A Lenten journey

Image from Pixabay

I wrote this poem on Ash Wednesday in 2012:

Into the wilderness
a Lenten urge has driven me,
hungry and thirsty.
The valley of desolations,
the criss-crossing paths of another’s suffering.
I’d rather blot pain out
but heavy clouds are massing.
Rain.
At least there will be rain,
in this desert.

Alone on the mountain,
only bare scarred rock
and the pale sheet of sky
and the trickle of a spring, nearby.
I can sense, not see,
the wind that can shatter,
the quake that can break.

And all around me, the Voice.
And within me, a Voice.

Be still and know.

The real me. The eternal You.
I will not hide away.
See, Lord, this time I’m not hiding.

When I wrote this poem, I had no idea that the following day, Thursday 23 February 2012, would be a traumatic and life-changing one. My housemate collapsed in the bathroom and I had to call a neighbour to break the door down while I phoned for an ambulance. It was the start of my friend’s final journey through a diagnosis of cancer, an unseen killer in her womb. Her journey would last the six weeks of Lent and finally end a week after Easter. She went into a coma during the Easter weekend and eventually died on Friday 13 April 2012. Her passing brought immense sorrow, but the peace and serenity she radiated during her final weeks and days will stay with me forever.

I’ve often written what I consider to be my best poems when my emotions are in chaos. Unrequited love and a brief fling inspired some of my best poetry. And then, on a deeper level, the shock of bereavement and grief. Our pain and brokenness can make us creatives extremely creative. I thank God for it. I thank God for the gift of writing that can help to release our pain like tears and is cathartic and healing. I’m not suggesting that writing our journals and poems magically gets rid of the pain … but it HELPS, doesn’t it? Enormously.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of my favourite poets, wrote these searing lines in ‘No Worst, There is None’, one of his ‘Terrible Sonnets’, or ‘Sonnets of Desolation’:

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there.

Do read his amazing poems if you never have.

We may not be magically cured of crippling depression. Hopkins wasn't. But all the darknesses we endure will not last forever. We face the darkness in the light of Christ, who faced the darkness on our behalf. And writing helps, as a form of therapy, as a way of making sense of tragedy, or of turning our life-experiences into uplifting fiction that inspires others. Many of the greatest writers, poets and artists lived broken lives of deep pain, yet the beauty of their art continues to bless us. What a wonderful legacy they left. And what a wonderful gift writing is.

“See! The winter has passed. The rains of March are over and gone. Primroses and daisies appear like stars on the earth, the cherry blossoms are exploding like pink fountains of light. The season of singing has come. Eternal spring lies ahead.”

(Inspired by Song of Songs 2: 11-12)

I’m an Anglican lay minister: my day job is administrator for the education and learning department of the United Reformed Church. I wrote a devotional for the anthology Light for the Writer’s Soul published by Media Associates International, and my short story ‘Magnificat’ appears in the ACW Christmas anthology Merry Christmas Everyone.