The Wind is Picking Up
All day yesterday, the wind grew. It played with the clouds and the leaves on the trees. Half of the sky got dark too early. A few drops of rain flew onto the tile of my balcony. A storm was coming.
Today, the wind is also picking up. The Israelites of generations past are preparing for the greatest journey of their lives. Jesus and the disciples are sharing one more moment together before everything is turned upside down. If I allow myself, I too can feel the fear and excitement in this impending chaos. I can participate in its later redemption.
For me, showing up in person for the Triduum is as exhilarating as a thunderstorm. There is no place else to be than in it. These culminating moments of Jesus’ life are real and relevant and they reawaken something in me. During these days, we tell stories that we know deep in our bones. They are stories about friends betraying you when you need them most, about keeping promises, physical pain, and about watching your friend, child, parent suffer. Stories about running away and coming back, unjust condemnation, of awful disappointment, darkness and death of someone you could not imagine life without. They are also stories about a surprising, tender act of love, of being known completely, of decisions, of meaning and impossible light in unbreakable darkness. Stories of real, actual hope. Stories about a storm and it’s clearing. Stories we remember and tell and live again.
And it’s a story we’re invited to experience with words and water and bread and candles dripping wax down our hands.
Something is happening tonight. The wind is picking up, the trees are starting to bend. I don’t want to hide from the reality of this weekend. I want to open the door and experience it with everything I have.
How might you be invited to participate in the Triduum this weekend? What would it be like to really feel the wind on your face - to enter this story with your whole self?
Teresa Nygard
Picture Credit: Unsplash, Charles Marleau