“Forming a Practice of Hope” is a monthly guide that will be published throughout the 2025 Jubilee Year in the Catholic Church. It is designed to spark a personal spiritual practice that is flexible and doable and is meant to be a road map that examines dynamics of the creative life and spiritual life. Read the other monthly guides here.
There is something wondrous about this time of year. As daylight becomes longer and longer here in the Northern Hemisphere, you can almost feel the earth “waking up.” At the base of plants whose dried-up stalks seem like ghosts of the previous years growth, there are signs of new life.
I love to garden. It is something that I got from my grandparents who were very close to the land, the earth. I like to go out and brush away the old leaves in the garden and look to see what is happening underneath this cover of dead things. Day by day, the changes can be slow, almost imperceptible, but then the day comes when all of a sudden there is a kind of new green that only happens once a year and is fresh and vibrant and present.
Each year it surprises me. Each year the feeling of life returning in that special kind of green gives me a lift that is hard to describe. Life WILL happen again. Growth WILL show itself once more. It’s hard to remember that when all that remains of the previous year’s growth are crinkled leaves and dead branches. Often what appears to be lifeless still has life deep inside.
Now, it is important to remember that new life is not “old life,” and definitely not “the same old life.” New life happens after the long winter of unseen change happens in us, where the old growth dies away and something entirely new takes its place. It will have some characteristics of what is familiar, but it will be completely new and will defy our expectations if we are stuck in a loop of sameness.
Each year the feeling of life returning in that special kind of green gives me a lift that is hard to describe. Life WILL happen again. Growth WILL show itself once more.
One of my favorite “noticing” practices is to watch the same tree branch day after day. To see it swell as the spring rains soak in. To notice the buds form and expand. To feel hope in my heart as this lifeless stick bursts into leaf or into flower. It makes it easier to imagine the resurrection. What would it have been like to experience that surge of life back into Christ’s crucified body after the quiet days of lifelessness enclosed in his cold tomb. That kind of surge must have been strong enough to push the stone away from the entrance, to open the way for this resurrected life, to infuse itself into our world and into our own hearts.
In the Office of Readings for Holy Saturday, an ancient homily imagines a conversation between the first Adam, who lies chained in a pile of bones in the underworld, and the resurrected Christ who is the new Adam: “I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld. Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead.” Can we hope in this new life that is ours in Christ? Can we remember these resurgences of life as we experience the power of resurrection in our own lives? Can we store up these surprising “noticings” from year to year, day to day, moment to moment and recall them consciously when all seems lifeless?
Life story: When I was a Jesuit novice, a companion and I were sent to Washington, D.C. We worked with the Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV), which aimed at raising consciousness about hunger and homelessness. One of our tasks was to go out in the cover of night and forage through dumpsters at warehouses where food was sent out to grocery stores. Many things were thrown out simply because its box was damaged, but the food inside was still good, though the appearance of it classified it as not “shelf worthy.” This was before there were organizations like City Harvest that would collect food from grocers and distributors in order to relocate it to shelters and food pantries. In fact, the work of CCNV paved the way for this kind of food reclamation to happen.
In 1982 CCNV harvested this perfectly good food, hired gourmet chefs, and catered a congressional luncheon. After the “oohs and ahs” about how delicious the food was, they were informed that all the ingredients of the dishes they were now eating were taken from dumpsters. After the initial shock, the lesson was learned, and a lot was finally understood about how much waste there was in this country. Experiencing this firsthand changed the minds of many who had the power to help establish the programs we have today, reserving this food to feed the hungry, rather than throwing it out because the bow was not pretty. Resources that had been thrown out got a second chance with the new life that was given to them through creative thinking and compassion for those in need.
Work Story: During my MFA studies in acting, I met Mia Yoo, the current artistic director of La MaMa and the successor to Ellen Stewart, whom I mentioned in last month’s practice. Through Mia, I joined with La MaMa’s “Great Jones Repertory Company” in presenting “The Trojan Women,” one of their most renowned pieces. Composed by Elizabeth Swados and directed by Andrei Serban, we performed it all over the world. We did not use English text. The sounds we used as actors to tell this story were composed by Elizabeth to embody the action and experience of the original story, now over 2,000 years old.
Just recently however, Onni Johnson, an original member of the Great Jones Company, approached me with an idea. “What if we took this play and taught it to artists in regions of the world that had experienced a history of violence around the issues of language and cultural identity? What if we gave them this play as a gift for them to do whatever they wanted?”
The fact that the language of this play was a language that nobody spoke made it possible for it to be common ground for artists in places where language had driven people apart. Because it was nobody’s language, it could be everybody’s language. Since Onni’s desire to bring new life to this piece of theatre (which itself was giving new life to a Euripides classic), “The Trojan Women Project” has worked with both Spanish and Mayan speaking artists in Guatemala; with Albanian, Serbian and Roma people in Kosovo; in Cambodia; and with workshops online and in person in many countries. In 2019, we brought artists from these places to New York to present a joint production of this play and gave them opportunities to share their own work as well. Onni’s sense that there was more in this work that just the same production bore tremendous fruit for these artists around the world and continues to inspire new ways of working in the Great Jones Repertory.
Further investigation:
Read the entirety of the Holy Saturday Homily or read John Chrysostom’s Paschal homily.
Suggestions:
- Take a walk where you know you will find some trees. See where each one is at its own stage of “waking up.” Remember what that same tree looked like in midwinter and reflect on this change.
- Look for something in your room or in your house that you have not used in a while. Think of a completely new use for it and use it that way for a time.
- Examine a choice that you made in the last few days. Did it bring you life? Or lead you somewhere else?
- Gaze at an icon of the Resurrection. What details do you see in it about death and about life?
- Get an onion or a flower bulb. Notice how dry and brittle its skin is. Peel off the outer layers and look at the difference. Put a few toothpicks in it and suspend it over a glass of water so that the bottom half inch is in the water. Watch it come back to life.
- Go back to any of the practice suggestions given in the first month of this series that focused on beginning something new. Recognize that opening yourself to new life might mean beginning again … and remember the fun you had doing it.
- Read Ezekiel 37:1-14 and imagine what it would be like to have this vision yourself. Ask God in prayer what needs Spirit breathed into it in you.
- Get up early enough to watch a sunrise. If you can, begin this when the stars are still visible. Map what is going on in your heart and in your thoughts as you watch the horizon and see how the light changes from moment to moment.
(Top image: Mary Crandall)