and I cannot help but smile in reverie at you smearing mud on your face while expostulating the benefits thereof :)
You yet struggle to express this beautiful wisdom of yours in words, and must break free of the squalid expressions of this age to do so. Yet I love this wisdom of yours: you remember better than I how to cultivate and delight in the simple and good, and your words bring back faded and dusty memories: of watching the Macy's parade with my mom and sister each year, while we farm-sat for a couple who would travel on Thanksgiving. The smells of the chicken coop, the sounds of the geese, the taste of Quaker Corn Bran (now Puffins), the feel of crisp and cold mornings, the showering brilliance of my mother's smile, the joy of nestling together to indulge in televised parade festivity. I also remember the joy of marching and playing trumpet, nestled amongst a joyful and noisy throng. Self-consciousness fades into simple joy at such times--a joy shared with others. So good...
I can see Wisdom's captivating treasury in you: a thrilling beauty, a refreshing well-spring. You are your namesake: "Kristen"="anointed," as in the anointing "oil that trickles down the beard of Aaron." Even your name has a soothing onomatopoeia: meditate on it long enough and you discover a trickling, flowing sound like that of "glisten."
Part 3:
ReplyDeleteYes. The same Spirit who grieves in you, grieves through clouds and rain. Yet that grief...that fellowship of suffering, with its downpour, is an investment in life--life which, when well watered, surmounts the dark burial of killing sorrow (betrayal and divorce). The same Spirit who hovered over the depths (Sheol, the grave) and brought life forth among singing stars and exuberant angels, is still present, hovering over the depths of your despair: ready to call forth life again...cresting upward into light...unfurling vibrant and unfading leaves, flourishing by "streams of water," and "bearing fruit in season."
There are many who despise exuberance like yours. I glean, from what you have written regarding his stance on livestock (goats and horses), and his "annoyed" attitude toward your enthusiasm for the parade, that your ex despised you in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. The pain of this resounds in your reflection on "cracked mirror." Having likewise experienced unrelenting contempt from one who should have held, loved, and cherished in responsiveness, but forsook, hated, and repudiated in proud despondency, I empathize with you in your harrowing betrayals. I grieve that your beauty and light, and that of your children, should be held in contempt--I grieve, moreover, that you should doubt that God has prodigally lavished you with these captivating gifts, revealing His glory through you.
Let God's light dawn upon contempt's poisonous lies and shake them out as one shakes dust from a blanket (Job 38:13). Know that there is nothing a luminary can or should do to curry favor with darkness, and there is much darkness in this age of frenetically distracted people who pursue technological mediation, dividing themselves from each other by drawing a strange line through their hearts and minds, so that many are double-minded--having no roots and no delight in God or His creation.
The enmity between light and darkness is unavoidable (Prov 29:27, Jn 17, II Tim 3), and proves your beauty and light by contrast. This is evident in how you think and who and what you love, even as you stumble in the face of fear, despair, doubt, and the alluring call to "productive success" in a world reminescent of Belshazzer's vainly vaunting, confused and toppling Babylon.
I should love to watch a parade with you, God willing, some day. I suspect the festivity would pale in comparison to your exuberance--all the bright outward pageantry a muted grey compared to the colorful delight of your brightly expressive countenance. Parades do not create joy in themselves, but are opportunities for exuberance like yours to overflow to others in cascading succession: your "cup runneth over."
One can learn much from you, Kristen Marion, "star of the sea," basking in your refulgent brightness and quaffing from your refreshing wellspring. Glory be to God for such unfading and unspoiled beauty.