Wisdom Tree

Dry Bones

by Vinita Hampton

Composed January of 1990, in response to Healing as Sacrament, chapter 5: “The Unobstructed Vision.” Revised by V.H. Wright, Easter Sunday, 2010.

 

They jut, half exposed in shallow earth:

unhinged knobs and splinters,

broken teeth that grin at the boiling sky.

Waves of heat roam low, simmer above the graves,

while small desert creatures traverse a ribcage

beneath the surface.

Perfectly still, void of color,

scrubbed smooth and looking permanent,

the truthful slain whisper of life’s severities,

of death’s panic before a peaceless void.

 

Until the wind screams a cataclysmic command

and the enamel-white seeps red, moves tremulously

within petrified mounds and breaks free,

sifting dust from rooted ends.

Insects flee, the sun stares upon new flesh that steams

and pulses among the rocks; the joints gather,

and skin stretches over raw muscle.

A mouth appears, its tongue wagging after forgotten syllables.

The eyes focus, and in the brightness tears stream

down nose, soft cheeks, and chin.

A person walks about.

A person walks about, raises miraculous fingers one by one:

an invocation across the hollow wilderness.

 

Yes, yes, when the vision comes,

the blood of the lost surges forward;

and lungs cough up powdery death to breathe again.

The soul grows back its busy heart and silky hair,

is at once vulnerable to hunger and harm.

But these newborn legs must walk—

    away from pale sterility

away from bare, burnt valleys

away from long, sun-drenched sleep.

They must walk

to seek water and a vocation. They must walk

or stay and die again.

Good Friday

I compose my first list

while Jesus is who knows where;

I hear there were goings-on through the night,

that it doesn’t look good.

While his poor mother lingers,

exhausted at outer doorways,

I put on paper a line of tasks that will

march me through preparations for Sunday.

The menu, then chilly grocery aisles, while

his disciples try to blend in with other shoppers,

earphones attached as if to follow a basketball game.

They frantically tune in and out of newscasts

because they couldn’t stay with him, just couldn’t.

 

As I sort the mail

they lash him to a post

--gas bill, magazine offers—

soon blood runs everywhere, and short

devastations quiver from slashed bend of his back,

the red of his mouth.

I try to unclutter the foyer—where did these stray

boxes come from? And the rug keeps

going crooked, like his steps

when they finish with him.

I need a yeast bread sweet yet understated,

will improvise as usual.

And they haul him now, to face the crowd.

Pilate fumes that this has landed with him.

The three-bean salad I can make early,

the cake, too, and the bread.

 

The people, as one, make their choice,

which you think would be a no-brainer,

but as I put away cleaning supplies I must

stop for the noise, the immensity of hatred—

it’s mystifying how abruptly they turned on him—

and I am weak, drained of all goodness

because I should have been there, should not have

trusted that things would work themselves out,

but they’re taking him now to where

the tools are kept, and I finish what I’m doing

because what else can I do?

 

The crowd thunders through my rooms,

rattling cake pans and paring knives.

I work away, looking up just once

to gaze at the point of their passion.

Of all things, mercy glitters in his eyes

when he drags the cross through my living room

and out the back door. My bread is rising;

something in all of this must fill with lightness—

we cannot abandon nourishment at the worst moment.

 

By the time they hang him up,

my back is killing me. I do not eat but

take a sip of wine at precisely the moment

they touch vinegar to his lips.

Then the ruddy sky thickens to black.

My house smells of food, and the corners

are swept clean. I rest and watch television,

tucked up where it’s warm and un-chaotic,

I feel him resting, too, unbreathing in a silent cave.

He and I made it through the day,

bore tedium and the ragged walk of hours,

for the sake of what will happen

before the leftovers are gone.

 

Copyright © 2005 Vinita Hampton Wright

 

Should We Go with Him, or Not?

Sometimes a person doesn’t want to keep company with a holy man.

 

Life is heavy enough without adding the weight of a personality you cannot read and an agenda that is crazy by most standards. Before I trail along behind Jesus, into Jerusalem, in the midst of one of the highest holy seasons of the year, with rumors of murder plots flying around my head, I’d like to ask him a question or two.

 

What kind of a messiah are you? Don’t think I haven’t noticed the politicians and activists trying to make their moves on you. You engage with them but then you don’t. One minute you’re avoiding crowds like an outlaw, and then you’re riding into town at the head of your own kingly procession.

 

Are you about death, or life? Since the day I joined your people, all I’ve heard about is life—abundant life, eternal life, the kingdom life. But you’ve said at least three times in the past week or two that when you get to Jerusalem, the authorities will kill you. Now it’s all about bearing our crosses, about persecution and death. You’re making me nervous.

