Here was an assembly of good people, celebrating their common life and honoring some of the religious ideas of their neighbors — including mine. It felt fussy and theologically petty for me to reflect too much on what was missing for me here. But there was a lot missing.
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
More broadly, each of us does have his or her own “language.” It certainly includes the various jargons of our many vocations and avocations, our jobs and our hobbies. It also includes the distinctive characteristics of our histories, our families, and our communities. Each pet name, each private joke from the shared experiences of spouses, families, and friends, helps shape a unique, individual “language.”
This Lent, I suggested we banish the phrase “I want” from our conversations. The goal, I explained, was to spend less energy thinking about what we don’t have and more being grateful for what we do. I framed this as a family discipline, but really, I saw it as a way to get my kids to stop driving me crazy with their endless pleas for more, more, more.
It doesn’t just come up and grab you by the shoulders and make itself known. We have to seek it out. We have to pay attention to the world with our eyes and hearts and minds open to see that the story isn’t over yet
We pause from our usual routine today to honor the reason we ever came together in the first place: Christ is risen indeed! A blessed and happy Easter to all. We intend to spend the day doing Easter-y things, and encourage you to do the same. Unless something significant develops, we don’t plan to do reporting today.
They look to this day and find it pulsating with meaning for the struggle to articulate what it is to be human.
“While we’ll undoubtedly have some fun with this, I also hope that by the end of Lent you will have learned a few things about a wide cross-section of saints.”
I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.