The veil feels thin today. This morning I padded out into the living room to switch on the lights and felt something rough beneath my feet. I looked down to see this palm crucifix and felt the hair stand up on my arms. I have no idea how the cross found its way to the place I encountered it, nor where it was before then; though I suspect, it had long ago been tucked into the pages of a book. I do know this, it’s been around a while. My devout Lutheran mother always saved a palm cross for me from the Palm Sunday service, tangible reminders of the faith community into which I was born. Somehow, this particular cross made its way to my living room floor and my foot made its way to the cross, today, on Palm Sunday. More than 10 years after my mother took her leave of this place.
While I did attend all the requisite classes during my childhood and adolescence I, unlike my dear mother, was not a particularly good student of the Lutheran faith. Nonetheless, I do know that Palm Sunday is the final Sunday of season of Lent, and that it signifies the beginning of Holy week, leading up to Easter Sunday, a celebration of the resurrection of Christ.
I remember that palm branches represent a kind of victory, in the Easter story, Christ’s victory over death. So I’m going to stretch and say that palm branches have a relationship to transformation and, as it appeared this morning on my living room floor, on Palm Sunday In the season of new beginnings, could be interpreted as a symbol of hope. And I rather like the notion that the spirit of my ma is doing her part, in death as she did in life, to wave those symbols at people who sometimes need to be reminded.