Posts Tagged ‘Suffering’
Conviction Cloaks Courage – Br. Curtis Almquist
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Br. Curtis Almquist
Janani Luwum
In 1972, an Ugandan military dictator, Idi Amin, overthrew the elected Ugandan government and began terrorizing and butchering the population, especially two groups: academics and Christians. Some called it the Ugandan holocaust. In the calendar of the church we remember today an Ugandan Archbishop, Janani Luwum. He was a gentle, zealous, courageous man who met face-to-face with Idi Amin, confronted him on his atrocities, and asked for atonement.[1] Leaving the meeting, Archbishop Luwum told his companions, “They are going to kill me. I am not afraid.” The next day his body was found riddled with bullets.
Uganda fifty years ago may seem far away; however, we need only witness the governmental terrorizing in our own country to see how the seeds of an Ugandan-like incursion have found a home here. We witness daily trauma and injustice for persons whose first language is not English, persons of color, persons who do not follow an exclusive brand of Christianity, persons who are not straight or cisgendered, and many others. Read More
Of This We Can Be Certain – Br. Curtis Almquist
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Br. Curtis Almquist
Our first reading is from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, Galatia being in modern-day Turkey. This is where Paul was born as a Roman citizen, one generation after Jesus’ birth.[i] In Paul’s letters he describes himself as neither eloquent nor handsome,[ii] and he was not married.[iii] He earned his livelihood as a tentmaker,[iv] and he was literate in Hebrew, the language of his Jewish heritage; in Latin, the language of commerce and diplomacy; and in Greek, the language of culture and higher education. All of his life he personally suffered from something significant – we know not what – which he called “a thorn in his flesh” which never healed.[v] We know that he identified as a devout Pharisee, Pharisees being the largest and most influential religious-political party in Jesus’ own day, and they strongly opposed him. The name “Pharisee” means “separated one.” The Pharisees separated themselves from society to study and teach the law.[vi] Paul was an accomplice in the murder of a man named Stephen, a prominent follower of Jesus.[vii]
We read of a mysterious, life-changing encounter Paul had with Jesus along the road to Damascus. This surreal encounter was after Jesus’ crucifixion, and resurrection, and ascension. Paul unmistakably recognized Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ. We could call this the moment Paul’s conversion to Christ; however this was actually only the very beginning of his conversion.[viii] We know this for two reasons.
For one, in the years following, Paul makes a confession. He writes very transparently, “For I know that nothing good dwells within me… I can will what is right, but I cannot do it…”[ix] And yet Paul is full of hope and praise, what he even calls “boasting,” that he continues to be saved by Jesus, Jesus’ strength, he says, coming through his own ongoing weakness.[x] His name for this ongoing miracle in his life is “grace,” a word that Paul uses 80 different times in his epistles in the New Testament. Paul’s conversion was life-long.
We also know that following his mystical Damascus Road experience with Jesus, Paul virtually disappears. Paul immediately went off to the desert of Arabia for a period of time, and then to Syria for three years, and then for fourteen years he lives a life virtually unrecognized and unknown to members of the growing churches. So it was likely almost twenty rather hidden years before Paul returns to Jerusalem to begin his public ministry as a follower of Jesus Christ. Twenty years of his ongoing conversion… which never ended.
Saint Paul’s Christian formation was really in a crucible of suffering. He writes that he lived through afflictions, hardships, and calamities; experienced beatings, imprisonments, riots, and sleepless nights; of often being without food, and of being cold and naked; of suffering from bandits, from danger at sea and shipwrecks, and from betrayals by those whom he trusted.…[xi] At the end of his life, imprisoned and facing capital punishment because of his allegiance to Jesus, his last word is almost unbelievable. He writes, “rejoice!” In case you might misread his handwriting, he writes, “Again, I say, rejoice!”[xii] The words “joy,” and “rejoice” are words Paul uses relentlessly in his writings, and always in the context of suffering, which is such a paradox.[xiii]
Paul was a very complicated person, by his own admission. I have often wondered whether Paul would write today what he wrote 2,000 years ago? I imagine that he would have some other things to say, especially if he knew thirteen of his epistles – maybe he thought they were simply letters – would become part of the Canon of Holy Scripture, eventually carrying a similar weight to the Hebrew scriptures which had so decisively formed his own thinking, praying, and practice.[xiv] But we have no way of knowing how Saint Paul would write today.
