Beyond Expectation

Now that he has risen,
our eyes can conquer
fear.

Raise heads
and with the trees
reach out a hand.

It will come soon:
in windlessness and fire,
birds over land,
an almighty Dove.

Wait, and your voice
will be understood.

                  -Jan Dotinga
                    translated from Frisian -- hjb
                   

When a Daughter Marries

[Summer is a time when for many young lovers wedding bells ring.

It’s been a few years since our youngest daughter’s wedding feast.

And the weddings of her three older sisters are an even more distant memory.

But this is what I remember, now dedicated to all the parents who will be “giving their daughters away” this summer.]

(An awful phraseology, really, but that’s a topic for another time.)

When a daughter marries, you smile and laugh a lot.

Partly from tension, of course.

But mostly from relief.

For all the hurly-burly of the preceding months (Adam and Even never knew what they were missing) is at last culminating in a peaceful ceremony of beauty.

The families are there.

Friends have come.

The dresses all fit, and the colors complement.

The music is melodious and joyful.

Bride and groom are radiant.

The vows are spoken, and no spurned lover appears at the last moment to object.

You smile with relief: it’s going well (though much too quickly) now.

And you smile and laugh because this is a festive occasion – this is a wedding feast!

Though the wine doesn’t flow like it did in Cana, the spirits are high, the talk is animated, and currents of warm affection float everywhere. 

The Creator’s gracious gift of love is celebrated!

But there’s another reason you smile and laugh a lot: you try to cover up.

For when a daughter marries, what you really want to do is cry a little.

You try not to, of course, for fathers don’t cry.

So they smile and laugh a lot.
But she’s flesh of your flesh, after all, and after all these years rather firmly attached.

And it hurts to part with what is part of you, to let go, to let your flesh unite with other flesh.

But it is the way of love: for man and woman to leave father and mother and to cleave unto each other.

God made it so, and it is right and it is beautiful.

And therefore parents say Amen to it; in fact, they would have it no other way.

Still, even the most beautiful things can hurt a little.

Maybe it’s especially the beautiful things that make you cry.

There’s something else you do when a daughter marries: through your smile and through your tears you breathe a prayer.

Up to this moment, bride and groom have experienced the delights and frustrations of romance: tomorrow their history of husband and wife will begin.

You breathe a prayer of thanks that it will begin in the Lord.

For in our time, marriage is a fragile institution.

The strains and tensions of this age wreak their havoc all too often.

God’s children are subject to that too, for they too are vulnerable.

Life can get messy; and marriage is part of that life.

That’s why you pray for a union that will be steadily sustained by the grace of God.

And in George Eliot’s words, you pray that this young couple may be joined for life:

“to strengthen each other in all labor,

to rest on each other in all sorrow,

to minister to each other in all pain,

to be one with each other in the silent, unspeakable memories at the moment of last parting.”

The Merry Month of May

If I were a poet, May would have been a busy month.

A poet, we know, is irresistibly moved by the mysterious muse

to express the inexpressible.
To find words for feelings that lie too deep for thought.

And the month of May often fills the heart.

If I were a poet my pen would have caught the transient,

fragile beauty of the flowering crab, “where the bee sucks,”

and whose pink-red petals dazzle my every May.

If I were a poet I would have celebrated in un-Hallmarkian verse

my brother’s birthday and all those days and ways

in which, as close friends, we spent time in gut-aching laughter,

serious thought, stimulating talk, and mutual affection.

If I were a poet I would have found on Mothers Day

true words of thanks for all the caring and sharing

and praying and self-giving of good mothers everywhere.

If I were a poet I would have captured through imagery

and sound and rhythm the many feelings of my heart and

my spirit’s prayer on our daughter’s birthday, who lives

her life more than 2000 miles away.

If I were a poet I would have composed a dozen sestinas

for all those who, capped and gowned, in pomp

and circumstance, celebrate a cerebral siesta after much

hard learning and weariness of the flesh. 

If I were a poet I would have exclaimed in psalms and hymns

and holy sonnets the glorious mystery, truth, and power

of Ascension, and Pentecost to follow. 

Even then, I doubt that I could have struck the human spirit

with the fullness of the awesome wonder those two events entail.

And if I were a poet I would memorialize the lives

sacrificed in too many wars.

I would in graphic detail depict the sins of slaughter,

the price of freedom, the specter of mass death. 

My conscious memory began with war, ironically

in the May time of the year. 

Those memories, mild as they are, still have the power to haunt. 

If I were a poet I would poignantly pen my pleas and prayers for peace.

But I’m not a poet. 

Still, May was busy anyway. 

And now, at Merry May’s end, I am content to sit

under pale moonlight and “let the sounds of music creep in my years:

soft stillness in the night…the touches of sweet harmony.”
For something as “full of the spirit as the month of May,”

we need a Shakespeare.

Now, there’s a poet!

Behind the Mask

We walk behind invisible masks.

It’s safer and therefore more comfortable that way.

Each of us has secrets we try to disguise.

Michael Jackson knew it well, even in addressing another:

            All along I knew you were

            a phony girl

            you sit behind the mask

            and you control your world

            So take off the mask so

            I can see your face.

But an honest face can tell the truth.

We need masks to disguise the truth.

The truth of our insecurities, pretenses, secrets of the heart, depression.

Maybe it’s especially the teenager who dons the masks,

tightly guarding what cannot safely be shared with others,

tightly protecting self from hurts, misunderstanding, taunts, humiliation.

