Good morning, friends, and deep peace to you as we start a fresh week ~
I missed sending out a little reflection last week as I was returning from visiting my mom. I’ve shared here how she developed early-onset Alzheimer’s quite some time ago, and we’ve been making and marking the journey together — a journey which can simultaneously feel breathtakingly fast with the rate of disease progression and heartbreakingly slow in the constant drip of grief.
Upon my return, I found myself pretty overcome with memories and images from the time together. So much pain, punctuated with these incredible moments of God’s persistent grace. One of them happened on our visit to the cemetery.
My father died from cancer nearly ten years ago, and I try to make a point of getting to Woodlawn Cemetery when I’m back. When our family was there right after Christmas, we went together with a handful of flowers, and each of my kids, alongside my mom, placed a single flower on the gravestone.
I knew I wanted to go with my mom back to the cemetery while I was there and bring a couple of fresh flowers. After parking the car on the skinny stretch of road, we started walking toward the grave. I noticed right away that something was on the stone. Had someone recently been here?
When we edged closer, my heart skipped. There were flowers there…the flowers we had left two months ago in the winter snow, sitting precisely where we had laid them. Flowers that were sustained amid South Dakota blizzards, and in what my brother has called “the windiest place ever.” They were perfectly dried, and upon touching, I could feel their adherence. It was as though they had glued themselves to their spots, each flower laying exactly where each of us had laid it.
The quiet miracle, with its myriad of meanings, has continued to unfold in my heart. One of my friends, who knows how much I struggle with the distance and time between my mom and me, said she saw in this miracle the promise that I don’t have to be there every second. That when I return, things will be different, but that the presence of love will have remained this whole time. Things will have changed, just like the flowers, but the love is cemented and grounded in place. A steady presence all along.
And with that promise, I also see how beauty and the depths of grief are adhered together. How places representing our most profound pain bear witness to how much we’ve been given the opportunity to love. And still love. And that even in death, love is glue.
Upon returning from my trip, a friend shared with me the replay of a conversation between Suleika Jaouad and Susan Cain, “On Joy, Sorrow, & Creative Alchemy.” In this powerful conversation, which I cannot recommend enough, they talk about how creative offerings of love alchemize this kind of deep pain. Suleika, who first experienced cancer in her twenties, had a relapse ten years later and found herself once again in the hospital.
Though she had long been a well-known writer, the combination of medications she was on created double vision, making working with words nearly impossible. “And so I pivoted,” she said. “I put my journals to the side and I decided to try watercolor. I’d never painted before,” Suleika shared, and yet she quickly discovered, “watercolor is full of happy accidents. You don’t have control, like in life…”
And what Suleika and Susan made clear in their conversation, too, was that “creativity is a gift everyone has access to. You don’t have to be a writer or a painter as a day job. There’s benefit in cultivating a creative practice, even if nobody ever sees it. In fact, I think it’s always more delicious when you’re creating from a place of doing it simply for yourself.”
Creative mediums — be it writing or art or music or more — are generative and transformative. They give us a place to go with all we carry, and create something beautiful. And like flowers glued to a headstone, creative offerings reveal how it’s all held together.
I think its why I wrote, Ash and Starlight: Prayers for the Chaos and Grace of Daily Life . Creating those prayers was one kind of offering. A way to both alchemize the pain and hold together the “ash” and the “starlight” of life.
Or I think of a dear friend of mine who just finished a weekly “Healing Haiku” class in which she wrote haiku poems about her brother who died two and a half years ago. The instructor of the class had them write haiku poems on everything from how their loved ones hug felt to what their eyes looked like. “When we’re done,” my friend told me, “we’re supposed to have a portrait of our loved one.”
Suleika and Susan shared at the end of their conversation a Mary Oliver quote, one which inspired the art above.
We shake with joy, we shake with grief.
What a time they have, these two
housed as they are in the same body.