What I believe we can cling to with absolute confidence is Saint Paul’s conviction that nothing, absolutely nothing can separate us from God’s love. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” he asks. It may seem like a rhetorical question. It’s actually Saint Paul’s memoir:
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For [Christ’s] sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” [xv]
So be it!
[i] Acts 22:22-23:11.
[ii] 1 Corinthians 1:17; 2 Corinthians 5:12; 10:10; 11:6.
[iii] 1 Corinthians 7:1-7.
[iv] Acts 18:1-4.
[v] 2 Corinthians 12:7.
[vi] Galatians 1:13–14; Philippians 3:4-6.
[vii] Acts 7:51-60, where “a crowd dragged [Stephen] out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.”
[viii] The story of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus is told in Acts 9:1-19, and retold by Paul in Acts 22:6-21 and Acts 26:12-18.
[ix] Romans 7:18-20.
[x] 2 Corinthians 12:9.
[xi] 2 Corinthians 6:1-10; 11:23-30.
[xii] Philippians 4:4-7.
[xiii] The words “joy” and “rejoice” appear 49 times in Paul’s epistles.
[xiv] Most scholars believe that Paul personally wrote seven of the thirteen “Pauline epistles” (Galatians, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Philemon, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians). Scholars debate whether the other six epistles were authored by Paul, or whether he was honorifically attributed as being the author by disciples who knew his mind and heart.,
[xv] Romans 8:35-39.
Where do they get their strength from – Br. Geoffrey Tristram
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Br. Geoffrey Tristram
I was talking with a friend recently about the situation in the Middle East, and he said he felt so much darkness right now that he found it hard to know how to deal with it. I knew exactly what he meant. You may feel it too, overwhelmed by the images of violence, death and destruction. How do you pray, what words of prayer do you use, how do you focus your love amidst such images? How do you remain faithful and hopeful? For me, I have tried to focus on individual families who I have read about, and prayed for them by name. I have read about individuals who have shown extraordinary bravery, resilience and self-sacrificial love; mothers with their children who have lost everything but hope. Where do they get this hope, this strength? God bless them.
Munther Isaac is a Palestinian theologian and he’s the pastor of the Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. He gave an interview last week which greatly moved me. He said, ‘When I talk to my friends in Gaza I have no idea how they are surviving. It is really hell on earth there. What kind of strength do these people have, and where do they get it?’ The same question may be asked of those Israelis, whose loved ones are still being held as hostages. What an excruciating time of waiting and hoping. Where do they get their strength? Or of those Lebanese whose homes have been destroyed, and loved ones bombed. ‘What kind of strength do these people have and where do they get it?’
Munther Isaac goes on to say, ‘I am convinced that people undergoing harsh realities experience God in a more real way than we can imagine. We hear it from those pulled from the rubble, who still say, “We thank you God. We rest our case before God”. The faith they exhibit in God is so strong’, he says. ‘We pray for deliverance, but the Bible doesn’t promise deliverance. It promises that God will be with us.’ Read More
Good News Amidst Bad News – Br. Curtis Almquist
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Br. Curtis Almquist
Our reading from the Prophecy of Isaiah is an 8th century BC version of what we are seeing every day in our own newspapers and online: a world, including our own homeland, teeming with conflict. For Isaiah, the players were King Pekah and King Remaliah of Israel; King Rezim of Aram-Syria; and Kings Tabeel, then Uziah, then Ahaz, and then Jotham the successive Kings of Judah.[i] For the life of me, I cannot keep it all straight – neither the political players whom we are reading about from the 8th century BC, nor our own present-day news stream: the historic territorial disputes, the ever-changing political alignments, often created by common enemies; the fracturing of treaties and goodwill; the political threats and promises; and the suffering of the innocent. Whether in the 8th century BC or in the 21stcentury of the Common Era, there are so many parallels in strife that span across time.
