Hope Returned at 12:37

The morning star shone brightly

[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.