That’s When: thoughts on trust and time
a Holy Week poem
Not far from my grandmother’s hymnal was her date book. A hard cover, usually decorated in flowers or tea pots, she had one for every year. It functioned as a calendar for tracking appointments, birthdays, and anniversaries, and also like a journal. I have one of those old date books. It is filled with notes on what she ate, phone calls, visitors, cards she received or sent, people she was praying for, and thoughts on Sunday’s sermon. I love flipping through these pages, smiling when I come across my name in her beautiful penmanship. Grandma Bernie’s hymnal influenced my faith and her date book sparks my curiosity about time.
It’s Holy Week, the final days of Lent. For many, a time of heightened reflection and increased anticipation. A week with more worship services than usual.
I’ve long wondered about the early days of Holy Week. There’s so much fanfare around Palm Sunday and then not a lot of action until Thursday. In recent years, I’ve done more reading and research to discover what scholars believe Jesus was actually doing on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
This year, I’m not so much thinking about where Jesus was, what he was doing, what he was eating, and who he was eating with, but rather on how we (humankind) navigate our days. How we travel or stay in place on troubled nights. How we prepare for coming betrayal, or arrest, or detention. How we journey between war and peace, violence and redemption, crucifixion and resurrection. How we know it’s time.
Journaling several mornings ago, I asked, “is knowing time, the same as trusting time?”
More than once in my life, I have felt suspended between life and death, hope and despair, possibility and the end of the road. There are three specific times when I have made life altering decisions. All three were terrifying and not made lightly or without intense deliberation and discernment. All three were made without full knowledge of the outcome only a growing awareness that something had to change.
Looking back, I recognize that it wasn’t about what I knew, but what I trusted. I trusted myself. I trusted a source bigger and wiser than myself. I trusted my small circle of support who said I wasn’t alone. I trusted that it was time.
Whatever faith or curiosities you hold or have released, whether or not you observe Holy Week, I invite you to reflect on time.
Where have you been?
Where are you now?
Where are you headed?
How will you go from here to there?
What do you know about time?
When have you trusted it?
Below is a video reading of the poem That’s When, capturing the relationship of trust and time. If you have a copy of Not My Grandmother’s Hymnal and want to follow along, you will find it on page 174.
If you’d like to get your hands on a signed copy, order here.
Tomorrow—Maundy Thursday—I’ll continue sharing Holy Week Words and Water with a video of the poem Our Feet on YouTube. It’s about a tender time washing Grandma Bernie’s feet when I was a teenager and she was moving closer to the end of her life.
And Good Friday, also on YouTube, I’ll share a poem called Eleven.
Inquisitively, Rebecca