breath;
There’s something about Easter that has captured my attention these past few years. And it’s something beyond the fact that it’s the time when we remember the events that became the basis for our faith as Christians. The pattern of death and resurrection is a theme that God has seemed to continually emphasize to me over the past couple years, and perhaps it is because Easter is literally focused on Jesus’s death and resurrection that this season has stood out so much to me. In any case, it’s a theme that has still been at the forefront of my mind this year throughout this season of Lent and Holy Week.
The past year has been one of the hardest in my life (as I’m sure it has been for many people), and if I’m being honest, many days hope was non-existent, and it was often a struggle just to get through each day. It has felt like one very, very long winter, when I have grieved loss after loss and death after death and change after change. It’s been so long that sometimes I wonder if it will always be like this. I still don’t know the answer to that. I still feel like I’m in winter, although there are a few signs of spring that have been whispering hope to my tired heart.
I wrote a lot of poems last year, including the four below. The first two I wrote about a year ago, shortly after the Covid quarantine began, and the last two I wrote in October as I reflected back on Easter time 2020. Most of the poems I wrote last year I’ve kept to myself, because they’ve felt too raw and personal to share. But as I read through them again recently, these seemed ready, in a way I definitely wouldn’t have been able to share a year ago.
These poems are still relevantly honest reflections of where I find myself this Easter. Maybe you’re in a similar place, tired and sad and struggling to find the ability to celebrate after a year of so much death. If so, I invite you to fight for hope with me. Right now, we may still be in a season of death, but I have to believe that one day, resurrection will come.
Breath, breath,
all is breath.
All is breath, says the teacher,
a chasing of the wind.
Some have called it vapor.
All I know
is that there is no security in mist;
its only constancy
is that it changes.
Breath; breath.
Breathe.
I see the first signs of spring—
whiffs of sweet blossom fragrance,
a swarm of butterflies chasing one another
through a sun that has become steadily warmer,
long rainy days giving way
to an abundance of fresh new green.
The world is changing,
all on its own,
and most of the time I hardly even notice.
But this year
I wish the change would come quicker.
The sun’s daily visits are longer,
and we may have just had our last bout of rain
until next winter.
But inside my heart is foggy.
Change has come too quickly
and too unexpectedly,
yet I find myself wanting it to keep changing—
to change back to the way it used to be.
How long? —I find myself repeating the question
far too often.
How long?
Breath; breath.
Breathe.
My mind and soul are foggy, but
what am I really chasing after,
anyways?
My desperate attempts
to chase away the mist
are, ironically enough,
like chasing the wind.
My mind fights against the disorientation,
the strange coexistence
of a world resurrecting itself into spring
and my own heart falling deeper
into winter.
Breath; breath.
Breathe.
I wonder
do the trees ever fear
that spring will never come
when they let go of their leaves
in the fall?
Do snakes ever panic
as they feel a part of themselves
slough off, their own skin
peeling and writhing,
exposing unweathered, uncalloused scales?
Do plants ever mourn
when their flowers fade and decay,
leaving behind a shell that may
or may not become a seed
that then falls to the ground
and produces new life?
It’s one thing to know
that the pattern of things
is death first,
then new life.
It’s another to feel the presence
of death,
to be in the middle of the dying,
to feel the pang of terror,
the wondering—will I ever live again?
Breath; breath.
Breathe.
Grieve.
And breathe again.
That is all
that is constant,
the breathing,
the grieving,
the waiting
for spring.
(I wrote this reflection at the same time as the poem above.)
This is a season of death, lament, grieving, change. I was not ready for it, and I know this is only the beginning of it. I know that it won’t last forever; it, too, is merely a breath, a passing mist that vanishes as soon as it appears. Yet even though it is only vapor, fog can be blinding when you’re in the middle of it. How is it that vapor can be so thick that you cannot see five feet in front of you? You know that it is fragile and a breath of wind can push it aside, yet it can feel suffocating and all-encompassing. When you’re in the middle of it, you have no idea how much more fog you have to push through until you reach the sunlight again. It’s impossible to see in front of you, and it’s even hard to look behind you as well, to remember that it was not always foggy, that in fact the warmth and light of the sun is still there; you just cannot see or feel it right now.
How do you express a pain or loss that is still happening? I struggle to find words for what I feel inside. It is too raw, too new, and I do not have the benefit of hindsight to help me articulate what is going on inside. All I know is that it hurts, that it is scary, that uncertainty sucks, that death is not always a quick, one-time event, but is often an agonizingly slow, painful process. Is there resurrection on the other side of this? I think I believe that there is. But in the middle of the dying I’m not so sure.
She alone stayed in
the place of death, wondering
where God was; waiting.
The stranger met her
in the middle of her grief—
“Why are you weeping?”
Though he knew that all
would be made right, he asked her
what was on her heart.
“I don’t know where he
is,” she sobbed. “I cannot find
him!” —“Mary,” he said.
For there was nothing
to fear. He knew where she was.
And he had found her—
here, as she waited
in the place of death, she—the
first to see his face.
(This poem was inspired by a passage in The Jesus Storybook Bible, p. 314:
“The other women rushed home, but Mary stayed behind. How could it be true? Jesus was definitely dead—how could he be alive? Just then Mary heard someone else in the garden. Perhaps it’s the gardener, she thought. He’ll know where Jesus’ body is.
‘I don’t know where Jesus is!’ Mary said urgently. ‘I can’t find him.’
But it was all right. Jesus knew where she was. And he had found her.”)
i’m worried that easter
never comes; that
the sun never shows itself again after
the midday darkness of friday;
that the process of decay is never arrested,
reversed, surpassed by glory;
that the flayed muscles and flesh just slowly
disappear into cold,
dry bone.
i wonder
if this is how thomas felt, demanding
to see and touch his resurrection, because
death doesn’t just go away
when you want it to. why
do we condemn for doubting the man
who loved so well that he just
wanted to grieve
and figure out how to live
honestly
now that what he’d loved was gone,
as if he knew
that “god works all things together for good.”
you don’t just snap
out of trauma. you don’t
just believe any bit
of light you see.
easter sunday, 2020
today, we are the first disciples,
alone in our homes, grieving what
is lost and fearing
what will come; unable
to gather in the grand
assembly of the feast
(because what is there
to feast about this year);
wondering whether
the christ indeed heals all things
that have died, or if
it’s worth it to hope
when everything we’ve known has
been stripped away so
suddenly. today
we understand those first dreadful
moments of waking to a day for
celebration and feeling
nothing but the empty ache
of death.
“When you put a seed into the ground, it doesn’t grow into a plant unless it dies first.”
—1 Corinthians 15:36, NLT