There is a word of hope buried in this Prophecy of Isaiah, hope for the 8th century BC which also pertains to us in our own day. Isaiah speaks an assurance in the voice of God: “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint…” “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint…” Read More
Crowded healing – Br. Jack Crowley
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Br. Jack Crowley
One of the many things I love about Jesus is that he knew how to work a crowd. Jesus dealt with crowds all the time. Crowds to be fed, crowds to be healed, crowds trying to anoint him king, crowds trying to arrest him, and finally a crowd who crucified him. Jesus knew crowds.
These crowds were not just crowded with people, they were crowded with meaning. Everywhere Jesus went, people tried to figure out what Jesus meant. Jesus’ words, actions, and very being were jammed with meaning. The crowds around Jesus unloaded all sorts of expectations, baggage, and misunderstandings onto what Jesus meant. Yet through it all, Jesus just kept on healing.
Jesus kept on healing, because healing cuts through the crowd. Healing has the power to unite a crowd. Healing even has the power to make us love a crowd.
Our Gospel this morning is a perfect example of the power of healing. We are told by the Gospel writer that Jesus was being followed by a large crowd and that the crowd was pressing in on him. That’s a powerful image. Read More
On the Hard Road
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
⇓ Download, print and share: On the Hard Road
We never thought life would be like this, never considered we could lose so much. Death keeps shattering our plans and expectations with loss. Everything is upended. The world feels doomed, and things don’t make sense anymore. What will happen next?
It’s hard to believe he’s gone. We’ve been together so long.
The doctors said there’s not much they can do.
If I lose this job, I don’t know how to keep supporting them.
We can’t go back. We have to find a way here.
Our words of disbelief and grief today could echo back, nearly unchanged, those spoken two thousand years ago, when two grieving companions talked together on the road to Emmaus. They shared their grief at losing Jesus, their friend, whom they expected would save them, but who was betrayed, killed, and buried. They talked of the body missing, and people supposedly seeing angels.
As these two walk to Emmaus, Jesus comes walking alongside them. They don’t recognize the one they love. The man asks about their conversation, sees and hears their sadness, and then shares about his own suffering, speaking through the language of scripture.
Our words of disbelief and grief today could echo back, nearly unchanged, those spoken two thousand years ago, when two grieving companions talked together on the road to Emmaus.
Hard as it is to believe, this is resurrection: feeling loss and disorientation, long talks of grief, and receiving a stranger’s compassionate presence. Easter does not come with quick fixes or easy answers. There are times when we do not even see that Jesus is here, alive, with us: Jesus came to Mary as she visited the tomb, and she supposed him to be a gardener; he came to a frightened community gathered behind locked doors; to a group out fishing for whom he provided breakfast; and to these two friends, on the way and linked in sad talk.
This is still true: Jesus comes where we are now, amid difficult emotions, perplexing questions, as we walk and eat. Frederick Buechner wrote: “Jesus is apt to come into the very midst of life at its most real and inescapable moments. … He never approached from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks.”
One way to see Jesus is to stop and look back. Ignatius of Loyola taught that reflecting and then giving thanks is a key way to pray. I see Jesus more easily by looking back. In the past day or more, for what are you most thankful? Perhaps a kind word or gesture, a fear unmanifested, a beauty glimpsed, a memory recalled. “How did you receive love? When were you most fully alive?” Sometimes it’s only after an experience that we can see what it truly held and meant for us. When the two disciples finally recognized Jesus in Emmaus, they were then able to remember their “hearts burning within” while Jesus spoke to them on the road. Recognition comes later. We have to stop and look back to not miss it.
Hard as it is to believe, this is resurrection: feeling loss and disorientation, long talks of grief, and receiving a stranger’s compassionate presence. Easter does not come with quick fixes or easy answers.
