Offering 10 I Summer
It doesn't have to be a cemetery: Reclaiming an inheritance of Presence
cut flowers from my prayer garden
A Walk Down Memory Lane
Inside her aunt and uncle’s country cabin in rural Kentucky, a five-year-old little girl with short blonde hair sits with her Aunt Mary at the kitchen table playing a game of Chutes and Ladders. It is 1999. There is lemonade, cookies, and laughter. But most important to her little girl heart, there is patience, presence, and adventure. When the game is over, they venture outside of the cabin, passing the exquisitely beautiful blooms that are towering—some of them above her—in the wild cottage garden that her Aunt Mary tends to with excellent care.
“Are your raspberries ready?”, the little girl pipes up. These were her favorite. They make their way beyond the cabin and set off for a nature walk—a grand adventure.
The little girl’s cup is full. She is me. And this is one of my earliest childhood memories.
It is a memory dripping with divine revelation that would make its way into that little girl’s heart three decades later—a memory that the Holy Spirit excavated from my heart in an unexpected way last summer.
I’m going to tell you that story. And I pray that through it, you may see yours more clearly too.
We all belong to the same Story, after all.
The Place of the Inner Child
Last spring, the Holy Spirit gave me a vision for a prayer garden in my backyard (you can read more about that in Offering 6). I imagined my prayer garden lined with field stones. I have long admired gardens with stones around them and my Aunt Mary and Uncle Kendall had stones lining theirs. When visiting one afternoon, I mentioned my garden to her and asked where they had gotten their stones. The stones ended up being from their property and they offered to let us gather some for the prayer garden.
My husband and I, along with my Uncle Kendall, took the Trecker into the woods and loaded beautiful old stone that was part of an old stone fence.
Our two children stayed behind at the cabin with Great Aunt Mary.
There was lemonade, cookies, and laughter…
patience, presence, and adventure.
On one of our trips into the woods, I looked at my husband with unexpected tears in my eyes—
“This is bringing me so much joy, reaching into the place of my inner child, the place that craves adventure and exploration.”
Stones of Remembrance
A few days after gathering the stones for my prayer garden, I met with my spiritual director1 and we reflected on the journey I’d been on of allowing Jesus to heal my inner child, my truest self that is hidden in Christ (you can read more about that journey in offering 5). I shared with her how for so long I’d wrestled with the interior loneliness of my childhood/adolescent years and the seeming absence of Jesus in my most painful seasons.
For a very long time, I tended to look at those seasons as places of death. Death to the possibilities of who I might have been—believing that each wound in my story, inflicted by others, and myself, made Jesus step further and further away from me, removing His presence.
We reflected on the transformation that Jesus had begun inviting me into (and still is) and the shepherding he was doing to heal those lies, reminding me of the truth that my inner child, my true self, had never been left behind, that she is still with me, and that He has always been waiting for the day when I would let Him take me by the hand and reveal the true life that, for so many reasons, wasn’t able to unfold before then.
There is a season for everything and I’m abundantly grateful that Jesus protected the bud until I was safe enough and rooted enough to start unfolding in His love.
I told her about my prayer garden and the sense of joy and exploration that gathering those stones had conjured up in my heart. And it was in that reflecting that the Holy Spirit unearthed the memory from my Aunt Mary’s kitchen table those three decades ago.
As I shared more about this memory, pieces started to come together for me in ways that my child/adolescent self could never comprehend.
Aunt Mary and Uncle Kendall moved to Iowa not long after that memory. It was a highlight of my summer any time we would travel to Iowa and visit them for family reunions.
I loved being there.
There was an invitation to presence that never seemed to run out.
During one of the hardest years of my adolescence, recovering from an eating disorder and living with secret traumas, I longed to visit my Aunt Mary and Uncle Kendall in Iowa. My best friend, Abby, and I flew together to Iowa and spent a whole week of our summer vacation with them.
I soaked it in.
We made handmade soap and baskets with Aunt Mary, put together bouquets from her garden, went fishing with Uncle Kendall, earned our junior ranger badges (Aunt Mary was a park ranger at Effigy Mounds National Park), and made homemade cookies and cream milkshakes and sipped them on the front porch together.
It was simple and wonderful.
One afternoon, after expressing our boredom, she put us to work pulling weeds in her garden.
We didn’t get bored again.
Looking back now and tending to my story, I know that my desire to escape the hard of my reality and fly to the never-ending cornfields of Iowa was to attend to the cry in my heart for a Presence I didn’t fully understand just yet.
My aunt and uncle were just being themselves—hearts open wide— and had no idea how significant their hospitality to two teenagers really was.
Aunt Mary’s house was a signpost of presence and adventure and is a touchpoint in my memories that the Holy Spirit used to point me to the inheritance of Presence that has always guarded my life.
They’ve since moved back to Kentucky.
The stones we gathered are the stones from the land where they now live.
And these are the stones that line my garden—
stones of remembrance—
of remembering this special memory of presence that shaped my life, but most important to my little girl heart (that still beats within)—
the patience, presence, and adventure of the One who discerned my cry for Presence before I could name it aloud.
It Doesn’t Have to be a Cemetery
My spiritual director ended our time together that day in the same way she always does, by asking me what I needed as we closed our time together.
I asked her if we could engage in imaginative prayer2 with a scripture on stones.
She looked at me and said, “You’re not going to believe this…” (the Holy Spirit orchestrates this sort of thing frequently during our times together).
She pulled out a sheet of paper she had already prepared to give me and it was a Lectio Divina prompt 3 (an ancient prayer practice) on Luke 24:1-8—a scripture about stones.
This is the passage of scripture where Mary of Magdalene and Martha go the tomb with the burial spices they had prepared for Jesus, and they find that the stone in front of the tomb has been rolled away.
