The Wasteland

April 14, 2022

I woke up this morning to a landscape of grey on grey on grey. It’s Holy week and in my Christian faith tradition. It’s a bleak, hopeless week. We begin with pageantry and palms waving. Triumphal entry feels like the start of something new and amazing. Then the week takes a turn to unjust death sentences catapulted by group think & executed by leaders valuing political power over justice. Symbolic final meals are eaten, then betrayal, death, and the torn veil of the synagogue.

My mood today feels bleak. On so many levels (personal, community, professional, global) it feels like an in between time. War is brewing overtly across country lines and cloaked within communities, families, regions. We’re lonely, tired (deep tired), uncertain, wistful. The tunnel is long and grey. Grey. Grey.

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dries tubers….

- T.S. Elliot, The Wasteland

Growing up in a Baptist church, I loved Easter Sunrise services, singing duets and celebrating resurrection - life championing death. At that time, Baptists didn’t DO Holy week. We did Palm Sunday & Easter, skipping the ampersand. Overcoming. Wading as briefly as possible through the dark swamp of human cruelty onto the messages of sunshine, hope, prosperity.

As I’ve walked my faith journey, those bipolar anchors have cracked and crumbled…the heaven v. hell; sunshine v. darkness framings are like a framed piece of art with a child’s simplistic drawing in the middle. Charming, sweet even, but incomplete.

On this Maundy Thursday, the day Jesus ate a Seder meal with his closest friends, He knew betrayal was in the works. They did not. Uncertainty was the dominant vibe. Today, I sit in the uncertainty of the roots beneath the surface. Dare I hope? Are the roots dead…or cultivating branches that will shelter… or perhaps weeds?

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water.

- T.S. Elliot, The Wasteland

Human, may you deeply feel all the feels.