This week’s Offering poem is written by Salena Marie Scott who is a poet and member of our church familia.
“May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole” — 1 Thess 5:22-23
Years ago, I had endured enough trauma with severe illness that I was convinced God’s promise of “holiness and wholeness” no longer applied to me. After a particularly hard year of unsuccessful surgeries and treatments, I felt prompted to spend time in nature and grow a garden, even if I was physically capable of very little. What I found in my tiny backyard was God’s divine wisdom, abundance, and ability to restore all around me. The more I observed God’s holiness and wholeness in nature, the more I believed I was worthy of the same. The more I partnered with Her to heal the land, the more I believed that I too could heal, in body, soul, and spirit.
My health has improved in miraculous ways since that period of my life, yet I can’t claim that I live free of ‘invisible’ disability. What I can claim is that Her promise of making me “holy and whole” vibrates through every cell of my being, just as it vibrates through every cell in all of creation.
The “Epilogue of Mending”, which I am sharing for this week’s Lenten Offering, was originally a closing poetic prose for a body of work I wrote for a festival focused on local environmental issues. This deeply personal piece doesn’t mention God by name, but Her guiding hands are in every word, nudging me toward hope and healing.
May the God of Peace nourish your body, soul, and spirit this week.
May you find Her miracles and mercies in nature and ordinary spaces.
May the holiness and wholeness of our Triune God dwell within you this Lenten season.
Epilogue of Mending
For years I lied in a stale bed
and surrendered to the damaged body
that had somehow birthed a precious baby.
The seasons changed and she had birthdays
while I was in Good Samaritan,
and Grandma bought her a hospital themed
Lego set as a way to help her understand.
Plastic people in tiny wheelchairs
hooked up to thread sized tubes –
I hated that toy.
My husband carried on in consecrated love.
Working two jobs, packing preschool lunches,
the constant small talk of How is your wife?
I missed recitals and she would run in the house
excited and clumsy to show me the videos on his phone.
The security of home, but also the silence
of what would become, how we felt emotionally,
we didn’t have the energy, and all I remember
is guilt unsaid.
The brain normalizes surviving, doesn’t allow
you to consider how long this will go on,
plans and prayers fade until you’ve forgotten
what it feels like to have any imagination
for the future, any identity at all.
Somehow, in the fog of diagnosis and disease,
on a meager dirt patio, I found strange sanctuary
in the seeds. Ordinary black specks
reminding me of what it is to restore.
The first true leaves of a California poppy
nudging me forward, holding my hand,
the smallest of hope for growth.
Before long I had white sage
and tomatoes growing side by side,
a ridiculous pumpkin plant in a pot,
an Eden of fury and failure,
fiddleneck tansy eaten by a gopher,
grubs chewed out limbs, my body still broken
but also, unfolding.
I would sweat and toil in the ritual of restoration,
with a heart monitor, extra medicine,
it didn’t matter if I felt depleted after
because grain by grain of soil I began
to trust again in a disabled frame.
I could share with my daughter the
unbridled experience of wonder as she made mud pies,
put cabbage loopers in jars, watching them cocoon
and turn into moths to be released and fly
and start the cycle all over again.
There were baby praying mantises on the ceiling,
yanking carrots for the first time,
watching the sunflowers and irises rise –
all proof that I was capable of living.
My husband would do the dishes
looking out the window above the sink,
proudly watching me metamorphize,
slowly healing.
It’s not logical or accurate to say
that the mere practice of cultivation
cures chronic illness.
The brittlebush grows with decayed
and blooming stems of the same plant, as do I.
It’s mystical and complex
and nothing I really understand:
How the leaves quiet trauma,
how putting what should be in California land
taught me to love both bodies.
Deep grief but also possibility,
rescuing an ant from inside the house,
the grace, the rest, the hope again
for healing.
