Lent, Days 20+some: “Halfway Through the Dark”

This week, I inadvertently stopped writing things on stones. I was feeling overwhelmed by the amount of things I could write on stones, if I so chose to. I was thinking about individuals who weigh heavily on my mind because of their life circumstances. I was thinking about events happening (or not happening) in our country that sit on my conscience like a gathering rain cloud, whether or not I engaged with the details via news sources or social media. I was thinking about the things in my own life that seem to have no answer—things with impending consequences that move on and on towards an unseen destination. Once I arrive, I’ll have to get off this boat, but my suitcase is empty and not only do I not know what I’ll need to take off the boat with me, but I’m not sure those things made it on this vessel to begin with. All this to say that I feel totally unprepared for what is to come. I eventually wrote “waiting” on a stone, but that feels inadequate to all the contemplations that have been gathering in my brain, mental stones that are as weighty as physical ones.

In the beginning of this journey, I had thought to dispose of each Lenten stone daily, but as I look around my home, I find small piles of them gathering like dust in corners. I haven’t known what to do with some of these, and so they have stayed with me—on my desk, my kitchen table, the shelf next to where I rest my head at night, the pockets of my jackets and travel bags. They are collecting more than they are disappearing, which is what I had hoped to do during Lent. But I suppose this way feels more adequate to the seasonal sentiment. 

The darkness is getting more potent as I travel further into Lent. Sometimes acknowledgment can be freedom from something, but in this particular case, it’s been more like an archaeologist uncovering a sand-buried city with a paintbrush one stone at a time. This part really shouldn’t be shocking, and indeed, it hasn’t taken me much by surprise. The most surprise I have felt is in the discovery that the more weight I acknowledge, the heavier I get, the more grounded I feel, rather than oppressed, as I imagined I would have. 

There are burdens I would like to stop bearing, for sure, but many of these “burdens” are things that I shoulder voluntarily as expressions of connection and love: The friends whose life events are always on my mind, whose griefs and joys I engage viscerally, whose concerns come in one ear but never go out the other because they get trapped in my heart on the way through. I could write not only names on individual stones, but each concern, hope, dream, loss, love, desire, longing, fear, injustice, prison, need that I carry for each name. There aren’t enough stones in all the bags of rocks at all the Lowes Home Improvements in my county to accommodate the words I could write down. 

I didn’t expect to experience such stillness, presence, connectedness, stability, or nearness to God that I am feeling as a result of this intentional naming/holding/bearing of the heavy things of life. It turns my mind to Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” 

I love how this verse is unpacked in a sermon called “Restful Burden” by Dr. Timothy J. Keller. He notes that in this passage, Jesus is not asking the “yoke-less” to become yoked, but asking those already yoked to relinquish it and take him as the new yoke. That “thing” we are bound to is whatever it is we are currently relying on “to deal with [our] restlessness; to deal with that sense that [we] haven’t lived up; to deal with [our] need to prove [ourselves].” 

I wonder about my previous Lenten stones when placed in this context. Which of those things define the weight of the yoke I bear, and which are the things yoked with me under that load? I’m not sure I can answer that question with authority just yet, but it was instructive to listen as Keller explored the analogy of the yoke: if we yoke ourselves with something wild and untamable or uncontrollable (as likened to an animal), we will never be able to keep up with its pace and power and will be trampled by it; and if we yoke ourselves to something that cannot (and never could) keep up with our pace or the weight we take on, we will get tangled up with it and end up strangling or trampling our yokefellow instead. “We all have this weariness of soul, and we all have something we yoke ourselves to [in order to] deal with that weariness and yet it doesn't work. In many ways, the thing we yoke ourselves to, that [thing] we most love, will destroy us and we’ll destroy it.” 

That is an awfully sobering thought, especially considering that we often yoke ourselves to things we love and trust. I don’t want to inadvertently bind my spouse, children, and friends to this mountainous burden I have chosen to shoulder. It causes me to ponder anew the breaks or endings of relationships in my life. How many of those folks were being trampled, or had to disconnect from me in order to save themselves from that inevitability? In what ways could this consideration increase my grace and compassion for people, as well as for myself? 

Let us recall that Jesus is not suggesting that folks with no yoke take on his yoke. He is talking to people who are already bearing a yoke of some kind, with the knowledge that there is no human yoke comparable to his. Keller suggests in his sermon that Jesus is offering himself as the “yoke”—himself as the “burden,” in fact, because “‘I’m the only burden that is light. I’m the only one that, if you get in harness with, will not relentlessly, unforgivingly drive you into the ground. I’m the only yoke-fellow that is humble and gentle. I forgive. I cover’.” 

I wonder if all this explains the shift in how I’m carrying the weight of these stones here at the halfway mark of the Lenten season. Even if I could honestly say that my burdens were all for the sake of others (which I can’t), my love and service for others is very often the way I justify my own existence and prove my worth. In that context, love of others and bearing my communities’ burdens is an impossible, utterly crushing weight. But the very same “stones” become something quite different in another context. 

“The heart of Christianity is: You cannot possibly prove yourself because you cannot possibly do the things that deep in your heart you know you ought to do. Jesus is the true human being. Jesus is the righteousness of God. He’s come and he’s done it. [Jesus is saying] ‘Make me the way you prove yourself.’ …And that’s the reason why becoming a Christian is not primarily laying down your sins…but [it is primarily] laying down your doing.”

When I think about being yoked with Jesus, I see myself being connected to all the aches and joys of His heart for me and the world. I feel the pressure of them on my soul and body, but instead of crushing me, they feel like touchstones that keep me tethered to all that is loved and lovable in this world. 

So many weeks ago, a dear friend of mine described a moment in which they were playing outside with their kids, who started placing stones on their body as they lay on the ground. It was early days in Lent when they brought this experience to my attention and suggested a way of symbolizing stones and their weight as: “the restrictions, burdens, choices, work, and even love that isn’t easy but holds us to the earth and to our Spirit-given purpose, whose presence may not always feel like a gift but holds our feet in the way we should go.” 

Now, I can finally say that these words have come to roost, wise and beloved friend. Thank you for offering them with open hands for just such a moment as this. I’m only sorry it took me so long to understand. But I have arrived here at last.

Burden-less One Who voluntarily takes on burden because of love: thank you for the miracle of being weighted but not burden; for the ability to care but not be crushed; for the connectedness of all life experience and the reality that even death cannot kill me, so pain certainly won’t. I want to be yoked to you. You are the source of all things, and yet you are kind, and that compels my heart towards you with the fierce and certain love of a child. May I trust like a child today. May I rest like a child today. May I accept your love like a child today. May I love others well, fueled by that endless well of love that is You.