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The Broken Path: the stations of the cross - Station 3

 

"The Broken Path: Station 3 - Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus Carry the Cross"
by gregory a. milinovich
broken glass and sea glass on an old farm window
march, 2021


in case you are just tuning in, i sharing a series of posts about eight different stations of the cross which i created on old windows with bits of broken glass.  you can see the first station here, and the second one here.  (you can also view the whole series, with the prayers, questions for meditation, and a video version here).  

this station is about Simon of Cyrene, whom we read about in Mark 15:21-23, with only the barest details.  he was charged with helping Jesus to carry the cross, but in the end, it was a helpless kind of helping, really.  the man Simon was helping - Jesus - was still about to die, no matter what.  there was nothing Simon could do to really change anything.  

this is the same idea lifted up in the prayer for this station by Padraig O'Tuama from "Daily Prayers with the Corrymeela Community" (copyright 2017 canterbury press norwich, london).  here is the prayer for this station: 

Simon of Cyrene,

stranger than afar,

You were a help

to an unknown man.

We pray for all who help:

that their help may be helpful;

that their kindness may be kind.

Because yours was,

even though you knew

you couldn’t do

enough.

Amen.

i love this idea about "enough."  did Simon do enough?  could he ever have?  is there ever really enough?  i once took an entire semester-long course in grad school called "enough" which wrestled with these very questions.  here, back to the story of Jesus and the cross, there was no help to be given to take away the pain, the brokenness, the red, raised marks of the whip in the flesh of Jesus.  in an effort create that sense of not being able to do enough, i created a circle around the cross (the cross, by the way, is really two different color schemes, left and right, as a way of showing Jesus and Simon), using white/clear sea glass.  this isn't glass i purchased in a store, but glass that's been collected from various beaches, mostly in Maine and California.  it is glass that has been broken, but so worn by the wear and tear of the waves, that the edges of grown smooth.  i wanted to create a kind of "halo" of this soft glass around the cross, as if an effort to soften the effect of this tool of execution.  but the circle is not complete.  it is not enough  it is broken, in the lower right quadrant, into a cascade of broken glass, all sharp and cutting.  additionally, this window has a break in the left pane, which you might be able to see if you zoom in, a fracture that reveals a weakness, yet the thing is held together.  i loved working on this window because it felt familiar to me: broken, yet held together.  that could be the title of my memoirs!  

perhaps our own brokenness is often a reminder that we can never quite be enough or do enough to save ourselves.  or maybe the brokenness of furnaces and hot water heaters and transmissions reminds us that there is never enough stuff in the world to make us truly happy.  or maybe the brokenness of the world around us reminds us that we can never do enough to "fix" the system or the people in them, most especially ourselves.  but what we can do, is be a helper, like Simon. 

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