Recap: For Lent this year I am spending some time reflecting and creatively engaging with a theme each day. In an attempt to slow down I am setting aside this time, for creativity can not be rushed, and small changes to my daily pace of life can have a large impact.

Theme: A Sorrow

I started thinking about “a” sorrow to try to capture. (How can I choose just one?) Then as I cataloged all the things that are sad and broken I realized that they all track back to one great sorrow. The curse itself is the sorrow that I paused on today. The curse culminates in death. It is the curse that says nothing good can last, that loss is inevitable in this world.

It turned my thoughts to the words written by Andrew Peterson in a blog post about the Nashville floods of 2010, an image of which shows up in his song Come Back Soon. (To listen click here)

It is still one of my all time favorite blog posts as he goes on to talk about the place of art and telling the story of the Kingdom.

It resonates.

You can read the whole post at: www.rabbitroom.com/?p=9578.

But as I reflect on the sorrow of the curse, I’d like to share some of Andrew’s words here:

“The Great Nashville Flood of 2010 was devastating. People died. Homes were lost. We watched our neighborhood street turn into a muddy river. On one of our walks down the hill from the Warren to see the flood’s progress we spotted a family of field mice who had been forced to higher ground. Then we saw two or three moles. We and a few neighbors gathered them up and moved them to safety.

Later, in the woods, we found a drowned baby rabbit, soaked through and pitiful. Their warren had flooded and it was too small and fragile to escape in time. I imagine its mother pulled it out with the others and this was the unlucky one. I have a thing for rabbits, you see, so it gave me pause. A few minutes later I heard my son Aedan screaming through the woods. I ran. Our dog, a huge Great Pyrenees named Moondog, had found another baby rabbit, this one still alive. Before Aedan could stop him, Moondog’s instincts kicked in and he attacked. Rabbits scream like humans. Aedan saw it all and heard it all as Moondog bit and shook the rabbit till its back broke. When I found Aedan he was weeping in the mud with the little bloody rabbit cradled in his hands. It was awful.

Later, while the rain battered Tennessee, Aedan sat on the couch and wept. He punched the cushion and cried, I’m sorry. I feel terrible and stupid that I’m crying over a little rabbit when there are people dying all over the world. It was just a rabbit! I was astonished, as I often am by my children. I held him and told him to cry all he wanted. You’re mourning the same thing, I said. Death is death. He wasn’t just grieving the little animal, but the Curse itself. The rabbit in the dog’s jaws only signified the presence of the serpent in the garden of his boyhood. He was grieving the slow dusk of his own death as manhood’s shadow gathered in the east. The world, the rabbit screamed, is broken. That truth intrudes and slays the days of youth. Nature, in the words of Tennyson, is red in tooth and claw.

So we grieve and we rejoice, like breathing in and breathing out. The little things matter, and the big things matter, and hearts far and near need hope.”

So here it is again. The sorrow: “He wasn’t just grieving the little animal, but the Curse itself.” Death may not have the victory, but it still has a sting and that sting is witnessed everywhere I turn.

So I took my camera down to the graveyard at St. Illtyd’s church. And in the midst of the ancient stones I came across this little piece in the grass. The rest of the stone has long since perished. All that remains is loss and a call to remember.

Nothing stays the same. So as I sit with the Lord today and lean into the sorrow of Ash Wednesday I hear the words: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Turn from sin. Be faithful to Christ.”