photo by Collyn Ware

Apple Blossom Time
    --for Gracyn

For months, winter has cast
stern silhouettes upon the land--
such spears and snarls,
twigs and tines
to make the hours weep.
 
Until spring simply opens the world, releasing
baskets of balloons which take the air
with saffron joy.
Until the first sweet blossoms pink the day,
blushing against the cornflower sky.
 
Tomorrow, you will turn eleven.
But for months, you’ve been pruning
the branches of childhood,
making space for something even brighter
in the canopy above.
 
Now, the first blooms begin to peek around
the corners of innocence.
They test the breeze,
their petals pearl with dew.
 
This is apple blossom time,
this liminal space where girlhood smiles
one last rosy smile, and minutes blink
in wonder.
 
This is apple blossom time,
when the world is pinker, softer
 
and you, my darling bud, are lovelier
than you know.
 
 
 
 
 

In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong.
― Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs

As most of us face additional weeks of quarantine, we may feel as though we do, indeed, understand our fellows of the cell. Celled in, sheltered-in-place, cloistered–call it whatever you wish. In the 13th century, St. Francis of Assisi, walked the roads of Italy and joyously proclaimed that [the] whole world is our cloister! Today, the world’s cloister is more of a collective reclusiveness and remoteness.

To cloister means to seclude or shut up in or as if in a convent or monastery. In the photo above, the 11th century Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Greece, one of 24 Meteora monasteries, is a stunning example of a cloister. In Greek, meteora means suspended in the air. This type of suspension–above the earth, cut off from others–is precisely what many of us think of when we consider cloistering. We think of a dramatic retreat from normalcy, a sparsely furnished windowless cell and endless hours of solitude. The Monastery of the Holy Trinity looks like just the place for this kind of retreat. And as remote as it is, it may not seem all that different than the homes we now find ourselves sheltered in.

In his book, The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, Henri Nouwen writes:

We say to each other that we need some solitude in our lives. What we really are thinking of, however, is a time and place for ourselves in which we are not bothered by other people, can think our own thoughts, express our own complaints, and do our own thing, whatever it may be. For us, solitude means privacy . . . We also think of solitude as a staion where we can recharge our batteries, or as the corner of the boxing ring where our wounds are oiled, our muscles messaged, and our courage restored by fitting slogans. In short, we think of solitude as a place where we gather new strength to continue the ongoing competition in life.

As Nouwen suggests, I suspect that many of us regarded our first days of quarantine as welcome–even necessary–recharging. To be cloistered in our homes meant privacy and valued time for ourselves. I remember the first weeks of a summer job I held in college. I cleaned rooms in a small motel and, in the beginning, revelled in the time I had alone in each room. A bottle of Lime Away in hand, I scrubbed and thought, scoured and dreamed. I recall thinking, they’re actually paying me for this? A few weeks into the job, however, I began to dread being alone with my thoughts, for they had run amuk into darker, scarier places, and I couldn’t rein them in. They charged into what ifs that often left me standing on a precipice looking into the worst of my fears. I began to hate being cloistered in those rooms. With each bath tub I scrubbed, I felt as though I was scrubbing away layers of myself, leaving little of worth behind.

Nouwen writes about his own struggles with what he calls transforming solitude, the solitude of the saints. He explains how this type of solitude requires getting rid of scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract me–naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken–nothing. He goes on to explain that it is this nothingness that is so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. Ah yes, I have known–and continue to know–this nothingness.

Our current cloistering doesn’t prohibit us from talking or video-chatting with friends and family, from listening to music, watching television, reading books, and doing whatever we like to do in our homes. Nor does it relieve many from attending meetings (thanks to Zoom). Still, we’re not used to living exclusively at home. And in spite of technology and other means of distraction, we may find ourselves staring into the nothingness that arrives when all else fails to engage us.

