Lenten Journey — Page 15

Let the Alleluias Begin! A Photo Essay

April 1, 2013 By Diana

It rained on Easter Sunday, gentle but insistent,
washing the air, watering the earth,
catching our attention.

The sun did not break through until late in the afternoon,
and somehow, it felt absolutely right for this particular Easter celebration day.

I have stepped back into leadership during this Lenten season,
enjoying the familiar rhythms of leading weekly communion services.
Services that are liturgical, yet at the same time, informal and friendly.

Our congregation enjoys the aesthetic contributions of a small group
of thoughtful, talented women
who work with the preaching pastors to provide
a worship environment that encourages us to better
focus on the Word offered on a particular Sunday,
or throughout a season.
All during Lent this year,
we were reminded of the journey
by a simple purple drape on the cross
and a large urn,
filled with bare branches.

On Palm Sunday, those branches were visible above the array of color
provided by palm fronds and fabric.

On Maundy Thursday, they were visible on the back altar table,
behind the richly purple setting on the front table.

On Good Friday, they disappeared,
along with every other usual object in the chancel —
the baptismal font and table removed,
the pulpit shrouded.
And on the side shelves, where greenery usually flourishes,
only these upended wooden boxes, draped
in dark fabric like the cross.

And then came Easter!

Those bare branches?
Now richly flowering.
The purple drape on the cross?
Replaced with shining white.
Those stark wooden boxes?
Filled to overflowing with
lilies, waving their brilliant faces across the front of the sanctuary.

A glorious feast of white and gold,
the Christ candle tall and stately in the center of it all.

Shaking rainwater off of coats and jackets, worshipers filled the sanctuary
earlier than usual.
Almost on cue, they began to settle into their seats,
quiet their conversations and ready themselves to worship.
We began where we left on Friday.
That night the plaintive sounds of “Were You There?”
filled a dark room, and everyone left in silence.

On Sunday morning, the lights dimmed,
as the room filled once again with the sounds of that old song,
this time in the lilting soprano of a high school senior.

As she sang, our pastor came slowly down the center aisle,
lit candle in hand,
arriving at the Christ candle as the song came to its end.

And as the Light is lit,
the alleluias begin — full lights,
drums, trumpets, oboe, voices and glorious, glorious music.
“Christ is Risen!”
“He is risen, indeed!”

I don’t know that I’ve ever been more grateful to say those words
than I was this year.
One of our founding members, now in her 90’s,
declared this the finest Easter celebration she has ever experienced.
And I’d have to agree with her.

One of the lovely events that added layers of meaning to the day
was the baptism of the infant daughter
of our former Director of Children’s Ministries.
Following the tradition of the early church
(and the contemporary Catholic church, as well),
we folded small Anastasia (whose name means ‘to live again’)
into the family of God on Easter Sunday, trusting that the work of the Holy Spirit
will be real in her life as she grows to claim
the name of Jesus for herself.

Jon and I read the words together,
asking the age-old questions of parents and people,

dripping the water on her small head,

offering words of blessing to this babe and her family.

And then, Jon carried the church’s newest member
up and down the aisles, introducing her to her new family,
while we all sang, “Children of the Heavenly Father.”

Jon’s sermon was strong and true,
spoken from the heart with illustrations my visiting
grandsons could enjoy.

It was a magnificent way to begin the Easter Feast.

And then our smaller-than-usual family group continued the feasting
gathered around our table, as the rain fell gently outside.

Our oldest daughter, her husband and three fine sons
joined my husband, my mother and me to break the fast of Lent
and celebrate the Risen Lord.

The salad course was first,
followed by barbecued salmon,
cheesy potatoes,
a divine quinoa side dish that Lisa has added to our repertoire,
and baked asparagus with a balsamic glaze.

Even our resident vegan ate enough to require a little resting between courses!

These three young men have had a more difficult life than most their age.
They lost their dad after a long, lingering and difficult illness.
It is good to see them happy as a family,
with Karl and Lisa giving good direction and
providing a living model of redemption in that home.
There can be resurrection in this life of ours —
we remember this truth every time we are with them.

Fourteen-year-old Joel is our resident baker/chef and he created this
stunning coconut cake to cap off the day.
It tasted even better than it looks,
and it looks divine!

Poppy got a candle in his piece,
because he celebrated a birthday that was
pretty much lost in the shuffle of Holy Week activities.

The candle that was lit at the beginning of our worship,
was also lit in the center of our dining room table.
And as the afternoon clouds moved slowly away,
the blueness of sunshine-after-rain
seemed a fitting and celebratory way
to finish off the feast.

