rend your heart, not your garments

This weekend, I was moved to paint this. "for His eyes are on the sparrow // the littlest birds make the prettiest song"

Everything about it felt wrong. We filed into the nave, passing by the stained glass saints keeping vigil over this generation, living in another century only inches from where they watch. We were a small group: the one like a brother, the one who makes me laugh wildly, the one who spills grace with each word. It was not they who were wrong, but I.

Me, with all these past months of the silence of God, with the living in the shadow of the joy, the other side of the grace. I felt wrong; I felt out of place; I felt the exhaustion of not hearing.

Because I used to hear. I used to feel. I used to walk in the midst of Him, or rather, knew I walked in that space.

And rend your heart and not your garments.

Is it possible to do Lent wrong?

I was giving up Facebook. I felt no motivation to do anything else. Last year, I had heard the Lord speak clearly, and I gave up meat altogether except for feast days and, more significantly, abstained from the Eucharist. I had grown, deep and full, through such mortification, such discipline.

But this year, this year felt trite. Giving up Facebook isn’t much of a sacrifice, isn’t much a good that’s left to then return to in rejoicing once the fast is completed. Yet I had not heard otherwise. I had not heard, it seemed, at all. Giving up Facebook only seemed right. But that was all. It seemed right. It didn’t seem much like I had heard.

And I thought that perhaps, if the ashes were made on my forehead, if I took that sign to myself, then perhaps I would hear Him again, feel His presence burn into the sign of the cross made upon my face.

Is this not the fast which I choose, to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke? Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into the house; when you see the naked, to cover him; and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

It was after the reading from Isaiah, during the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. He appeared to be homeless, clothes hanging off his frame, walking down the center aisle of the nave, and I wondered if he wouldn’t stop until he reached the alter, because his steps seemed so determined. He took a seat near the front. He stood with us during the reading of the Gospel, he did not cross himself with us when the homily began. He raised his hand once, during the homily, and the priest gently looked from him. And this was right, for a kind, older woman was already on her way to sit beside this stranger, to pat his shoulder, to lean in and listen to him whisper into her ear.

I couldn’t stop wondering if he was hungry.

We were five minutes into the homily and my insides were churning. I couldn’t stop looking at the man and wondering if he needed be fed, how he would be fed. There wasn’t a lunch after the service, there wasn’t necessarily going to be food to be found. Then I was thinking about the sandwich shop, the one on the corner several blocks away that I had never been inside but had passed often.

I sat and debated the inner voice in me, because I have not heard Him in so long, because I have not felt His touch in so long, I could not be sure if it was Voice or voice, God or self. Things were lost in the translation.

Today, if you would hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.

What was I thinking?

It was the middle of the homily. I left my copy of the prayer book, the leather-bound one I love, slid past the people I loved, and kept my eyes down and away from those stained glass saints as I walked to the back of the nave, breath coming short.

The sun was pushing hard out from the clouds and I wished I had my sunglasses. It was several city blocks to the sandwich shop and at one point I found myself lost. I was turning over too much in my mind about what this man would want. If I were hungry, what sort of deli slice would I value, what would be extra special, would be gift?

Inexplicably, I felt turkey and lettuce and tomato. Like a madman, I felt the most ordinary of sandwich ingredients.

I crossed against two lights and entered the shop. There was a line, which frustrated me. If this was right, shouldn’t it be easier, a path made clear? I considered asking the people in front if I could go ahead of them, for I was about my Father’s business, but I still wasn’t even sure that I was.

What if the man wasn’t hungry at all? What if this was not going to be gift but offense?

So I waited in line, still debating, still wondering, and at one point I noticed on the menu board a sandwich like the one I had thought of, with the addition of mayonnaise. I considered, however foolishly, that it might just be Providence if that man should also like mayonnaise.

I walked briskly back to the church, knowing by this point I had missed the imposition of the ashes. My heart was pounding violently in my chest, aching to be set free. I gripped the sandwich tight as I waited for a light to turn and the traffic to stop and, in the anger of my exhaustion, hurled a prayer like a javelin into the heavens and demanded to know why this silence of God has been so palpable lately, why this absurd act of buying a sandwich for someone who might not even need it was the closest to God’s touch I had felt in months.

And God replied as the red hand telling me to stay turned to the white stick figure telling me to walk. I heard Him by the words I had read the night before in Father Elijah: “I ask only that you walk neither behind nor before, to the left or the right, but that you walk in the midst, even into the valley of the shadow.”

And I wept. I wept at the corner of North 6^th Street and Columbus Avenue, holding a sandwich, no ashes on my forehead, but ashes pressed hard into the flesh of my heart.

For He is good, even in the shadow of joy, even on this side of His silence.

I sat outside the nave while the service finished, looking up the prayer book on my iPhone and following along. When the doors opened, when the people shuffled out in silence, ashen foreheads and bowed heads, I quietly made my way to the woman sitting with the man and passed the sandwich to her. She would know if it would be gift or offense to him, she would know what to do.

“I thought he might be hungry.”

Because I was hungry. Because the most I can muster right now is reaching out and passing off what I hope is blessing, because the ashes of my collected self can only manage that.

I watched her hand it to him as I left; I watched words pass between them. I’m not sure what was said; I am not sure whether he thought it gift; but, I trust that the word which passed between them was the word that made all clear.

Walking back out into the sun, leather-bound prayer book recovered, sunglasses on, standing in the company of three ashen foreheads, three people I in different but deep ways love, I still felt wrong, I still felt in the midst of the valley of shadow, I still felt dried tears on my cheeks, but I also felt ashes pressed hard on my heart, in the secret and deep places, and I knew the goodness of God in the land of the living.

It is the fullest cup, it is the most abundant mana, it is enough for the season, it is enough for the day.