[This is a continuation of the two previous posts for Holy Week, one on Maundy Thursday and one on Good Friday.]

How it came to be that hope —or a kind of hope —returned to me that Easter morning so long ago, at 12:37a.m., I cannot explain. The moment was shocking, subtle, disarming, and out of the blue all at the same time. I was having toast and milk in my kitchen to beat back insomnia. I put my dishes in the sink and turned the corner and was walking around the bar stool to my right, shuffling my cold feet across the wood floor toward the stairway. Then something lifted. The thought came, Maybe the suffering will end. Maybe, even, happiness will come. Why exclude it as a possibility?

For, you see, the most wretched, helpless and terrifying aspect of the journey into the Dark Night is the weight of it and the feeling it will never end. That is why the moment something lifted, whatever it was, so shocked me. I did not swoon. My head did not spin. But relief came. It was as simple as that. I felt the onus had been lifted off me, and that even my life was not beyond the reach of joy.

This was the point of the journey, to return to Chesterton’s metaphor, where the descent reached its nadir and I stepped across the invisible line that transferred the process to an upward incline.

Hope of a kind returned to me at 12:37a.m. and nudged me into believing that it could be that God himself has dreams for me. It could be that the ache of loss, disorientation, and even hopelessness I was carrying these many months was God himself praying through it to effect his will, his deepest longings. Maybe it was his ache. Who knows? Why count it out?

The moment seemed to say, ‘Life will come back to you. You will live.’ I would have welcomed further clarification — terms, you know. But it was sufficient to have been given that much: You have been dead and now you will live. Life will return to you.

I didn’t know what it meant by “life” and I didn’t know when or how the returning to it would unfold for me. I thought I might issue a request. Then I thought, the less I have to say about how life returns to me probably the better off everyone would be.

*

The worship service Easter morning opened with trumpets. The woman whose feet I’d washed wore dainty silver slippers. A woman sitting next to me wore purple velour and kindly pointed out to me the page number for the opening hymn. Her hands trembled when she sang. She rocked left and right. During the doxology she raised her palms, arms bent at the elbows, and bowed her head at the part that says, “praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

I was remembering a dream I’d had. It had to do with a funeral taking place in what looked like an old but refined luxury hotel with bell-hops and brass elevators. In the “lobby” I saw a coffin high on a bier, the lid open and the corpse wrapped in cloth, like a mummy. People came over and started to lift the coffin and carry it to the sanctuary for the funeral. I remember feeling sad seeing the body wrapped like that, being lifted and carried for the funeral.

I was looking at the mummy and saw something move. Then it moved again and turned and twisted. Soon I saw hair, brownish-auburn, and then a round ruddy face of a woman. She wore her hair short with curls. She had been dead, wrapped in linens and in fact was being carried into her own funeral when life returned and she moved her head and wriggled free from the linens that had enshrouded her. Her face was neither anguished, nor sublime. Maybe a little confused.

The rector preached that Sunday morning, saying, “Something very dramatic, beyond explanation, occurred that first Easter that influenced the course of the world. All of us have had our own crucifixion times when we were backed into a corner with no where to turn and no hope for tomorrow. It is called the dark night of the soul, when we are holding on to — or being held up by — a thin thread of grace.”

The woman in purple velour knelt beside me in the pew. She rocked front and back, putting her hand on her heart when we sang, Alleluia. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast. Alleluia.

I went to the rail to receive the body and the blood of Christ, and the rector pressed a wafer in my cupped hands. The body of Christ, the bread of heaven. My older friend, the one who had washed my feet on Maundy Thursday, was the chalice bearer that day. She smiled as she lowered the chalice. “Wendy, this is the blood of Christ, the hope of salvation.” I held back my tears. Returning to the pew I kneeled. ‘O God, let your light reach my darkest place. Let your mercies come. Let them rise with your holy purpose.’

