Day 32: Lent for my Hosannas

“I still question how we see God, how we use God. Our society acts as if God is something that’s carved in stone, making God static so that we feel more secure.”

–Anne Wilson Schaef

If God has character anything like Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia, we know that safety and security may not be the top priorities in our interactions with the holy.

And as much as that scares us all, isn’t it freeing to know that we are made for adventure, led on a path that is winding and curious and sacred?

Yesterday was palm Sunday, passion Sunday.

We sang Hosanna! at our church as the children brought their palm branches down the aisle, and later in the service we each received a branch and were encouraged to wave it in the air as those others did that day.

My Eliot stood up in his pew every time the choir sang, waving that stick of leaves in elegant motion with the rhythm of the song, and the adults in the room moved theirs in tiny, unnoticeable motions, if they moved them at all.

Because now as adults, we’ve set our image of God in stone, set ourselves in the proper place of safety and security.

Where we are, there may be no real need for celebrating, for asking questions, for truly journeying into the deeper places where true soul-work happens.

But that day long ago when Jesus hobbled in on that donkey, He was still fresh and beautiful to them.

Can you imagine such mad joy?

Such lucid thanksgiving?

Can you imagine yourself waving a palm branch in rhythm with the coming alive of your own heart and soul?

The truth is, even today we don’t understand it. And the truth is, that’s why the Mystery is so wonderful, how it has space to pull us all in.

We don’t have palm leaves in our hands, but do we know how to celebrate the fullness of God?

Do we know how to linger in a state of thanksgiving, how to tread the path of constant aliveness to ourselves and the reality of Christ?

Is it possible for us to crack the statue we’ve created and let God be the Mystery that has always been, so that whether we are safe or secure or not, we are held?

The people that day didn’t realize what was coming, but we’ve seen another part of the full masterpiece.

And so, stepping into that fullness is another matter.

But what good news we carry with us!

What fullness in our stride.

What ability to wave our palm branches high again, to call out that maybe there is a reason worth shouting out Hosanna! in 2016.

Just maybe.