Good Friday Walk About
Yesterday was Good Friday. I took a rare weekday off from the office. Since Jesus died inconveniently, ignominiously on a Friday, it seemed right to take the day to consider the way of his journey, and of mine. Do we not all die? Birth and death are momentous events that we all have in common. You and I, the subject of these events have no memory of our birth, and will have no memory of our death. The same cannot be said for those who join us in fellowship, and in joint collaboration in the work of living our lives.
My mother and my father have passed. My father’s death seemed an abstraction, something with the smooth texture of an observed event without emotional substance. My mother’s death rocked me. She left, I felt lonely, and I still reach out to touch parts of her that remain within my memory. A few weeks ago I lost a grand-daughter, Kai, who was still-born. The loss was inexplicable, sudden, a twist of Nature that left us numb.
On “Good” Friday I took a walk around town, Mundelein, where I have lived for many years. I parked my vehicle at McDonalds. I walked alongside Kraklauer Creek observing the flow of the stream that is just wide enough to offer a bit of risk, just enough danger to the kids who play along its banks, leaping from stone to stone to cross the creek. The water sings where the stream is constricted by the rocks. Water is Nature’s life bearing pulse, flowing into the Father of waters the mighty Mississippi; then to the Gulf of Mexico.
I walked past Santa Maria del Popolo Church. Towns people were steadily filing into the sanctuary intent on the Good Friday mass. I am not Catholic, and I think that all organized religion suffers from the decay attendant to our failing empire. Nevertheless I felt attraction to the image of Mary and her infant child, displayed in a niche high on the outside wall. A mothers compassion, patience, and sorrow is the best image that we have to convey the solicitude that we must muster for our collective survival. Aside from a partial achievement of those ideals, humans cannot survive.
Walking with the stream of parishioners, crossing busy Route 45 I walked down to St. Andrews Lutheran church. Facing the busy traffic on Route 45, St Andrews has displayed three crosses draped with a purple shroud. The crosses are not meant to be decorative. The cross was a crude instrument of torture that always had one outcome: prolonged dying in abject abandonment for its victims. The cross is as decorative as an AK-47 or a canister of nerve gas. Jesus did not die wrapped in a shroud of royal purple. His was no lyrical death.
Making my way back to Kraklauer Park and my vehicle, I stopped in at the Area General Store for a cup of coffee. I knew that Rob the owner who is a friend, would be on hand. A few minutes of conversation with Rob was a comfort. I sat for a while, enjoyed my coffee and read another story from Wendell Berry’s book. Then I left for another spot in town.
There is a surviving patch of wilderness in Mundelein, that is across Midlothian road, opposite the Park District campus. There once was a farm there. A number of years ago the property was sold to a developer, lots 
were carved out, and roads were surveyed and constructed. Nothing different than the usual “progress” that surrounds all of us. Where the creek runs under the road, there is an small pond, 
surrounded by wetlands, held by a dam with a spill way. The place was left alone no doubt as it is necessary to drain the watershed. The wildness remains despite the profit motive and the reach of engineering to obviate Nature for all manner of short sighted “solutions.”
I spent some time there by the old pond, listening to the robust roar of the overflow plunging down the spill way. At one time farm animals, and a farming family lived close to the old pond. I took some pictures.
Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.
–excerpt from Ash Wednesday by T. S. Eliot
3 thoughts on “Good Friday Walk About”
Perhaps a correlation.
From Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse:
Therefore, he had to continue bearing these ugly years, bearing the disgust, the emptiness, the pointlessness of a dreary and wasted life up to the end, up to bitter despair, until Siddhartha the lustful, Siddhartha the greedy could also die. He had died, a new Siddhartha had woken up from the sleep. He would also grow old, he would also eventually have to die, mortal was Siddhartha, mortal was every physical form. But today he was young, was a child, the new Siddhartha, and was full of joy.
He thought these thoughts, listened with a smile to his stomach, listened gratefully to a buzzing bee. Cheerfully, he looked into the rushing river, never before had he liked a water so well as this one, never before had he perceived the voice and the parable of the moving water thus strongly and beautifully. It seemed to him as if the river had something special to tell him, something he did not know yet, which was still awaiting him. In this river, Siddhartha had intended to drown himself, in it the old, tired, desperate Siddhartha had drowned today. But the new Siddhartha felt a deep love for this rushing water, and decided for himself, not to leave it very soon.
Very nice! I have no doubt that it is love that saves us, if we are saved at all. We are mortal, and each of us has made his and her contribution to a culture corrosive of Nature. Yet there is much to love.
I often think of this passage from Siddhartha. When I stand by a river or creek, I listen. I know there is a voice I’m not understanding. I realize this can sound like new age hooey, but I also know that the river is only reflecting an inner voice that we all have, a voice that can only be heard as though an echo ourselves. If we allow the river to bounce back that inner self, we can learn, we can gain wisdom from that knowledge of self, a wisdom that no one can teach us. Someday perhaps I will hear the river and know who I am in a way that I long to know.
I do not reread books. There are just too many and I have a very limited time on this earth. But I have read Siddhartha five times and expect I will read it again. It gives me hope that I might someday hear the river and allow it to unlock my own secrets. So I will continue to patiently wait and listen for that ancient voice.