Striking the Pose of Ready

Jenny Buck, April 8, 2007

The irony of me standing here, on Easter Sunday, EASTER SUNDAY, does not escape me.  The only possible word I can speak to is the word resurrection.  Truthfully, I don’t think I have ever said the word resurrection out-loud.  It rests on my tongue a stranger.  A foreigner.   But here I am standing up here – really the only thing funnier knowing my journey of the past couple decades, would be if I were wearing a bonnet and patent leather shoes.  Which, thank you, I am not.

But I do not think my reason for being up here is to talk about how ironic my being up here is.  I do, actually, think I have something you need to hear.  This liturgy, in some important way, is my grand finale.  Not because I am dying.  Not because I am leaving.  Because I am ready.

My journey of decades, starts really heating up the past number of months.  I have been filled with intense imagery (I could loan some to you Keith Ford).  There have been images that have come to me that begged to be my liturgy, the final word:  cardinals, have held deep meaning for me since exactly after my grandmother’s death, their bright red delicate bodies seemed to bring my Grandmother close to me.  But during the past few weeks I understand that they are not bringing my grandmother, they are here to remind me of my voice and strength and color in this world and what I am capable of becoming.  Another, I was taken out to lunch on my birthday by a dear friend who bought me a cup of blossom tea – what a treat.  The waiter brought me a steaming goblet of hot water and dropped, plop, an ugly brown bulb into this beautiful goblet  … the bulb proceeded to gently, tenderly open, tendrils of green tea opened like fingers, to unveil its secret, a beautiful red blossom with an arc of tiny white flowers over it.  Aha!  Liturgy!  But I am no flower, though certainly I have tried to be one. 

Nope.  None of these.  My liturgy begins with a mood.  Have you ever put your face near a door cracked open on a very windy day?  Have you felt those brazen, crazy winds that nearly push that door right out of your hand? There’s a force in wind that is pushed through small openings that seems greater than how it feels when you throw the door open wide. 

This is where I begin.  It is very, very windy.  The kind of wind that can knock you off your feet and rip doors right out of your hand.  And speaking of doors, there are lots of doors, the sky is full of them, wide open – in fact I have been so obsessed by open doors that I sketch them, quilt them, paint them … I feel like Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters!

Fierce wind, open doors.  A phrase “the space between” and Kernels of something have me mesmerized.  No cardinals, no blossoms.   

Wind.  Open doors.  The space between.  Kernels.  Cripes.  Resurrection! 

So where is this to go that begins with me and ends with you – working with this cast of crazy characters? At first glance it would seem like this is a story of massive change.  But it feels like FINALLY.  It feels like tick.  The next step.  Ah, this is true.  It rests quietly and softly like right always does.

Over the years, winds have pushed my voice into interesting places.  I have spoken as the Democratic National Committee and have been the Chair of the party, members of congress and even presidential candidates.  I have spoken earnestly on behalf of Don Samuels, countless nonprofit leaders and many who are doing right in this world.  But it is their stories I have spoken.  I have remained silent. 

The doorway where I now stand is an opening where my voice blows and whispers.  My stories.  My truths.  My commitments. 

The space between.  The air between here and there.   This feels to me like Judson.  The community where I can poke at my truths and get up here and talk about it!  I can look at the outside word and see the need and my gifts and I am in the space between -- where I sit in the iridescent gold and blue lights and feel it live.  It’s energy from you wise, artistic, talented people who dream and vision and live and die.  You exhale, I inhale – your dreams become alive in me.  My dreams become alive in you.  Your energy.  My energy.  God’s energy, breathe in, breathe out – our very living and dreaming fills this space – this space between our deepest yearnings and the outside world.  Judson is the space between.  A place where I go to become.  If I were writing our mission statement this is what I would say. 

We all have our deepest gifts alive inside.  It is the kernel, our nucleus.  Some of us are very aware of our gifts and some of us have them buried them so deeply – it can feel like there is nothing in there any more.  It can feel like the door is locked tight, no wind or pulling will open it wide.  But when we come here, something can be stirred.  It twitches and trembles a little.  The door can crack just a bit.  Perhaps you feel a breeze when Shirley and Vonne show a glimpse from their photographic eye.  Or Pam and Jon’s glorious words pulling you into life’s deep living.  Or David Buck’s incomparable passion for meaning that has turned the world upside down for some of us with his vision of what will be.  Or maybe it’s Craig and Sydney’s boundless energy, Barb’s garden, Mike and Linda’s prairie, Kate’s deep loving wisdom, Doug’s glorious passion for music, Randy’s powerful gift of guidance, Sarah’s gift for connecting us, Sandy, Trish and Katie’s love of your child, Beth’s love of this earth, Barbara’s perfect note that brings you next to God and John’s leading conductor arm that makes your whole being arch to that next chord.  Or maybe it’s Diane who stirs up something crazy and powerful in you and helps you discover where you can go next.  Breathe in, exhale.  This space between is alive and it has the power to help us move to where we deeply know we are to go.  Using our deepest, best selves.  Breathe in, exhale.  Part of something much bigger.  We are not meant to pour over our lives of self-interest, our scrapbook/memoir journeys, until we figure it out.  We are not meant to live other people’s stories, we are meant to step out into our own lives.  We need a community to help us do this.  Perhaps I’ll take in your last breath, perhaps you’ll take in mine.  Life is moving on.  This place.  We people.  You are right here with me, right now.  This breath we take, this one right now, is the only one we can count on. 

Maybe that’s what the winds are all about.  Our breath in movement, mixed with the breath of each other, this world, all the creatures and plants – our very universe breathing in and breathing out.  When we ignore it, it blows fiercely, pushing us toward our openings.  But if we put it in the right place, the right community, it can calm and still and doors will open wide for us to go in and out, over and over again.

Ok.  So I know I can’t escape an Easter liturgy without saying Jesus out loud.  There I did it!  You see, Jesus is complicated for me, I don’t think we’re supposed to follow Jesus, I think we’re supposed to follow our deepest best selves.  I think we are supposed to learn from his actions on behalf of the world.  Jesus for me is a reminder of how powerful it is to live with your gifts fully engaged.  You can, and do absolutely change the world.  He did.  You do.  I do. We must.

So resurrection?  Maybe.  Buried self way down deep with the breath in this place bringing life.  Whispering.  Beginning.  Resurrection doesn’t have to mean busting your way out of the soil after a tragic, violent, death.  Sometimes resurrection is stepping through an open door.  Or seeing your deepest truth and putting around it the breath of dreams and dreamers. 

My story cannot wait any longer.  It has been beckoning me with a fierce funneled wind that expects nothing less than everything from me.  And what I know from the way I feel connected to this universe, each of you, the very breath of existence and life, is that everything is well within my reach and nothing less will do.  For this is my LIFE.  This is my truth.

That feels like a very large, heavy statement, doesn’t it?  I EXPECT EVERYTHING FROM ME.  No easy does it.  No one day at a time Sweet Jesus … no.  It’s big and all.

And it rests on me like a calm, early morning, spring wind – full of smell and thaw and bird song.

Truth doesn’t have to be heavy, you know.  Sometimes it’s effortless and light like joy or whipped cream.