The woman whose feet I’d washed left the service with wet eyes, as I did. We’d sung a hymn of praise to the power of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and, singing it, I knew that it was so—really knowing it for the first time in many years. A kind of hope had returned to me at 12:37a.m.; I could not say a hope for what. I knew only that in this life there was a time to die and a time to live and I’d sensed, by the mercies of God and by the clock that signaled 12:37, that the journey had changed course and that I would not die, but live. Augustine called the process, “laboring under the pain of the new life that was taking birth.” This Resurrection Day heaven and earth together rose and the morning star brightly shone, the Red Sea opened and the people were delivered from their gloom. The woman in my dream wearing death linens turned her head. Her cheeks were red. Her hair hadn’t lost its curls. She awoke from death, bewildered but alive.

I had no prayers left to pray. No deaths left to die. No prayers, no deaths, only trust. The last best highest devotion came by the low road, along the hard way. O God, may it please you to comfort and relieve those distressed in mind, body, or estate; give them patience under their sufferings and a happy issue out of all their afflictions. May their last best highest devotion not be in vain. Let your mercies come, Good Father, clothed in splendor, gold, silver, bronze, blue and purple and scarlet, a finely woven linen.

Continuing the reflections of the first Holy Week of my post-divorce life so many years ago (see previous post), when Good Friday came around, I had made the decision not to attend the service on that day, being weary of death themes. (Good Friday on the Christian calendar marks the day Jesus’ earthly life ended when he expired on the cross. It is the saddest day of the year for Christians.) Instead, I rented a movie called Signs. It starred Mel Gibson, who played a struggling ex-priest who’d abandoned his calling after the untimely death of his wife. It involved crop circles and the invasion of aliens. The ex-priest —Mel Gibson — lived on a farm with his two young children and his younger brother, played by Joachim Phoenix. One day, the children started sensing the presence of something unusual—aliens, it turned out, and crop circles appeared in the corn fields. The terror they evoked reduced Mel Gibson to becoming (once again) a praying man. Only with God’s help could he and his family (and the world) be saved, and it was.

The movie felt contrived. I felt no terror watching it. It did, nonetheless, lend me a moment to imagine myself being led into the darkness with Jesus holding my hand the way Mel Gibson took his little girl’s hand when the aliens threatened to harvest her soul. Jesus went before me, holding my hand, and Mel Gibson went before his little girl. Sometimes my heart spasmed and I couldn’t breathe. Sometimes my soul buckled in on itself. Then he carried me.

I imagined aliens arriving, my soul buckling in on itself, and the worst —the worst—that could happen was that I would die alone. Aliens would come with their crop circles and shadow people’s doorways and hide in people’s pantries, the way they hid in Mel Gibson’s pantry. They would terrorize towns and nations and CNN would cover it. People would be harvested—empty shells of human remains left behind á la Jerry Jenkins (get it?). I’d be alone in my home when the end of the world would come. I’d be in my soft green bowl chair, the one I bought at Pier 1 for $79. I’d die alone and wouldn’t fear aliens because a woman with nothing to lose had nothing to fear and, who knows? I may never be found because the world would be ending everywhere and people might not think to call. I’d die in my home with “0” on my message machine. When the world would end, I’d be alone in my house and the moment of death would end all fears and I wouldn’t remember the feeling of dying alone, nor would I have to keep thinking about living alone because I would have already faced the Worst Case Scenario. Thinking of it (for once) didn’t make me cry.

Then, on Sunday morning at 12:37a.m., I passed from death to life. Hopelessness awoke to possibility. (To be continued.)

The evening of Maundy Thursday commemorates the last night of our Lord’s life. “Maundy” originated from the Latin mandautam, which means “command.” Jesus left us a command that night, embodied in the words, “Take. Eat. Do this in my remembrance.”

I attended a service on Maundy Thursday, years ago, which carried great meaning for me. It was the first Holy Week of my post-divorce life and I was tentative and raw emotionally.

I entered the dimly lit sanctuary where two glowing candles adorned the altar. All crosses were shrouded in red linens. The service commenced and the rector prayed, “Mercifully grant that we may receive the sacrament thankfully, in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge.”

We sang:

                  “He split the hard rocks in the wildness
                   and gave them drink as from the great deep.
                   He brought streams out of the cliff
                   and the waters gushed out like rivers.
                   But they went on sinning against him,
                   rebelling in the desert against the Most High.
                   They tested God in their hearts,
                   demanding food for their craving.”

