Tragedy in the old sense. Two faces of the same coin. That which made you special and great, the source of your greatest triumphs, has led you to this, this misery and disappointment and end of all hopes. Your fire has become your ashes.

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Palm Sunday is a celebration day and it is right that it should be so.  Because the Holy Week to come is also a procession and it also ends in a coronation.  The King of Jerusalem or else the very stones would cry out!  That was how his last week began.  And it ended with the very stones crying out in earthquake, proclaiming him the King of the Universe.

It is not comfortable to ride a donkey, but perhaps it feels easier on the bones if you know you are riding to your crown.  Your pains are donkey-back pains.  They are taking you to your city and your throne.  You cannot see them, but the crowds are there, cheering.

On the sweetness.

Though it is Palm Sunday, your congregation sings all the easter hymns with enthusiasm–He is Risen!  The chapel is full.  Two sets of children join to sing Gethsemane.  Expiation, crucifixion, the Garden, the Cross, the Tomb, the Risen Lord, it is all one, and you are one.  A half hour after the service, the chapel is still full of people talking.

Your nose runs but you cannot breathe. Your throat rasps. Your head hurts. Everything hurts.  Your eyes, oh man.  You are so tired, why can’t you sleep?

Ookh. Your stomach is like a drum about to burst. The pressure–things are moving down there–this does not feel good.

They hurt—some. They are tender. They throb. Don’t bump!

You are afraid to try. You fear the laughter, the mockery, the self-contempt. The suspicion that you aren’t good enough made into a certainty. It would be bitter, and the fear of it now is bitter also.

You are afraid of the hurt. You are afraid of the wrench, the jolt, the stab, the cut, the tears. You are afraid of pain, body and soul, and the fear is sharp.  The fear itself makes you feel pain.

“Mommy and Daddy are going to be living apart now. We are still a family and we still love you, we just think its better if we get divorced.”

Two breaths, three, and the world’s turned upside down.

Half of you is ripped away and turned to anger and malice. It is awful to see what the two of you are now. It is awful to remember when you weren’t.

You trusted someone. They lied to you. They led you on. Your skin is unblemished. Your bones unbroken. You do not bleed. But you are stabbed deep.

Scrapes, wounds, infections, raw, pussy, bloody, oozing, scabbed…

At 3 AM (3 AM is my muse), I was thinking about our friend Bruce Charlton and his preference for praying to Jesus because it is more intimate–we have a real conception of Christ from the gospels but almost everything we know about God the Father we know third-hand.  That’s fixable, of course.  If you do enough praying to the Father, you begin to develop an intimacy and understanding with Him also.  But I take BC’s point.

But something also says that it is important to approach the Father wearing Christ’s  mask, which is what we do in prayer.

I wonder if there are really two different things that we call prayer.  One is sort of a half-dialogic communion, a sort of extremely informal prayer that half occurs on the plane of sentiment, that can be and in my own personal experience often is directed at the the Father, Jesus, martyrs and ancestors, and even maybe living people, carried on through and sometimes to the Holy Ghost.  And the other is a more formal entry into the throne room of God and making your petition there.

Someone you love is doing wrong.  It is sickening and it is changing even their face and posture for worse.  You try to say something and get clawed.   You… pray?

Your toe snaps, your arm snaps, your rib snaps, your femur snaps, your neck snaps…