Christ is risen!
He is risen, indeed!

Joining this longer than usual picture-essay with Michelle, Jen, Laura and Jennifer

Filed Under: Church, church year, community, Easter, Encouragement, family, God's gifts, Grandparenting, Holy Week, Lent, Lenten Journey, memoir, personal journey, Photo Essay, photography, The Church, The Grandkids, Uncategorized, worship

Scandalous, Extravagant Love — A Sermon for the 5th Sunday of Lent

March 17, 2013 By Diana

Scandalous, Extravagant Love
a sermon preached at Montecito Covenant Church
Sunday, March 17, 2013
by Diana R.G. Trautwein

(If you prefer to hear rather than read a sermon, the podcast for this will be available late in the day on Thursday, March 21, 2013 at www.mcchurch.org under “Resources”)

We’ve heard the word of the Lord from the prophet Isaiah and the apostle Paul. Now it’s time to hear it from John. Today, I invite all who are able, to stand for the reading of the gospel. And though I do encourage you to turn to chapter 12 in your pew Bibles, or in the Bibles you’ve brought with you today, I’d like to ask that you listen to it now. I’ll be reading from The New Living Translation.

Hear the good news from John 12:1-8:

Six days before the Passover celebration began, Jesus arrived in Bethany, the
home of Lazarus—the man he had raised from the dead. A dinner was prepared
in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, and Lazarus was among those who ate with him.
Then Mary took a twelve-ounce jar of expensive perfume made from essence of
nard, and she anointed Jesus’ feet with it, wiping his feet with her hair. The house
was filled with the fragrance. But Judas Iscariot, the disciple who would soon
betray him, said,“That perfume was worth a year’s wages. It should have been
sold and the money given to the poor.” Not that he cared for the poor — he was
a thief, and since he was in charge of the disciples’ money, he often stole some
for himself. Jesus replied, “Leave her alone. She did this in preparation for my
burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.

The gospel of the Lord.

You may be seated.

I don’t know whether it’s the arrival of daylight saving’s time or the early beginning date for Ash Wednesday, but somehow, Lent seems to be flying by this year. I don’t often say that, you know. Lent sometimes feels endless to me, six long weeks of plodding my way through the wilderness, of not singing, ‘hallelujahs,’ of giving something up or adding something on, of getting ready for the events of Holy Week. But here we are: one week from Palm Sunday, on our calendars — only one day away on John’s.

This little vignette happens just before the triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem. And Jesus is deliberately not in the city. Because at the end of the preceding chapter — the one in which Jesus commands Lazarus to, ‘come out!’ from the tomb, four days after the man died — there is a lot of buzz going on about him, and about Lazarus, too.

There were a lot of witnesses to this miraculous stripping away of the bonds of death from Jesus’ friend Lazarus. All those who came to help the sisters mourn — who were with Mary and Martha when their brother died — they saw what happened. And they were blown away by it. Many of them followed after Jesus — John tells us that they ‘put their faith in him.’ But a few, well a few of them went to the Pharisees. . .who went to the High Priests. . .who called an emergency session of the ruling council to talk about this remarkable feat.

And in the verses just before our story for today, Caiphas, the highest of the high priests, spoke these prophetic words: “It is better that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” Apparently, this latest Jesus-deed was terrifying to them, so terrifying, that they immediately began to intently plot and plan for his death.

So Jesus removed himself from public view for a little while. In the meantime, the people who were gathering in the temple court, getting ready for the festival of Passover –they were looking for him, wondering where he was. And the high mucky-mucks? Oh yes, they were looking for him, too.

And Jesus? Well, Jesus went to a dinner party.

It’s interesting to me how often Jesus is eating dinner or somehow referencing food in the gospels. We’ve got parables about salt and yeast, and mustard seeds and banquets. Jesus miraculously feeds large crowds of people, he is criticized for eating and drinking with sinners and for not forcing his disciples to fast. He dines at Peter’s home, and more than once, at the home of the siblings we see today — Mary, Martha, Lazarus. And of course, he uses the imagery of the Passover feast to describe what his own death means. As Jon’s quote from N.T. Wright last week put it, “Jesus didn’t give his disciples a theory about the cross; he gave them a meal.”

So with all these pieces of background in mind, let’s look at this eight verse section a little bit more closely and see what we can glean from the story before us this morning.

