I debated posting on Good Friday because it seems too holy for anything I could write, but this post from last year came to mind. In rereading it, I had forgotten that, even though I wrote it in May, it took place on Good Friday in April.
I wonder if the disciples felt this way. A life-shattering event as the sun set on a Friday evening, the beginning of their Shabbat. Shocked and seeing only death around them. A Saturday of silence where there was nothing they could do. Scared and wondering how the story ends – or if it already had. Having no reason to assume new life was just around the corner.
I guess that’s where our stories differ. They could not have hoped for life after death. A year after writing this post, we find ourselves looking hard for signs of life again. As we mourn. As we keep walking. And as we have to trust that spring and new life will follow this harsh winter we have had.
Looking hard for signs of life, first posted May 4, 2021
I found a bench in the sun and waited for my friend to walk the labyrinth. I had walked it first and wanted to give her time alone in it. Once she finished, she sat on a bench across from me, and we shared our experiences, which in the same labyrinth were very different from each other’s.
There were large, barren trees in a ring around us. I wasn’t paying much attention to them but my friend commented on the one behind me, whose crooked branch I was sitting under. She had been quietly assessing if it was a dead branch and the likelihood of it falling on my head. But then she noticed very small buds on the tree and realized it was safer than it looked. She said,
“You really have to look hard for life.”