They are perplexed.
Two men, radiating light, appear, confronting them with a poignant question,
“Why are you looking for the Living One in a cemetery?” (The Message Paraphrase)
As she read the passage, repeating it slowly a few times, I engaged in the practice of imaginative prayer, opening myself to the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Each time she would read, “Why are you looking for the Living One in a cemetery”?, it pierced my spirit.
When this happens, I listen.
A gentle whisper, the voice of the Holy Spirit, opened the ears of my heart,
“It doesn’t have to be a cemetery, Lahni”.
So often, we look at our past like a cemetery—places of death—tombstones that we revisit time and again.
“Where are you, Jesus?”, as we run our fingers over the cold marble of familiar words.
Here lies the future I thought I’d have.
Here lies the mom or dad I thought I’d be.
Here lies the dream that will never be mine.
Here lies the path I should have taken.
We all have our “Here lies”, our feet all too familiar with the path to these tombstones of death.
But dear readers,
tombs are for the dead.
And Jesus is alive.
Cemeteries are for the buried.
And our stories are unearthed,
alive once again by the transforming power of resurrection!
Why do we keep looking for the Living One in a cemetery?
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
And in Him, we are given a radical invitation to turn away from the cemetery and find our path back to the living garden of God.
He is the path. He is the way Home. And He does not tend graves.
He tramples them.
In all of the places where the Kingdom of Darkness has convinced us to tend to these places of death, revisiting these tombstones over and over again, Jesus invites us to watch flowers grow.
In all of the places that death has tried to make its’ claim on our lives, Jesus has paradoxically preserved our true life in Him—in those very places.
There is no other name under heaven, no spiritual system or guru, light or life source, who can discern our cry from afar.
All authority has been given to the Keeper of our inheritance of Presence.
It is held securely with the Living One—
and His name is Jesus.
The paper my spiritual director printed out had a picture of Mary weeping outside of the tomb, Jesus standing near her. The picture is a depiction of John’s account of the empty tomb story (John 20:15-16) where Mary mistakes Jesus as the gardener,
“Supposing Him to be the gardener, she said to Him, “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” (which means, Teacher).”
I’ve longed been intrigued by Mary’s observation of Jesus in this account.
She thought he was the gardener.
Whether or not Mary could see the significance in her observation—the truth is,
Jesus is the Gardener.
The whole of creation is being re-made through the radical mystery of the incarnation, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.
The re-flourishing of our truest identities and the re-making of the entire cosmos commenced when the true Gardener walked out of that tomb.
Corpses come alive,
the decay of the Earth has its end,
the glory of the Lord will be our Home.
We have each been given a right to this inheritance of Presence, this Garden in our souls, this Garden to where we are headed.
There He is.
There He has always been.
Preserving eternal seeds of grace, righteousness, and hope where once we could only see death.
Gardener.
Teacher.
Friend.
Jesus.
He is not in the cemetery you keep visiting.
He is waiting for you outside of the tomb with flowers in His hands.
More Than Just Flowers
In a backyard in rural Kentucky, a 30-year-old woman, early greys sprinkled throughout her brown hair, sits in her stone lined prayer garden, sipping iced lemonade, surrounded by the exquisitely beautiful flowers she tends to with excellent care. She looks up at the sky, birdsong greeting her from the trees, and she talks to Jesus.
There is patience.
There is adventure.
And there is a Presence unlike anything her little girl heart could have ever imagined.
The woman’s cup overflows. She is me. And this is my inheritance.
My Aunt Mary texted me last week to let me know she dropped off a fair book on my front porch so I could enter my flowers into the fair.
These flowers tell my story and remind me of the Story to which I belong.
They tell your story, too, dear reader…
an inheritance of Presence.
picture: the bouquet I arranged from Aunt Mary’s garden in Iowa
Thank you for reading Cadence & Canticle—I’m so glad you stopped by! May you leave this space blessed and heartened as you return to the soil and stewardship of your life. I’d love for you to join this community of fellow pilgrim-souls!
For further engagement with this season’s offering, head to the Trysting Place right below!
WELCOME TO THE TRYSTING PLACE—
a contemplative space at the end of each offering for you to quiet your soul and slow down in the presence of your Creator. Settle in with all three sections or choose just one, moving through them at a pace that is right for you. This is designed to be a spacious place for your soul—a sacred rhythm for your life.
CADENCE & CURIOSITY—
an invitation to quietly contemplate and become curious about what is stirring in the depths of your heart.
What tombstones do you keep revisiting? What are the “Here lies” that you have spoken over your story? Spend some time in prayer and ask the Living One to teach you a new path, beyond the cemetery, into His wild garden of grace.
CADENCE & CONVERSATION—
an invitation to reflect on and share what the Lord is revealing to you in this season. Use this as a personal and private extension of reflection or use it to share your heart with other readers in this community of fellow pilgrim-souls. I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
Think of a memory of embodied presence from your own childhood/adolescence. How did this shape you? Thinking about it now, how does it point you to the inheritance of Presence that belongs to you or that you are being invited into? Perhaps there is a connection the Lord is inviting you to make here. I’d love to hear!
CADENCE & CUE—
The final stop in each offering—a cue to still your soul before the things that are good, true, and beautiful as you ponder how you might carry them with you into your season!
Spend some time praying with Luke 24:1-8 or John 20:11-16. Maybe you want to try the prayer practice of imaginative prayer or Lectio Divina (see footnote #2 and #3). However you choose to pray, invite the Holy Spirit to reveal Himself to you in these passages and give you the grace to see your story more clearly.
Curious about spiritual direction? Read this informative post by my friend, Celia.
Ignatian Contemplation: Imaginative Prayer - IgnatianSpirituality.com
How To Do Lectio Divina (Praying With Sacred Scripture) - Good Catholic