To see Jesus, we often have to seek company. If you feel blind and weighed down in grief, you are not alone. Many of us feel the same. Like the two companions on the road, speak your grief to compassionate friends and strangers. Pray even when God feels absent. Jesus is present alongside us including when we do not see him.
Pray your pain. If you’re wanting help with words, about half of the psalms are honest examples. Start with Psalm 13 and Psalm 102. Lament is a cry of pain and a cry of trust. It is stark and boldly real about pain and suffering, and it assumes being heard.
Lament is not just for Lent or Holy Week but for life. Even God grieves! In Genesis 6, God “grieved in the heart” at how people behaved. Jesus wept over Jerusalem and at the tomb of his friend Lazarus. From the cross, Jesus cried out with words from Psalm 22, trust and question in tender, wrenching symmetry: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Lament is our ancient prayer and part of being human.
Consider this: How do you know when children are upset? They flail, cry, hit, stomp, and resist. How do children look when at ease, trusting? They slump, lean into us and objects, hug back, and rest.
As a child of God, I find that one way I am praying is like a child: with my body. I hit the air with my fists, then slowly push and pull as with a heavy object. Tensing arms and clenching fists, I curl or twist and stay in that tension offering my constricted self. This is a way of praying, expressing the pain.
Then I let go and relax, leaning against a wall or lying on the floor, letting my whole weight be supported. Taking deep breaths, I trust God holds me fully. I also stand with my arms outstretched and tilted back imagining I am floating in the ocean, or alternately tilted forward as if floating on a cloud. These are ways of expressing and feeling trust.
Music beckons the body to move, to dance, to express sighs too deep for words. Pray with music that prompts such tensing and hitting pain or such floating trust – or find music that invites both. Children of God, pray your confusion and pain, what is hard to bear. Ask for grace to trust and move in such a way that you can feel free to express and receive what is true for you.
Children of God, pray your confusion and pain, what is hard to bear.
Psychiatrist Curt Thompson encourages us to not deny our losses or diminish them by trying to compare our experience with someone else. Your grief is real, and it is yours. Thompson suggests writing down each day at least one thing you have lost or are losing. Then also name a couple things for which you are thankful. In this way, pray both grief and gratitude.
A tree with a large broken limb hanging down inspires both these moods of prayer in me. I let one arm bend, droop, twist, and hang, feeling the weight of what is broken and hurts. I then raise the other arm upward like healthy limbs in gratitude. Like the tree, I experience both realities at the same time and thus pray weight and wonder, grief and gratitude.
Jesus persistently comes to us, with us, alongside us – including when we do not see him. Not in dazzling power, but in the glimmering presence of shared stories, Jesus walks and eats with us. Pray your story wherever you are in its unfolding, perhaps with movements, shaking pain or floating trust. Jesus is with us, grieving with us, listening with love, and gently fanning our soul’s faint embers into flame.
Jesus is with us, grieving with us, listening with love, and gently fanning our soul’s faint embers into flame.
Questions for Reflection
– When have you met Jesus on the hard road? How did you know it was him?
– How does your body ask to pray? Do you pray with walking, or dancing, or other forms of movement? Will you try a new way of moving your prayer?
– Pray both grief and gratitude. Which one feels more present to you right now?
Is it possible this this is easter: the pain, the grief, the confusion, and the loss we know only too well? On the hard road of life, Br. Luke Ditewig promises us, we do and will encounter Jesus, who comes alongside us even when we do not see him. This is resurrection.
Patience and the Crucible of Life
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
⇓ Download, print and share: Patience and the Crucible of Life
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “patience” as “the calm abiding, a quiet and self-possessed waiting for something”; however the etymology hints at the normal context, which is often very difficult. “Patience” comes from the Latin patientia, which is a “quality of suffering” – suffering with calmness and endurance, what the scriptures call “long-suffering.” And suffering you often are when you are forced to relinquish your desires, or when you are left to wait without recourse. Patience is oftentimes not pretty and may feel vapid; sometimes there is a storm before the calm. It is one thing to wait in eagerness for something delightful we anticipate will unfold. It is another thing when we must be a patient patient because we are not in control over suffering – our own suffering or that of someone else whom we carry in our heart.