Sitting in the darkened sanctuary amid shrouded crosses and slow-burning candles, I felt something of Jesus’ death close in on me. He’d asked his friends to stay with him and pray, but they fell asleep. He went out alone and prayed, nose to the ground, tortured and weeping.

It was the only time he’d hedged. He asked if there might not be another way. He knew there wasn’t, but had to ask. He loosened the knot that tied him up inside—only a groan could free it—then he rose to meet his fate.

Did the aching leave him? Did the dread and indecision retreat? They struck him when he was down. They demeaned and humiliated him. What else could they do to the One who had laid bare their consciences?

He went to the darkness alone. And that night, I sensed he was asking me to follow, to take his hand and go with him into the darkness because that was the only way through to the other side, to life.

At that service, attendants brought out bowls and poured water into them and put them on the floor with towels. The rector invited any who were inclined to rise and come to the front and have their feet washed and to wash another’s feet.

Why did the Lord leave such commands? Why did he make it so hard to follow? I’d be embarrassed, waiting in the front pew, looking, wondering if anyone would notice I’d come. Who would wash my feet? Whose feet would I wash? How do you do it?

I rose and walked forward and sat. Then I saw a friend, an older woman who’d found me during my first visits to that church and then owned my situation immediately in her heart. She came forward with a 93-year-old man named Sefton, who rang the church bell each Sunday before the service, rain or shine. My friend said, “You sit and wait while I wash Sefton’s feet and he washes mine. Then I’ll wash yours.”

She kneeled and lowered his bony foot into the water. Sefton put a hand on her shoulder. She poured water over the tops and around the heels and between the toes. She wrapped each foot in a towel, one at a time, and worked it dry.

Then Sefton kneeled. He needed help getting down. My friend sat in the pew while he washed her feet. Then he sat near me and waited while she kneeled a second time, lifting my feet to the water, hands pouring wetness over and under and between the toes. She dried them one at a time.

I stood to return to my pew and saw a dainty woman in a yellow spring dress sitting and waiting alone, probably wondering, as I’d wondered, who would wash her feet. I knelt by her and took the basin and lifted her feet into the water. They were delicate feet, pointy, like a ballerina’s. I poured water the way my friend had done with mine, and dried them one at a time. We stood. I embraced her. She said, “What should I do now?”

“You can sit down,” I said. “My feet have already been washed.”

The rector read from the Prayer Book: “The Lord Jesus, after he had supped with his disciples and had washed their feet, said to them, ‘Do you know what I, your Lord and Master, have done to you? I have given you an example that you should do as I have done.”

The people responded, “Peace is my last gift to you, my own peace I now leave with you; peace which the world cannot give, I give you.”

We sang. Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

I didn’t join in at first. I heard myself say, No, I wasn’t there. What did it look like? What did it sound like? What did it smell like?

I imagined the smell of lentils and wine, of cinnamon and fire and sweat and dirty feet. I pictured wetness in people’s eyes, though I imagined the seeing wasn’t as bad as the smelling or the hearing. I imagined voices, the clatter of stones. Weeping and spitting and rattling sounds. The beating of a stick. A hiccup. A whisper. “Ha!” A groan. Eloi Eloi.

I pictured a hill and a sign, a hyssop branch and a purple robe and a sponge and a flinty spear — accoutrements that went with the spectacle. I imagined the hillside smelling of pottage and smoke and burning fat and the sweetness of myrrh. And bodily smells, sweat, waste, blood, the blending of the foul with the sweet. Seeing, I imagine, wasn’t the point.

Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?

I wasn’t. But I’m here now. I’m thinking about it.

We read Psalm 22, the first line of which Jesus lamented as he neared death.

My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?
Why do you remain so distant?
Why do You ignore my cries for help?
Every day I call to you, my God, but You do not answer.
Every night you hear my voice, but I find no relief.
My life is poured out like water.
All my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax, melting within me.
My strength has dried up like unbaked clay.
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
You have laid me in the dust and left me for dead.
My enemies surround me like a pack of dogs;
an evil gang closes in on me.
They have pierced my hands and feet.
I can count every bone in my body.
My enemies stare at me and gloat.
They divide my clothes among themselves
and throw dice for my garments.

