Curse

“All fallen leaves should curse their branches.”

For some, Lent (or anything like it) can be a dark night of the soul, a period of dimness before the light, a season of burial and planting before the garden grows.

I grew up in a religious world that valued certainty. I look around today and see our world torn into camps of people who believe themselves to be certain about something on one side and those who find themselves to be certain of nothing on the other. This is not the same dichotomy as belief/unbelief. Or Republican/Democrat. Or even faith/doubt. I’ve met people who are certain of their belief in a particular God “brand” that I don’t recognize as Christian, for instance. And I’ve met people who are certain there is no God — many of whom, I should add, are sure there can be no God if God looks like the one the other group adheres to.

There are things I believe but do not know. The same might be true for you sometimes.

I don’t know if this play is going to come together, but I believe it will if we keep showing up. Substitute play with whatever.

David Bazan sings about the absurdity of responding to God or reality or our circumstance by putting ourselves in a camp at all. He starts his song by suggesting that it is silly for us to sign up for membership that only believes in red and orange leaves falling from trees versus the red and yellow ones. And it’s absurd to think that that decision has any real bearing on they way things will fall out. And it’s even more absurd to ask the question when the tree is beautiful and the leaves are meant to fall from it.

It is okay to live in the questions. It is good to resist some invitations. The tree is there regardless of what you believe about its leaves.