Here is a disclaimer. Sometimes we should not be patient. Some things we encounter in life are urgent, and we must act now.
But in the normal gestation of life, we must often wait. Without our learning patience, we will miss being present to a great deal of life. Life entails so much waiting. When the answer is not forthcoming, when something is not being resolved, when the door is not being opened, when someone is not acquiescing, when we have lost any sense of controlling some circumstance, we may experience a certain anguish or anger. To experience the fullness of our life, we must learn to wait well. Saint Francis de Sales advises, “What we need is a cup of understanding, a barrel of love, and an ocean of patience.” Patience is a quality of waiting.
Patience does not come easily to most of us, for several reasons. Our ego, how many of us grandstand our own importance on the stage of life, can be a great impediment to patience. What I want, and when seems right, when I am entitled. It took me many years to distinguish the adoring love I experienced amongst my own family-of-origin from my true place in the world. For some of us, the context of learning about patience has very little to do with us, personally, and everything to do with others. They have their place, their needs, their hopes and desires. I must wait my turn. Sometimes there are many people in line ahead of me. The Jesuit priest, Anthony de Mello, describes the necessary shearing of the ego that can happen as we grow older: “Before I was twenty, I never worried about what other people thought of me. But after I was twenty I worried endlessly about all the impressions I made and how people were evaluating me. Only sometime after turning fifty did I realize that they hardly ever thought about me at all.” The stage on which many of us learn about patience is discovering we are seldom THE STAR and more often the extra. We have an important and unique part in life, but so does everyone else. We must learn, listen, and become patient in the waiting.
Having to wait may prove to be a crucible to your soul, burning away what does not belong. You will not always get what you think you want in life. Jesus describes himself as “the gate” and “the door,” and sometimes he bars the way (John 10:1-9). As I reflect back on my own life, I teem with relief and gratitude for so many things I thought I wanted but was denied. (In my younger years I was nicknamed “Curtis Armtwist.”) I realize now that had this-and-that or such-and-such have happened, I would have ended up in a very different place.
Sometimes, by God’s grace, we are denied our dearest hopes. T. S. Eliot writes of how we often want what proves to be the wrong things, and how “the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: so the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing” (T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) in Four Quartets: East Coker, III, 11. 23-8). Patience can even mean learning to be grateful for the doors that did not open before you, and, therefore, the new direction in which you turned which has brought you to where you are.
Finding the goodness in waiting, in slowness, is quite countercultural; however our having to wait may turn out to be a great kindness of God towards us.
Finding the goodness in waiting, in slowness, is quite countercultural; however our having to wait may turn out to be a great kindness of God towards us. The scriptures consistently refer to us as “children of God” (not “adults of God”). Children are not developmentally ready to know everything at once. There is a progression in our capacity to know, which God knows. The apostle Peter awakened to this realization. He writes, “Beloved, while you are waiting, be at peace… and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation” (2 Peter 3:9, 15). Our experience of having to wait may, in actuality, be God’s experience of waiting on us until we are ready for more. Take heart. Simone Weil, the great French spiritual writer and political activist of the 1940s, writes how “waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.”
Here’s one more benefit. Adding the phrase “patient waiting” to your soul’s vocabulary may be a helpful intervention to the onset of anxiety. There is a freedom that can be gleaned in your being powerless to know the future. God knows. God knows what you do not know, and God knows that you do not know. In the beginning of creation, God creates an interchange of light and darkness to fill each of our days. It is as true for the sky as it is for the soul. We can only bear so much light. Light can be as blinding as darkness. The eyes of your heart will be enlightened with as much light as you can bear (“The eyes of your heart,” an evocative phrase of Saint Paul in Ephesians 1:18). When you are in the dark, God is not in the dark. The psalmist writes of God: “Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike” (Psalm 139:11. See also 1 John 1:5). If you are in the dark about something, your waiting invites patience for the dawning. The dawn will come in the fullness of time.
When you are in the dark, God is not in the dark.
