Daily walks along the Merrimac River have flooded me with grace-filled moments of awareness and praise. In the teasing ways of March, there have been spring-like days and cold grey ones, following one upon another, giving each day's walk a different flavor. Join me at riverside as I remember one of these moments.

Here is a huge rock, deeply wedged into the squishy bank. A good place to sit for a just a short time (cold, you know!) time, waggling mud-booted feet in shallow water, readying them for fresh accumulations of mud. The rock has a great cleavage in its middle. A tiny green shoot, barely visible, grows out of the deep fissure. Amazing, really; so little else has "greened up" yet. Life is surging forth from that broken-open rock and there, in that moment, everything sings of Jesus Christ. Christ there, deep within Creation.

[I]n him all things hold together...so that he might come to have first place in everything. (from Colossians 1:17-18).

The Word of God bursts forth from breakings-open: the breaking open of Mary the Birth-Giver, the breaking open of the heavens at Jesus' baptism, the breaking open of Jesus -- pierced and crucified, the breaking open of the tomb which could not hold him. In Christ, stony hearts break open and are transformed. In Christ, animosities which lie cold and hard along the rivers of our lives are broken open and healing is possible. All of these breakings-open are gathered up into God's plan for reconciliation...and reconciliation is God's sovereign will for all creation, unleashed in the self-giving of Jesus upon the Cross. This is why the Church offers her most powerful liturgies during Holy Week and Easter (and why we need to be in attendance throughout).

This Paschal reality -- this soaring truth of crucifixion and resurrection -- is not some vague abstraction. It is the relentless rhythm of God's action in Christ, into which we are all drawn over and over. Our choice, our response, is in letting ourselves be broken open so that God's grace may take root in us. Only this mystery can hold us safely. Only this truth plants us eternally with God and in God.

As we move on along the river, a good old, down-home, mud-on-your-boots hymn might be just right:

Rock of Ages, cleft for me. Let me hide myself in thee;
Let the water and the blood from thy wounded side which flowed
Be of sin the double cure; cleanse me from its guilt and power.

Should my tears for ever flow, should my zeal no langour know,
All for sin could not atone; thou must save, and thou alone;
In my hand no price I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.

While I draw this fleeting breath, when mine eyelids close in death,
When I rise to worlds unknown and behold thee on they throne,
Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.

As we move on from the river, let's keep building our house upon this Rock, thanking God for each year together as members of Christ's Body in Maine.