five-sense (Good) Friday

Mine is a flip-flopped faith tradition. It recognizes life in death, hope in the risky paradoxes of self-offering. The first is last, the last is first. The Holy One took on flesh and lived among us, and what we do to the least of these, we do to the Most High, the One who suffers with us.

On this darkest and most good of Fridays, I sit without a sense of what to say. I have been feeling cold rain on my cheeks, warm soup slipping from my spoon past my lips, a three-year-old hand in mine as we cross the street. I have been tasting salty broth and cinnamon-infused tea, tasting the sorrow of faraway friends' sadnesses. I have been seeing musical instruments all over my dining room floor, lists of books to read, shadows in the corners, my closest cousin's firstborn's early steps on a tiny screen. I have been hearing Josh's guitar, sirens wailing down the street, laughter down the hall. I've been smelling boiling potatoes, aged pages, cold and wet dirt. The beauty is all tangled with the pain, like roots and soil, like the fabric of our human days.

The suffering, the joy of it. Today what I am sensing is the deep heart-longing for full life: for resurrection.