Holy Week Lament: Tamara Hill Murphy (Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!)

Last night we attended the Good Friday service that Christ Church holds together with the hospitable Hope Chapel. On Thursday,  we wash feet and eat the Lord's supper before stripping the altar bare.  On Friday we sit in the dark, sing a few hymns and listen to stories.  Suffering stories framed in with the seven last sayings of the dying Christ. Each storyteller practicing the vulnerability of the exposed Christ, lifted up for all men to see the glory of the Father.

Today I share again what I wrote last year.  

 

This morning, I sit shiva with your stories -- the seven from last night, the six before me this week of holy lament:

Kaley Hill Ehret (Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.)

Shannon Coelho (Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.)

Haley Ballast: (Woman, behold your son!)

Brian Murphy (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?)

Nancy Gilmore Hill (I am thirsty.)

Sharon O'Connor (It is finished.)

Buried by Matthew Whitney

 

Father, into your hands I commit my spirit

         Tamara Hill Murphy, Holy Saturday 2013

 

Because I've heard -- and haven't seen--

I know the end of the story.

Someone said this means we'll be 

stronger

than the twelve --

well, eleven.

Because I know the end of the story, 

I have a hard time seeing

grief.

It's too easy to skip that day

and say

Sunday's coming!

 

I need to hear middles of stories.

So I can see.  Maybe not hear or

see, but feel.

 

In the dark church last night, the woman

following her walker to the podium, she

told us she lost the ability to hold onto things

so a man carried her words to her (later, in the dark,

I saw him put the straps of her purse over his own shoulder).

 

She lost the ability to hold tightly

but not to laugh, or

be held.

Another woman told us her mama's deathbed was the first time she said

"Your love was enough, mama." 

And then with a last look, two women

beheld.

 

The middle of the story for the twenty-something,

perched on a stool as if her body were so light it might

slide onto the floor, assaulted by uncommon infection and

the still-celebrated church man whose side of the story weighed

more than her 

body.

 

All week I heard stories here --

some beginning, some end, some

middle.

The middle of Sharon's

story, so nearly-capsized,

she must speak in boat metaphors (as I have just done).

 

In church, the six-foot-six bald man raised

up the microphone to get it close enough to his (surprisingly) 

quiet voice.

I  thought about Sharon then, when the man told his story with

boat metaphors -- the rolling on the floor in anguish 

like a riptide

of leukemia engulfing

his six-year-old

little girl.

 

The safe harbor of hope where

she just turned nine.

 

I gave up my house for Lent.  And certain intimate pleasures

my body is too wounded to enjoy.

It's a story middle.  And like every year on this 

Saturday,

I will write a letter.

 

I will use a pen to dig into the mounded death of

friendship, scooping for signs of life

onto a peace paper;

prayer of resurrection I do not expect any time soon.

 

A eulogy to an ex-friend:

I've given up hope for now, but let's put a pin in it

-- until the One holding that first breath of 

once-dead for all the coming-alive-again in His 

unbloodied mouth

breathes hot life on us in the new city,

the new garden where we get to try again.

Forever.

 

My pen a double-edged sword, pierces my own hypocrisy,

frees the spirit -- my spirit! --

the one I gave

to the wrong person.

I will pen-stab dead love with death-defying weapons:

I'm sorry,

I was wrong,

Please forgive me.

 

Even then, I'll suck in Saturday breath

for alive-again life I do not expect,

 am not sure I really want, now that I've figured out

the end of the story means death.

Worse than death --

mis-treatment.

 

Still, I listened to the stories all week, the ones

that remind me grief is not terminal.

The woman who made us laugh at Parkinson's, the mama who cried tears for 

her preschooler to catch -- a too-soon old man growing young again,

watered by his mama's tears.

 

The boy sitting on a bar stool drunk on his daddy's words,

This is my son.  Pass him the peanuts.

 

The story of the cool cloth

on the orphan's forehead, the poem finding hope in 

hanging by a thread.  

The airplane confessional, a woman committing

her mother's spirit to the sky --

maybe looking out the porthole window,

hoping to cross paths up there in the clouds.

 

The six-foot-six man standing on the church carpet like a blue wave,

shouting into his tall microphone so that we jumped from our pews --

 

Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!

 

And I didn't see Jesus' friends catch him -- raggedy and shredded --

off the wood.  Gauzing him up like a 

bloodied toe.

Burying him deep into virgin ground.

I didn't see it with my own eyes, only heard.

Maybe that's why -- when the scared story teller asked last night, 

"Christ Church will you catch me?"

I said -- Yes! As loud as I could so she could hear me.

But also, maybe, God,

 

to remind you in case you forgot -- 

what with your back turned and all --

that's what Good Fathers --

brothers

sisters

friends

airplane strangers --

do.

 

We catch the slip-sliding spirits falling out of the suffering.

And hand them over to

be held.

 

Since it's only Saturday, and we haven't yet 

really seen the Sunday (haven't beheld him in the clouds),

all we can do now

is hope you'll open your hands

 

and catch us from the

ground.