We call this Friday good

More than a decade ago, at work, someone said to me, “Happy Good Friday!” which struck me as wildly inappropriate. I wondered if he spoke from ignorance or from mockery. He was not a co-worker but a co-tenant of the building where I worked, and he was a strange fellow. (In case anyone doesn’t know, Good Friday commemorates Jesus’s crucifixion—not a happy occasion.)

Remembering that greeting this morning, I also remembered the line, “In spite of that, we call this Friday good.” I thought it came from a John Donne poem, so I searched online and found, “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward.” I found a youtube of someone named John Melton reading it. I don’t know anything about Mr. Melton, but he did a good job reading the poem. However, it did not contain the line I had thought of.

It turns out the line comes from T.S. Eliot’s “East Coker,” one of his “Four Quartets.” It could also have come from somewhere else; Eliot was a great one for quoting others in his poems. “East Coker” is a relatively long poem; the line comes at the end of part IV. I found a recording of Eliot himself reading it, but he is not the best reader of his own work; he is rather affectless. So I found a recording of Ralph Fiennes reading it, and that was better.

So, yes, this is the day of the agonizing death of our Lord. He was the lamb sacrificed for our sins—the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. That is why, in spite of his suffering and death, we call this Friday good. 

Being seen

“Thou God seest me.” My Grandma on my dad’s side embroidered that and had it framed. The cloth she embroidered on was an old shirt of my Grandpa’s.

The words are from Genesis, Chapter 16. Hagar, a slave, has been used and mistreated by the great patriarch Abram/Abraham and his wife, Sarai/Sarah. They have used her as a surrogate to bear Abraham a child. Abraham has used her as a concubine, but once she is pregnant, Sarah mistreats her and Abraham does not interfere. So she runs away, but she encounters the angel of the Lord, who tells her to return to Abraham and Sarah and prophesies that the child she carries will have countless descendants.

The God Who Sees Me by Patricia Ewing

The King James Version of the Bible then says, “And she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me.” The New International Version has, “She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me.’” (This is verse 13.)

Yesterday, I went to look something up in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is online at the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. I browsed my way into the section on Christian prayer. In defining prayer, the Catechism alludes to the story of the woman at the well (John 4), where Jesus begins a conversation with the woman by asking for a drink of water. The Catechism says:

Jesus thirsts; his asking arises from the depths of God’s desire for us. Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him.

I also watched a video, “How God speaks to us in daily life.” A priest in Great Britain, Father Stephen Wang, has a Youtube channel called Pause for Faith. In this particular video, his discussion of prayer draws on the story of two of John the Baptizer’s disciples who follow Jesus—literally—after John points him out as the Lamb of God (John 1). Father Wang dwells on the fact that, as they walk behind him, Jesus turns around and sees them and asks, “What do you want?” So, again, the emphasis is on the Lord’s initiative: he turns around and he sees them. 

It is a commonplace in psychology that people want to be seen, that being seen is a basic human need. If we feel invisible, unlooked for, unseen, we can remember this name of the Lord:

Thou God seest me.

Let the pottering commence

We have had some beautiful weather the last few days, sunny and mild. I have sometimes left my door standing open in the afternoons, letting fresh air in and allowing my dogs to run in and out at will. It really feels like spring.

The forecast predicts this weather will last two more days, then start to cloud up, and then will start cool, rainy days for the foreseeable future. So carpe diem. Make hay while the sun shines. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. Time’s wingèd chariot and all that sort of thing.

I have been clearing leaves out of plant containers and adding soil, to get them ready to receive new plants. Last year, again, I bought plants that I never transferred to the containers. Part of my work today was dumping dirt out of the little plastic starter pots. 

I bought four English lavender last year and never transplanted them, yet they seem to have survived the winter albeit in a somewhat bedraggled state. I ruthlessly pruned them this afternoon, and we’ll see if they come back. 

This year, I really believe, will be the year I make my comeback in growing flowers on my deck. I used to make my deck a bower of delight with fragrant and beautiful plants, but a year or two before my parents died, or maybe longer, I just didn’t have the energy. Since then, every year, I’ve bought plants and every year not planted them. I think it will be different this year because I am retired. I no longer have to get it done on the weekend or else. I can go outside and do a little work, then come in, and I can do that any day or every day.

When I was approaching retirement, when people asked me what I was going to do with my time, I replied, “Potter. Potter around my house and garden.” This week, I’ve been pottering on my deck, and it’s been wonderful.

Container with honeysuckle. 

Cleaned up and added a layer of new soil.

Cleaned up this stone (actually resin)
that had been covered with dirt and mold.

My pot of herbs.
The rosemary thrives through the winter,
and the chives come back every year.
Sage & thyme were looking sorry
in the pots they were in when I bought them.
I planted them to see if they'll revive.