Melting

Melting is messy.

I forget this, in my desperation for winter to release its icy grip on the land and on my heart.

Melting is messy.

In the last few days, our gravel road has become adversarial. Softened and saturated, its deep ruts reach up to either stop me in my tracks or throw me toward the ditch. Any illusion of control disappears during the half mile it takes me to get from home to the pavement. It’s not so much steering that’s needed, as yielding. This is a good reminder, though difficult to receive.

As I drive, mud splashes up to cover my car, sometimes so much as to obscure my view momentarily. If there is clarity and truth in winter’s scarcity, as Parker Palmer recently wrote,* standing at the threshold of spring is anything but clear. On the verge of new birth, everything is muddied, obscured.

I wonder if this isn’t a melting season in our nation. We’ve reached some clarity, it seems, about the need to finally, fully, address gun violence, racism, and sexual assault. It has been a devastating, but clarifying season in our life together as the raised voices of courageous sisters and brothers have led the way. Never again. Black lives matter. Me too.

But now the melting season is here in full force. Deep ruts of entrenched, systemic sin reach up to try to stop our progress, our momentum. Fear splashes up to obscure our view, our vision. Are we on our way to something new? Is this a necessary season? Is hope hiding even in the most audacious mud-slinging?

And you? Is this a melting season in your life? Are you feeling a bit like my gravel road? So softened by loss, so saturated by grief, that you’re vulnerable to those deep ruts? Beloved, the mess is serving a purpose. New life is on its way.

We began Lent with ash on our foreheads. Now mud coats our boots. Head to toe, we bear the marks of this melting season. Our finitude is front and center, the mess of our lives on full display. What would happen if we risked journeying with this vulnerability long enough to embrace it as the gift that it is?  As we journey toward Easter, what will emerge from our softened, saturated selves?

Yesterday I walked gently across melting ice, finding strange satisfaction in the feeling of that ice yielding to the weight of my carefully placed foot. I watched as each step created ripples of cracking. I listened to the steady swoosh of water released. I imagined God traversing the ice of my heart, gently but intentionally freeing me from all that would keep the Spirit from flowing. I imagine God doing the same for you, for our country, for our world.

Melting is God at work.

Peace, Stacey

*https://onbeing.org/blog/parker-palmer-the-clarity-and-truth-in-winters-scarcity/