Angie Kinghorn

Mary’s son

Yesterday, on Maundy Thursday, our choir sang a piece that has haunted me since.  It’s about Jesus, but through the lens of his mother, Mary.  The piece spans his life from birth to death, with Mary standing by to offer a mother’s comfort to her son at every juncture.

Each Lenten season we remember Jesus’ suffering, and since I’ve become a mother to a son, I’ve found God’s willingness to sacrifice  his own son that much more amazing.  As I watch my son grow and come to love him more with each day that passes, the idea of loving an entire people enough to give his precious body over to be broken for them … let’s just say my heart isn’t as big as God’s.  I couldn’t do it.  I look at the tender skin at the nape of his neck and I marvel at the scope of God’s love for us.  I couldn’t do it; not for anything.

But yesterday’s service reminded me that Jesus wasn’t just God’s son.  He was Mary’s son.  Mary bore him, raised him, and watched as he was abandoned by his disciples, tried before the Sanhedrin, and then stood at the foot of the cross and watched her beloved son’s hands and feet nailed to the wood.

Could you do it?  As a mother, could you stand there and watch soldiers nail your son (a grown man, but your son nonetheless) to a cross, then jeer as they tortured him with a crown of thorns and pierced his side with a spear?  Could you stand by and watch?

I couldn’t.

Let me share this music with you, because it speaks far more eloquently than I ever could.  Listen to the violin weep.  Hear the lullaby that echoes the ones you’d sing to your own babies.  Prepare yourself for the piano thundering its anger at the mention of Golgatha.  And through it all, imagine that you’re Mary, and that this is your memory, your son.

The piece is called Pietá, by Joseph M. Martin, and you can hear a beautiful rendition of it here.  Please go listen.

Are you crying yet?

Here, let me give you the lyrics:

 In the shadow of a manger,

by a candle’s dancing flame,

tender Mary holds her baby,

and she breathes His holy name.

“Jesus, rest your weary head,

close your weeping eyes.”

As evening falls, she starts to sing a lullaby.

“Lulay, lulay, peace be yours tonight.”

In the shadow of the temple,

in a place so far from home,

Mary sees her child of wonder,

and she marvels how He’s grown.

“Jesus rest your weary head,

and think on gentle things.”

With loving arms she holds her Saviour and she sings,

“Lulay, lulay, peace be yours tonight.”

In the shadow of Golgatha,

underneath a darkened sky,

Mary gently cradles Jesus,

Through her tears she says goodbye.

“Jesus, rest your weary head.

Your work on earth is done.”

And as the darkness falls, she whispers to her son,

“Lulay, lulay, peace be yours tonight.”

 

This music pulls tears from me.  Mother’s tears, as it’s finally hit me just what God (and Jesus, and Mary) sacrificed.  Turn the painting a bit and the fuzzy parts become clear.  I always knew Jesus was a man, but to think of him as a mother thinks of her own son … well, that triggers a whole different set of instincts, and perhaps a whole new level of understanding.

The Good Friday service tonight included a hymn (O Sacred Head, Now Wounded) that summed it up perfectly for me in the last verse:

 

“What language shall I borrow to thank thee, dearest friend,

for this thy dying sorrow, thy pity without end?

O make me thine forever, and should I fainting be,

Lord let me never, never outlive my love to thee.”

No language can possibly be sufficient to thank any of the players in this passion for their sacrifice.  No words could ever be enough.  Tonight I cry, mother’s tears of sorrow mixed with sinner’s tears of joy, for we have all been offered the priceless gift of redemption.
Praise be to God.

