Long thread on Holy Saturday, but it's one of the most stunning stories in my life:
One ago my best friend got divorced. Her marriage died under the blade of her spouse's choice to turn away. Our culture has no way of grieving losses like divorce or abuse or the death of dreams
So Mish decided she needed a witness.
She asked few of us women who are closest to her to plan a marriage funeral. Women—because like the women who were faithful witnesses to Christ's death, women have historically been the ones who prepare bodies for burial.
We became the witnesses of the death of her marriage. We honored the body of the union that died. We made space—together—for the hopelessness of being abandoned.
Jesus's story shows us that those who are faithful to witness death become those who are the first to witness resurrection.
This is the dark day when,
if we are courageous enough to see the tomb,
we begin to realize grief is a womb.
We could sequester ourselves away from our fears behind locked doors like the disciples. Or, we could walk with the women who were willing to look death in the face.
Today is the bad day that becomes good in the gathering, walking to the tomb, choosing spices and perfumes to wrap Jesus’s dead body in honor.
If we walk with the women,
we can realize in our own darkest moments of complete shock and betrayal and hopelessness that
It is only in
bearing witness to death
that we begin to rise.
This week Mish bought her first house. Last night we gathered around her table and sat in wonder of how in honoring the death in her life, God made *her* into a home for hope. These last two years, we witnessed resurrection.
But
it started
with bearing witness
to death.
• • •
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As an adult, perhaps like many of you, my spiritual imagination was shattered by pastors who believed themselves to be above serving the smallest. But today, on Maundy Thursday, as I put my feet up after vacation where we walked miles + miles, I remembered I have a better story.
When I was a girl, we'd observe Maundy Thursday in a circle at church, kneeling to wash each other's feet. In the quiet, we'd encircle ourselves in the story of a God who was not above washing his followers' grimy feet before serving them the Passover meal before his death.
Grown men would stoop to wash the feet of elderly widows. Friends would wash the feet of friends. No stinky feet disqualified a soul from receiving care. No foot left that sanctuary unwashed.
I remember my pastor kneeling down in front of me, asking if he could wash my feet...
Thoughts on John Crist + our adoration of people we later learn are abusive:
There is a reciprocal relationship between consumerism and abuse. People who treat others as objects become less human. +
There are people you love—writers, authors, pastors, comedians—who, behind closed doors and in private emails and messages, are treating others as objects instead of people. +
In private, many of the people we adore as wildly hilarious commenters on Christian culture or experts on wholeness are treating human beings as objects to collect or crush—depending on whether we are perceived as contributing to or taking from their own fame and acclaim. +