The Song of the Cross
From you is born all ruling will
the power and the life to do.
The song that beautifies all
from age to age it renew.
Music is a universal language. Music transcends cultural and linguistic barriers, allowing people from all backgrounds to connect and communicate through shared experiences. There is something powerfully mysterious and transcendent in how music opens memories, evokes emotions, and draws people together into a shared experience.
We are in the season of Lent. This, too, is a shared experience. Lent is a season within the church calendar to soften our hearts so that we may open to the realities of the spirit and experience the hidden thirst and hunger for communion with God. Phoebe Farag Mikhail reminds us that Lent is less about well-mannered denials and more about thinning our lives to thicken our communion with God.
Lent and the events of Christ’s passion are characterized by songs and music that steadily pull towards the cross. Within them, the center of God’s loving character is unmasked and revealed amid all that is wrong and ugly in the world.
It is music of minor keys, dissonance, and discord. The chords and intervals build tension and instability. It’s jarring. Darkness and evil take flight within the notes. It moves back and forth between notes and lines of mocking and mournful, menacing and sorrowful, clashing and harsh, demanding and brutal. This music requires resolution with meaning.
Imagine the scene. The cruelty. The blood. The smell. The violence. The fear. The sarcastic laughter and insults. The darkness. The evil. The women. The tears. The song of the cross rising from mouths and hearts. Do you hear it?
This year, I hear the song of the cross more clearly as I let go and release who I think I am and what I think I cannot live without. The song has the chorus of freedom. Real freedom. Freedom to be who I was created to be.
But it is also a song of nefarious wickedness and lawlessness. Of power. Of betrayal and abandonment. Of cruelty, violence, and inhuman suffering. Of lament, sadness, sorrow, and despair.
The song of the cross is one of forgiveness—not payment of debt, but forgiveness of debt. It is such a glorious melody.
It’s a glorious mix of melodies, genres, and notes where everything is turned upside down: heaven intersecting earth, kingdom of light overturning kingdom of darkness, unclean made clean, profane made sacred, curse restored to blessing, death resurrected to life.
The song of the cross is like a thunderbolt to the heart.
The song of the cross is Love. Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity (it did not need changing)! Richard Rohr helps us remember that Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God. God’s abundance and compassion make any scarcity economy of merit or atonement unnecessary and unhelpful. The cross reveals the definition of love—an eternally outpouring love.
The song of the cross is my compass in my life of faith—my with-God life. It points me home and to where I want to go. It helps locate where I am and points me back in the correct direction.
The song of the cross is universal. It is the universal song that transcends cultural and linguistic barriers, allowing all people to connect and communicate through this shared experience of Love. The song of the cross is powerfully mysterious and transcendent. It is personal and all-inclusive.
Do you hear the song of the cross?
Inspiration
The Two Mounts
Double Glory
Transfigured Jesus
radiantly shimmering on the mount of glory.
Face shining bright with the Light of Another,
brilliant as the sun on a July summer day.
Garments sparkling whiter than the stars on a black night sky.
Brilliant and transcendent
Holy men your companions, conversing in Light and Beauty
promise and future
togetherness and healing
yet unequal in beauty and brilliance.
Crowd
invisible
cowering and fearful in grey shadows
pitiful and clueless
blunt and grasping
desire emerging to control and contain
asking to build a tent
a tabernacle in own making
Mystery and majesty descending on a heavy cloud
Light surrounding
affirming
“My most dearly loved Son always listen to him.”
Power in mystery
transcending in wonder
otherness and awe
Glory in dazzling light
unapproachable
holy
terrifying.
Majestic beauty reducing all our place holdings.
Grandeur and Grace dissolving our certainty and foregone realities.
Dying Jesus
crossed on the mount of death.
Face dripped crimson with the blood of humanity, viciously beaten for the sins of all.
Garments taken
gambled and divided
naked and exposed as a newborn babe
Murderers your companions, conversing in death and doom
offering gifts of compassion and hope
togetherness and healing.
Crowd arrogant and loud
jeering and mocking
glaring and glinting
sneering in delight and glee
steeled on tearing down the temple
Darkness and evil descending on a shadow
muting “My most dearly loved Son always listen to him.”
Alone and forsaken
Light hidden and silent.
Power in weakness
foolish in poverty
unreasonableness and vulnerability
Glory in black darkness
unapproachable
suffering
holy
dangerous.
Shaming beauty refusing our mundane domestication
Sublime seclusion arresting our bottomless anxiety and dismantling cages.
Becky Grisell
I am here to serve your soul in whatever ways you might need or long for … spiritual direction, spiritual companionship, leadership coaching, enneagram coaching, Ignatian Spiritual Exercises guide, and guided retreats. What does your soul need? What does your soul want?
Listening with you to the song of the cross,
Becky