Early in Lent I participated in the monthly Taize worship at the Hermitage, in Michigan. We gathered in the chapel with the chairs set up in two tiers circling a cross which hung in the middle of the room, over a center arrangement with trays of sand, a Christ candle, and small prayer candles.

We sang the simple Taize songs over and over, sometimes accompanied by piano, sometimes by cello or flute or harp, till they had sunk deep within, quieting and centering us. Some were familiar to me from other settings: “Come and pray in us,” “Bless the Lord.” We sang, and quieted our souls, and slowly people began going to the center, lighting a candle, praying for awhile and then placing the candle in the sand and returning to their seats.

For an intercession song, we sang #22 in the Taize song book:
                By your cross and all the wounds you suffered,
                                grant us freedom in your love.

I found this echoing with my reading of Julian’s showings of Christ’s Passion, and of the deep message of love she felt.  Our cross was empty, two branches stripped of their bark and roped together. But there was a discoloration on the side facing me that looked like the face of someone crying out or weeping, hand to cheek. And across the room, on the opposite wall, there was a crucifix, with Christ on the cross, and beside it, an icon of Christ the Light-Giver.  I found my gaze going to the cross behind the head on the icon, to the crucifix, to the crying face on the cross of bare branches.

And in that space I held awareness of a number of people I know who are suffering – living with cancer or chronic disease, the loss of a loved one, depression, the breakdown of relationship. I went up to light my candle and to hold that in prayer at the foot of the cross.

We moved in to an extended time of silence before singing “When the night becomes dark, your love, O Lord, is a fire,” watching the flames of the candles flicker as others came forward to add another candle. And we sang “We adore you, Jesus Christ, and we bless your holy name, truly your cross and passion bring us life and healing.”

That one I will continue to ponder. The resurrection and its hope of healing and restoration, yes – but what of the cross and Christ’s Passion? How do I understand this gift of love? Understand, not in the sense of worrying about which theological interpretation of atonement I can assent to, but rather understand and receive at the heart level, as Julian so clearly did.

As I ponder, another visual memory stirs. Years ago I attended an Interplay workshop at Bethany Theological Seminary. In their lovely wood-floored chapel, we did hand dances, moved and played, told big body stories, sometimes all together, sometimes just a few of us. For one session, Cynthia Winton-Henry read the story of Jesus’ visit to Mary and Martha, and then put on some lively music. I watched as Martha after Martha sprang up, energetically moving, stirring, dancing around.

Then one male dancer stretched out on the floor, on his side, with one hand reaching towards the cross on the wall across the room, and with intense focus, began pushing himself with his other arm, a slow, silent, straight route through all the lively dancers, to the foot of the cross, where he rested, hand open and outstretched.

Like the dancer, like Mary, like Julian, like those praying at the Taize service, on this Holy Saturday I can continue to bring my prayers to the foot of the cross, my own and my intercessory prayers.

And a different sort of flame lifted my prayers this morning, as I walked the Stations of the Cross at Pathways Retreat Center -- the flame of sunlight and new plant growth.

Several of Julian’s showings touch on aspects of Christ’s Passion – copious bleeding from the crown of thorns and from the whipping, discoloration of his face and the drying of his body. It’s not imagery I’m accustomed to spending much time with. In my tradition, we tend to focus on Christ’s life and on the resurrection – our crosses are bare. We move seamlessly from the hosannas of Palm Sunday to the alleluias of Easter, with a nod towards the Last Supper and the handing over of Jesus and his abandonment by his friends if we attend a Maundy Thursday or Good Friday service.

 But we don’t – I don’t – spend much time suffering with Jesus on the cross.

Julian does, along with many other medieval mystics, though her visions of blood and of suffering are always interwoven with a vivid awareness of God’s love. She suffers as she watches Christ suffer, for the pain he felt and for her awareness that he who suffered is God. And she experiences a mix of sorrow and of joy.

And in this he partly brought to my mind the exaltedness and nobility of the glorious divinity, and at the same time the preciousness and tenderness of his blessed body united with it, and also the reluctance that there is in human nature to suffer pain. For just as he was most tender and most pure, so he was most strong and powerful to suffer. And he suffered for the sins of every man who will be saved; and he saw and he sorrowed for every man’s sorrow, desolation and anguish, in his compassion and love.  … And now he has risen again and is no longer capable of suffering; and yet he suffers with us, as I shall afterwards say.  p 213, Showings.

