More from N.T. Wright’s wonderful little book Christians at the Cross.  Here’s what he suggests as the practical way for the Colliery community to begin to address their grief.  Note that he is not suggesting that gathering the grief and placing it at the Cross will somehow magically erase all the pain and make everything better:

“I want you to gather up the pain and grief of this community:  the mining disaster half a century ago when over 80 men lost their lives; the other mining disaster — the pit closures — of 20 or 30 years ago, when nearly twenty times that number lost their jobs and the family and social sorrows, whatever they may be.  I want you to write down, some time over the next two or three days, just a sentence or two, or maybe just a word or two, about the particular griefs this community has had to bear in recent years.  And over the course of the week, we’ll gather them up, we’ll put them in a basket here somewhere, and when we get to Good Friday, we’ll bring them to the cross and leave them there.

Because, you see, that is the only way we can really and truly deal with them.  We come, like the crowds on Palm Sunday, with all kinds of hopes and frustrations, with sorrows and fears, and we have that glimmer of hope that maybe Jesus will be able to do something about it all…

…scribble something down…and we’ll keep them here and fold them into the story on Good Friday itself.  I have no idea what God will do with them.  But I do know that, when you bring things to the foot of the cross, the music of Jesus’ death transforms them in ways we can’t predict or explain.”

I’m posting these words because I know so many people who are dealing with profound grief from incomprehensible stories.  Even those of us who are not wrestling with deep suffering have hard stories in our past.  As we approach the ending of Lent, I wonder…what griefs of the past would you or I like to write down and place at the foot of the Cross?  I wonder how seeing these griefs anew in the light of Jesus’ death and resurrection might transform us?

It is too early, but I could not stop myself — I picked up N.T. Wrights, Christians at the Cross on Monday.  It is a little book of sermons given Easter week in Easington Colliery, a very broken former mining community in England (you may know a version of it from the film Billy Elliott).  The mine closed in 1994, taking with it both the primary employer and primary source of income.  By 2007, when Wright visited there, the signs of broken shalom were everywhere, with former family abodes now being used for drug shacks, and teenage pregnancy, poverty, and obesity at appalling levels.  Wright went there to join with the Council in asking what does restoring broken community look like in this situation?

In the introduction, he writes,

“…part of the problem may be in the difficulty of moving forwards when all the symbols and local culture are pointing back.  As with an individual who has lost someone they love, part of the point of the process of grief, painful and horrible though it is, is to enable the person eventually to look about them, draw a deep breath, and make some new starts.

This isn’t just a matter of ‘moving on,’ in the fashionable jargon.  It’s a matter of looking the past in the face, owning up to the grief which we often hide, and so laying a more solid foundation for what may be to come.  I decided therefore that it was worth spending some time in facing the multiple bereavements of Easington Colliery and in weaving them together with the story of all stories, the story of Jesus on his way to the cross.  As I say more than once in what follows, I have no blueprint for what might or should happen next.  If God is at work he wil do what he will do, and his purposes are always full of surprises.  But I am convinced that when we bring our griefs and sorrows within the story of God’s own grief and sorrow, and allow them to be held there, God is able to bring healing to us and new possibilities to our lives.  That is, of course, what Good Friday and Easter are all about.”

Wright’s words are so helpful in that they acknowledge that we do not know the exact path grief will take.  Furthermore, we are often plodding one day at a time through this uncertainty of grief, asking those ‘how long’ and ‘why’ questions.  And yet, there is one thing we can do — keep laying our griefs and sorrows at the feet of the One who knows grief and sorrow more deeply than we can ever imagine.  And in that, let us be prepared, no — expectant — of God’s meeting us with a resurrection surprise!

I did it again.  Realized there is a popular holiday on the calendar and I have no idea of its true significance.  What did I do?  I googled St. Patrick’s Day and read that most valued of resources, Wikipedia (I’m glad I no longer teach school so I don’t have to read plagiarized Wikipedia book reports, but at the same time, there are some really good articles there…:), and learned all sorts of things about St. Paddy’s Day.  So, here for you, is a quiz…please write the answers in the comments section.  The best answers receive — what else — a GREEN shamrock!:)

1. Why is St. Patrick a “gospel-hero”?
2. What color was originally associated with St. Patrick’s Day (and why was it changed?)
3. What is the significance of the Shamrock?
4. Where did the phrase “wearing of the green” come from?
5. What role does St. Patrick’s day play in the calendar of the Catholic church?
6. What city dyes its river green to celebrate St. Paddy’s Day?
7. If St. Patrick were alive, how much green beer would he drink in Savannah today?

Have a great St. Patrick’s Day, and “the luck o’ the Irish to ya!”

If you want to read an interesting article on St. Patrick and bringing the gospel, check this out:  http://communityofjesus.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/evangelizing-like-st-patrick/