Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Compassion (05/23/24)
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TITLE: Always Interrupting Funerals, a monologue | Previous Challenge Entry
By Laurie Kiel
05/30/24 -
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I don’t know about you, but I am always seeing funeral marches. Oh, not actual funerals, but people dispiritedly trudging on their way to bury their dead hopes, their dead dreams, and their dead futures.
And I think of our compassionate Jesus, who was always interrupting funerals.
I wonder what it would have been like to be the widow at Zarephath.
PUTS ON HEADDRESS
Here I am, at a funeral I have no business being at. A funeral that I shouldn’t have been alive to see. My son, my only son, is dead. How could that have happened? A son should bury his mother, not the mother bury the son.
I had already buried a husband years ago, but I had my boy to hold me when my legs buckled at the funeral.
“You will always have me, Mama,” he whispered. “I will never leave you.”
But he was wrong. His promise was a lie. He HAD left me. And now who would hold me as my legs buckle.
Without hope.
Without love
Without my husband
Without my son
Alone
No one to help me. No one to be with me. No one to love me.
As they carry my son’s coffin through the village, I want to crawl up on the funeral palette with my son and cradle him one last time.
A son shouldn’t die before his mother. A mother shouldn’t have to bury her son.
My world is upside down and inside out.
All I can do is wail,(SOB IN HER VOICE) trying to drown out the pain in my heart.
LOUDLY WAILS
Wait, is that JESUS I see, that itinerant rabbi I have heard so much about? He has such kind eyes, such compassion radiates from him.
My only thought is, They say that Jesus heals the sick. If only he had healed my son! If only, if only , if only..,
And then the refrain echoes in my heart —too late, too late, too late.
What’s Jesus doing? He is walking over and touching my son’s open coffin, causing the pall bearers to stop their procession?
What’s he saying? “Young man, I say to you, get up!” (Luke 7:14b NIV).
(REPEATS WORDS SLOWLY) Get… up? MOUTH OPENS WIDE IN WONDER AND DISBELIEF My boy just sat up! He has opened his eyes, and he’s talking.
I must go hug my son, (MIMES HUGGING HER SON) Oh Jesus, thank you for giving me back my son.Thank you for giving me back my hope. Thank you for giving me back my future.
REMOVES HEADDRESS
We are surrounded by the walking wounded, in a funeral march of dead hopes, dead dreams, and dead futures. May the compassion of Jesus flow through us into them and resurrect their hopes, their dreams, and their futures.
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