I see flames of orange, yellow and red
shooting upwards to the sky, piercing the whole clouds.
I see the clouds themselves chasing the flames upwards,
and I feel the air itself reading for the heavens.
How deeply King understood the role of forgiveness in the creation of his beloved community is seen in his assertion that the struggle for justice and the resistance against evil is not a struggle against other persons. It is rather a struggle against the structures of evil that entrap not only the oppressed but the oppressors as well.
Born at Droitwich, Richard of Wyche became chancellor of Canterbury under Archbishop Edmund Rich. King Henry III refused permission for Richard to be consecrated Bishop of Chichester, until the Pope threatened to excommunicate the King. Richard was a deeply spiritual man and an excellent administrator.
From what I have now written you, you will learn, Christian brethren, that plants are ripening here for the harvest that comes on apace, before the reapers can be prepared to enter in. But you will like to know something further, viz., in what have the two years promised fruit, where we have been laboring? Seeds of glorious light have been sown, and they are even now shooting forth branches which promise, in due time, an abundant harvest.
I once heard an old piece of folklore about Mary. Imagine, this story goes, that the angel of God had been wandering the earth sine the beginning of time, asking people if they would be willing to bring God’s child into the world. Mary was not the most pure, most holy, most beautiful; she was simply the only one gutsy enough to say “yes.”
We know that Joseph was concerned about his future with Mary because they were not yet married when she conceived. We know that he considered divorcing her, as the Jewish law allowed. So Jesus’ life began in a difficult and even dangerous situation in that small town in Israel.
Wendell Berry, the great environmentalist poet-theologian, has written a piece about somebody he calls a “mad farmer” who goes around shouting, “Practice resurrection!” “Practice resurrection.” That’s not bad advice.
No season of the Christian year speaks to the soul as does the Easter Tide. It is the beautiful season of the year, when the winter is ended and all things bud forth; the graves and sleeping-places of the dust are broken up and the beauty of the floral kingdom comes back to us in the fresh glory of living green and painted leaves and with the perfume of the incense-breathing gardens of spring.
Holy Week is the world’s sacred Winter;
The earth is a widow, the skies are sere,
There’s a sound of scourging and nailing in the vinegary wind;
And the darkness chokes the Son of Man.
The Bible tells us one thing—only one—about the dead who have passed out of our sight. They are with God. How simple that is! How sufficient it becomes! How cheap and tawdry as we dwell on it, it makes the guesses and conceits with which people try to make real to themselves what the dead are doing!