I wanted to find a photo of a 14th century English crucifix, such as Julian might have gazed upon. This is Welsh, but the right century, and though it is broken and faded, perhaps that can also carry some of the sense of Christ's suffering.

Julian goes on:
“And as I watched with all my might for the moment when Christ would expire, and I expected to see his body quite dead; but I did not see him so, and just at the moment when by appearances he seemed to me that life could last no longer, and that the revelation of his end must be near, suddenly as I looked at the same cross, he changed to an appearance of joy. The change in his blessed appearance changed mine, and I was as glad and joyful as I could possibly be. And then cheerfully our Lord suggested to my mind: Where is there now any instant of your pain or of your grief? And I was very joyful; I understood that in our Lord’s intention we are now on his cross with him in our pains, and in our sufferings we are dying, and with his help and his grace we willingly endure on that same cross until the last minute of life.” p 214-5, Showings.

And in these words: If I could suffer more, I should suffer more, I saw truly that as often as he could die, so often should he die, and love would never let him rest till he had done it. And I contemplated with great diligence to know how often he should die if he would. And truly the number so far exceeded my understanding and intelligence that my reason had not leave or power to comprehend or accept it.
p 217, Showings

I find Julian’s words resonating with experiences from Gestalt Pastoral Care, where people have found suffering transformed through recognition of ways Christ is present with them, whether in present sorrow or in painful memories.  (See Tilda Norberg’s Consenting to Grace for vivid stories from her work with people suffering deep pain and trauma.)

He suffers for us, we who are part of the Body of Christ suffer with him, and he suffers for all who suffer.

On this Good Friday, I am pondering this, and hearing the ringing refrains of Carl Daw’s hymn, “How shallow former shadows,” especially the last verse:

          Yet deep within this darkness lives a Love so fierce and free,
             that arcs all voids and – risk supreme! – embraces agony.
           Its perfect testament is etched in iron, blood, and wood.
           With awe we glimpse its true import and dare to call it good.
                                 #251 in  Hymnal: a worship book

I've had this icon card pinned just above my computer for years and this year for Lent, I’ve been reading and ruminating on the Showings of Julian of Norwich. Julian was a 14th century Englishwoman, a devout woman who lived the secluded, prayer-filled life of an anchoress in a two-room suite attached to the small church of St Julian’s in Norwich.

It sounds peaceful, but her times were as troubled as our own. The Black Plague visited Norwich at least three times during Julian’s lifetime, killing about a quarter of the population. France and England were caught in the seemingly endless battles of the Hundred Year war, controversy over the papal succession created two Popes, and there were ever-increasing taxes and the Peasants’ Revolt in England.

When Julian was 30, she fell so ill that she received last rites and her mother and friends gathered round to say farewell. Instead of dying, she received a series of visions, recovered, and spent the next 20 years ruminating on these showings, eventually writing up her account of what she saw and what she had come to understand about them. 

In her first vision, she is sure that she is on the verge of death as the room darkens around her, except for ordinary light falling on the crucifix that the curate holds in front of her. Then blood begins to fall in round drops from under the crown of thorns; she has a strong sense of the presence of the Trinity; she sees Mary as a young, simple maiden full of wisdom and truth, aware of her Creator’s greatness and her own littleness; she understands that Jesus is everything that is good, wrapping and enfolding us, surrounding us with his love.

And Jesus shows her something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, as round as a ball. She writes,” I looked at it and thought: What can this be? And I was given this general answer: It is everything which is made. I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that it was so little that it could fall suddenly into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God. In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that he loves it, the third is that God preserves it.”

Several of Julian's visions touch on aspects of Christ's Passion. As Julian recounts her visions and shares her reflections on them, she repeatedly works with the themes of God’s love and the gift of Christ’s suffering for us, wrestling with how this foundational love that she has been shown connects with the pain and suffering in the world.

Life and death, light and shadow.

I have found it meaningful reading for this year’s Lent, and I’ll be sharing some of the ways it has connected for me in these coming days of Holy Week.