In the silence of that dark sanctuary, after the service had ended, people started stripping the altar. The candles went out and were carried off. The palm branches, red shrouds over crosses, the red altar covering — all were taken away, as were the crosses themselves, save one. It stood alone on the table, the red cloth replaced with black. Everything was gone except that one black-shrouded cross. The silence, the emptiness, the darkness, the heaviness of all the sadness in the world closed in.

What was my greatest fear? Lay it down in the darkness where he laid down his fear. My deepest, most intimate, tortured, unresolved heartbeat must go into the darkness and die where he died. The nails went through his wrists and life was wrung out of his beating heart. His aching had been long gone. My aching made me ready to receive this death. I had to feel it as he felt it, defenseless, vulnerable. Lay it down. Put it where he died. Take it to his death.

Take my hand. I’ll follow you. Only take my hand.

Please Note: I will be putting the publishing of The Warrior King on hold as we enter into Holy Week on the Christian calendar. 

Palm Sunday, celebrated the week before Resurrection Sunday, highlights the occasion of Jesus’ final entrance into Jerusalem before his death, when crowds turned out to greet him with palm fronds. It was the day chosen by Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) when his beloved Clare of Assisi (1192-1258) would sneak out of her family home at night, run through the fields below the town, and leave her family forever to follow Francis till the day she died. Both Francis and Clare were revolutionaries in this regard: he, by championing the first monastic order for women; she, by running through the fields to claim it. Rather than marry into wealth and royalty, as was her destiny as part of the house of Offreduccio, she chose poverty—and Francis. The early sources create a stunning, sometimes shocking, depiction of the dramatic events surrounding Clare’s choice to leave her family and follow Francis. It was an event that sent tremors through Assisi at the time, and its impact remains to this day.

The noblewomen of the house of Offreduccio—including Clare, her mother, and two sisters—attended mass together in Assisi on that Palm Sunday in March, sometime between the years 1210 and 1212. Clare would have been sitting on the bench with them, wearing her most elegant attire. It was a festive occasion on which noble women showed off their most extravagant fashions.

A 14th century German altar piece (and the cover of my biography of Saint Francis) shows Clare receiving the palm from the Bishop, with Francis waiting in the wings to cut her hair. (Tonsure.) On this particular day, however, while her mother and sisters advanced to the altar, Clare remained in her place weeping. The presiding bishop, Guido, took note of the disconsolate young woman alone on the bench, tears tracking down her cheeks. Departing from church protocol, he left the platform and went to her to extend a palm branch, which she accepted. She deemed it his signal of assent to the life-altering choice she was about to make.

That night, after dark, Clare put on her walking shoes. She cloaked herself to face the bracing night winds off Mount Subasio and, loosening the iron bolt from a hidden door in the family home— known as the death door (from which bodies of deceased family members would be removed from the home for burial)— she slipped away from her childhood home, never to return. “Embarking on her long-desired flight,” as one source described it, Clare would have skirted through Assisi’s dimly lit alleys to escape through the southern gate that opened on to the plain below town, where Francis awaited her.

Clare’s blood sister Beatrice, who would later join her in penitential vows, attested in the testimonies related to Clare’s canonization investigation that her sister left the family at the urging of Francis. “He went to her many times, so that the virgin Clare acquiesced, renounced the world and all earthly things and went to serve God as soon as she was able.” Francis, along with a few of his brothers, met Clare in the plain with torches and a plan. Exhausted, mud-splattered, and flushed, Clare followed him to his dwelling, the small church he had rebuilt called the Portiuncola. There, he cut her hair.

The following days would prove harrowing for Clare and Francis. After her tonsure, Francis took her to a Benedictine convent called San Paolo, approximately four kilometers west of Assisi near the River Chiagio. She was to remain there temporarily under the protection of the sisters until Francis could secure her permanent dwelling. When light broke on Monday morning, Clare’s family discovered that she was gone. Outraged, they dispatched knights and relatives to retrieve her—by force, if need be. Her sister Beatrice recounts that these emissaries went to the convent at San Paolo and attempted to drag Clare out. “Clare grabbed the altar cloths and uncovered her head, showing them she was tonsured.” With that, the family despaired of her and gave her up to Francis. The commotion with the knights and relatives violated the rules of asylum that had been granted to Benedictine sisters, and the tumult compelled Francis to remove Clare promptly from San Paolo. He then took her to another convent, east of Assisi along the slope of Mount Subasio, called Sant’Angelo di Panzo.