The scene is a party, a party honoring Jesus. Maybe it’s a big thank-you feast, with Jesus as the honored guest, and Lazarus as one of his tablemates. Lazarus, the dead man brought back to life — yeah, that guy — he’s right there, eating and drinking and whoopin’ it up with the rest of the gang.

You’ll note that Martha — well, Martha is serving the dinner. That’s familiar information, if you’ve read Luke’s gospel, very familiar. You may remember that Luke talks about these sisters as two sides of one coin — one busy and distracted (that would be Martha), scrambling around to make and serve dinner; the other quiet and reflective (that would be Mary), sitting in the position of a disciple, at the feet of Jesus. And here in John, we think we’re hearing a snippet of the same kind of song — yet I see no judgment or critique of Martha’s role here.

John, you see, has already told us that dear Martha is no slouch in the theology department. She is the one, the insightful disciple, who boldly tells Jesus — even before he raises her brother from the dead — “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.” Not bad for a worker bee, not bad at all.

So, the three siblings: Lazarus is at table with Jesus, Martha is busy carrying hot dishes in from the kitchen, and Mary?

Where is Mary anyhow?

Ah yes — once again, Mary is at the feet of Jesus.

But oh, my goodness, this is a brazen woman! In the ancient middle east, women did not enter the public dining space of the house when men were eating, unless they were carrying food, like Martha was. Martha’s presence was legit. But Mary’s? Not at all.

In fact, just coming into the room would have been offensive and questionable in that time and that place. But what she does next? The only word for it is this one — scandalous.

She takes an extremely expensive vial of perfumed oil, she breaks the top off, and she pours it all over Jesus, most specifically all over his feet. The very place where she went to listen and to learn.

Those feet that trudged up and down the long,
dusty roads between Jerusalem and Galilee.
Those feet that went into the byways of small country villages,
into the synagogues and the temple court,
into the homes of his friends,
up into the hills
and out onto the boats,
and across the landscape of the land
carrying the body of the Lord, the Teacher,
the Healer, the Beloved of God,
carrying him into the lives of the people of Palestine.

Those feet that Mary loved.

She poured this gift liberally, spreading its beautiful fragrance all through the house, infecting everyone gathered there with that scent, that scent of love and sacrifice and extravagance.

And then, she did the unthinkable — she untied her hair, and she leaned over those feet, and she wiped the oil right into all the cracks and crevices, anointing him with this precious stuff, this imported, expensive, strong, sweet stuff. Such an intimate act, and such a shocking one.

I don’t know if it’s even possible for us to grasp just how scandalous this was. A woman in 1st century Palestine could be divorced if she was ever seen in public with her hair down. To use it to wipe the feet of an adult male? Unheard of.

Mary’s act is a scandal. And according to Judas, it was also a disgrace, an ethical failure, a misappropriation of funds. A waste.

And Jesus cuts him off, right then, right there.

“Leave her alone!”

Down from the soapbox, Judas. Stop your moralizing and take another look at what’s really happening here. Do you see this woman, this friend, this disciple of mine? She is sitting right square in the center of God’s will, in the center of my life right now. Mary has been paying attention, really listening to me. And this generous gift she’s given? It’s the most perfectly appropriate thing she could have done: she is getting me ready, she is marking me, anointing me –not in the usual way, not in celebration, not to mark a festive occasion — but to prepare me to die.

To prepare Jesus to die. This scandalous, extravagant gift had one primary purpose: to mark the physical body of Jesus with the promise of death.

Kings were anointed before their coronation. Jesus is anointed before his death, which will be, as we now know, the opening of that final door to the Kingdom of God. The cross, that place of paradoxical humiliation and glory, of strange and wonderful, upside-down power, of scandalous, extravagant love.

“The poor,” Jesus says to Judas, “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”

Mary and Judas stand in such stark contrast in this small story, don’t they?

Which one are you?
Which one am I?

My guess is, we’ve got a bit of both goin’ on. My guess is, it’s that Judas bit in us that keeps us from fully embracing the Mary side that’s struggling to be free. It’s the phony moral outrage that trumps the passionate embrace. It’s the self-righteous judgmentalism that supersedes the intuitive sensibilities. It’s the sneak thief that pushes the empathic encourager into the background.

It is Mary in this story who sees and tells the truth.
It is Mary in this story who makes her love for the Lord visible and tangible.
It is Mary in this story who pays attention to what’s really going on.

And it is Mary who is strong enough on the inside to do something scandalous, and extravagant and real on the outside.

