Simply Sacred Life

When I tell someone I’m retired, the inevitable, never-fail question is, “So, what do you DO?” I’m not kidding. Every. Single. Time. And when I don’t have a rock-solid answer like “Oh! I do some consulting”; or “I volunteer at the food pantry”; or “I have a part-time job doing x”, their eyes widen with barely disguised shock. I’ve learned to expect it. I get that look of disbelief, a sense I get that somehow, I’ve failed to meet their expectations of what retirement should look like. But what should retirement look like? and why?

Each spring is sacred. Each spring brings a renewed hope for life and grace. Each spring promises another chance to make it right, to enter into God’s own nature and be witness to His creation. Each spring unfolds the gritty, raw truth that life is good, that life and creation are resilient, and that His creation will triumph - no matter how unwisely we’ve managed the planet —or our lives.

Tomorrow we celebrate, contemplate, consider… motherhood: moms, grandmothers, aunts, daughters-turned-moms — all part of our national obsession with celebrating categories of people, with their title, roles and characters firmly set into place by Hallmark, who has created an American pastime of sentimentalizing what can be beautiful - yes; but what can often be complex, difficult and sometimes tragic.

Today is Holy Saturday, a strange in-between time, a liminal space that sits between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. As a child, I always felt like Holy Saturday was empty, simply a place-holder between the torture and death of the crucifixion of Good Friday, and the triumph of resurrection on Easter Sunday. There are no grand ceremonies to mark the day; no feet washing, no Last Supper re-enactments, no Requiem performances by grand choirs. Nothing. For most, this particular Saturday is about the grand sigh (admit it - of relief!) that the Lenten season is over, and all about the preparations for the Easter egg hunts and Easter baskets, and grand feasts of Easter. Saturday sits neutral, a ‘middle-child’ forgotten between the two greater days of the Easter weekend.

What is faith - really? And do I have faith? Do I have enough faith? Is there even such a thing as enough faith? How much is too little? And probably the most important question: Does faith make a difference in my life? Often, the greatest challenges to our life’s beliefs, to our core values, arise in the simplest of questions: and in recent weeks, this has been my own struggle: at its core, what is faith?

Moments that are too deep for words: the lovers’ longing look, a baby’s first giggle, the fatal diagnosis first uttered - a sunrise, an ocean breeze, the sighting of an eagle soaring overhead. We’ve all had them. No words can describe our feelings, no phrase convey what resides in the depth of our hearts. And yet, our world is drowning in words and letters and signs; in phrases and text. We are being slowly choked off with words.