Indian writer Amit Kalantri writes that [s]ocial distancing is an opportunity to check if you can tolerate your own company. There are certainly days–like those in my motel-cleaning summer–when I genuinely can’t tolerate my own company. I’d prefer others’ company. I’d prefer to listen to thoughts that are not my own, to immerse myself in the blessed presence of anyone else but me. And yet, I understand that the true nature and value of cloistering is not found in distraction but in contemplation.

In his book, Contemplative Prayer, Thomas Merton writes:

In reality the monk abandons the world only in order to listen more intently to the deepest and most neglected voices that proceed from its inner depth.

We’re not monks, and we certainly haven’t abandoned the world. Still, we have an unprecedented opportunity to listen more intently to those deepest and most neglected voices. That is, we have this time to temporarily abandon the busy, noisy lives we’ve led. We have this time to probe the inner depths of all our lives could–and should–be.

In the past few weeks, I’ve read some amusing posts and seen some funny memes about everyday sweatpants vs. good sweatpants. Today, dressing up might certainly mean breaking out the good sweatpants or leggings. In The Cloister Walk, author Kathleen Norris writes about her time in a monastery:

I could suddenly grasp that not ever having to think about what to wear was freedom, that a drastic stripping down to essentials in one’s dress might also be a drastic enrichment of one’s ability to focus on more important things.

I think Norris is right: when we strip down to essentials in what we wear, we may also be more likely to strip down to essentials in what truly matters–and what does not. For the foreseeable future, we will be fellows of the cell. As we move about our cells with the glorious freedom that only elastic waistbands can afford, may we cloister well.

If I care to listen, I hear a loud whisper from the gospel that I did not get what I deserved. I deserved punishment and got forgiveness. I deserved wrath and got love. I deserved debtor’s prison and got instead a clean credit history. I deserved stern lectures and crawl-on-your-knees repentance; I got a banquet—Babette’s feast—spread for me.
― Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace?

I confess that for much of my life, I didn’t fully understand that there was a banquet, an inconceivable and unprecedented feast, spread before me. I was too busy bellying up to the drive-up windows of what-I-deserved. A little condemnation (extra shame please), a side of paralyzing self-doubt (hold the compassion), and a whole lotta guilt (super-sized). Quite frankly, I didn’t get grace. What was I to make of such a beguiling offer of love and forgiveness? How was I to accept a gift I didn’t deserve? Truly, I deserved crawl-on-your-knees repentance; unmerited favor was surely intended for others.

Recently, I watched the feature film, Just Mercy, which tells the story of Bryan Stevenson, the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Stevenson, a public interest lawyer, has dedicated his life and career to helping all those who need and deserve grace: the poor, the imprisoned, and the condemned on death row. The movie–based on Stevenson’s book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption–focuses primarily on one of Stevenson’s first clients, Walter McMillian, a young black man awaiting death for the murder of a young white woman. McMillan didn’t kill this woman, and there was no evidence to prove that he had, except for the sole testimony of a white felon desperate to get himself a better legal deal. Faced with the seemingly insurmountable odds of challenging a southern justice system that had summarily condemned McMillan and countless other black men, Stevenson perseveres through legal battle after legal battle. Ultimately, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals exonerated McMillan, reversing the lower court decisions and freeing him after six years on death row.

Stevenson writes:

We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others. The closer we get to mass incarceration and extreme levels of punishment, the more I believe it’s necessary to recognize that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and—perhaps—we all need some measure of unmerited grace.

Just Mercy specifically addresses serious flaws in our justice, prison, and social systems. Still, I believe that Stevenson’s admonishment that we all need some measure of unmerited grace is relevant and fitting for everyone. We may neither deserve nor understand it, but most of us yearn for a banquet of love and forgiveness, acceptance and affirmation. We’ve tired of fast food that arrives cold and tasteless. We desperately want something better.