There’s a wall in a local Christian high school that gives a glimpse of what’s often behind the mask.

It’s called the “Speak Wall.”

It started in a chapel service where 18 students volunteered as guinea pigs.

They shared with fellow students what they had not shared before:

the fear of ugliness

the fear of not being cool enough

the ongoing grief for a lost father

loneliness

worry about the future

and other preoccupations that disturb young lives.

A hallway wall was dedicated as an invitation to other students to drop their mask.

It soon began to fill up. 

Notes, signed and unsigned, about repeated suicide attempts. 

A note about scars, empty pill bottles, and a tear-soaked pillow. 

A note about missing the love of a good family. 

A note about the pain of lost childhood innocence. 

A note with the question: “Why did God give me diabetes?” 

Another: “I need to break my addictions.”

Another: “I’m pretentious.” 

Another: “I’m covered by a blanket of regret.”

Among these poignant and disturbing notes, student responses of understanding, encouragement, sharing, promising prayer.

Within the school, this hallway has become a kind of sacred ground. 

Students and staff approach it in silence, then stop to read.

Then they go on to classrooms, the gym, the locker room. 

But there’s a difference now. 

There’s more awareness of the other, a growing sensitivity, a greater readiness to reach out, an increasing feeling of acceptance.

Is it possible that school can become a safe place to drop the mask?

And home too?

And church?

When War Came

I love May.
I always have.

Maybe it is because of the new life-ness of spring that suffuses nearly
everything.

Maybe it is because it is the month of my birth, and May birthdays
are still a sweet memory.

But there's another May memory that entered my life at a very
young age.

It is not a memory of innocence, but of evil.  The shadow of that memory
has dimmed over the years, but it has never faded altogether.

This is that story:

Once upon a time there was a little boy who lived in a farmhouse. 
There were cows in the barn attached to the house, chickens in
the chicken coop, pigs in the pigsty, a horse in the horse barn,
and bees in the beehives. 

The boy was happy, for all was well.

But shortly after the little boy had his 6^th birthday, something very
frightening happened.

His birthday had been wonderful.  The early day in May had been warm,
like a summer day.  All growing things were rushing to show off their colors
and smell and beauty.  The little boy loved this time of year, when the cattle
were back in the fields, farmers were plowing, and all the children were playing outside.

But one morning in this beautiful springtime, the little boy woke with a start. 
He heard voices outside the window of his bedroom, many voices, talking
loud and fast, as people do when they are excited or afraid. 
And then the boy heard something else: the droning of an engine,

a great big engine not far away. 
Maybe that’s why there were people outside talking so much, even though it

was only breakfast time.

The boy was curious and for some reason felt fear flutter inside. 
He quickly got dressed.

Nobody was in the kitchen.  Everybody must be outside, he thought. 
When he came outside, he saw his Dad and Mom, and his brother and
older sister gathered in front of the house, busy talking to a group of neighbors. 

And the noise of the engine was much louder now. 
But the boy didn’t see an engine.  Everybody was looking up at the sky. 
When the boy looked up too, he saw where the awful rumble came from:
hundreds and hundreds of airplanes darkened the sky, like a huge swarm

of locusts he had heard his Dad read about from the Bible.

The boy ran to his Mom. 
He could tell by her face that something very serious was happening.

“What’s wrong, Mom?  Why are all those airplanes in the sky?”

His Mom took his hand and pulled him closer.  Her voice trembled
when she said simply, “It’s war.”

The boy was too young to understand fully what that meant,
but he knew it was something that was very bad. 

He heard people talking about the dirty Germans who had invaded
their country and were bombing the big cities in the south. 
It was the first time the boy began to understand that there were
enemies in the land, in his land, enemies that would make life dangerous.

From that day the boy’s self-conscious life began, and he would
never again feel completely safe in the world into which he had been born. 
For the next five years, fear would be a constant companion.

The family gathered around the table for breakfast that morning
later than usual.  Everyone waited quietly for the father to pray
the morning prayer.  They listened to every word as the father
prayed earnestly for God to protect them from the enemy, to bring
back peace, and to be especially near those who were fighting or fleeing

for their lives.

No one had expected a war, though many had not trusted Hitler. 
No one knew what this war would mean for the little country of the
Netherlands or for all the other countries of Europe. 
But on this day, May 10, 1940, a dark cloud of an enemy air force
had appeared in the sky, and even the young boy had a bad feeling
that the cloud would only grow bigger and darker.

Silent Saturday

sleeping
out of the draft
fallen on the lee side of the grave
the flags are lowered
the sails now slackened
the feet are covered
at last at rest

sleeping
out of the draft
fallen on the lee side of the grave

but unobserved
through granite walls
a genial breeze begins to play
all the trees pick up their tiny ears
the fog undulates itself into new shapes
wind, mumbling, slowly strolls
across the graveyard
a grave's about to burst
before the rising sun

                  Tiny Mulder
                  (tr. from Frisian by hjbaron]

Good Friday

He must take this last step,

the last step of love,

the last step of life.

Now life slips from each limb,

finds refuge in his still-beating heart:

stretching from pole to pole,

high as heaven,

low as hell,

now overflowing,

heavy as the world,

the world of sin and misery.

See.

He takes his heavy heart,

and, slowly, laboriously,

alone between heaven and earth,

in the awesome night,

with passionate love,

he gathers the sin of the world,

and in a cry,

he gives ALL:

“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”