Author Archives: Jenn Cavanaugh

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About Jenn Cavanaugh

B.A. Russian Language and Literature, Willamette University; M.A. Theology and the Arts, Fuller Seminary

Lenten Calendar: Forsaken

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Every hour of every day there are crucifixions,

Justice Scales by Emory Douglas

Justice Scales by Emory Douglas

the Christ on trial in someone, somewhere,
judged in fear, condemned in ignorance,
mocked and beaten, imprisoned, killed,
while we watch at the foot of the cross
or from three cock crows away, and ask,
‘God, God, why have you forsaken them?’

The world is full of Good Fridays and Golgothas.
In the small arena of our lives,
there appears to be the same defeat of goodness
and it’s difficult to wear a bright smile
when the heart hangs heavy in a darkness
full of thorns and nails and swords.
Unable to see beyond dyings, we cry,
‘God, God, why have you forsaken us?’

from ‘Easterings’ by Joy Cowley

 

Justice requires attention and presence. Injustice demands we look or walk away. We sense this when we witness it — if God were only here, we think, this would never happen. Pray for somewhere that seems God-forsaken. Keep your eyes open for ways to shine God’s light in and on dark places.

Lenten Calendar: Confession

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Why and how to reckon with the things on our conscience?

Confessions-Las-Vegas-Running-Out-of-Time-1000x669@2x candy chang

Candy Chang’s traveling project invited people to post anonymous confessions as an opportunity for “catharsis and consolation” http://candychang.com/work/confessions/

To whom and to what end do we confess?

What do we gain and what does it cost us to accept a confession?

What do any of us do with it once it is out there?

It is at once a comfort and a challenge to remember how much we all stand in the need of grace. 

Late Results

We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
—Milosz

 

And the few willing to listen demanded that we confess on television.
So we kept our sins to ourselves, and they became less troubling.
The halt and the lame arranged to have their hips replaced.
Lepers coated their sores with a neutral foundation, avoided strong light.
The hungry ate at grand buffets and grew huge, though they remained hungry.
Prisoners became indistinguishable from the few who visited them.
Widows remarried and became strangers to their kin.
The orphans finally grew up and learned to fend for themselves.
Even the prophets suspected they were mad, and kept their mouths shut.
Only the poor—who are with us always—only they continued in the hope.

— Scott Cairns

 

Lenten Calendar: Be Food

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The Way In

Sometimes the way to milk
     and honey is through the body.

the-spoonful-of-milk-1912.jpg!Large Marc Chagall

The Spoonful of Milk – Marc Chagall


Sometimes the way in is a song.
But there are three ways in
     the world: dangerous, wounding,
and beauty.
To enter stone, be water.
To rise through hard earth, be plant
desiring sunlight, believing in water.
To enter fire, be dry.
To enter life, be food.

— Linda Hogan

Lenten Calendar: Pray for Peace

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Engage in a little audio divina today with Moçnik Damijan’s Ierusalem. Damijan’s text is taken from Psalm 122 – sung in Latin and English – and the names for Jerusalem in multiple languages.

Jerusalem has only rarely, if ever, been a “city of peace,” as its name signifies. It is a prophetic, rather than a descriptive, name. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus “sets his face toward Jerusalem” in chapter 9 and does not arrive until chapter 19; most of his ministry takes place as he journeys toward the cross. Both God and Jesus lament over Jerusalem repeatedly in the Old and New Testament; it represents a place that has a special place in the heart of God, but which has never reached its potential. The prophetic book of Revelation ends in a description of a new “city of peace” in which God’s will is finally done on earth as it is now in heaven.

For what place or city do you feel moved to pray? Pray along with the groans and whispers and cries and melodies of the choir. Pray for its peace and reconciliation and fulfillment and the success of those working to improve the lives of its inhabitants.

blum

Temple Mount and Western Wall by Ludwig Blum

Jerusalem—built as a city
    that is bound firmly together.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:

    “May they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls,
    and security within your towers.”
For the sake of my relatives and friends
    I will say, “Peace be within you.”
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
    I will seek your good.

— Psalm 122:3, 6-9

Lenten Calendar: Unfinished

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“So, you’re a background singer in your own life?

Why’re you in the background?

…

You gotta let the lies go

and let your hope grow.”

— Kim B. Miller, “Lies”

Face (Claude) Henri Matisse

Face (Claude) – Henri Matisse

I find a lot of hope in being unfinished — a work in progress. When things aren’t working out as planned, well, the story isn’t over yet. It helps me extend grace to others, but especially myself — there’s less pressure to be perfect or have it all figured out.