Red letters

I was always meant to be Joseph’s.  What better sign than being born with his name tattooed onto my leathery skin?  From boyhood, I was his constant companion, sitting on shelf after shelf until we arrived here at our permanent home, this cabin on the lake.  Here he brought his wife, and inside my pages, joined her name to his.  With each baby, with each marriage, with each death, I was inked again.  Bearing witness.
When he took me to the porch each morning, I absorbed the oils from his fingers and the salt of his sorrows, and in return he took peace from my pages.  From his lap I watched his lips move over my stories; his calloused hands carefully turning pages that crinkled like flakes of croissants.  He paused to sip his coffee, staring out at the early morning fog on the lake.  And he talked to God, and to me, like we were old friends.
We put the children to bed together every night with a story.  Tiny Elizabeth, all dimpled cheeks and giggles, and her older brother David, literal to a fault, asking his father why the family hadn’t given away their money since Jesus said it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven?  Why were they living here at the lake when God called them to feed his sheep?  There weren’t even any sheep at the lake.  And why did they pray for the troops when Jesus said to love your enemies and bless those who curse you?  David went on like this every night until Joseph finally said “Enough, now.  Goodnight.”
David came to me often, restless, looking for answers in the place his father found his.  But I had none for him.  I watched from the table on the porch as he tried to find peace in pill bottles and vodka, and Joseph’s tears and raspy voice told me what I already knew about the rest of David’s life.
And then one day Joseph inscribed the details of David’s marriage along with the rest.
When David came to visit, to record the birth of his son in his own hand, his touch was foreign on my pages.  And though they were soft, those hands were not gentle.  He prayed over my pages and shocked me with his transgressions.  Married just a year, but lost as ever.
When I couldn’t yield the answers he wanted, the rationalization for his decisions, the forgiveness for his sin, he slammed me down and ripped out a page of Matthew.
And then I heard him, down at the woodpile, and realized what page he had taken.
“And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.  It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”
Screams.
Sirens.
Then silence.
So together, David, Joseph, and I were all ripped into pieces.
But Joseph has come back to me.  We are broken, torn; but we are together, even as the fresh ink scars both of us, and his tears run down my pages as if they are my own. 

***This piece is for the online writers’ group Write on Edge (formerly the Red Dress Club).  
The prompt  was for memoir, but I ended up writing fiction.  I welcome all constructive criticism. 

The prompt: Do objects have a memory? Does a rocking chair hold the essence of the snuggles it has witnessed? Does a pottery mug remember the comforting warmth it offered a struggling soul? The dictionary defines personification as “the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.” Tell a piece of your story from the point of view of an object who bore witness in 400 words or less.

Sanctuary

This is a fiction piece for my online writing group, The Red Dress Club.  This week’s prompt was to write piece about finding beauty in something ugly.  Oh, and to do so within a 600 word limit.

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The storm took her by surprise.  Rain slashed down the street in sheets, tearing through Juliet’s light windbreaker.  She swung her backpack off her shoulder and clutched it to her stomach, breaking into a run.  No way would she make it back to her dorm before her laptop and textbooks were drenched.  
There was only one place to go.  Tall and foreboding, the building cast a constant shadow over her daily scurry to and from class.  She made a habit of averting her eyes, but it was always there, on the periphery, waiting.  
The rough iron of the doorknob felt foreign in Juliet’s hand as she grasped it and pushed at the heavy door.  She shivered as she stepped into the silent stone narthex.  Rain slid down her legs in cold streaks and puddled on the floor.
She’d never been into St. Paul’s, but the faint scent of incense and the sound of the downpour thundering on the slate roof reminded her of hours spent on her knees in their little stone church back home.  Before she gave up.  
The sanctuary was empty, but for the lines of flickering votives to the left.  Unconsciously, she drifted over to the flames, casting her eyes over all the prayers represented in their flickering light.  One wick was low in its little glass, and as she watched, it grew dimmer, then, with no fanfare, went out.
Answered or unanswered, she wondered.  A life saved here, or called back home?  
The wet backpack was cold, and she forced her numb fingers to let it slip gently to the floor.  She knelt and thought of the crucifix back in her dorm room, hidden under the bed with a bottle of cheap vodka and a battered stuffed bear she’d had since babyhood.  
Suddenly she heard slow footsteps behind her.  The wood kneeler creaked, and with a heavy groan and crackling knees, a presence settled in beside her.  Glass clinked and she smelled sulfur from a match.  
And something else.  Dear God, what was that smell?  Cat piss and mildew?  A sigh turned into a rattling, chesty cough.  My God, she thought.  This is what I get for coming back.  A slow death by tuberculosis.
Another hacking cough, and Juliet couldn’t help but open her eyes.
She stared.
The figure next to her was wearing dark rags.   He had a thick wool blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and as he coughed again, she smelled wet dog.  She felt nauseated.
His fingers were thick and lined with dirt.  The callused skin gave way to ragged nails edged with black, and his hands shook as he placed the candle on the altar.
Another cough and he turned his head in her direction.
Juliet knew that face.  She saw it every day outside the diner just off campus, as she walked home.  He sat on the sidewalk with his guitar, and she’d passed him so many times she’d learned to ignore him, to not feel the pang at the open guitar case holding only loose change.
His eyes were closed in prayer, and as she watched in amazement, the big, dirty hands produced a delicate rosary and began weaving a practiced path along the worn beads.  
He was far away, close to his God, and now Juliet was the invisible one.  She couldn’t stop looking at his face, his hands, his lips as they whispered the same prayers she’d been taught and all but forgotten.
And then, tears began to slide down his face, streaking clean tracks through the grime.  She felt guilty for bearing witness to this, for being here when she only needed to get out of the rain.
Slowly, she pushed herself up and gathered her wet bag from the floor.  
At the door, she looked back.
The kneeler was empty. 


