Reprise

“…but you have never looked into the immovability of stone like this, the way it holds you…becomes faithful by going nowhere.” -David Whyte

For Maundy Thursday

This line is in the poem Stone, from David Whyte’s collection of poetry entitled The Sea in You. I have already referenced Whyte’s writings a few times, but couldn’t help sharing these words. Even if it meant risking redundancy. I first heard him recite the poem in a recorded interview several years ago. He talked about this area in Western Ireland that he had been visiting for decades. A stone inhabits this place, a stone that has been carved to have the resemblance of a face. For years he visited, drawn to this face, as if it had something to tell him that he didn’t understand. Until one visit he had a breakthrough and left with the words to this poem.

Homes, akin to stones, provide that same immovable faithfulness, holding us each day and night. I remember talking with my oldest son when he was a toddler while we were shopping for groceries. He asked me where our house was while we were gone (still, clearly, trying to fully grasp the concept of object permanence) to which I simply replied “Oh, it is right where we left it. That’s the nice thing about houses, they don’t go anywhere.” That aspect is what, ideally, can make home a real shelter. A place that, regardless of the storms at work, in friendships, or around the world, “staunches your need to leave, becomes faithful by going nowhere.” This truth, of course, is what makes it so tragic when home is not this way.

And yet, there is another type of faithfulness that is constant, not in its immovability, but in its ability to come back. Lately, I have been distracted looking out my kitchen window. Despite living in this house for over eight months, all novelty depleted, this remains my first Spring in this home. Just outside my kitchen window I can see my neighbor’s plum trees. Six weeks ago they were bare and covered in snow, three weeks ago they were blooming with flowers as white as fresh cotton, and right now they are a shade of green so vibrant I imagine some of the other plants can only compete by being green with envy. The sounds and colors of Spring are faithful not by going nowhere, but by coming back each year. The tree may stay, but the leaves show their loyalty by creating shade when the Summer sun is too much and by leaving when the Winter sun is too little.

This reprise, or “taking up again”, does not just exist in the seasons but in our very lives. Recently I was able to travel with my family to visit my wife’s grandparents. They are both far along in years and her grandma, especially, is restricted to a hospital bed and is mostly unresponsive, among other things. Unresponsive, that is, until my youngest son, just shy of eleven months, was brought over to meet her. Something in her, although just shy of eleven hundred months herself, could immediately recognize something in him. And wordless as he may be, he recognized it too. For they both reached forward to hold hands. The pure essence that seems to be there at the start is faithful to come back at the end.

Today, according to the Christian tradition that I follow, is Maundy Thursday. Taking place the Thursday before Easter it is a day when Christians remind themselves of when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and ate one last meal with them. As with many of Jesus’ teachings, the event was probably multifaceted in what it meant. Moments later these friends of his would abandon him and leave him to fend for himself as he faced arrest, false accusations, humiliation and execution. Perhaps, before all this happened, Jesus needed a moment with them where he took care of them, held their feet in his hands, and experienced some intimacy he could carry with him through the lonely journey ahead. Or, perhaps, he was blessing their feet. Praying that they would stay safe while he was not with them, and that they would come back to him later as swiftly as they left him. Maybe, like Spring, their faithfulness was not subject to their immovability but in their ability to reprise their roles as disciples, again and again.

May you feel held by the home around you and may it cast aside any reluctance to be in this moment. May you also be encouraged by the revolving patterns around you, that promise to not abandon you but to come back when you need them most. May you not forget the essence that inhabits you, even if you are far from the beginning or the end, and may the witnessing of essence in others invite you to come back. And may you, my friend, not be alarmed if in a few days you see that immovable stone rolled aside. Perhaps, it is faithfulness coming back. Reprising itself in a new way.