Olives and dust.

Olives and dust. 

I close my eyes

Only for a moment, and the moment’s gone
All my dreams
Pass before my eyes, a curiosity

Dust in the wind
All they are is dust in the wind

Same old song
Just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see

Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind.

There’s a poster fixed to the noticeboard outside a church I’m visiting on a rainy afternoon in Lent. I’m dragging my feet a little outside the gate, taking a heart and head moment of preparation that I often seem to need. I glance up before I enter, and pause as I clock a poster. The background is white, with 4 separate pictures in boxes: a hoop on a tragus, an earing, a nose stud… and a nail-pierced palm, dripping with crimson blood. Across the bottom of the poster, the statement:

Some piercings cost more than others.

Oooof.

Though eye-catching, in a beige and blood kind of way, my attention remains on the creaky side door and gathering beyond.

But that night I wake, as always, in the wee smalls. In my drifting twilight sleep I’m in front of the poster again. I watch myself stretch out my hand and touch its shiny white surface. Tracing the ear, the nose, the hand, I run my finger down to the image of a nail. To my surprise I realise the patch of blood has texture. It’s dry and crumbling, not red but a darker burgundy, or brown. Curious, I step forward and rub some more. More dirt is loosened, and as I keep rubbing the rusty nail falls away. I step back and watch it hit the pathway with a clang. I glance around for a witness to this strange unfolding in front of me, but the streets are empty. A wind picks up, and more dirt is displaced, and the hand and the hole grow bigger. I feel my feet move as if I’m being guided gently forward into the dark centre of the palm, larger now than any poster, pithy statement, or church noticeboard.

Darkness swallows me and I’m falling slowly down through an inky sky. Moon and stars pass by. I shiver under their cold light, and the touch of moist cotton ball clouds, before the soft warm earth meets my limbs and I am on land again.

My eyes adjust to the milky moon darkness, and I look around. Gnarly trees rising from dusty ground with patches of grass. It feels solid and warm under my feet. The heavy quiet and true dark are alien to me. I’m far from home. Far from today.

Walking slowly I touch the trees, their knotted branches hard beneath my fingertips. The leaves are narrow, leathery and I can feel hard round fruit forming in clusters.

The air crackles in the grove. I can feel it. The crackle of collision and collusion, allegiance and worship. Decision.

Oooof.

Then I hear him.
Moving slowly toward the sound, I see him.

He’s curled in the dust, rocking and moaning. His hand reaches for the solid trunk of the tree, his body unfolding from it’s fetal position.  He steadies himself before gasping words fall from his lips. Wet with tears and sweat, tracklines run down the dirt on his face.

I’m arrested. Caught in the violence of this moment, this pain. It is as if all the agitation and distress of all my days moves up from the dark corners within me. Watching him feel it, I feel it in slow motion. It moves from my gut, every bone on fire. My heart contracts in an unbearable ache and bile rises in my throat until like vomit the groan comes up from me. And still it rises. My ears hum, resonant with anguish. In the drawing up and drawing out I am hollowed like the space that comes in the silence after convulsive sobbing. My eyes locked on the man, I, too, lean into a tree. Clinging on for strength, falling to my knees.

Just when I feel that I might break under the weight of sorrow, the moan that escapes from my lips moves like a will’o’the wisp toward him. He breathes in. I let go. 

I hear him speak, not to address me, but to another. One unseen, yet present to him:

As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’

I will myself to be still, and lean in to hear the whispered words tumbling fast and raw from his mouth.

These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go to the house of God
under the protection of the Mighty One with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng. Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.

Now I know where I am, and what I am seeing. I’m in the garden, watching the crushing of The Olive. Watching the deep deep pressing, and feeling the oil as it flows around me, drawing out of me and into me. Ah, the tears flow now from my eyes. No longer a shaking, sobbing, but a quiet waterfall.

He moves to stand, stumbling forward, then steadied. I watch him walk, weak and limping to a cluster of trees and longer grass. I squint and see a tumble of cloth and bodies densely huddled, snoring under a darkening sky.

Friends, he whispers, friends I asked you, I need you, watch with me. They are half-roused, but not conscious. Eventually he leaves them, returning to his tree alone. The night gets a little darker, the air a little heavier.

My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon – from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.

By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me – a prayer to the God of my life.

I say to God my Rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?’
My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long,
    ‘Where is your God?’
(Ps 42)

Silence falls. Silence in the Olive groves.
Then I hear him again, addressing the One he weeps before:

If you are willing .. let this cup pass from me. (Matt 26:14)

For a moment, it is as if I can see a goblet on the ground beneath the tree. There is a liquid in it, dark and cloudy.

He gazes at the cup, then sighing moves to stand again, and walks to his sleeping friends. Again he reaches out his hands to pull them into fellowship with him. But sleep is warm, and they prefer its embrace to his.

Defeat bows his shoulders forward as he watches them before turning to the tree. Sitting on his knees, palms open, I hear him say, louder now:

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him my Saviour and my God. (Ps42)

The goblet on the ground is still there in this moment. The weight of sorrow, of loneliness, disappointment and the heavy wisp of pain that I know to be mine… all fall into the dark mixture within as his tears flow.

I sit in the dust. Arms clasped around my knees. Waiting, hardly breathing, for the longest time. Darkness gathers, cold now. In the holy hush, I feel the crackle again. The shadows seem to gather. I’m not alone in the watching and waiting.

The wind picks up, and dust swirls. I hear voices speaking one after another. Words and warnings that are familiar to me rise and fall in the swirling….

This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup filled with the wine of my wrath and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. *

Awake, awake!
Rise up, Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath, you who have drained to its dregs
the goblet that makes people stagger. *

On and on they come. The wind builds and builds, forming into a funnel, a tiny tornado swallowing the prophet words. Then it drops, and the funnel falls into the cup.

All is quiet. I can’t breathe, until I hear him exhale.

My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.

One last time he stands. One last time he walks back to his friends, shakes them, speaks to them, and returns alone.

May your will be done.

I jump up, and run to his friends, angry at them, wondering if I can rouse them, urge them to stand.  But as I draw close to the jumble of hands and faces and clothes I see my sleeping face, my hands, my clothes amongst them. And I understand.

I turn back to him. Watching from behind as he sits in palm-open surrender.

I understand.