Dream of Life

It's been almost a year since April 27, and this is probably the toughest blog entry I've had to write.  I don't want to go back to that day.  Commemoration, remembrance, looking back:  I used to wonder why some veterans returning home from wars don't want to talk about their experiences in country.  Now I know.  When a part of you is forever destroyed, it's tough to talk.

But the purpose of this blog is to talk, to open up and share with you, our kind supporters, where we are in the rebuilding process, and what we're thinking, and where we're going, and who we're becoming.  So here goes.  And this time, I'm going to get a little help from a fantasy writer, a psalmist, and a rock star, because the task seems too big to handle by myself.

 

I shot this the day after the storms--a week after Easter 2011--through a glass door and out across the street to rubble, into an indigo blue sky.  The image captures what I'm feeling--and what I'm feeling, which is so hard to put into words, is Easter.  Easter:  Pain that brings joy.  Joy that is painful, because we know what hurt feels like.  Pain and joy, violence and grace, coupled in resurrection, a rising, that no one ever expects.  

 

In an essay on fantasy literature, writer J.R.R. Tolkien called this phenomenon 'eucatastrophe,' a 'sudden and miraculous grace,' one that 'does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure.'  For Tolkien, eucatastrophe 'denies...universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief' ('On Fairy Stories').

Flash forward to Easter 2012:  In our borrowed space at the Benedictine Monastery, we processed with the cross that had been bent in the storm.  

But we also flowered another cross.

Two weeks later, just this past Sunday, we concluded the prayers of the church with a reading of Psalm 130, which reads, in part,

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,

and in his word I put my hope.

I wait for the Lord

more than watchmen wait for the morning,

more than watchmen wait for the morning.

And so here we are, one year later, poised somewhere between tragedy and joy, living in hope.  Sometimes we struggle in doubt.  Sometimes our grief comes flooding back.  Sometimes the future shines clear, shimmering like a cobalt-blue sky.  

 

In Easter 2012, we dream of life.

I said (above) that a rock star would help me write this post, so I'll close this installment with some Bruce Springsteen.  Not long after 9/11, Springsteen wrote 'The Rising,' a rock song with an Easter theme. You can watch it here:  Bruce Springsteen, 'The Rising,' Live, 2003.

Have a great Easter season, everyone!  You'll see more posts shortly, as we begin the bidding process and move to our groundbreaking.