As we celebrate Easter, the feast is before us–year after year. The table of unmerited grace is set, our places reserved. Often, however, we join the ranks of so many throughout history who have struggled with this reality. We’re wage-earners who like to pay our own way. We’re self-made men and women who don’t like to be beholden to anyone. We’re hard workers who want to deserve the gifts we receive. For too many Easters, I didn’t accept my invitation to the banquet. When unmerited grace was offered, I passed, thinking that I’d done so out of humility and a keen sense of justice. How could I stuff my face with forgiveness I didn’t deserve? How could I accept an entrée of love? How could I possibly take even one hors d’oeurve of compassion?

I’m guessing that many of Bryan Stevenson’s clients felt similarly. Faced with years of imprisonment and/or execution, they, too, may have felt as though the banquet invitations they’d received were surely meant for other, more deserving folk. But the strange and glorious news of Easter is simply this: no one deserves a place at the banquet table, and yet all are invited. It is the wonderfully irrational promise of Easter that gives us clean credit histories.

In his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, Philip Yancey writes:

How would my life change if I truly believed the Bible’s astounding words about God’s love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?

Yancey understands the potential power of unmerited grace, how it may truly transform those who accept it and come to see themselves as God does. As we sit down to eat our own Easter banquets, I pray that we might see ourselves as the undeserving but much-loved children of God. And above all, that we might graciously accept the standing invitation to the greatest banquet of all.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. Ephesians 2:8

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
― Winston S. Churchill

Have you ever heard of the Lancastria, a British ocean liner whose sinking resulted in the greatest losses in British maritime history? I’m guessing that most haven’t. I hadn’t until recently as I was reading Erik Larson’s biography of Winston Churchill and family, The Splendid and the Vile.

On June 17, 1940, the RMS Lancastria, requisitioned during Operation Ariel to evacuate British nationals and soldiers two weeks after the Dunkirk evacuation, sank. Bombed by the Germans near the French port of Saint-Nazaire, the Lancastria’s sinking resulted in the British military’s largest loss of life from a single conflict in World War II. More people died from the Lancastria sinking than from the Titanic and Lusitania combined. No one knows exactly how many people died, but death estimates range between 3,500 and 6,500. Some have speculated that the the death toll was even greater. The Lancastria’s occupancy was generally limited to 2,200 with an additional 375 crew members, but 9,000 were crammed on board during Operation Ariel. There were approximately 2,500 survivors.

And yet for five weeks, the British press–under Winston Churchill’s orders of a media blackout–offered no news of this disaster. Only when the late edition of The Scotman published a story featuring claims from the New York Sun newspaper regarding the Lancastria’s sinking did the British government admit that the ship had, indeed, sunk after being bombed by the Germans. In his memoirs, Churchill wrote that he told his staff: The newspapers have got quite enough disaster for today at least. He later admitted that he’d planned to release the news of Lancastria’s sinking a few days later, but that this was Britain’s darkest hour, and the news of France’s surrender crowded upon us so black and so quickly that I forgot to lift the ban.

Churchill’s Minister of Information, Mr. Alfred Duff Cooper, was asked why the Lancastria’s sinking, as well as stories of heroism from British troops on board, were not published in England until weeks after this had been published in the American press. He said:

The reasons for holding the news of the bombing and sinking of the steamship “Lancastria” were the following. This ship was engaged on a military operation, and it was evident from the German wireless announcement that the enemy were totally unaware of the identity of the ship which had been sunk. Further, it is contrary to the general policy of His Majesty’s Government to announce the loss of individual merchant ships. The number and the total tonnage of merchant ships lost is given in a weekly statement. The tonnage of the steamship “Lancastria” was included in the statement issued on 2nd July. This policy is well known, and I cannot, therefore, understand why on this occasion bewilderment should have been caused in Liverpool and shipping circles.

The Lancastria was considered a merchant ship?The total tonnage was reported weekly? In this case, the ship carried people–not merchandise–and the total tonnage was largely made up of human lives. And Cooper couldn’t understand the bewilderment regarding this loss? He undoubtedly did understand the tragic proportions of the Lancastria’s sinking, but as a good soldier whose commander in chief had ordered him to silence–and later to damage control–he spun the story as only those in such positions can. And do.