And you know what I think? Despite John’s extra details about betrayal and thievery, I have a hunch Judas wasn’t all that different from a lot of us church folk. He was part of the inner circle, after all. He was privy to the private lessons, the extended discussions, the uneasiness of the disciples about where Jesus was headed. He was on the inside.

But he wasn’t paying attention.

Maybe he was too busy with his own agenda. Maybe he completely misunderstood who Jesus was. Maybe he wanted to control outcomes, to manipulate the Lord into doing what Judas thought was best.

Whatever it was, Judas was tied to a lie, unable, maybe even unwilling, to see the truth that was right there in front of him. Judas had not built an inner life that had space for empathy or insight or loving response.

It is Mary who is the model disciple in this story, the one who both listens to and acts on the commandments of the Lord. You remember those? “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength,” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” And Jesus was both, wasn’t he? The Lord her God, and her neighbor.

Here’s the piece that we must not miss here, my friends. Jesus tells us that he continues to show up in our neighbors. “If you do it unto the least of these,” he says, “you do it unto me.”

Staying close to the heart of Jesus necessarily means staying close to our neighbors. Staying in tune with the God of Love means offering that love to others. Paying attention to what Jesus teaches brings insight, intuitive responsiveness, genuine empathy and acts of love.

Sitting at the feet of Jesus will always lead to pouring out the fragrant oil on those very same, very dusty, very real feet. They go together, two halves of a whole, two sides of the equation, two parallel, intertwined pathways leading to the same destination.

It is also true that sitting at the feet of Jesus may very well lead us into some scary, risky places. Learning to be in tune with Jesus could bring us to make a wild leap once in a while, to do the unexpected — maybe even the unacceptable, but oh-so-deeply loving thing. Because sitting at the feet of Jesus will always involve a shocking amount of wild and crazy love.

Because the feet that were nailed to that cross are the most perfect picture of Love this world has ever seen. And sitting by those scarred feet will lead us down, down, down into the very heart of our God, where we will know that love is, and always has been, the only answer that makes any sense of anything.

And when that happens, when that downward, deepening, true knowing about love happens — the world moves.

I tell you, the world moves.

Pray with me:

Oh, Lord — will you move the world through us?
Draw us to those feet of yours, help us to sit still long enough to listen,
to understand, and to experience your love.
Then send us out to pour scandalously expensive love on the feet of others.
And when we do, to see you there, to see your eyes shining back at us.
Help us to be you, and help us to see you.
St. Teresa used to say that you have no other hands but ours —
will you help us to give these hands, and these hearts,
and these feet to you, Lord?
To you. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Maybe you’re sensing today that pull inside,
that downward pull to the heart of love, the pull that will
always bring you to the feet of Jesus.
And maybe, just to sort of cement that awakening in your spirit,
you need to take a risk.
And dear friends, in this particular community,
sometimes the riskiest thing we can do
is to step out, in front of God and everybody, and just say, ‘yes.’
So Pastor Jon and Anna will be here in the front to hear your ‘yes,’
to pray with you if you wish prayer, to encourage you to let the Mary in you
come out into the light. We’re going to sing a litte, and you can come right then,
if you’re feeling especially brave; but they’ll both be here after the benediction, too,
so you may come whenever you wish. But, I say to you,
as kindly and lovingly as I can, if the Spirit is drawing you, come.

Joining this much-longer-than-usual-blogpost with Laura, Jen, Michelle, Jenn and who knows who else I might think of. . .

Filed Under: biblical study, church year, Holy Week, Lent, Lenten Journey, prayer, preaching, Sermons/Homilies, Sunday Reflections, Uncategorized, women, worship

A Lenten Meditation — Week Four

March 14, 2013 By Diana

Lenten Service, Week Four — A Reflection on the Lectionary Texts
offered at Montecito Covenant Church
Wednesday evening, March 13, 2013

Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; II Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

I’ve been reading and thinking and pondering and praying about the sermon next Sunday morning for the last couple of weeks. It will be the first one I’ve preached since retiring over two years ago, and I think I’m sensing a theme or two coming at me from the primary text for this Sunday. Funny thing is, I am finding a very similar theme in the texts for tonight, which are the ones we used last Sunday in worship. Do you think maybe God is trying to tell me something? To tell us something? Yeah, I thought so, too.

Okay. So. In our first Old Testament text for tonight — the Israelites are finally, FINALLY done with the manna. The wilderness wandering is over, they are beginning to settle into the new land, the new life, the new them.

