Wounded and Rising

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   April 20, 2024

Still fresh into the Easter season, I’m wondering just what it might mean to practice resurrection.

Here in the northern hemisphere, trees and plants are offering a visual aid each morning. Seemingly overnight, and especially after a steady rain or a day bathed in sunlight, leaves unfurl from tight buds into spring green. Jonquils, tulips, narcissus step out dressed in colorful blooms. Their appearance seems guaranteed and predictable until I remember the harshness of a lingering winter, one that would not let go of its grasp, one that threatened not only snow but deadly freeze. In the face of adversity,  greening persisted. Blooming did not hold back. Rising and rising and rising everywhere.

As I’m pondering resurrection, what stands out for me among the riot of flowering bulbs are a few miniature tulips. They were crippled by a late frost and appear to have paid the price for their audacity. Their growth is stunted, their buds not dead but deformed. Each day I watch them struggle to open their wounded petals and I hear them preach new forms of beauty and of rising.

In this Easter season, when the gospel stories reveal so much unexpected hope and encouragement, we give thanks for the gifts of spring’s seeming perfection. But the tiny tulips remind us that any reflection on resurrected life must also include the showing of wounds. (Luke 24:36-40; John 20:19-20, 25-28). Wounds visible on the risen Jesus, reminding us that he not only suffered but that he fully inhabited our human condition. Wounds as a sign of life that seemed at an end but are really a new life unfolding in mysterious ways. Wounds pointing to our shared vulnerability. Wounds proclaiming that brokenness and scars and even death are not the last word or the end of the story.  

That’s why I’m keeping close watch on the miniature tulips, their misshapen petals, their ragged leaves, their crooked stems. Though they seem to be creatures of an alien season, the life force is so strong in them that they will not be denied their moment to step into the sunlight in full display, just as they are. That is my hope for all of us.

And for the poet, Mary Oliver, in “Hurricane”:

It didn’t behave
like anything you had
ever imagined. The wind
tore at the trees, the rain
fell for days slant and hard.
The back of the hand
to everything. I watched
the trees bow and their leaves fall
and crawl back into the earth.
As though, that was that.
This was one hurricane
I lived through, the other one
was of a different sort, and
lasted longer. Then
I felt my own leaves giving up and
falling. The back of the hand to
everything. But listen now to what happened
to the actual trees;
toward the end of that summer they
pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.
It was the wrong season, yes,
but they couldn’t stop. They
looked like telephone poles and didn’t
care. And after the leaves came
blossoms. For some things
there are no wrong seasons.
Which is what I dream of for me.

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Take an inventory of any scars, wounds, bruises, or fractures—physical or emotional– that you bear.
Reflect on any learnings that have come into your life through suffering.
Who or what is helping you to move closer to healing?
Ask the Holy One to deepen your compassion for yourself and for all the world.

Featured Image:  Waldemar, Unsplash

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