Great Silence and Great Darkness – Thoughts from the Easter Vigil

Do you ever feel in your life as if you have looked to the cross TOO much?  You have seen so much suffering, so much physical and emotional blood spilled that when it comes time for the Good Friday story of the beating and the death of Christ, you need to look away – look to ANY other corner of this story for compassion?

I offended a great number of my friends in the first half of the 1990s when finally I had had enough, and adamantly reused to go to one more AIDS funeral among my friends, family, acquaintances, co-workers, the guy in the tea house who knew somebody who I’d had a drink with once…. Death all around. It was in the air around us all, with anger and depression and wild activism you would not believe. It was a time when uninformed people riding through the Dupont Circle METRO station in Washington, DC would hold their breath for fear of coming in contact with “IT.”  And like the two presidents in ofice during those days, none of those uptight stick up their backside, rock-ribbed people never even bothered to call out “IT” by its name.

At least the word “cancer” could be whispered, ever-so-softly, with little fear of its appearing in the conversation like Bettlejuice.

In those days, I had to look away from the Cross, from the death and the suffering – to look toward something that my exhausted spirit could cling to, just as Ebenezer Scrooge begged his Future to show him some compassion associated with the un-named death he saw all around.

As I grew older and the world became (slightly more) informed and my focus moved away from losing my friends to AIDS, to loasing my cancer buddies, and losing those moving off from age and various infirmity. My perspective changed and was a bit better at looking up in the face of ultime love, sacrifice, and compassion, if slightly, if for a second.

I found an interest in the story of the two Marys in the Easter  story, and how the side characters had to deal with the Passion of Christ, in the immediacy of the moment.

While I collect my thoughts on what has turned into a great evening of waiting… Of spending quiet, happy hours with friends and family, I sit in the dark stillness of the Easter Vigil, waiting for the sun to rise - trying to close off my thoughts and be ready for the Great Getting-Up Morning that is Easter.

Tonight, though, as we wait in the darkness, my spirit becomes tired again, and I want to look away from the Cross both out of habit, and of fear that I have to sit through one more “dark time.”

How much more darkness, Lord, will there be?

That Feeling will pass. Life is what it is. Dark nights, Sunny Days. Rain and Cloudless skies. All of that…
 along with being able to look straight-on into this most silent, most fearful of nights, that Feeling is wound up in who and what we are.

And what we hold as the Truth.

While sorting through my Saturday and filing away the memories of the  grandness of it all, Isit now in the darkness, thinking of Mary, Jesus’ Mom.

I can’t add words of explanation beyond what Bruce Springsteen says in his song,

Jesus Was an Only Son

Vigils cannot last forever. We won’t always live in the stressful circle of anticipation of things that (until we see the Truth) we can only imagine.

Watchman! Tell us:
What of the night?
What of the night?

The watchman answers:
The morning cometh…

And also the night.

Keep the faith!

“Jesus Was An Only Son”
Lyrics

Jesus was an only son
As he walked up Calvary Hill
His mother Mary walking beside him
In the path where his blood spilled

Jesus was an only son
In the hills of Nazaree
As he lay reading the Psalms of David
At his mother's feet

A mother prays, "Sleep tight, my child, sleep well
For I'll be at your side
That no shadow, no darkness, no tolling bell,
Shall pierce your dreams this night"

In the garden at Gethsemane
He prayed for the life he'd never live,
He beseeched his Heavenly Father to remove
The cup of death from his lips

Now there's a loss that can never be replaced,
A destination that can never be reached
A light you'll never find in another's face,
A sea whose distance cannot be breached

Well Jesus kissed his mother's hands
Whispered, "Mother, still your tears,
For remember the soul of the universe
Willed a world and it appeared."

Tags: compassion, guidance, Jesus, Lent, Video