Sometimes I have to ask myself, though, why is that part of my life or myself so underdeveloped? Why is it just roughed in? A sketch I’m in no hurry to finish? What fears and lies are keeping me from committing the time and focus it would take to fill in the features? It’s safer to be all potential, even if that means squandering it, but God has hopes, dreams, plans, and work for our completed selves. What is one step toward that future self you’ve been avoiding for fear of mistakes? What if we accepted the possibility of imperfection along the way to being made perfect?

Lenten Calendar: Loss

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Make no mistake: loss is not a gift. What was lost was a gift, sometimes one that wasn’t appreciated fully until it was lost, which only adds to the anguish.

Every loss is unique to the mourner, and yet the experience of loss is an inevitable part of life in this world.

Lent is a season to acknowledge it as real, to allow grief and regret to wrack us and ultimately, hopefully, to grow in appreciation for all we have been given, whether we still possess it or not. Loss leads easily to fear and defensiveness, but the recognition of the universality of loss can soften our hearts and make healers of the healed.

The Grieving Women Albert Bloch

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept
him alive.

Before you know kindness as
the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as
the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that
makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you
everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

 — Naomi Shihab Nye

Lenten Calendar: Lengthen

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Lent comes from the same root as lengthen — as the days are lengthening, as this active fast calls for the lengthening of our souls, the feeding of the hungry and care for others.

If you extend your soul to the hungry
And satisfy the afflicted soul,
Then your light shall dawn in the darkness,
And your darkness shall be as the noonday.
The Lord will guide you continually,
And satisfy your soul in drought,
And strengthen your bones;
You shall be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.
Those from among you
Shall build the old waste places;
You shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
And you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach,
The Restorer of Streets to Dwell In.

— Isaiah 58:10-12

Lent is not about nesting. The nest is made, the eggs have hatched, the child is born, and all these hungry mouths need fed. The focus of this fast is not to eat less, but to “share your bread with the hungry” (Isaiah 58:7). At this time of year, many of us think about how to make do with less, but how will you physically direct the surplus of resources that frees up to those in need?

widelec3

art by Michal Pawlicki

Rather than developing a scarcity mentality, how will you extend yourself to others to demonstrate to them — and yourself — that there is enough?

Lenten Calendar: Hiding

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Today’s lectionary psalm is Psalm 32 – a maskil, or contemplative psalm imparting wisdom. It deals in visceral images of the pain and futility of trying to hide our dark secrets from God.

When I kept silent,
    my bones wasted away
    through my groaning all day long.
For day and night
    your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was sapped
    as in the heat of summer.

This oppressive feeling of guilt and shame lifts completely after coming clean with God, but then this psalm we’re supposed to think about and learn from does a funny thing. Just after busting the myth that we can hide from God, it refers to God as a hiding place. Obviously not from God, but from those who would punish us for giving up our pretense and deceit. God’s presence is the safest place to be our whole selves.

La Voix du sang Magritte

La Voix du sang by René Magritte

The lyrics to Our Lady Peace’s “Hiding Place” echo those of the psalm…

Have you seen what I saw
The sky came down from afar?

Have you been there before
That place where hearts’re reborn?

I’m looking for a place to go
I’m waiting on another
Hiding place for hearts

Have you dreamed of a world
Where armor sheaths your bones?

Have you ransomed your soul
To pay for all that you’ve got wrong?

Never give up

… and the video evokes the feelings of danger and safety.

 

Lenten Calendar: Meek

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Consider the mushroom, it neither boasts nor vaunts itself above its fellows, and yet it grows in every environment. It knows the power of numbers working humbly and steadily in concert. Individually, they are fragile; together, they are inexorable.

shallow focus photography of mushrooms

Photo by Chris Gonzalez on Pexels.com

Mushrooms

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot’s in the door.

— Sylvia Plath

 

Lenten Calendar: Change

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Most of us — if we’re honest — will admit that we resist change, even if we like the idea of it. We may delight in newness, have a penchant for novelty, welcome distraction, or coolly ride out circumstances, but that doesn’t mean we want anything to shift within ourselves on a profound level.

Lent is an apt season for reflecting on the things in our lives that want to move, that cannot or should not remain the same. A gift that needs to grow, priorities desperate to realign, bits of our psyche we’ve worried so much that they’re raw or calloused and need to be left alone to heal.

Tracy Chapman’s song “Change” asks all the right questions — questions we can only safely ask ourselves in the presence of a God of love.

2020-02-29 (2)

“If everything you think you know
Makes your life unbearable
Would you change?”

“If not for the good why risk falling?”

“If you’d broken every rule and vow
And hard times come to bring you down
Would you change?”

“Are you so upright you can’t be bent
If it comes to blows?”

“If you knew that you would find a truth
That brings a pain that can’t be soothed
Would you change?”