A little more than two weeks after her departure, Clare’s blood sister Catherine (later called Agnes) joined her there. The Legend of Saint Clare notes:

Embracing her with joy, [Clare] said, ‘I thank God, most sweet sister, that he has heard my concern for you.’ The next day, hearing Agnes had gone off to Clare, twelve men, burning with anger and hiding outwardly their evil intent, ran to the place and pretended to make peaceful entrance. They turned to Agnes, since they had long ago lost hope of reclaiming Clare, and said, “Why have you come to this place? Get ready to return immediately.” When she responded that she did not want to leave her sister Clare, one of the knights, without sparing blows and kicks, tried to drag her away by her hair, while the others pushed her and lifted her in their arms.

According to the Legend (a Legend is a medieval biography written with a bias toward the holy aspects of the subject), they carried Agnes along the slope of the mountain, still tearing her clothes and pulling out her hair, casting them aside along the path. Clare followed them, beseeching them on her sister’s behalf, and finding her sister near death on the ground alongside the road. How (and if) Clare convinced them to leave her is not known. But no one knows how long she took to recover after being left along the road. In time, however, Francis tonsured her, too, and soon established Clare and her sister at the place he had intended for them all along—the small church he rebuilt called San Damiano. Thus with blows, wounds, tears, and blood, Clare’s life as a follower of Francis commenced on Palm Sunday, which is oddly reminiscent of the events that unfolded for Jesus himself, after he entered Jerusalem that day, heralded by waving palms.

This coming year marks a milestone birthday for me, as I will have completed seven decades on this earth. By this point, “New Year’s Resolutions” (at least for me) take on a differing hue. Some age-old aspirations still hold true, devotion to which is worthy to be renewed year to year. Other aspirations take a deeper view that is not so much anchored in day-to-day living but in the hard work of clarifying one’s interior vision. I’ve included below a few such aspirations, some anchored in matters of this world and others probing the deeper and higher world:

1. Don’t judge people. In the age of social media, it is alarming to observe the speed with which a badly-worded post or an unpopular position can derail someone’s entire career, if not their life. Is this how we want to live? Let us resolve to be measured, patient, grace-filled, and to eschew knee-jerk judgmentalism.

2. Try to keep going. There are trials and struggles enough in life enough to suck the soul out of anybody. For those of us who are Christians, it is helpful to remind ourselves that the one we (seek to) represent is Jesus. His way of loving and engaging is our mandate and often pushes us into new territory that is alien and hard. Keep trying. He is near. His angels will help you.

3. Be kind. The holidays especially magnify any given person’s soul struggle. Many silent tears are shed. This fast and difficult world is full of reminders of loss, bombardments, false promises and impossible standards. Let us take one another by the hand. God knows all things. And He is kind. Let us not presume to know. Let us be kind, like God.

4. Quiet acts of goodwill done out of love dispel darkness. Pope Benedict XVI wrote once, “evil is noisier than goodness.” He added, “Acts of love and service, the daily effort sustained with fidelity and patience are often left in the dark and pass unnoticed.” If we wish to understand and engage this world, he said, we must be able to “pause in silence, in meditation, in calm prolonged reflection” and go forward in actions that reflect light, not darkness. This work will help us find healing from the wounds of day-to-day life.

5. Strive to do well whatever you’ve been called to do. With respect for your humanity and without expecting impossible perfection, always keep in your heart the blessed sentiment, “Sentite de Deo in bonitate” (“Think of God in a spirit of good;” Wisdom 1:1): God is with you, he is near, he desires good for you, he loves you.

May God’s grace and light cover and sustain you in this coming new year.