 

When will we know that the job is done? You speak of the kingdom as already arrived, but your references are so often about the future—with its judgments and wedding feasts. Is there a plan at all? A course mapped out that we can see, to know where in the world we are? And will you give us a clue when the directions change?

 

Am I going crazy? I can’t not go with you—I mean, where else would I go? But some days I feel as if I'm as ignorant now as ever. My life is a wreck, thanks to you. But I can’t go back—no, I don’t really want to go back. But what do I have here? And where is here? And who are you?

 

It feels good to ask the questions. But why do I sense only silence in response?

Holy Week, Really?

Each and every one of us has lived through Holy Week, some of us multiple times. Only our Holy Week is situated in hospital waiting rooms, in divorce court, in that horrible space between jobs, in the lingering and hoping while a relationship gets better or finishes itself. We never choose Holy Week; it finds us and stays until it’s finished. Our Holy Weeks never care about what we think or want, or how frightened we are.

 

But this Holy Week, the Christian ritual remembrance of the days leading to Jesus’ execution, is a space we enter willingly. We decide to dwell upon things such as a final meal with friends, betrayal by those we dearly love, and a chaotic mess of events over which we exercise no control.

 

We allow ourselves to imagine what it would be like if our truest dream met a brutal death. Some of us have already experienced that—when we lost a child to cancer or a happy family to disaster or infidelity. But, just the same, we choose to hang out with horror and longing; we stand through extensive readings and re-enactments. We sit in small chapels quiet as tombs, to “wait and watch” with the body and blood of Christ in their more recognizable forms: bread and wine. We drape our worship spaces in black, drain dry our baptismal fonts, remove all the brass and the flowers; sometimes we even silence our music. Sometimes we lead our children to the garden, where they bury the word “Alleluia.”

 

We enter this darkness because we choose to. Is this a form of crazy? Perhaps it isn’t crazy enough. Perhaps we are invited, day in and day out, to enter Holy Week, but we refuse the invitation. So many millions of people with whom to watch and wait, whose darkness is ongoing and excruciatingly solitary: prisoners, nursing home residents, victims of war, families just down the street. We are willing to walk the way of the cross with Jesus once a year. What we forget is that the Christ and the Cross march continuously across days and countries, always down, down into death and confusion.

 

The Gethsemanes and Golgothas are too many to count, in this world. The waiting rooms are brimming. The truest dreams and hopes fall from the skies like firestorms, dirty bombs and smart bombs, flaming and terrible.

 

Do we want Holy Week, really? No—do I want Holy Week? Will I walk with the Christ to the Immigration Office or the AIDS ward? Will I weep with the Good Friday mother who felt that abortion was her only decent choice? Will I present love and mercy in rooms of the powerful, open my life to the rants of those for whom Easter is success and prosperity and progress?

 

This Holy Week, the one at the church—it may be the easiest one of all.

 

Copyright © 2010 Vinita Wright

Praise and Expectations

Today we celebrate Jesus’ “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem. He is riding a donkey colt, and the crowd welcomes him with “Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” They make holy his path by covering it with palm branches and clothing.

 

Somehow I’m sure that Jesus knew the irony, even as he participated in it. The crowd praised someone who had become the focus of their own visions and expectations. A good many of them expected him to lead a revolt against the Romans. At the very least they saw a ruler, on his way to a throne—a real-time throne, that would change their tiresome and oppressive situation.

 

He knew that his kingship was of another order entirely. But he let them sing and throw down their branches. Their words described reality, sure enough, just not the reality they were envisioning.

 

Praise always brings expectations with it. When someone praises my work or your work, it’s because he or she imagines that work as fitting their own vision of what the world should be. Finally, here is someone who will help the church straighten up. Finally, here is someone who will speak the truth to those pro-abortionists. Finally, here is someone who will clean up the mess and make us feel better. Finally. We are always waiting for a messiah to come riding in to town. We have a list ready for him, of all that he needs to do and say.

 

And we can’t allow the messiah to be the messiah. He or she must be messiah-like in the fashion that pleases our sensibilities and our political viewpoint. Some of us praise Jesus of Nazareth because he spoke truth to power and challenged the status quo, whether in the religious institution or in the larger culture. Some of us praise Jesus of Nazareth because he was without sin and provides an example of the moral high road. Some of us praise Jesus because he gives us a group to belong to that is always right and, with certainty, on its way to life everlasting. Some of us praise Jesus because, frankly, he’s the only sort of savior we’ve ever known—he is familiar and thus comfortable and thus acceptable.

 

I must ask myself, what am I expecting of this messiah as I throw down my palm branches? Who am I hoping he will be, and what am I counting on him to do? Chances are, I will be disappointed, because this messiah asks no one’s permission to do what he must do. He is brave enough to disillusion us, even lose our support. He understands that each woman and man must give up a crippled and misled dream, sooner or later.