Flowers glued to a grave…
A haiku portrait of the one we love…
A string of prayers…
There is an offering of beauty to be found.
To be made.
A Prayer
I wrote this prayer for the book discussion guide of MaryAnn McKibben Dana’s wonderful book, Hope: A User’s Manual. It gets to that theme of creativity and artistry so intrinsic to who God is, and who we are.
Holy Author,
Humble Artist...
From your quiet, gentle
hands come the most glorious landscapes—
the most generous stories—
creative works in which we find a home
to live in and live for.
You hand us a pen, a paintbrush,
a ream of paper filled with space,
inviting our hands to move with yours,
joining the story...
making the story...
And so we put down our
expectations about readiness
and our fears over standards.
Our cravings for control
and catharsis and closure.
We put those down so we can take up
faithfulness for now
and trust for today
and a pen or a paintbrush
in no need of perfect endings.
We will open our hands and our hearts
in wide welcome,
writing hope with our lives—
your expansive ministry of grace.
Amen.
Something that nourished me recently…
*My middle son, who is all about creative acts, randomly made a mail slot out of paper the other day. Unbeknownst to my husband and me, he taped it by our door (and real mail slot). I was so touched when I went outside and saw our mail carrier actually followed Simon’s instructions, and put the mail in his slot.
*This Rilke quote I recently read, which I copied into my journal…
*I hope the birdsong has been as glorious in your neck of the woods as it has been here. Cardinals hold a very special place in my heart for all kinds of reasons. I caught this video a couple days ago which I have watched again and again…Turn up your volume and listen.
Ash and Starlight, plus other good things…
*SECOND EDITION OF ASH AND STARLIGHT ~ Find the updated edition of my book here at Chalice or at the Amazon link!
*MONDAY MANNA ARCHIVES ~ You can view previous Monday Manna reflections here, or for the really old stuff, go to my website. 💛
*OPPORTUNITIES TO ALCHEMIZE ~ There is SO much pain right now in our hurting world, from the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine to the crisis of migrant families needing support to escalating racial tension to the literal ground of creation crying out…I was talking with a migrant family with a baby asking for help in the parking lot outside the grocery store last week when someone drove by, rolled down their window, and yelled, “Go back to where you came from!” Find one place of pain you can give yourself to today, through donations or time or prayer. Here in Chicago, Nuevo Vecinos, The Resurrection Project, and Catholic Charities are but a few of the organizations you can support or partner with to help with the migrant crisis, alongside many churches — including First Presbyterian here in Wilmette — collecting hygiene kits. And if you’re local, please consider coming to the “My Block, My Hood, My City” event next week with Jahmal Cole.
With you, friends, as you take your pain and make it an offering…..
Love and Light,
Arianne
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Arianne - this spoke so deeply to me in so many ways. As I read, I felt so many overlapping spaces to my life now and my life in the past. Looking at the flowers on your dad's gravestone, I thought of how that is, in a sense, the first time I have been able to visit your Dad's grave since he died. When I was at FPC, I was so blessed by your parents in so so so many ways and I ached for your Dad's death 10 years ago and I ache with the Alzheimer's journey your mom (and your family) is on. I "put flowers" on the grave as well as I read your beautiful reflections.
And then coming to your prayer from MaryAnn's devotional guide I think of how her book spoke so deeply to me last year and how it continues to speak today as one of our church small groups is working our way through the book.
And then Rilke - Just this past Saturday was the 7th anniversary of the death of a dear friend named Phil. Phil introduced me to Rilke when I was part of a very unique small group with him and two other men. There are few people in my life that I have met who was wiser and deeper than Phil was. And our last time together as a group before he died, we read Rilke together.
So thank you for sharing these places - obviously you weren't writing just for me, but I was so resonant with what you shared today. Thank you for your Spirit-speaking today.
Thank you, as always, for this comfort to my Mondays. Special thanks for including the Jahmal Cole event next week. Thanks friend! :)