I wrote a longer version of this reflection years ago for Christianity Today, and often reflect upon it during the holiday season. It is a reminder that “the Christmas story” also includes disruption and tragedy.

Much drama played out at the time of Jesus’ birth, particularly as depicted in Matthew’s gospel narrative. There, the story juxtaposes stark contrasts: stars and swords; majestic kingly visitations and twisted kingly agitation; children who die and the child who gets away. Mary rejoicing, Rachel weeping. Yet how do we reconcile this glorious birth of a savior with the bloody death of those innocent boys?

Herod, who was the Roman client king of Judea at the time of Jesus’ birth, got word that royal visitors were passing through the region and called for a private meeting. The Magi, as they are denoted in the gospel, were not necessarily kings and there may not have been three of them, but were, in any case, wise. Skilled astronomers and members of a priestly caste who may have been Zoroastrian, they were industrious, courageous, and truth-seekers from present-day Iran or thereabouts. One biblical historian suggests that they left Persia late in 3 B.C. directed by an astronomical phenomenon and arrived in late 2 B.C., when Jesus was a toddler. Herod learned from these “wise men” the time when an unusual star first appeared indicating the birth of someone destined to be a king, and he told them to “go to Bethlehem and search carefully for the child. And when you find him, come back and tell me so that I can go and worship him, too!” After this interview the wise men went their way and finally “entered the house and saw the child with his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him.” By this time the child and his family were ensconced in a house (Matt. 2:10) and Herod calculated that the child could have been born up to two years earlier.

When these kingly visitors departed, “they returned to their own country by another route, for God had warned them in a dream not to return to Herod.” As a result of this slight, “Herod was furious when he realized that the wise men had outwitted him. He sent soldiers to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, based on the wise men’s report of the star’s first appearance (Matt 2: 7-9; 11-12; 16). Joseph was warned about this in a dream and escaped to Egypt with his wife and son before the slaughter commenced.

It was well-known at the time that Herod suffered from “distemper,” which the historian Josephus said “greatly increased upon him after a severe manner.” This topped off his well-attested paranoiac ravings, which had already driven him to command that his wife be executed, along with his two promising sons. This man “of great barbarity towards all men equally” had been confirmed “King of the Jews” in 40 B.C. by the Roman senate. Little wonder, then, that at this decrepit stage of life he was in no mood to hear word of one “born king of the Jews.”

Matthew summons the ghost of Rachel, quoting the prophet Jeremiah in his lament, to express the grief of these mothers:

“A cry of anguish is heard in Ramah— and weeping unrestrained. Rachel weeps for her children, refusing to be comforted— for her children are dead” (Jeremiah 31:15, NLT).

Ramah was where the Jews gathered before they were carried off to Babylon. There, Jeremiah cites Rachel’s weeping as God’s own lament over the loss of his children. Rachel herself died in sorrow as she gave birth to her second son, naming him Ben-Oni (”son of my trouble”); she died “on the way” (to Bethlehem), never securing a permanent home. Rachel was not comforted and this became God’s chosen metaphor for the apogee of anguish: the picture of a mother weeping for her lost children.

Ivan Karamazov, in Feodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, echoes the sentiment as the intellectual agnostic who poses a question to his spiritually sensitive brother, Alyosha: “But then, what about the children? How will we ever account for their sufferings?”

Ivan acknowledges that thinking adults may “have eaten from their apple of knowledge; they know about good and evil and are gods themselves. And they keep eating the apple.” But, he says, “little children haven’t eaten it.

“How is it possible to atone for them?” he asks. “If the suffering of little children is needed to complete the sum total of suffering required to pay for the truth, I don’t want that truth, and I declare in advance that all the truth in the world is not worth the price.

“We cannot afford to pay so much for a ticket,” he says. “And so I hasten to return the ticket I’ve been sent. . . . It isn’t that I reject God; I am simply returning him most respectfully the ticket that would entitle me to a seat.”

Perhaps if the mothers of Bethlehem understood that the birth of a savior would cost the lives of their sons they might have returned their tickets, too.

It could be argued—in a twisted way—that it might have been more “just” if Joseph and Mary’s son had perished with the rest of the boys. Thus, the question would have been resolved: Why did God save him and not all?