Mark Hirst, grandson of Walter Hirst, a Lancastria survivor, writes:

The trouble with the story of the Lancastria is it doesn’t fit with the grand narrative of that period – the miraculous evacuation of Dunkirk, and the Battle of Britain.

Like so many stories which have been hidden in the cavernous recesses of history, the Lancastria’s story was largely overlooked and forgotten. And there have been many of those who have commissioned the hiding, who–in the words of Churchill–believed that It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required. Indeed, history is peopled with so many whose justifications have been birthed from and taken refuge in what is required.

I’m not writing to pass judgment but rather to question. In war time–or any crisis–is the truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies? Do we require a bodyguard of lies to protect us from truths so brutal, so colossal that most of us would instantly collapse and be buried under their weight? Do most individuals in power insist, as Colonel Jessup did in the movie A Few Good Men: You can’t handle the truth!?

I’ve written recently about the challenges in identifying the truth. There are just as many challenges, I suspect, in determining if–and when–the whole truth is warranted. Always? Sometimes? Rarely? Just as our worldview determines our definition of truth, it also determines how and when we use it. Did Churchill truly believe that the British people should be protected–at least temporarily–from yet another crushing blow in their darkest hour? Was his decision to hide this from the press more an act of compassion than deceit? Did he fully intend to make this news public but found himself so overwhelmed by the fall of France and its implications for Britain that he simply forgot to lift the media blackout? I’m guessing that the answer to all of these questions is yes.

And yet, the hiding, covering, or spinning of the truth rubs us wrong. Even when we know and trust others, believing their motives to be good, we falter when we discover they’ve lied or concealed something from us. Our trust in them begins to erode, if only through pin pricks in their armor. We feel betrayed, at first, and later frightened. A question grows and gnaws at us: what else don’t we know?

Today, as we shelter in place and watch/listen to/read the emerging news about Covid19, most of us have become weary–and wary. News reports and social media posts circle around us as sharks eyeing chum in the water. And as chum, many of us find ourselves bobbing helplessly in threatening waters, eager to be washed up on some sunnier, safer shore. But the reports, the data, the images keep coming. Government officials, medical and public health experts, scientists and all those with mouthpieces keep talking. Day after quarantined day, we wonder if we’re being told the whole truth or if it’s being spun, modified, or withheld by those, like Churchill and so many others, who may contend that in our darkest hours, the truth may undo us.

Churchill once quipped that [a] lie gets halfway around the world before truth has a chance to get its pants on. Maybe this is our fear: that truth won’t have a fighting chance to get its pants on before lies have changed our lives and written our history. And the reality that those who lie to us may genuinely care for us only confuses and saddens us.

One of my greatest blessings is that I live 50 yards from my grandchildren. We’ve spent many wonderful hours on the swings that hang from the big oak tree in their yard. And even–perhaps especially–in this time of quarantine, there’s nothing like taking to the air in a swing where you can momentarily leave the earth and all its troubles below you.

Swinging
for Griffin

These are feet I know well.
Ten button toes stuffed,
too often, into unnecessary shoes.
 
They’ve walked the path from
your house to mine so many times
that even the creeping charlie has given up
and left a red clay artery to harden
in the sun.
 
Shoeless today, they take to the air,
dangling dreamily from the swing in the big oak,
their bottoms coated with dirt
even before noon.
 
Again, you say.
And I push again with all that I have
because I remember how the swing’s chains would squeak--
then catch--
when I’d gone as high as I could;
when, with each pass,
I took to the sky as a swallow;
when my hair would find the breeze
and I’d close my eyes because it was better this way,
the rising and falling taking my gut
by surprise.
 
I push hard, running beneath you,
hoping to tease the air into taking you further
into the oak boughs,
 
hoping to catch your feet so that I can release you
again.