Sonja!

April 20 was the day of baby Sonja's birth. At 4 am that morning a week ago, we got a phone call and soon to be big sister Erika was brought over by her parents to be with us. She woke up at gramma and grandpa's house hours later not even remembering coming here. Before I'd even gone back to sleep the phone rang again with news Sonja had arrived. In a rush, in a hurry she arrived, so fast they barely made it to the hospital.

Waiting in those early morning hours, I was unable to sleep, eagerly anticipating the long-awaited arrival of our newest grandchild remembering my own labors. My thoughts hovered above the waters of chaos, this place of new life. In this thin place, where dreams merge into consciousness, I remember realizing profoundly the connectedness I had not only with this event, but also with all life. It is through the totality of all of our experiences and memories that we are able to recognize our common humanity. It is in this tender most human of all spaces that we become aware of how we all come from the same place, the same molecules only so ever slightly rearranged. I thought of the women all over the world who were giving birth this very morning. Thinking of the labor pains my thoughts settled on the current intense Spring I am experiencing here in Michigan. The words from the bible about all of creation groaning in labor for a new creation took on new relevancy.

This new creation, the kingdom Jesus spoke so often about in the gospels, is like the force of the sap pushing up from the roots of the big trees and little bulbs here, rising to feed the newly growing buds and flowers. It is like the force of the labor contractions pushing out that baby into new life. This force of life connects us and truly literally makes us one even as each one of us is a unique creation of this stuff of life. Each new life bursting forth is a miracle and changing the world forever. Why is it that this is so hard for us to see? Life is so amazing!

Waiting

Flying to Michigan last week was, for me, an experience of moving backwards in seasonal time. I had just found my inner Spring and here the daffodils were just beginning to brighten the brown leaf covered garden beds. Here it is still cold and it is early spring. Winter doesn't seem to want to let go of her icy grip. Just before we arrived more than three inches of heavy wet snow fell. It still lies in melting dirty heaps at the edges of parking lots reminding me of cast off children's snowmen slowly returning to the earth. Erika asked "is it winter again?"

We are here to help when the new baby is born, tenderly tending big sister, Erika, who will no longer be the only kid in the house as well as to cook, drive and generally keep order. Our daughter-in-law is now very pregnant, tomorrow is her due date and she is ready for the new life to come. I see in her, as well as in the lilac bushes outside our house and in every growing living thing here in Michigan, the pulse of life. Life eager to burst forth and do what life does—grow into the fullness of what they are.

But today it is gray and cloudy again and I wonder if this Easter promise of new life is just a pipe dream. Waiting for new life, waiting for Spring once again, waiting for resurrection is challenging my patience. It is too easy to stop watching, to close my eyes and tell others to wake
me up when it is finally here. How difficult it is to remember to trust not only the promise, but the pulse of life, forever pushing forward, forever renewing, forever alive. Patience is such a hard thing to learn.

Finding voice again

Spring, that riotous season of new life breaking forth, has finally come to me. I did not recognize that I have been living in the season of winter. Day by day, I put one foot in front of the other. Time passed. I was silent. I could not find words for what was happening within me. I have not been sad. I have not been depressed, only still and silent, like the molecules that make me up having been cooled and have been moving more slowly.

But while all seemed silent, much has been going on underground. Leaving the church in October and then going on the trip to Palestine in November shook up my comfortable certainties. I went on the trip to learn about another perspective in our Holy Land. I had never been exposed so clearly to unspeakable oppression, injustice and hope destroying situations. Everybody is afraid of everybody. Fear hangs over the country like the smell of sweat in a busy gym.

Venue and voice finally came together for me several weeks ago. I was able to give a slide presentation about my trip to the Friday Group I attend at the Berkeley church. My goal was to stand in what Parker Palmer calls "the tragic gap." By that he means the place where one stands in the place between our deepest hopes and the current realities, however bad they are. In this place of tension one does not give in to cynicism, to fluffy clichés, one does not become polarized, taking one or the other side. Standing in this hard place literally took my voice away.

While I have no answers, I occasionally find I am more clearly able to find footing. In this place of tension, there is no judgment. Standing in this holy place of tension, I see the face of Christ.

In these final days before Easter, Christians everywhere are called to stand in this tragic gap of tension between what is and what could be. I pray we all can find steady inner ground and trust that by holding the tension, new life, new compassionate possibilities can come.

Check out my slide show of Palestine on the web! www.jstokstad.com/Palenstine