Easter Wednesday – 2020 – Back Another Way

It is the daily deepening silence which most fosters solitude for us these days, far more than self-isolation itself.  It is Day 24 for us.  Silence, and its companion, solitude, were both abruptly shattered yesterday morning when Rodney, along with his workers Travis and Glenn, drove into the yard, complete with large boom truck, wood chipper, and assortment of chain saws.  It is the time for a major trimming and pruning of many of our cherished trees.

It didn’t take very long for the two of us to see this event – tops of trees gone, huge piles of brush throughout the yard – one could almost feel the pain of the trees – as being another image for COVID-19.  Nothing will be the same again – in our world, in our lives, nor in our yard.  A seemingly heartless pruning without yet knowing the outcome.

Today’s Gospel text is from Luke (24:13 – 35), the Emmaus story, perhaps among the most favorite resurrection appearances.  We read that the day is almost over, and yet, the two disciples, immediately after recognizing the one who was breaking the bread at the table, quickly returned to Jerusalem.    The same 11 kilometers, the same land marks – but how different from the earlier walk.   One immediately thinks of the Magi, returning by a different route at the beginning of the life of Jesus, and now again, for the disciples of the Risen Christ.

Earlier this year, friend Myrna Kostash, writer and regular guest at the house of prayer, sent some Christmas poems along with a care packet of Orthodox spiritual gifts following a trip to Georgia in Eurasia.  One of the poems, “Back Another Way,” written by Mike Biggs and Nancy Matson of London, UK is the following:

Once we straighten up outside the low-beamed door,
And leave the stable where we briefly knelt
Maybe we could all go back another way –

Perhaps avoid the city that we came through
With its lavish and unsatisfying feasts;
Its calendars and calibrations;
Politics encouraging complicity in malice.

Those unexpected shepherds had a way of skirting settlements.
They would pause on hillsides for an angel song – or its faint echo.

We rehearse as much as we can catch of words
That made them catch their breath about a king
Shrinking  small enough to fit a makeshift cradle
With an aim no grander than an ordinary life
And death to dignify all ordinary lives.

Holding that thought, we may find our homeward journey
Finds us kinder and more careful of each other
Till that ordinary king comes back another way.

Thanks for this, Myrna, and for sharing a quote from Michael Gerson, Washington Post:  “Decay is knit into our flesh.  By all appearances the universe is cold, empty and indifferent … This leaves every human being with a choice between despair and longing. Both are reasonable responses to a great mystery.”

His words were written when COVID-19 was something only happening in a rather unknown city in China.

The Magi going home, the two disciples abruptly returning from Emmaus and ourselves post-pandemic,  and also the trees which have become chips for the garden:  back by another way.    - Glenn  -