Uprising

Descending Hurricane Ridge
and looking not far but close,
I saw one standing at the road’s edge.
Her feet were in snow,
her hands folded in prayer,
and her face turned to a bare gray snag.
This watcher, this Mary of Magdala
with gray hair and a gray robe tells me
to remember the dying tree of Golgotha.
I join my prayer with hers;
we have similar questions.

He suffers with us, reveals our lot 
as his own life within darkness.
The one suffering must be
at the heart of God’s darkness.
It’s a long way now from that first
uprising in the garden of morning.

We have been witnesses
to many shattered lives.
We must walk past genocides
and misery on the Trail of Tears.
We recall enslavement,
Irish famines, lynchings,
horrors of the Holocaust,
and bullets and bombs falling
first on Guernica and then on Hiroshima.
Today they cut, cull, nail,
and explode at random, mostly on the poor.
We pray for all these victims and wonder
if we should pray for the perpetrators too.
Can we forgive their learned ignorance,
the petty roughness, and cultivated hubris
of these shriveled souls?

Does his sacrifice bear all this
for all of us and for all of us,
from his great heart to ours?
We pray for justice and mercy
and hope that death is
not the last word.

O Mary, we are not the same,
but part of you lives in me
and my Christ in you.
May I journey with you now
to see what you have seen
for your sake and for my own
to be the witness you have been?
You saw the darkness in that time
at the dying tree and the light 
of that uprising that sets the broken free.
Will you pray with us now?

Give thanks to I Am
  for God is good
    This love endures forever
Let each clan say
  This love endures forever
Let all who come after say
  This love endures forever
Let all who love I Am say
  This love endures forever
Out of our distress we called to You
  and You have become our rescue
The stone that the builders rejected
  has become the cornerstone
This is the plan of I Am
  and fills us with wonder
This is the day You have made
  We will fill it with gratefulness
Blessed is the one who
  comes in the name of I Am
    bringing us light
Give thanks to I Am
  for God is good
    This love endures forever

The uprising takes the hand of each of us,
and we fall up into the depths of time,
fall into the flow of the river of life.
May we stand in the light of dawn
from that first uprising.
May we stand in the light of Christ,
the light of the world, the light
that shall be for all people,
the light that shines in the darkness,
the light that gives life,
the Spirit that gives life,
the light that turns to love,
the love that overcomes
suffering and death,
and is in all things.

Reflections and Connexions

This post is dedicated to Bill Palmer in this liminal time, for a friendship that is much too brief.

Uprising is a literal translation of the Greek word for resurrection. The following painting was a fairly common icon in the early centuries of the church, and these icons are still comissioned and revered in Orthodox Christianity. Jesus at the moment of rising has the wrists of Adam and Eve. Just like Adam and Eve chose death for all humanity, Jesus chooses resurrection life for them and for all of us. All of humanity in this particular icon is streaming out of Hades. The belief behind this is that Jesus has and will bring back all of humanity from the realms of the dead. Below his feet are the broken gates of those kingdoms. The creeds of the church echo some of this belief when they mention Jesus “descending into hell.” I’m not sure who the other two are in the painting. My best guess is that they are Saints Peter and John who tried to find Jesus the morning of his rising, but it was Jesus who found them somewhat later. There is a certain timeless quality in the beliefs behind this icon. The Uprising (Resurrection) happens both then and now.  

Mary Magdalene was the first living witness of the Uprising. She was also present at the crucifixion and lived in the liminal time between the darkness and the light. Two weeks after Easter a few years ago I was coming down the road from Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. I saw an older woman (about my own age) praying by the side of the road. Perhaps since she was facing a “dying tree” and very obviously in prayer, I thought of the cross and remembered Mary Magdalene. I wondered how Mary would pray now, especially in response to the events mentioned in the third stanza. The italicized words are from Psalm 118. This poem Uprising is my response to the wondering, not so much an answer as a continuing question.