But those of us who claim faith in the gospel must be willing to look at these kinds of movements with searching eyes, and gospel logic often makes little sense. Gospel logic asserts that the one who got away is the ticket that Ivan handed back to God.

Jesus had to escape Herod’s decree in order to face the day when the angels would not intervene and when Joseph would not whisk him away; the day when Mary, not Rachel, would weep and would not be comforted.

The Lord and His Prayer, author N. T. Wright writes that when Jesus delivered us from evil, he went “solo and unaided into the whirlpool [of evil], so that it may exhaust its force on him and let the rest of the world go free.” Jesus, in the end, was the one “who was not delivered from evil.”

Rachel’s lament in the book of Jeremiah, concludes optimistically: “Do not weep any longer, for I will reward you. Your children will come back to you.”

In its fullness God’s portrait of grief—the weeping mother—is overruled by the picture of children returning: “See, I will give a signal to the godless nations. They will carry your little sons back to you in their arms; they will bring your daughters on their shoulders” (Isaiah 49:22, NLT). Terror too is part of the Christmas narrative. For all the twists in the story, and for all its crushing contrasts, it ultimately is the story, as Wright notes, of “when darkness breaks with the human cry of a small baby, blinking up at his Mother in the sudden light, and seeing her face.”

In the upcoming issue of the magazine of which I am the editor, Ex Fonte, we explore the unseen world of our celestial friends and enemies—angels, saints, and (alas) demons. In preparing this issue, as I’ve pondered the place of angels in the intersection of the life of a person of faith, I was reminded of Frederick Buechner’s enchanting novel, On the Road with the Archangel,* a book that carries special meaning for me especially at Christmas.

During the last Christmas we shared as a family, when my sons were grown but still living at home, I told them that the only gift I wanted that year was to read them a story aloud, the way I used to when they were little. They groaned and rolled their eyes. I pressed my case in financial terms, and when they realized this arrangement would absolve them of spending time and money running around on Christmas Eve looking for something to get me, they saw the blessing. I chose Buechner’s above-mentioned book. We gathered around the dinner table or in the living and I’d read aloud with my husband and three adult sons.

They came to call it “Buechner time.” I’d descend the stairs, book in hand, and one son would call out, “Who’s ready for Buechner?” Another would say, “It’s Buechner time!” And so “Buechner time” was my sons’ Christmas gift to me, but it was also a mother’s trick to give my sons the greater blessing. I suppose I wanted to re-live the fleeting remembrance of what it felt like to have my sons gathered around me, like when they were small. I knew it wouldn’t last, and it didn’t. Nothing lasts. Your childhood doesn’t last, nor your adolescence, nor your children’s toddlerhood, nor their adolescence. The mud their friends track in doesn’t last. The potato chips don’t, nor does the hissing and recoiling when all you’ve got left is the silence.

In the book, the narrator and main character is the archangel Raphael who had the responsibility to carry the prayers of “of all who pray and of those who don’t even know they’re praying,” and present them to the Holy One:

“Some prayers I hold out as far from me as my arm will reach, the way a woman holds a dead mouse by the tail when she removes it from the kitchen,” he said. “Some, like flowers, are almost too beautiful to touch, and others so aflame that I’d be afraid of their setting me on fire if I weren’t already more like fire than I am like anything else.”

One son questioned the theological soundness of the idea: “I thought Jesus was supposed to carry our prayers.”

I responded, “It’s fiction. Let’s go with the imagination.”

“There are prayers,” continued Raphael, “of such power that you might almost say they carry me rather than the other way around. . . . There are prayers so apologetic and shamefaced and halfhearted that they all but melt away in my grasp like sad little flakes of snow. Some prayers are very boring.”

Over the course of my life, I imagine I’ve uttered prayers that could fit into every one of those categories. I chose Buechner’s book to read that Christmas because the hidden gift I wanted to give my sons was the knowledge that, whatever kinds of prayers we utter, not matter how wretched, half-hearted, or small, God hears them. I wanted them to know that, as sure as they gathered around me for Buechner time, which did not last, the prayers they pray as they gather around God’s throne —perhaps assisted by the archangel—do last. I’ve learned through the struggles of this life, through my thoughts, my prayers, and my dreams, and with the help of delivering angels, that for all the fleetingness of life’s passages, one thing does last: our dreams, our holiest prayers, the ones that, I believe, carry Raphael to heaven rather than the other way around.

