Glimpses of Healing and Hope
March 20, 2017
By: Jane Bishop Halteman
We look to spring to make all things new; in our part of the world, we anticipate the muddy soil drying out and eventually turning green, cloudy skies becoming blue again, birds who flew south for the winter returning. Even our wintery spirits seem to lift as the sun shines longer and brighter, and evidence mounts that the earth is beginning another new cycle of growth.
Macrina Wiederkehr, in her book The Circle of Life co-authored with Joyce Rupp, suggests that spring is a good time to “meditate on the return of life. How are we, like the buds of the earth, opening to God and to others? What secrets buried deep in the soil of our soul are being revealed to us? How is the gospel of springtime unfolding for us? What is the great blossoming in us?”
Like my embattled crocuses, who finally decided yesterday that it was safe to bloom after emerging from the ground two weeks ago, our wintered-over souls take new courage as days lengthen and signs of new life appear from amidst the left-over debris of last year’s dried-out stalks and withered flowers. The surviving crocuses, somewhat the worse for wear having weathered more winter since they poked through the ground, are blooming brightly but not without tatters and tears. They remind us that new life, new flowerings will follow pain, despair, failure, trauma.
Many spring blossoms unfurled this past weekend for KRMCers who live in the western area group. Not only did we welcome Vic and Nancy, who started their move Saturday from Buchanan, MI, to South Bend’s Near Northwest Neighborhood (NNN), but some of us represented Kern Road Saturday night in a neighborhood choir festival hosted by the NNN, and others of us and the wider KRMC family watched four of our area group members compete Saturday/Sunday in the St. Joe Valley table tennis open.
The community pitches in to help Vic and Nancy move to the Near Northwest Neighborhood
Members of their former area group and small group and other KRMCers helped move boxes out of Vic and Nancy’s Buchanan house, and several of us from their new area group welcomed the movers and home owners with lunch and offered more pairs of hands to cart boxes inside. I love Nancy’s desire to foster a drop-in culture at their South Bend home. Her February 8 blog post at The Practical Mystic says this: “The room that really captured my imagination on this fourth look at the Pink Lady was the dining room. It is big. Before, I just thought, that is a really big dining room. Yesterday I began picturing our table in it with all the extra boards. People dining around it or learning English around it or writing letters to Congress around it. The dining room is big enough to be a neighborhood hub in itself.” That blossoming hub is another sign of spring!
Andre sings with neighborhood choir
Andre and Brenda recruited about 15 KRMCers to sing Saturday night at the neighborhood choir festival, sponsored by a Black men's choir in which Andre participates. Many thanks to him for responding to the invitation to include our pick-up choir in this cross-cultural opportunity, where we connected with other people of faith in the neighborhood...yet another springtime blossoming for our KRMC family.
Phil, Dion's win (under 2100 RR-playoff), Dionta takes a break, Dion, Marty (with Andre and Barbara)
During our sharing time at the conclusion of our Lent 3 worship service Sunday, a KRMCer offered that, for him, “hearing stories at the table tennis open revealed another dimension of our church at work.” Spectators shared the excitement of players Phil, Dion, Dionta, and Marty, rejoicing with them in their victories and feeling the pain of tough losses. Learning more about each other as individuals represents spring blossoming.
In what way might you turn deepening connections inside and/or outside the community into a worthwhile Lenten practice? Today is the first day of another spring; how will you allow spring into your life this Lenten season? Consider these spiritual exercises from Spirituality & Practice for your celebrations of the start of spring this week.