Image: Sudie Blanchard
The poem below was written for a poetry workshop here at RiverWoods in Durham. It speaks of the shedding I did last fall, when Peter and I said goodbye to our home in York. I hesitated to share it here, because it is so much about my own experience. But now I am wondering…maybe you, dear reader, have been shedding too. What might you have let go of in the last year? Where might new life be calling you? What, as a church, have we shed in the last 13 months, and how might that draw us, as a congregation, into new life with the risen Christ?
Shedding
When a lobster sheds,
Its hard shell cracks and falls away to the sea floor.
Then, the lobster,
Soft and vulnerable,
Hides and waits
For its new shell to harden
And a new life to begin.
Last fall, like the lobster, I shed too.
Not a shell, but stuff.
First, the family treasures left for auction:
My grandmother’s dressing table…
Her snuff-box collection
My other grandmother’s sterling tea set
The big oil painting with the gilt frame–and more…
I cried when this first lot left.
It was the hardest.
Then came the great give away….
The “good” china and crystal,
Kitchen stuff,
Our big four-poster bed,
The dining room set,
Pictures and books,
Rugs–and more…
Family, friends, ReStore and Savers got the loot.
By the end,
All that was left was an empty house.
I walk into the future,
Soft and vulnerable.
Carrying just enough.
Enough to begin this new life.
– Sudie Blanchard, April 19, 2021