2015.04.12 Forty In Forty: Sisterhood

Siblings are a blessing and a curse. It’s hard to live with them and impossible to live without them. They know you very well, well enough to torment you, and well enough to defend you, no matter what—also well enough to love you into death and beyond.

I am the oldest of three sisters. There are approximately three years between us each. Our mother had three miscarriages before me and two before my younger sister, Laurie. Our youngest sister, Jeanie, died prematurely of brain aneurysms when she was 34, just five months before I would turn 40. She broke our hearts and broke up our troika.

I have no idea if heaven is a state of being in which we two living sisters will see our “baby” sister, again, but it’s a nice hope. We have lots of love to catch up on, and lots of stories to tell, and lots of need to be we three again. 

When I moved away from "home" I gave many years of scrapbooks to my children and theirs, so I don’t have childhood photos of us three sisters to share, alas. Nor do I have a photo of Jeanie alone, although I wake up to see her face in a group photo with her husband and three children taken just before she died. 

Two out of three of us are alive today: Laurie (left) now, at 73 and me at 76. We have been through all kinds of hell and damnation. Okay, I exaggerate, but I’ve lost count of how many times we have broken up and tentatively come back together—just because we are sisters. Now we are old enough to embrace intimacy, and also be ourselves. Age helps some things. We both will probably live into 2019, 40 years after Jeanie died.

                                 

                                                                      

Forty is a conventional number. In the Bible it is also a symbolic number, signifying a very long time. The Israelites wandered in the desert wilderness for “40” years. Jesus headed into the wilderness after his baptism. For “40” days and nights he discerned his vocation. It took a long time, but he decided  to withstand the temptation to exploit others with his spiritual gifts. He would, instead, do the unifying work of God.  

It takes a long time to grow up and into unity.

(A note: before you pummel yourself, or blame your sibling, consider your larger context—just to see whether anyone, with good intention, might have told you, "You're as good as your sister," or "You are the a perfect gift from God.")

*  *  *  *

In a NY Times Magazine article, “40 Portraits in 40 Years” (October 3, 2014), Susan Minot wrote the story behind a series of photographs, taken from 1975 to 2015 by artist Nicholas Nixon of his wife and her three sisters. I have seen the exhibit; it is transfixing, this photographic documentation of sibling affection, sibling difference, and sibling aging.

Here is the 1975 photo:


Over the years the annual photo became a project in which the artist and the subjects collaborated. Without wardrobing or make-up, the four sisters stayed as they were, year after year, enduring together within the truth of aging. “Everyone won’t be here forever” was implied.

This sisterhood admitted public observation, but not entry. It is remarkable that, in this age of the selfie, there does not seem to be evidence of attention-seeking. As I gazed at these sisters they gazed back at me, steadfastly. They had eye contact perfected, yet they never looked self-conscious. Sad often, showing signs of sibling wear and tear perhaps, but not possessed by their own image. Was this the way of these sisters?  Or was it the skill and eye of an artist who knows how to catch the truth without fanfare? Probably both.

According to Minot,“Nixon has pulled off a paradox: The creation of photographs in which privacy is also the subject. The sisters’ privacy has remained of utmost concern to the artist, and it shows in the work. Year after year, up to the last stunning shot with its triumphant shadowy mood, their faces and stances say, Yes, we will give you our image, but nothing else.”

There is something profoundly god-like in this last statement, something we humans who believe ourselves to be made in the image of God might take to heart. 

The sisters in 2015.

 

2015.04.05 Resurrection is What Exactly?

Some Christians get hooked on both the literalness and the singularity of Resurrection. They call it THE Resurrection, as if it belonged to Jesus Christ alone, and as if it were a one-shot deal, taking place at one time and in one place. 

Resurrection is an absolutely terrific theological idea. It's a God thing, though not unique to Christianity, nor particularly historical at all. The meaning is simple: God brings life out of death of any kind. It’s a spiritual phenomenon, a mystery of course, but so what? You can choose to hope in resurrection, or not. You can choose to believe in God, or not. So far there ain’t no proof.

Although.......I will say that, from biblical times and all through history, there has been a ceaseless flow of witnesses to resurrection power. 

I choose to put faith in this mysterious energy I call God, and because I do, I tend to look for resurrective happenings everywhere at any time. I figure that’s my spiritual vocation.

Just today I got an Easter card on line. It featured a beautiful song, sung by the Salisbury Cathedral Choir. The song lyrics come from an A.E. Hausman poem, “The Lent Lily.” Tradition has it that the daffodil’s yellow trumpet opens on Ash Wednesday and dies on Easter day.  The last stanzas of “The Lent Lily” go like this:
   
    And since till girls go maying
    you find the primrose still,
    And you find the windflower playing
    With every wind at will
    But not the daffodil.

    Bring baskets now, and sally
    Upon the spring’s array
    And bear from hill and valley
    The daffodil away
    That dies on Easter Day

 


I already knew daffodils did not last very long. A week ago my husband brought some home for our indoor easter garden. They sat bright and beautiful in a vase, trumpeting the good news of spring.  Slowly and surely, they wilted— much faster than the tulips. On Easter day they went to compost.

Resurrection is a daffodil, brief and fleeting and life-giving—like Easter. The only way to keep the brilliant hope of resurrection alive is to watch for it to come in small fragile doses and let it lodge in your heart as hope—springing eternal of course. 

I observed one such resurrective happening at our parish where adults and children were rehearsing for the Easter liturgies. Everyone was stressed, just trying to follow all the complicated instructions about who followed whom and what was read when.

It was time to practice the readings. A young boy, ten or so, was practicing his reading for the Easter Vigil liturgy. He is an earnest soul, smart and full of life, plus drop dead handsome. As he read from the Bible he stood on a pew kneeler in order to reach the high pulpit. He wanted to see and be seen.  He read perfectly, until he came to one place and stopped cold.

“There’s a mistake here,” he said, pointing to the text, which was a reading from the Old Testament prophet, Ezekiel, about God’s promise to give us all new hearts and new spirits and to enjoin us, once again, to follow God’s ordinances and statutes.

 “See here,” the boy pointed.  “There’s an extra T in this word. It’s supposed to be statue.”

No one laughed.  This day the boy learned a new word and those few of us present felt resurrected.


P.S.  People have sent me poems, YouTube renderings, and simple opinionations about resurrection. I conclude that resurrection is still a hot topic, one we care about enough to deny, affirm, or discern over and over. That is good. Theology evolves like history and here is what I, and I’m not alone in this thought, feel sure happened after Jesus died: his Jewish brothers and sisters, fans and followers were radically disillusioned by their own theology. It was insufficient. 

They could not let it rest given the teachings of Jesus about his idea of God as love and their own experience of this kind of love in their lives. They shared memories, stories and perceptions. Together they discerned a new theological direction, a new idea about their one God: that crucifixion and other violent acts are not divinely engineered or inspired as they had thought; and further, that divinely inspired acts are resurrective not destructive — always. 

Christians are not in agreement about this, but I suspect that a new theology is emerging, one that will allow God to be “love alone all loves excelling” as the hymn line says. And perhaps humanity will finally accept that we are beloved of God, and that we too will be resurrected, daily and after our biological death. In meantime, it is our calling to notice and create, where we can, resurrective acts, and to live embodied lives of compassion, peace and justice toward all living things.