The Darling Files 002 // The Flames We Pass

Welcome to the second entry of The Darling Files. In case you missed the first one, you can read it here. This month I share an essay I’ve worked on here and there, submitted a few times, but just never quite found it a home. I think that’s a big reason for this project. Too often I think the good words are only deemed good when someone else declares them so. I forget, I can be my own publisher. In case you needed the reminder, you can be your own publisher, too.

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Our family shuffles into church late, as we do, sneaking down the side aisle like a second processional, my children’s footsteps greeting the congregation. Yes, hello, we are late once again. We find our usual seats on the creaky wood pews and I situate my three children on either side of me. From my Mary Poppins bag I pull various activities to keep their little hands busy before turning to the front of church with a deep sigh. We made it. Time to worship.

Immediately, though, I’m distracted. 

The children are my first and obvious distraction. They fidget in their seats like someone cranked up their windup knobs. I hush and give them the look. Still they wiggle and squirm as if movement is what keeps their hearts beating.

“Look what I made mom!” Elliott, my six-year-old, whisper shouts to me. He holds up a crayon drawn picture in front of his face. I smile through my mask giving him a quick thumbs up before glancing behind me hoping the people in the pews don’t see the way his rocket ship resembles bathroom graffiti.  Maybe they aren’t paying any attention to us.

CLATTER CLATTER CLANG. A water bottle falls to the ground.

Who am I kidding? We’re a side show spectacle. 

I’m trying to worship but I’m also trying to write, in my head, of course. It’s my turn to write the Prayers of the People for next week’s worship service. My plan was to pay attention in worship today (ha, I know, right?) to God speaking to me and then write what I heard. Just pay attention and then patch a few words together, says Mary Oliver in her poem “Praying.” And don’t try to make them elaborate.

I can almost hear her whisper shouting these words to me from across the sanctuary. Just patch a few words together? Got it, Mary, thanks for that. I mean, she’s right. Praying couldn’t be that hard, right? Ask God for what we need. Throw in some poetic language. Amen. 

But, Mary, I want to whisper shout right back to her, praying is just so heavy these days. I glance around the sanctuary, morning light streaming through the stained glass windows like fingers reaching out. I try to make out familiar faces but with masks, eyes are all I see. Tired eyes. Hopeful eyes. Distracted eyes (it’s me, hi.) What do they want? Where do I even begin? What are the just right words they need from me now to bring them comfort, healing, hope? 

Comfort, healing, hope. 

My mind meanders to my friend. She texted me earlier this week sharing news of her miscarriage. “I’m weak,” she confessed. “Pray for me please. I just can’t right now.” It was so early for them, too early to even share the good news, and now to have to be vulnerable in admitting crushed hope. My heart flinches with the clash of two emotions–the honor in being trusted with this story against the pain of wanting to remove their grief all together. I long to offer her encouraging words, something beautiful to give her hope.

Not a blue iris, says Mary Oliver, just weeds in a vacant lot.

My friend doesn’t need my iris words. She needs me to do what she isn’t strong enough to do herself. She needs my weeds in her vacant heart. She needs me to pray. 

Leo, my youngest, climbs into my lap now, as if he knew I needed to feel the weight of something I could hold.  I look up at the altar, attempt to settle back into the words of worship but once more something pulls my attention. 

A candle sits at the front of the church, a small one inside a tall hurricane on a table barely large enough for the holder to rest. There are other candles lit in church that morning, as there always are. But this flame is unique. 

This is a flame over which our church has kept watch since early June 2020. 

On that morning, a member of the Migizi organization, a non-profit that supports the well-being of the American Indian Youth in our Minneapolis community, came to our pastor with a lantern and a flame. The flame he carried was that which was found in the ashes of their smoldering building following the uprisings after the killing of George Floyd. 

I remember that morning all too well. I remember waking with fear as thick as the smell of smoke through our open windows. The previous night's protest and holy rage descended upon the corner of the Third Police Precinct in Minneapolis, bringing fire and destruction to every building in its wake. Our church was on that corner, Migizi right behind us across the alley. In the first light of the morning I learned with great relief that remarkably, our church held strong, untouched. Migizi was not quite as lucky. 

In the aftermath of that morning, a member of Migizi stood on the sidewalk in his trauma, overlooking a space that once held a safe home for their community, now in an unrecognizable heap of smoldering ash and flame. The ash would return to the earth, but the flame he wanted to keep.

Collecting the barely flickering flame in a lantern, he brought the fire, a symbol of renewal in the Native American culture, to our pastor. And thus our church agreed to keep watch over the light until Migizi could rebuild. Members of our community passed this tiny flame of light from home to home, keeping it alive ever since. 

Back in the sanctuary, the children play musical chairs in our cramped pew once more, pulling me back to the reality of my own responsibility. I think now of the action of our congregation carrying that fire with amazement, and also relief. Thank goodness no one asked me to care for the flame. Watching my children bounce around in the pews I can only imagine how quickly that light would have been snuffed out after a pillow wrestling tournament gone wrong. I imagined the three year old in my lap practicing his birthday candle blowing. One huff and a puff and all the important prayer work of holding space for a grieving community would go up in smoke.

Watching the candle today flicker, dance, letting us know it is still very much alive, I see I needn’t worry. The church knew who was capable of keeping the flame burning. Some are more prepared to carry the burden of flame for others in different seasons of life.

A member of Migizi gathers with us this morning to speak of the plans they have for rebuilding. She shares her gratitude with the church for keeping this small flame remembered, but it is I that feels honored. What an incredible amount of trust it takes to invite someone to carry your trauma. But really, what else could we have done? We couldn’t stop the fires from destroying their home. We could, however, carry a memory of that flame until they were ready to hold it themselves. 

It’s a bit like prayer, isn’t it? 

We share the ashes and flames of our lives with others—our grief, our trauma, our broken unknowns—so that they can hold it for us for a little while. We invite our people into every vulnerable feeling, the ones that make us wiggle and squirm, because this movement is what keeps our hearts beating. It’s what keeps the flame burning, and us remembering. It’s why we write words in our heads and whisper shout the things we want to share. It’s what keeps us coming together in community, even through all the distractions on a Sunday morning, because our collective presence, however loud and clattering in our echoing spaces, is how we hold each other. 

It’s how our prayers of the people get to God—in the trails of smoke from the flames we pass around, one shared grief at a time.