Warm Coffee on Good Friday Morning
This is a reflection from Good Friday 2012. My friend Coffee is now 93 and a half. Her vision and hearing are getting worse, but she still came to my second grade daughter's school musical this week. I am so thankful to know her and that she let me share this experience with you all. May the joy of walking with the ressurrected Lord fill you with peace and hope!
I sat
alone in cool darkness on a folding lawn chair in a little patch of woods that
we call our Gethsemane, the place where each year members of our community hold
an all night prayer vigil between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. I chose the dawn shift. Night shadows crept away as morning’s light
helped me to discern the shapes of leaves, the trees in the distance, the small
bodies of birds whose songs filled the air.
I heard quiet footsteps moving slowly along the path and then I saw her
form, small and slightly stooped, using her cane for balance, approaching the
garden. It was my friend Coffee, the
oldest member of our community. She
settled into the other creaky old lawn chair beside me for the last hour of
prayer before “Peter,” one of our community volunteers would end our vigil by describing
to a gathered crowd how he felt and all that happened that night. We smiled but didn’t exchange words, honoring
the sacred quiet that had been nurtured by our friends through the night.
Though my mouth was closed, my eyes were
prayerfully open that dawn. I regarded
her ninety-two and a half year old frame in the rickety chair and saw that she did
not, like me, look like someone who just rolled out of bed and stumbled into the
darkness. She had taken the time, at
dawn, to independently shower and wash her hair and dress for the day. Her hair, still damp and clinging to her
scalp made her look more delicate than she usually appears to me when her hair
is dry and frames her head in a cottony cloud of white. She grabbed at her head and huffed at herself
for not taking the time to dry her hair or even bring a hat.
At this point I could no longer simply close
my eyes and return to inner silence.
This time of prayer required loving action. I looked under tarps for the blankets that
were not there. They had been taken
inside by others when April showers briefly wet the night. I wrapped my orange scarf around her head and
told her I would be back. My 33 year old
legs were nimble and full of life. I
took no notice of the roots and stones and slight dips and rises in the terrain
as I hurried out of the woods. The path
that had been lit by tin can luminaria whose candles had expired in the night
led me to the community library where I found heaps of crocheted Afghans. I grabbed an armload of blankets, carried my
light and easy load back across the dewy grass and returned to the thicket where
I found Coffee reading the Bible. I
draped her shoulders in purple and blue and her lap was warmed with orange and
brown. She offered to give me back the
scarf on her head but I insisted that she keep it on her still damp head. I was warm from the run and thankful for the
blanket on my own lap and the crisp air on my neck as we sat together in
prayer. I was thankful to be sitting
beside my friend who had become regal - wrapped in the colors of heaven and
earth.
Coffee would scoff if she heard me
describe her in this way. As a
preacher’s daughter, Christian educator, long-term missionary in Korea, and a
decades long member of intentional Christian communities she has spent nearly a
century cloaked in humility and service.
She has shared with our community that the biggest challenge in aging is
the struggle of not feeling useful and of being a burden to others. Though she no longer has any official jobs in
our community, the one thing she does faithfully is come to morning prayer at
8AM Monday through Friday. My husband
and I come when we can but the pressing needs of children and work make it a
challenging discipline to keep in this season of life. Each morning she faithfully wraps up beloved
ones in prayer and offers them to God’s tender care. She takes seriously the work of prayer and
our community and countless others are better for it.
Soon a
small crowd had gathered and we waited expectantly in silence for Peter to
come. A college-aged man ran in with a
towel pinned over his clothes like a toga and told his harrowing account of
that last night with Jesus. After he
gave his dramatic speech and hurried away for fear of capture we all scattered
away from our imagined Gethsemane back into the present time and space. I could have walked away alone at my normal
hurried pace, but instead I chose to walk at Coffee’s pace. The topography of the field from her point of
view zoomed into my focus. She held my
arm in one hand and her cane in the other as she commented. “My, this is quite a hill for me,” she paused
to catch her breath, “But, Jesus’ path was steeper….and he had to carry a cross
too. That is something to think
about.”
Later
that day I found my orange scarf neatly folded in my mailbox with a short note
of thanks. I wondered if she even knew
what a gift she had given to me that morning.
Did she know what a blessing it was that I could offer her comfort in a
place where Jesus had received none, that I could be a faithful friend to her
in a place where Jesus’ friends thought only of themselves; that I could, in a
simple physical gesture, offer to her the comfort and peace that she daily
offers to loved ones through her prayer and presence; that in her moment of
need, and I am sure there will be more in the years to come, she brought me
closer to the Kingdom of Heaven.