Saturday, April 9, 2022                                 (click here to read today’s scriptures)
Rejoicing in the complexities of suffering
Dark night, in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, its gleaming skyline, dark stars and a waxing crescent moon. Saturday will dawn brimming with sunshine as our April days gradually warm into the 90’s. Texas spring. The day before Holy Week. The day to gather up palm branches and prepare to lay them in front of the donkey, previously unridden, carrying Jesus into the hail of hosannas. Blessed is he in the name of the Lord! O, that we could keep those words on our lips for more than just one shining moment.
Cast away from you all the crimes you have committed, says the Lord, and make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.
The pollen is running, the poor baby wakes. A wild sneeze or two, but no crying he makes. Our grandbabies Miles and Jasper sleep at last like rocks in their beds, and I wish I could too. My older body and often anxious mind refuses to wander like Jasper’s (although I’m working on it), refuses to rejoice over a few sweet words like Miles (working on that too), and so sleep beckons, then recedes. I fall into a dream only to wake again. But the Lord sustains me. And I will not fear, though tens of thousands assail me on every side.
My friend Steve calls this “rejoicing in the complexities of suffering.” I need to read the books he reads. This idea comes from The Grace of Nothingness by Fr. Cassian Koenemann. We talked about the New Mexican “penitents” and their endless beating of their own backs. I suggested Steve might be about ready to build a splintery cross in his garage and take to the St. Louis sidewalks, leaning into the wind. He scoffed. Or did he?
The Pharisees met and cried, “What are we going to do? If we leave this man alone all will believe in him and the Romans (I almost wrote Russians, there) will come and destroy us. But Caiaphas said, “You know nothing. It is better for one man to die instead of the people.” From that day on they planned to kill Jesus.
We ate with Jan at Buca di Beppo (Italian for “my buddy’s basement) today, and finished off our ziti and clam linguine and chicken limone with a Colossal Brownie Sundae that took our breath away. We shared it with a neighbor table, and especially with their happy, thankful daughter, who swung her four braids hanging awfully near that sundae as we left the restaurant.
We took a ride to Community First, a thriving east Austin tiny-house community of formerly homeless men and women, and then a few blocks further to the mile long new Tesla factory. You know, the one where Elon Musk slept in the paint room for two weeks with his right hand helper, both resting lightly on cots for two weeks,  popping up at all hours, both listening for the genius that seems to hover over Elon’s head most of the time.
The factory held its “Cyber Rodeo” grand opening Thursday, with what Musk said “might be the biggest party on earth.” As Lawrence Ferlinghetti said of all of us, but somehow his words apply especially to people like Elon Musk, “And we are perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder …”
I will deliver them from all their sins of apostasy, and cleanse them so that they may be my people and I may be their God.
We had dinner with Jasper and Miles while Andi and Aki went to a drive-in movie, celebrating Andi’s birthday. Bits of chopped antipasto and linguine, salmon cakes, chocolate from the treat bags (Halloween lasts all year at their house) and even a few bites of bread and bagel, then they brushed their teeth, they jumped all over the room and screamed, they slowly settled down into stories.
This story started with a renegade orange eating in the space station, having trouble with gravity at first. The orange began frying flying pancakes, who protested loudly about how hot the pan was, and slowly we realized their names were Andi, and Miles, and Jasper and Aki. The orange had to keep them under control, and they kept asking the orange for mercy, but the orange just fried them on one side and then the other and watched their bubbles slow, and fade, and popped them into a warming pan, one by one, and slammed the lid down on them, and refused to hear their pleas for mercy.
“Hush!” The orange glowered, and frowned, and shouted, and warned them. “What’s wrong with you? You were made for me to eat!” But the tables turned at last, when the orange began scratching his navel, and Mommy, the Queen of All Pancakes, got up her gumption and threw her gravity-less self over the orange and held him down, while the other three made short work of him, peeling him, quartering him, squeezing him and drinking down his juice. He whimpered and pleaded, but to no avail.
“Ah!” Miles smiled at Jasper, and Jasper smiled at Daddy, and Daddy smiled at Mommy. “We got our vitamin C today.”
It was a little awkward for me, falling asleep after a story like that and then waking again on the floor beside Miles’ bed, stretching and reclaiming the ligaments in my back and heading downstairs to wait for our kiddos to get home. Downstairs we had a few bites of pineapple sherbet, because the orange had disappeared somewhere. And we settled into the early hours of Saturday, knowing how close Holy Week is at last, how the crowds will shout hosannas on Sunday and we will join them in spirit, unless this year is different from all the rest.
The people looked for Jesus and said to one another as they stood in the temple area, “What do you think? That he will not come to the feast?”
OF COURSE he is coming to the feast!
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
