Lent 6: into the wreck.

In the art piece Anti-Mass by Cornelia Parker, the burnt pieces of an African American Church that was destroyed by arsonists seem to hang in mid-air. It is a haunting image of destruction and resurrection. This new form floats like a dream; its image clings like a dark memory. From the charred wreckage, something new and beautiful rises.

This art seems an appropriate source of reflection because for me the journey of Lent is very much a time of sorting through the wreckage. This desert time is an invitation to dwell in the difficult places. I look at places of hurt, violence, and destruction; the places that are flawed in myself and in the world. It is a time to feel out the rough edges and the unsettled pieces that don't fit, and to begin an act of prayerful imagination and reconstruction. In Lent, the wilderness and wreckage become a dreamscape for our exploration: a space for dreaming of how the Kingdom of God might unfold, an opportunity to look for impossible possibility.

In Adrienne Rich's wondrous poem "Diving into the Wreck" she writes:

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail. 
I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank
of something more permanent than fish or weed.

Lent is very like the journey undertaken in Parker's art and in Adrienne Rich's poem. We too are diving into the wreck and searching beneath the surface, sorting through the damage, finding treasures, tarnished and broken and bringing a small light into the murky blackness.

May your own journey into the wreck lead you to unexpected wonders.