That Year When Jesus Came to Your High School

When I was at my mom and dad's, my mom showed me various books that she had used as devotional texts for Lent.  One book, Forty Days with Madeleine L'Engle, had all sorts of scraps of paper in it, including some of my poems.

We couldn't remember whether or not we were using the book together, but across a distance, or whether she was using it to lead a local church group.  I was happy to see that I still liked the poem.  It was first published in Chiron Review, back in 2009.  I'm almost certain that I wrote it earlier.

I've now written a variety of these kinds of poems, the ones I think of as Jesus in the modern world poems.  They are an attempt to answer that old Sunday School question of how the world would react if Jesus returned again and what would Jesus do and how would we recognize him?

I think of my Sunday School teachers of long ago, asking those questions, and I imagine that they would be scandalized by my poetic answers.  Of course, they may have been secretly radical themselves, as they taught us about the Jesus that the Church wanted us to know.  They may have planted these seeds that have bloomed into poems, decades later. 

New Kid

If Jesus came to your high school,
he'd be that boy with the untuned guitar,
which most days was missing a string.
Could he not afford a packet of guitar strings?
Did he not know how to tune the thing?
Hadn't he heard of an electronic tuner?
Jesus would smile that half smile and keep playing,
but offer no answers.

If Jesus came to your high school,
he'd hang out with the strange and demented.
He'd sneak smokes with the drug addled.
He'd join Chorus, where the otherworldly
quality of his voice wouldn’t quite blend.
He'd play flute in Band.
He'd spend his lunch hour in the library, reading and reshelving.

You would hear his songs echoing
in your head, down the hallways, across the years.
They'd shimmer at you and just when you thought you grasped
their meaning, your analytical processes would collapse.
Instead, you write strange poems
to delight your children who draw mystical
pictures to illustrate your poems inspired
by Jesus, who sang the songs of angels,
that year he came to your high school.

Imagery for Ash Wednesday

I have been thinking about Ash Wednesday, specifically about the imagery of ashes.  Many of us will hear an Ash Wednesday sermon that emphasizes our ultimate destiny, the ashes to ashes, dust to dust approach.  Some years, we need that reminder.

This year is not one of those years.  Most of us are watching the world in despair, although the sources of our despair might be different:  eminent climate collapse, the world that we once knew vanishing each day, geopolitical shifts, the resurgence of diseases and other forces for ill that we might have once thought were vanquished.

I was looking for a different approach for my Ash Wednesday sermon.  Last year I talked about decomposing stars as being part of what comprises our dust.  Tonight's sermon will talk about the value of ash to a garden:  it can enrich the soil while killing weeds and diseases.

I thought about using more garden metaphors.  I planted bulbs in the fall, a week or two after the remnants of Hurricane Helene devastated the region.  I had bought 50 bulbs with a plan to share them with a friend and to help her plant them.  But in the summer, she had a stroke, and she's still in the skilled nursing unit.  Even though I paid for them all, I felt weird about planting the bulbs in my yard, but in the end, I decided that it would be more of a tribute to our plans to plant them, to let them live.

I thought about trying to work that story into my Ash Wednesday sermon, but in the end, I couldn't really make it work.  I like to think that the story is still there, an invisible scaffolding, informing and supporting the sermon.

The Day Before Ash Wednesday, 2025

Today is Mardi Gras, and it's also Shrove Tuesday. It's the day before Ash Wednesday, the day before Lent begins. The holidays of Shrove Tuesday, Carnival, and Mardi Gras have their roots in the self-denial of the Lenten season. These holidays are rooted in the fasting traditions of Lent and the need to get rid of all the ingredients that you'd be giving up during Lent: alcohol, sugar, eggs, and in some traditions, even dairy foods.

Mardi Gras and Carnival, holidays that come to us out of predominantly Catholic countries, certainly have a more festive air than Shrove Tuesday, which comes to us from some of the more dour traditions of England. The word shrove, which is the past tense of the verb to shrive, which means to seek absolution for sins through confession and penance, is far less festive than the Catholic terms for this day.

In the churches of my childhood, we had pancake suppers on Shrove Tuesday. In the church of my childhood, a church could count on its members gathering whenever the church doors were open. Thus we had Shrove Tuesday pancake suppers and Wednesday Bible study meetings and groups of all sorts gathering throughout the week.

These days, most mainline churches feel lucky if members come on Sunday, much less at other points in the week. Many churches have Confirmation classes during Sunday School time, unlike my experience of trooping back to church in the late afternoon of a Sunday. Many churches do the whole Holy Week journey on Palm Sunday because they know that church members won't be coming back on Thursday and Friday.

It feels like we should do something special on the day before Ash Wednesday, but I suspect many of us aren't interested in traditional Mardi Gras festivities which often include large amounts of alcohol.  This blog post has a recipe for a quick yeasted bread that is relatively healthy.  It's fairly simple to make, and easy to make more festive if that's your thing.

My Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday will consist of driving; it's the day I head back to my mountain home.  It's been a great visit with my parents, and I know that I am lucky to be able to say that.

Launch into Lent 2025

Here we are in the last few days before Lent.  Tomorrow feels like part of Lent, even though it is not.  Let me collect some fragments.

--My sister and I have been thinking about ways to live healthier lives, ways to use Lent to undergird our efforts.  I have thought of some sort of point system, less complicated than the March Madness sports grids, but something that gives points and takes points away.  So, I might gain a point for every serving of fruits and vegetables, while losing a point for every alcoholic drink. I haven't worked out many details yet, but I wanted to capture this idea.

--I also love the idea of doing our Lenten disciplines not only for ourselves, but for the larger world.  In the example above, I like the idea of making decisions and gaining points and along the way,  using those points to help us remember to pray for the health of the larger world.

--I like the idea of adding something to our Lent, instead of denying ourselves.  But I do understand the power of denial.

--My thoughts about adding something tend to revolve around reading:  reading a poem a day, reading a devotional resource especially designed for Lent, reading my way through a book of the Bible.

--This year, I'm taking a seminary class that focuses on Christmas and Easter.  We will start exploring the Easter texts soon, and I think it will be interesting to go through Lent as we explore those texts.  I've enjoyed the deep dive into the Christmas texts which stretched Christmas into January and February.

--I need to write an Ash Wednesday sermon, which is challenging because the Ash Wednesday texts stay the same each year.  I want to say something different than last year, when I used some of my best ideas.  This year feels different:  my congregation has had more deaths and then, of course, there's the national and international changes. 

Let me finish this blogging so that I can move on to the other work of the day--and the joys of the first day of Spring Break at 2 of my schools.

The First Day of a Quick Trip to Williamsburg

I am up in Williamsburg, Virginia for a few days to celebrate my mom's birthday.  Last year, we went to Charlottesville, but this year, it made sense to meet in Williamsburg because my mom had a concert last night as part of the Williamsburg Choral Guild.  They had a great concert of songs from the American Songbook.

Earlier yesterday, we went to the older part of town to make sure we knew where we were going and where to park.  The Kimball Theatre is historic, but small, and it was cool to be able to see a performance there.  We had tickets to a sold out show.

We ate lunch at a French restaurant, the Blue Talon Bistro.  I ordered an appetizer as my main dish:  fried oysters served on a bed of red onion slivers, grape tomato halves, and tiny cucumber rounds.  It was all drizzled with a spicy mayo kind of sauce.  I could have eaten 10 servings.

We also went to Joann's for the liquidation sale.  The prices I saw weren't much better than normal times, and in fact, less good than some of their 40% off sales.  Maybe it's too early in the liquidation process.  I bought some Christmas fabric for 40% off, which it might have been anyway.  I bought enough to back one of the quilts I'm making.  It's less Christmas holiday, more colorful snowflakes on a black background kind of fabric.

I may go back to get some more.  My cousin's daughter who will graduate from high school in the next few years, and she loves Christmas.  I have a vision of strips of cloth sewn together (not a very helpful description, I know).  When I was there, I was a bit overwhelmed:  should I only choose the red and green fabrics?  Should I get a wide variety trusting that the theme will help them cohere?  

I decided not to buy fabric for that project--plus it was just too busy to make me want to linger.  I did take a cruise around the store, just to be sure that there weren't other supplies I should snatch up.  I am surprised by how the beading department has changed.  Back in the days I first did much with beading (2005-2007), I remember boxes of a variety of beads sorted by color.  Those don't seem to exist anymore. My sister bought some yarn, and then we headed off to lunch.

It was a beautiful day yesterday, so we went out for a walk in the late afternoon after my mom left to be at the theatre early for a rehearsal.  Just a few hours later, the weather had turned.  We left the concert to blustery weather, a cold wind that cut through us.  It was good to be at my mom and dad's, with their lovely gas fireplace.

Today will be one of the few Sundays that I'm not preaching and presiding at Faith Lutheran in Bristol.  We will go to brunch and relax.  It will be a different kind of Sunday, a brief rest before Lent begins this week with Ash Wednesday.

New World Order

When I'm on the road by myself, I usually have NPR on, and when I travel on Friday, as I did yesterday, many of the NPR shows are doing news of the week retrospectives.  In the morning, all the commentators expected the afternoon meeting between Trump and Zelensky to end in a minerals deal and perhaps a vision for a path to a peace treaty.

By afternoon, it was not to be.  I first heard about the contentious meeting on a BBC show carried by an NPR station.  It was oddly comforting to hear the discussion in clipped, British accents, even as the subject of the discussion was so catastrophic.

As I listened to Trump and Vance shouting and Zelensky try to get a word in edgewise, I felt that careening disbelief that I've felt so often in the last few weeks.  Really?  Grown ups talk like this?  And then I wondered how we came to have audio.  I imagined some brave White House employee sneaking a recording to a British reporter.