Freefall

This is a memoir piece written for The Red Dress Club.

The prompt: imagine that you have died and your daughter/son will be given the gift of seeing a single five-minute period of your life through your eyes, feeling and experiencing those moments as you did when they occurred. What five minutes would you have him/her see? Tell us about them in the finest detail.
The prompt comes with a 700 word limit.  This post squeaks in at 699.

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They say you find God in unlikely places.  In a stable, not a cathedral.  I remind myself of this as we stand trussed up on the tarmac, having indemnified the world against our own recklessness.
“Y’all call it a plane, I call it an antique,” I mutter under my breath.  No one can hear me over the noise of the propellers.  Propellers!  How…quaint.  
We have to climb an actual ladder to get in the thing, right past the cartoon Betty Boop painted on the fuselage. There are no seat backs or tray tables.  Hell, there aren’t even any seats, just metal benches lining both sides of the plane.  Mark’s on the other side, and far enough back that I can hardly see him.
They don’t close the door, not while we load, not while we rattle down the runway, and not even in the air.  I suppose I should be scared, but the hair whipping around my neck tastes like freedom, like my high school convertible hugging curves on back roads as the wind tears “Closer to Fine” from the speakers.
The landscape dissolves into a chess board and I wonder if this is how it looks to God in his heaven.  I think of all the problems I’d like to have left on the ground and my head aches.  They are too heavy to carry.
“Give it to God,” ministers say.  But they don’t tell you how.  I tried once; I wrote my problems on a scrap of paper torn from a church bulletin and tossed it into the silver collection plate as it passed.
Sermons talk about “heavy hearts,” and I never understood the concept until now, now that I have one thudding away in my own chest, and it tells me with every beat that I was stupid and proud to think that I could make my own plan and have it be good, that I am muddling through this life like a blind woman, that things feel too bad to be right.
I am tethered to a blonde girl in her early twenties, and she cinches us tighter as the world  grows smaller.  Her chatter is static.  I am mesmerized by that open door.  All we have to do is go through it.  They told us some people fight it, hold on to the door so tightly they break their arms.  Better to cross them over your chest, they said.
Then it’s time, and over the roaring of the plane, the gaping door, the excited chatter, my mind goes silent, and for the first time in my life I feel like a yogi.  This decision is made.  I guess I could back out but then I’d have to land in this rustbucket, and honestly, the door looks like the safer bet.  
Besides, I need a grander gesture.  Offering plates are for smaller problems.  I don’t think I could fit myself into one, even at the Vatican.  And my whole body is what I need to give.
I give it up, I think.  All of it, all of me.  I trust in you.
Blondie and I scoot our conjoined butts to the front of the bench, watching as pair after pair of our fellow passengers disappears, sucked right out of the door.
To you, Lord, I think, as we approach the door.  I give myself over to you.  At Blondie’s signal I cross my arms over my chest.  So this is what it’s like to give up control.
Oh.  
Give it to God.  Is this “it”?
Before I can do more than smile, Blondie propels us forwards.
We fall.
After it’s over, everyone asks, “Wasn’t that the best rush ever?”  
No.
No rush at all.  Only peace.
There’s a video of it, and it shows a girl that looks like me.  She’s smiling, even gives a thumbs up to the camera.
But what I feel as we fall … it’s not on the video.  I am cradled.  We step out of the plane into the warm palm of God, as tangible as anything I’ve ever felt.  Our arms and legs curve in the concave position of freefall, molded to the shape of his strong, invisible hand.