Sacraments & Running Away

The Sun! It happens sometimes

I'm in Wisconsin for Easter, which is kind of strange for me. It's the first year I haven't gone to a Good Friday service in my whole life. While I miss the communal remembrance of sin and sacrifice (I think it was just this year that I finally truly understood what Christ's death means. All the depravity, selfishness, and twisted manipulation that humanity has and does and will continue to unleash on the world and each other is awful. It's frightening. The amount of darkness inside of me alone frightens me. And Jesus took all of it, and it was so much that the sun couldn't even continue looking. The entire world went black and the stones cried out, and I finally understood it's because so much evil was in one place, on one person), I feel like I am able to remember the passover, Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Christ in a different way here.

The view of our house

Last night we ate pizza and talked about what it would mean if the bread and wine in communion was actually Christ. How we carry Him around with us in our everyday life, and the consequences that gives to pizza and Thursday nights and road trips.

I love my friends, this chosen family, so dearly. Yet when I am with them I know how unbelievably selfish I am. I forget to do what I say I will do, I break my promises, I betray others without even realizing (which is worse, because whatever understanding I'm betraying isn't of enough consequence to me for me to remember it in the first place). The sorrows of the world, of myself, visited me, became stones, and placed themselves on my ribs and palms and feet. Then Jesus took them.

Death consumes all of us, daily and in the end. I'm leaving these beautiful people. They're crazy, and I'm thankful. I'm so thankful I just burst into tears yesterday while reading a book, because there is so much love and it feels so useless when physical presence will end.

What is also true, however, is that death itself is gone. C.S. Lewis and Sheldon Vanaulken meet in Oxford for what, both of them knew was most likely, the last time. They hug, and maybe wept (I don't remember). Lewis crosses the street and down a ways while Vanaulken watches, wanting to make a memory. Then, Lewis turns around, and this tall oak of a man shouts "But the great thing is, Christians never say goodbye!"

So this weekend, I'm making a memory. While crafting this beautiful space that I will relive in Easters to come, I carry the life and memory of Christ. He is faithful. He is risen.

E

I Say It's Alright

Chicago looked like this last Saturday. I took a Polaroid.

There's this scene in the Parent Trap (Lindsay Lohan edition) that I watched a million times this summer curled up in my flat in Scotland, (seemingly) dying of mono (which I just thought were terrible allergies at the time), where American Lindsay goes to her mother's fashion studio in London and begins playing with the crystals. Here Comes the Sun comes on, and there's something kind of magical about the combination of the Beatles and glittering crystals and being wrapped in motherly love that the scene presents. I feel like that now.

River Walk on Wacker Drive

I see this everyday. Such is student life in a library.

It's been approximately 180 days since it has been this warm in Chicago, and I love it. During winter, the trees and ground hold their breath and then it snows and then the sun comes and they exhale into blossoms and warm rain showers and green grass. Winter brings the kind of peace that stems from resignation. Spring brings peace that stems from hope.

There wasn't even any rain! Just a rainbow!

What's really exciting, to me at least, is that I can talk about my graduation without wanting to throw a tantrum for the first time since July. I will be dead and gone, as one friend put it, come May, but it will be such a good kind of dead and gone. I've had an amazing collegiate career, have been given the best group of people to live with I could have ever asked for, and the sun came out in Chicago. All I can do is be thankful.

Cake at Magnolia Bakery, from that sunny Saturday in Chitown

I feel as if I've been wrapped up in love and warmth, and the wind through the pines and buds sound almost like the music of wind chimes, and the Beatles are playing on the fresh lawn. All the good things in life came up to me, shook my hand, and stored themselves in my heart and memory, and I get to carry them with me like jewelry. My life is only beautiful things.

Wacker River Walk

Photo shoot in a Mall.

Beautiful things, and SUNSHINE.

E

Snappin' a friend with the good news.