Practice Resurrection by Karen Tamminga-Paton www.tammingapaton.com
Practice Resurrection
by Karen Wilk
Practicing resurrection
It’s easy in the spring when we see the new thing
God is doing right before our eyes
Every sunny morning when we rise
The grass is greening, shoots appearing
Birds chirping, skies clearing
The warmth of the day inviting
New growth, new life budding
From the tomb of winter, once so stiff and stark.
We Practice Resurrection out of the cold and dark
But how do we practice resurrection when…
When the ship is stuck
When we’re murking in the muck
And that’s not all –
There’s a wall.
At the wall, I’m foreclosed, forced to stay
Yet, here my illusions begin, like autumn leaves, to fall away
The world is not in our control
We can’t grasp, conceive the whole
Stopped blind, will I find–
The grace, the good, the genuine
The truth that life is not, yours or mine
But there is beyond, above
and wrapped around, a cord of love
Golden, sustaining, maintaining thereof
Life and growth, raising, blazing, whereof
Resurrection’s not up to me, but given
Like water and sun and grace
Could the wall also be for my protection?
— An invitation to pause and discover resurrection
– To feel its warmth, securing my place
To notice the rope’s gentle suspending embrace,
That joins me to the Other,
Sister and Brother, Creator and Mother
Divinity, Trinity,
Holy Being in Community
Now the wall, shadow and light reshaping
Wisely, winsomely, landscaping
All that Eternity has made
I, nor you, need be afraid
Not because concrete doesn’t rise rough
Not because life and death are not tangled tough
But because golden cords are strong and wound around
To bear our weight and settle sprouts in holy ground
Nourishing the sacred, the small, the mustard seed,
In the cupped cuddle of mud’s deep mead
Now a sapling contained yet free
Sparkling, colourful, precious tree,
Responding with joy to my abjection
Here, I practice resurrection.