Easter on the calendar may not be Easter in my soul.
~John Winn, For All Seasons
If there is one line in one prayer that resonates with me every single year during Lent, it is this line from John Winn's "A Lenten Prayer for Slow Walkers on the Road from Bethlehem to Jerusalem." In my experience, sharing it with others while warming the labyrinth, I am not the only one.
As I led a Holy Week Service of Wholeness, reading this prayer with a small group of women, I found a home in these words. As a small group of early-risers stood together sharing communion at our "sunrise" service, watching the clouds drift by, no "sunrise" for us, the words once again rose up within me. Easter on the calendar is not Easter in my soul. I felt like those bewildered women at the tomb on Easter morning. I think the sense of the words of this prayer were true for them that day, there was no joy. This year's lectionary text from the book of Mark (16:8) says this of the women who went to the tomb in the early morning and found it empty, "they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." I know the words of this prayer have never been truer for me right now, I am not feeling "Easter" in my soul. And that is OK ... for this year, I have been profoundly affected by the loss of my niece, Clarissa.
The Great Silence staff gathered on "Easter Monday" to prepare for retreatants to arrive on Tuesday. It was a glorious day by the lake ... to breathe, to ponder, to invite silence
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| Lakeview Methodist Conference Center, Palestine, TX |
All the streams carry the wisdom of the forest to the lake,
and over there silence replaces the noise!
~Mehmet Murat Ildan
As I walked to my cabin, I stopped by the beautiful Dogwood tree in bloom to drink in the beauty of its delicate blossoms and its fragile strength. When I was young, I remember taking long drives with my parents. I would lay my head in my mother's lap and when the dogwood bloomed amongst the pine trees along the side of the road, she would tell me the Legend of the Dogwood. It was a story that connected my fledgling faith and nature in a way that nothing else did at the time.
As a staff, we finished setting up the kitchen and the lodge with
prayer stations, formational reading material, lots of battery tealights, and the small labyrinth. 
Then we sat with one another to share the sacred stories of our lives with one another. I asked a question that I was asked many times by a former mentor, Wendy J. Miller. This question held much of our sharing and was particularly helpful for me that night as it carried me into the silence and up out of the silence to awareness, "What ditch did you cross to get here today? To my surprise, I said, "It is the grief I carry and the tears that refuse to fall. I fear I will never cross the ditch for I am laying in it, unable to move and all I can see is chaos. I am hoping that entering the silence will create a space for my tears to fall so that I might begin to crawl out of this ditch or perhaps to learn to live from within them."
There is a sacredness in tears.
~Washington Irving
As I laid my head down to sleep that night, I pondered the invitation to healing that I sensed God was offering me. I wasn't sure I would be able to enter into this invitation but I slept well thinking of it and of the God of Silence who so gently holds each one of us and loves us right where we are.
Take this link for Part 2: The Great Silence: Invitation to Silence
Take this link for Part 2: The Great Silence: Invitation to Silence
