April 5, 1999: Gethsemane

What follows is the story of what I experienced Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. I write this several days later, and I was not able to turn the corner to Easter. But I feel okay about that. Someday I will be able to.

Last Thursday, at therapy, I started from an image of myself as a child lying in bed, hurting (emotionally) so much and knowing that there was no way out except to wait until I grew up. In remembering, I felt so much pain and I couldn't find a way to let that pain flow, to give it shape.

After trying for awhile, I asked my therapist for a few words about pain from his experience and understanding, hoping he would say something that would fit well enough for me that it would help the pain find a shape. He said that to him the ultimate model of pain is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. That felt right to me and we sat with it and felt it. It didn't lead to any resolution but it didn't feel like it was time for that, it was most important as a way to feel not alone in the pain and to be able to feel it in a more developed way.

My church does a Vigil at the Cross, where people sign up to watch for an hour between the Maundy Thursday service and the Good Friday service. All the decorations (candles, etc.) are removed from the altar at the end of the Maundy Thursday service and a crude wooden cross is put on the altar.

I had signed up for the Vigil from 5 to 6 a.m. Friday morning. When I got there, and the person before me had left, I first read the Garden of Gethsemane passages. Then I sat on the floor, just outside the altar rail, and tried to bring together my pain and Jesus's pain. I started to feel that I shouldn't make such a big deal about my pain because what I feel now is not as severe as what I felt as a child lost in pain and hopelessness. Then I realized that that wasn't true.

First I saw that God had given me the comfort of sleep as a child. More than that, I realized that I hadn't felt all the pain as a child and that is why I have to feel it now. Suddenly I was so thankful that I am able to bear the pain now so that my child-self didn't have to. I felt like I am the body of Jesus for her, bearing her pain. I cried, partly in pain and partly in gratitude that I can bear the pain now for her.

After awhile I stood up and I touched my eyes and then touched my wet fingers to the cross. First I touched the wood where the hands and feet would be. Then, after crying some more, I went back and removed the cloth that was over the cross and put my fingers on the plain rough wood where the head would be. Only it didn't feel like wood, it felt like skin. I felt like I was touching the face of Jesus.

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