For many years now, I've been drawn to stay local and walk the neighborhood Stations of the Cross organized by the parish of St. Mary of the Angels. Good Friday is viscerally real on the streets of JP/Roxbury's Egleston Square. Yesterday, different members of the parish took turns carrying the cross - brown hands, black hands, young hands, wrinkled hands, women, men. Who needs a Roman centurion when you stand where a young man was shot after being chased through the parish and library yards? Unexpectedly, I found that also in my heart was a mother I and many of my coworkers had helped take care of in her multiple hospital admissions, who lost her life to addiction a couple of weeks ago shortly after her child was born.
Were you there when they laid her in the tomb?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Sometimes it makes me tremble, tremble, tremble....
Were you there when they laid them in the tomb?
Collectively, we failed him. Collectively, we failed her. We do not love our people enough.
Perdona a tu pueblo, Señor, (Forgive your people, Lord)
perdona a tu pueblo,
perdónale, Señor.
Along the way, there are glimmers of hope. Likely filled with fear, Simon helps carry the cross. Veronica nonetheless wipes a sweaty brow. It's tempting to rush to Easter and Resurrection. But we need to know how to walk together through this bleak place.
Passover is drawing to a close. The Hebrew people spent 40 years - 2 generations - in the desert on their way to liberation, living into the transformation they needed to make from an enslaved people to a free people, learning to trust the guidance of pillar of smoke by day, the pillar of fire by night, learning to trust that there would be manna and water enough.
Were you there when they laid her in the tomb?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Sometimes it makes me tremble, tremble, tremble....
Were you there when they laid them in the tomb?
Collectively, we failed him. Collectively, we failed her. We do not love our people enough.
Perdona a tu pueblo, Señor, (Forgive your people, Lord)
perdona a tu pueblo,
perdónale, Señor.
Along the way, there are glimmers of hope. Likely filled with fear, Simon helps carry the cross. Veronica nonetheless wipes a sweaty brow. It's tempting to rush to Easter and Resurrection. But we need to know how to walk together through this bleak place.
Passover is drawing to a close. The Hebrew people spent 40 years - 2 generations - in the desert on their way to liberation, living into the transformation they needed to make from an enslaved people to a free people, learning to trust the guidance of pillar of smoke by day, the pillar of fire by night, learning to trust that there would be manna and water enough.
