Lenten Reflection for April 16

It was not yet midnight. My flight wasn’t for another seven hours. Why was my phone snarling at me to wake up? I fumbled it trying to find it in the blackness of the hotel room. When I finally answered it, my son, a paramedic, anxiously said “Dad… Mom has had a brain bleed. She’s in the ER and they are trying to decide where to send her.” In the chaotic confusion of that moment and those that followed, I was in shock and disbelief. I was somehow able to navigate the two-hour drive to the hospital where she was flown, disappointed in myself for not being there with her. The neurosurgeon was very guarded and in the hours that followed, and all of the expectations and hopes and dreams we had planned for, seemed shattered like a glass ornament falling from a Christmas tree.

After ten days the miracle, for which we prayed, brought new-found hope. She was talking. She was smiling. She started walking. She amazed her doctors. And then, what was called, a routine scan revealed cancer, and the rollercoaster of hope and disappointment wouldn’t let me off the ride until she died as I wept while wiping her face on a hospital bed fourteen months later.

The last chapter of Selina Stone’s Tarry Awhile entitled “Weeping” focuses on disappointment as a source of grief and weeping in our lives, and how this is not only personal, but also institutional and societal. Being brutally honest, she suggests there may even be times when we are disappointed in God for not delivering on expectations we have either created or bought into during our lives.

Examining my experience of hope and disappointment caused me to reflect on our country’s sometimes discouraging search for justice and healing for all. The passage of the 13th , 14th and 15th Amendments following the Civil War, the 24th Amendment and Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Voting Rights Act of 1965, and even the failure of the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, first introduced in 1923 (the year my mother was born), were all intended to provide justice, equality and healing for those who face racial or gender discrimination. This rollercoaster of hope and disappointment stubbornly refuses to let us exit its chaotic ride.

In the subchapter “Coping with Disappointment”, Dr. Stone reflects on how those close to Jesus and even Jesus Himself may have coped with disappointment during His suffering and death. Following her own mother’s death, she tarries with the Virgin Mary as she contemplates a Pietà while visiting the Vatican. The final subchapter “Going Through” asks us to consider tarrying awhile as we are experiencing those liminal places between hope and disappointment in our lives.

Some questions we might consider in those liminal places might be:

How has disappointment affected our experiences of ourselves, our institutions, or even God?
In what ways do we cope with the disappointment we feel in ourselves, others, or our society?
How do we withhold our judgement of God when we find ourselves struggling between hope and disappointment?
How might we better practice being clear, brave, humble, and kind in those liminal places, as Bishop Craig invited the clergy to do at their recent retreat?

-Rev. Tom Sinning, pastor and priest, Emmanuel Church in Alexandria