Waiting patiently is not a limp submission. Waiting patiently is an active presumption that God is at work in our life in ways beyond what we could ask or imagine (See Ephesians 3:20-21). When you have no choice but to wait, open your eyes and open your heart to what you otherwise might have missed. You do not have what you are waiting for – what is next – but you do have what is now. Don’t cut in line. Be present to what is now, even if it is full of struggle. You will find the companionship of God’s real presence in the waiting, which is the fruit of patience.
I waited patiently upon the LORD;
he stooped to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the desolate pit,
out of the mire and clay;
he set my feet upon a high cliff
and made my footing sure.
– Psalm 40:1-2
Questions for Reflection
– Do you struggle with waiting? What is it about the experience that is hard for you?
– When and how have you, conversely, discovered the goodness in waiting and slowness?
– What practices help you to stay present and grounded in times of waiting?
Patience does not come easily to many of us, for many reasons. Yet in this moving reflection, Br. Curtis Almquist suggests a few of the many reasons that being forced to wait can actually be a gift. We are all invited to discover the countercultural (and surprising) goodness of waiting.
Passion – How Love and Suffering Coexist – Br. Curtis Almquist
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Br. Curtis Almquist
“Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you…” This is like a teacher getting the attention of the class by saying, “Listen up!”[i] Various other versions of the Bible translate Jesus’ attention-grabber here as “Believe me,” or “I assure you,” or “I can guarantee this truth,” or “I tell you for certain…” Does Jesus have your attention? We are primed to know this is very important what Jesus is about to say; however we have to do some homework to make sense of its importance.
Two things. Jesus describes how a grain of wheat must die to bear fruit. A farmer would tell us that as long as a tiny grain of wheat keeps on being a kernel in the head of a stalk of wheat, it remains just that: a lone kernel of wheat among many such kernels. It’s only when a grain of wheat is detached from the head and buried in the ground that it can germinate and produce a whole stalk of wheat. Jesus describes this process as a grain of wheat “dying.” Of course Jesus is speaking metaphorically. What does Jesus mean? Because he has signaled that this is very important: a grain of wheat needing to “die” to bear fruit? Jesus is speaking both about generosity and about suffering. Read More
The Scripture of Your Life – Br. Curtis Almquist
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Br. Curtis Almquist
Mark 7:24-30
This is a very old story. For more than 2,000 years people have heard this same Gospel story endlessly. Nothing changed. The same story. Quite boring, irrelevant… except for one thing. The only thing new or different is what’s going on for us, the hearers of the story. We, the hearer, are in a new space, like never before.
In our Rule of Life we say, “These hearts of ours are not empty vessels but inner worlds alive with images, memories, experiences and desires.”[i] God’s revelation to us will be a kind of synergy between what is going on with a very old scriptural story, and what is going on today in our own heart and imagination[ii]. And that creates a whole new story.
So we have Jesus in the region of Tyre, a town on the Mediterranean coast of southern Lebanon. A woman comes up to him. She is from Syrophoenicia, the Roman province of Syria. She is a long way from her homeland. Is she without a country? We don’t know. She may be without hope. She is certainly a person vulnerable and desperate or she would never, never alone have approached a man, a Jewish man, especially as she is a Gentile woman and a foreigner. Read More
A Severe Mercy – Br. Curtis Almquist
Br. Curtis Almquist
The prophet Malachi could not be using more extreme language. The messenger for the Messiah will come “like a refiner’s fire and like fuller’s soap.”
- A refiner’s fire is a metallurgy process dating back to antiquity. A refiner’s fire is a crucible that heats precious metal, like gold and silver, to a molten state from which the dross – the impurities – are skimmed off. It is a searing process that yields the pure, precious metal.[i]
- The fullers were the launderers. Fuller’s soap is a caustic cleansing agent, made from lye and other repugnant chemicals.[ii] Fuller’s soap was used to purify fabric and make it white. The fullers stamped on garments with their feet or used wooden bats in tubs of this blanching soap. The stench from this soap was so great that the fullers had to work outside the city walls of Jerusalem.