* * *

*Buechner’s book is a fictionalized interpretation of The Book of Tobit, a deuterocanonical text included in the Catholic and Orthodox Old Testament but regarded as apocryphal by Protestants.

A version of this reflection will appear in the next issue of Ex Fonte coming out in late January. Learn more about the magazine and go here to subscribe.

I always remember my father in a special way during the Christmas season. Now that I am older and alone, I am especially moved when playing music box music. My father loved music boxes and was always playing these magical tunes during my childhood Christmases. Music box music always puts me in a mind to remember my father and especially so at Christmas.

Upon his death in 1995, my father left a letter for the family to be opened after he died. In it, he said (among other things) that if he had any say in it, he’d like to visit us every Christmas Eve in the area around the North Star.

I’ve looked at the North Star every Christmas Eve since then and have never once sensed him or felt him, though, admittedly, I didn’t know quite what to look for. Yet—it must be said—that the Christmas Eve immediately after he died, my brother went to the lighthouse on the beach on Sanibel Island, where my parents had lived, and looked at the North Star and he saw a shooting star. He said that it felt like Dad was telling us—I’m doing great! — and we were greatly consoled.

Yet, for me, over time, every time I’d look and not see him, I would decide I wasn’t going to look again. But then I’d think, sure as I don’t, that’ll be the year he shows up!

There was one Christmas Eve a few years ago that was bitterly cold and I remembered my father’s hope to visit us at the North Star. Being bitterly cold and late at night, part of me preferred the warmth of my bed. But this night, I put on my winter coat and boots and walked outside looking over the night sky. I wandered to the back of the house where it would be darker. The frozen ground crunched under foot and I turned and twisted my head looking for the Big Dipper knowing it would, in turn, point me to the North Star. It was a clear night and stars could be seen. Yet, try as I might, I couldn’t orient my gaze in a way that enabled me to see the Big Dipper. I saw what I thought might’ve been the glimmering North Star, but wasn’t sure.

After some time, I returned to the warmth of my room. The music box music was still playing quietly and my heart welled up with sorrow remembering my father and missing him. In my heart, I apologized to him for not being more attentive when he spoke to my then-young sons of “Christmas magic” and “Santy Claus” (as he called him), regretting how I asserted a pietistic attitude that, as Christians, we focus on Christ at Christmas and not Santa Claus. This lonely night, I was sorry for that. I wished I had possessed more mirth about it. For I have come to believe that there is some hidden in magical force behind all the hopes that arise in human hearts at Christmas; it is why children are exceedingly happy and joy-filled this time of year and why many adults are cast down, depressed, and sorrowful. Something real is pressing upon us and, for me, it has taken a lifetime — and the birth of my grandchildren — to perceive the evanescent hint of that magic.

Amid this moment of regret, I heard my father whisper to me, Do not spend another minute in such sorrow. There is such glory that awaits you. These transient tears waste your time and drain your soul. Be of good cheer! A wonder of great splendor awaits you and we will rejoice in it together.

During this season when hearts are warmed, parties abound, singing and candlelight services evoke sentimental themes, remember the ones who are not present. There might be an inclination on the part of some to curl lips in a scowl or shake a head at the party-pooper, wondering how a person of fellowship and good faith could opt out of the festive communion. The answer, if not obvious, is simple: for some, it is simply too painful to join the merriment of Christmas. For those whose hearts are aching or torn or dismayed or grief-stricken, consider that Christmas only amplifies such sorrows which, for the majority of days under standard rhythms and obligations are normally held in check. The holiday season blows up all that, and emotional ballast is interrupted and much pain arises even from merriment.

So remember the absent. Don’t lay upon them the burden of your expectations. Christmas is such a glorious, mysterious, joy-filled and hopeful time of year — which is why for those whose hopes have been lost and whose hearts ravaged, the wonder of the season lays upon them an added layer of fragility.