Nope--it was all televised, and later, when I watched the footage, it seemed like a pre-planned spectacle.

It's an astonishing moment that I would never have imagined.  A Republican president embracing . . . Russia???  I came of age during the reign of Ronald Reagan, who must be spinning in his grave.  It's hard for me to imagine how any of this ends well.  I already miss the peace and prosperity slipping through our fingers.  I know, I know, it was peace and prosperity for Europe and the U.S., with proxy wars fought around the globe.

I can imagine any number of scenarios about where the world lurches from here, and none of them are good.  As I was driving, my apocalyptic brain kicked into overdrive yesterday, and I sang "Dona Nobis Pacem" to quiet it.  I'm amazed by how well that works.  This video offers a beautiful rendition, with footage from a cathedral.

I switched over from NPR to a classic rock station just as one song ended and the next started:  "Cult of Personality."  I smirked, but as the afternoon wore on, I did wonder if the d.j. was being deliberate.  I heard "Highway to Hell" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday" in short order.  Hmmm.  I realize that my English major brain makes all kinds of connections that might not have been intentional.

Last night we went outside to see if we could view the planetary alliance.  I think that we saw it, but as with the playlist that might be making a statement about political struggles, I wasn't sure.  Still, it was good to look up at the sky and to remember how brief our geopolitical struggles are in the long term--still not a comfort when I think of what those geopolitical struggles likely mean for the rest of my life and those who come after, but a cold, planetary comfort nonetheless.

Hearing Differently

Yesterday I went to the audiologist.  It was a good appointment.  In a way, I didn't find out anything that I didn't already know:  I have fairly significant hearing loss in my left ear, along with ear wax even though my primary care doctor and a nurse dug a lot of wax out of my ear, and I have some hearing loss in my right ear.  We experimented with hearing aids, and if they cost less, I would have ordered a pair right away.

However they cost $6,190 for the pair, and my health insurance doesn't cover any of it.  That does include 3 years of follow-up care, maintenance, and repairs, and if the hearing aid is lost, a replacement for a reduced price.  I know that there are cheaper models out there, but I don't know how cheap.  I know that Apple does something with iPhones and earpods--but I have had trouble with earpods in the past, with getting them to stay in my ear.  When I think about it as a daily cost, they may seem more affordable; my spouse did a quick calculation and came up with $3.00 a day.  And it's not like they stop working in 3 years.  I can keep them, probably for another 4-7 years, maybe more.  But they are sophisticated technology, so maybe they wouldn't keep working.  They are manufactured by North European companies not Chinese companies, so the upcoming tariffs don't affect the decision.

Clearly, I am not ready to make the decision on something that costs that much money yet.

I found out that my left ear has an ear canal so narrow that the audiologist couldn't get the instrument into it to measure how the ear drum vibrates.  That may do a lot to explain why I have had so much trouble with earbuds and earpods staying in my left ear.

It was a good appointment, good to have confirmed that the hearing loss is not my imagination.  And then it was off to school.

My nonfiction writing class was engaged in a writing day, which didn't require much from me.  My Survey of American Lit class requested some time to write, as their Test 2 is due today.  I was happy to oblige, once we watched a bit of Death of a Salesman.

I read that play in high school, as did most people my age.  My students did not have it assigned.  We talked for a brief moment about the play and the characters, and then we watched a bit of it.  

I found it hit me much harder than I did when I read it in high school.  How could it not?  Willy Loman is 60, which in high school seemed ancient to me.  Now I am aghast at how broken a man he is--and of course, I am meant to be aghast.  But what's worse, it doesn't seem out of the range of possibility, the way it did when I was younger.  I am scared to spend too much time thinking about how many people my age are broken in similar ways.

In the evening, my seminary class on Christmas and Easter discussed the non-canonical texts that tell about Mary and Joseph and the birth/childhood of Jesus.  They are bizarre texts, the Proto-Gospel of James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.  One thing that I wondered was whether or not the canonical Gospel stories would seem just as bizarre, had we not spent our lifetimes hearing them and watching them and acting them out in childhood pageants.  I think they would.

My professor finished by saying that we can see how the non-canonical texts are trying to fill in the gaps, that they are harmonizing with the canonical texts not competing with them.

She reminded us that it's good to have gaps in the texts.  The gaps remind us, as do the texts (both canonical and non), that having the answers is not the same as living well and living faithfully.  Her closing thoughts seem so essential to me in this time of deep division.

Today I zip down to Spartanburg to check in at work, and then I head up to Williamsburg.  My sister is meeting me there, where my parents live, and we'll have a nuclear family reunion.  We do this occasionally, just the four of us together, the original family unit.  It's easier to coordinate our schedules with just the four of us, so we take the opportunities where we can.  It's a way of celebrating birthdays, too, a way to celebrate without having to figure out a gift.

Let me finish packing.