It feels at the moment as if we have partial maps, each showing something of the terrain and the way ahead. To add to the challenge, some of the maps are fake, showing ways that don’t exist or removing features from the landscape. Interpreting all that partial information, in order to plot a way ahead, can only be a shared task.
“Abba, may we bend the knee
of our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies,
to live in joyful obedience to your will.”
“We do not exercise the disciplines of Lent because we are afraid God might not be merciful – and we must compel God’s presence into our lives by piety – or by fooling God into believing that we really are good enough – but because God can be nothing but merciful. God has a proprietary interest in you, living between your bone and soul.”
The problem comes when there’s no process: when it’s impossible to get beyond denial. The death of a loved one is too obvious a loss to be denied forever. When a threat is more diffuse, less graspable, it’s possible just to keep on denying it’s there, especially when the consequences of doing otherwise just feel too great to deal with.
“God of mystery and wisdom,
be with us this Lenten season.
As we walk to the cross
keep our eyes fixed
on you and your love -“
“Today, I sacrificed a one of my precious masks for the sake of Ash Wednesday. Normally I burn a stack of palm crosses and fronds from the previous year’s Palm Sunday celebration just as many churches do.”
Sitting at my desk and exhausted from the frantic search, I slid open the closed-desk-drawer and there it was; the iPhone. Happy. Ready to serve. Slightly power-depleted from her effort to say “Through these people’s messages of love to you, I —am-trying-to-communicate.”
But hope is not fragile,
or pretty,
or fine.
Hope is a weed,
a clinging vine.
Is there spirituality to be found in classic music videos?
Charlette Preslar and co-host Reverend Hannah Wilder talk about the Transfiguration, our temptation to want to stay on the mountaintop, and what conversations at home will be like based on this gospel theme