The Painted Prayerbook

Testimony © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Epiphany 6, Year B: Mark 1.40-45

Last week the news came that a friend of mine has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. It is large, and it is grim; the doctors measure his life in months, perhaps weeks. A stained glass artist who has devoted his life to finding beautiful ways to capture light, Joe—making his own path as ever—is finding other ways to measure and mark these remaining days. The threads of community that he has tended across the years in such places as the Grünewald Guild are gathering around him now to support him and to make it possible for him to be in places he loves; friends and family have enabled him to return to his home and studio at the artists’ community where he lives, and folks from the Guild are plotting a trip where they’ll bring Joe back up there.

Living on the other side of the country, I am missing being present for this but am grateful for the words that come across the miles, words that tell of how Joe is entering his dying in much the same way that he has entered his living. The tumor has impacted his speech and visual recognition skills. But a note comes from a friend who writes of how even when Joe struggles with words, “he seems, to me, even more himself than ever. He’s almost translucent with grace. And I have been so moved by the ‘random’ words that, at times, come instead of the one he’s trying for. It’s almost as if the words that he has most often expressed come easily; blessing, blest, grace, friends, church, my voice, your voice…”

I gather up these words as I ponder the words that Mark offers in the reading from his Gospel this week, words about a leper who finds healing in his encounter with Jesus. “If you choose, you can make me clean,” he says to Jesus. Stretching out his hand and touching him, Jesus says, “I do choose. Be made clean!”

It is a mystery to me how Jesus chooses, and where, and why. I cannot fathom how he chooses at times to stretch out his hand, and at other times seems to withhold it; how he chooses against the restoration that he offers with such ease in stories such as this one. Why the leper, and not Joe? Why the mother-in-law of Simon, as we saw last week, and not millions of others across the ages who have lived with illness and pain?

I know, of course, there are few answers to these questions in this lifetime. And I know that it is better to look for the miracles that do come, including the daily wonders of connection in the midst of a world that pushes us toward isolation, the marvels of friendship and community that return to us and gather around us when life breaks us open.

I do not let Christ off the hook for the ways he sometimes chooses. And yet I think about my friend across the country, speaking the words that have come most easily to him. Blessing. Blest. Grace. How in the midst of the tumor that grows and the days that dwindle, there is something in him that is fiercely intact and persistently whole. Friends. Church. That knows still how to capture the light. My voice. Your voice. That rises up to freely proclaim, to offer testimony in the luminous way he has always done and will do until the last breath leaves him.

Joe is having an exhibit at his studio this weekend, wanting to have this chance to share with friends his artwork from across the years. “Bring food. Bring joy,” Joe says in the invitation.

This day. This hour. In each moment given to us, may we bring sustenance. May we bring joy. Whatever illness we bear, whatever wounds we carry, may we be ministers of healing to one another, and may the wholeness that persists within us rise up and shine through, offering testimony in the ways that only we can offer.

What the Light Shines Through
A Healing Blessing

For Joe

Where pain
does not touch you.
Where hurt
does not make its home.
Where despair
does not haunt you.
Where sorrow
does not dwell.

Where disease
does not possess you.
Where death
does not abide.
Where horror
does not hold you.
Where fear
does not raise its head.

Where your wounds
become doorways.
Where your scars
become sacred maps.
Where tears
become pools of gladness.
Where delight
attends your way.

Where every kindness
you have offered
returns to you.
Where each blessing
you have given
makes its way back
to you.
Where every grace
gathers around you.
Where the face of love
mirrors your gaze.

Where you are
what the light
shines through.

Joe in the studio. Photo by Kristen Gilje.

P.S. For a previous reflection on this passage, visit The Medium and the Message.

[To use the “Testimony” image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Image: Shimmers Within the Storm © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Epiphany 4, Year B: Mark 1.21-28

In his brilliant essay “To Retrieve the Lost Art of Blessing,” John O’Donohue writes, “The force of a blessing can penetrate through and alter the inner configuration of identity. When the gift or need of the individual coincides with the incoming force of the blessing, great change can begin.”

This kind of change and reconfiguration means that a blessing is not always a comfortable and cozy thing. Sometimes the blessing most needed is one that involves confrontation and calling out, that requires standing against what is not of God. Such a blessing may be difficult to give—or to receive. It calls us to acknowledge and challenge and grapple with forces that thrive within chaos, forces that often work in ways that are exceedingly subtle and cloaked and require even more wisdom and discernment of us than when such forces take clear and obvious forms.

But, as Jesus shows us in this passage where we see him healing a man in the grip of a destructive spirit, such a blessing—the blessing that comes in facing the chaos rather than turning away from it, the blessing that comes in naming what is contrary to God’s purposes rather than letting it persist unchecked—makes way for the wholeness we crave. It brings release to what has been bound; it invites and enables and calls us to move with the freedom for which God made us.

“The human heart,” writes John O’Donohue in his essay, “continues to dream of a state of wholeness, a place where everything comes together, where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform into vision, where damage will be made whole, where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise, where the travails of a life’s journey will enjoy a homecoming. To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a person now.”

Is there some part of you that has become bound—that recognizes what is holy and craves its blessing, but fears the change that would be involved? Is there a habit, a belief, a relationship, an aspect of your life that has you in its grip, that confines you, that limits the freedom with which you move through this world—perhaps without your even realizing it? Can you imagine what release would look like? Is there a destructive force at work in a person or system or institution you’re connected with, that you might be called to engage? Can you identify a first step that would help you confront what confines you or those around you?

Here is a blessing I’ve written for you. This day, this week, may you give and receive a blessing that will help you and yours enter more deeply into wholeness. Peace to you.

Blessing in the Chaos

To all that is chaotic
in you,
let there come silence.

Let there be
a calming
of the clamoring,
a stilling
of the voices that
have laid their claim
on you,
that have made their
home in you,

that go with you
even to the
holy places
but will not
let you rest,
will not let you
hear your life
with wholeness
or feel the grace
that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you
cease.
Let what divides you
cease.
Let there come an end
to what diminishes
and demeans,
and let depart
all that keeps you
in its cage.

Let there be
an opening
into the quiet
that lies beneath
the chaos,
where you find
the peace
you did not think
possible
and see what shimmers
within the storm.

—Jan Richardson

Thanks for noting that while “Blessing in the Chaos” has circulated widely as being by John O’Donohue (due to some folks seeing his name in the post and assuming the blessing was by him), it’s by me.

2016 update: “Blessing in the Chaos” appears in my new book The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief.

For a previous reflection on this passage, click the image or title below:

Epiphany 4: In the Realm of the Spirits

Also, I have a new blog endeavor at Devotion Café and would be delighted for you to stop by and visit; click Devotion Café.

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Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Shimmers Within the Storm,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. If you’re using them in a worship bulletin, please include this info in a credit line:
© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.

The prose quotations from John O’Donohue are from his book To Bless the Space Between Us.