Matt Mings on Stuck in White (missed Red … should be Green)
Easter (liturgical white) season has come and gone.
The Pentecost (liturgical red) party is over.
Now is the extraordinary span of Ordinary Time (liturgical green). That long green run into discipleship. Or at least it should be.
But I’m still stuck on the day after Easter, staring at an empty tomb.
After the hoopla and thrill of knowing the One is alive, I’m thinking on the meaning of an empty tomb.
Poor thing, that tomb. Didn’t even get to keep it’s quarry but a few days. Due to the 100 or so pounds of spices Joseph of Arimethea hooked up, there wasn’t even a smell of decay before the tomb’s resident hopped up and out.
A vessel barely used for it’s purpose, that tomb. And now it sits there useless. Not to be thought of much again until the next Triduum. And even then it will be but a passing flash in the pan … The earth will quake, the stone will roll back, and the pitiful tomb will once again sit empty.
I guess I can’t stop thinking of this tomb because I can so relate to it’s plight.
A symbol of the greatest triumph ever that now sits idle, unthought of, unused. Perhaps hoping to be useful again next spring.
It’s already gone through the only 3 phases it has: prepared, used, emptied. Why does that emptied part last so long?
I’m in “career path” number 3.
First there was the starving artist. The world of professional theatre prepared me in so many ways (said only retrospectively) for the next phase.
Second, there was the preacher / pastor. I really felt I was being used by God to do some good things in the reconciling of creation.
Now, I’m a high school English and literature teacher. It seems that all my preparation and usefulness (not to mention all my pride) has been emptied.
I sit devoid of all that was before, hoping to be prepped and used again.
*Sidenote: Granted, I fully believe I’m accomplishing something for the greater good. I was amazed at the thanks I received from my seniors as they graduated, having only been with them for four months. Who knows what may come of those young lives?*
As a younger man, I never wanted to sit empty. I wanted to prepare for something. I wanted to be thought of as useful. Now, an older man (though still young, I think), I’m not minding the emptiness.
Perhaps, it is only emptiness that will allow me to be useful once again. Perhaps, the emptiness is a preparation of sorts.
Perhaps Life will once more come to this symbol of Death.
As I’m writing this, I received a text from one of my very few close friends. He reminded me of a dream we shared some time ago. A dream we could both say we had been prepared to envision. A dream that is still a dream. Still waiting on the usefulness part, I guess.
What do you with a dream when you are simply sitting empty and waiting?
Poor tomb, may your dream be realized.
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Category: Sacramental Living | Tags: empty tomb, Lectionary, usefulness, uselessness, waiting Comment »