And in number 32, the psalmist sings about the beauty of forgiveness, the change in his or her own emotional life because they have confessed their failings to God and have discovered that God is faithful to forgive, in fact, has forgiven in the very act of confessing. The singer remembers and celebrates that God is a safe place, not necessarily a tame place, maybe not even a non-scary place — as C.S. Lewis and others have reminded us – but a safe place, a hiding place, a space where all of who he or she is is welcome, loved, heard, forgiven.

And the epistle lesson? Oh my, we heard some powerful teaching on this passage last week! If you missed Jon’s sermon, I encourage you to go to the church website and look for the podcast — it was truly excellent. Jon pushed us to examine more carefully some of what many of us have been taught about what happened on the cross, about atonement. He reads Paul’s words to Corinth, and he finds there a very different kind of picture than the one a lot of us were taught. He finds a picture of new creation, of sinbeing nailed to the cross, of God loving us in spite of that sin, of Jesus’ death as the fullest expression possible of the Father’s extravagant and even risky love for us human creatures. An important text, with a strong clear message of transformation.

And then we have the gospel lesson.

Probably one of the most famous of all Jesus’ teachings, the one we call The Prodigal Son. And yes, I suppose it is indeed that – the story of the younger son, who treats his father as if he has died already, claiming his portion of the family estate and then wasting it, and his entire life, in a far off land. Soon enough, he wakes up, though, doesn’t he? And he seeks to return to the care of the father who loves him.

And here is where the story really gets interesting to me, and where I begin to question the well-known title of the story, too. Because I have to say the behavior of the father in this story is anything but usual, anything but predictable, anything but just – at least to our limited understanding of what ‘justice’ looks like.

This father does not do what so many might expect him to do:he does not rake the kid over the coals, he does not criticize his profligate behavior, he does not condemn the boy for having left in the first place, for having upset the family system, for having wasted half of the estate. Seems like that boyish behavior is worth at least a small hint of displeasure, doesn’t it? But we get none of it in this story from Jesus, not one breath.

What we see instead is a picture of reckless, extravagant, even scandalous love – which is, by the way, the title of next Sunday’s sermon. The father does the totally unexpected — he welcomes his lost boy home, not only welcomes but celebrates him with a grand party – new clothes, new jewelry, great food, good wine, lots of laughing and eating and drinking goin’ on. This is a party, man. A PARTY. A “he who was lost has been found” kinda party.

And there is not one hair’s breadth of hesitation from daddio. Not one: this is my kid. I love him to pieces. He may have behaved like a complete jerk, but that does not matter to me, now that he has returned. The point is — my boy is back. And that is all that matters.

I love the setting for this story, which the opening verses of tonight’s reading give us — the Pharisees have been grousing about the people Jesus chooses to hang out with. They do NOT approve and cast withering looks his way. Can you just see them? The scripture says, ‘they muttered.’ Muttering. That’s a pretty horrible word, for a horrible habit, one that most of us, if we’re at all honest, have to fess up to, don’t you think?

And that is exactly what the other son does as the story switches focus for a minute.

Except he mutters LOUDLY, and pointedly – at his father. His complaints are deep-seated, he feels excluded, left out, angry at the father’s expansiveness. He feels slighted, unappreciated, unnoticed AND he has decided that his father’s decisions, his acts of love and grace, are somehow unseemly. Jealousy rears its very ugly head and possesses this older, responsible kid.

Sigh. I can identify, can you?

I am the oldest kid in my family of origin. I am the ‘good girl’ in the story of my life. I am the one who behaves with decorum, trying always to obey the rules, even the ones that are unwritten and invisible. So I get this guy — WAY too well. But here’s what I notice almost immediately. The father gets him, too.

He extends grace to both his boys this night.

Number one son gets assurances that ‘all that I have is yours. . .’ Did you catch that? All that I have is yours. Wow. No word of criticism here, either, is there? Nope. Not one. Only words of love and encouragement. “Come on, join the party. You know I love you — you’re the one that’s always here, you’re the one to whom everything belongs. Come on over – because, son, here’s the thing: WE HAD TO CELEBRATE. There was nothing else to be done.”

You know what I think? Maybe we should start calling this story the story of “The Prodigal Father.” What do you think? It’s the father’s behavior that is ultimately the scandal of the day. He is the one who has nothing but grace to offer

to the profligate and the jealous older kid,
to the wastrel and the mutterer,
to the bitterness of failure and the pomposity of success,
to the wheedling cries of, “I am a poor worm, let me in, let me in,
to the offended (and offensive), “You never gave me any party.”

EVERYBODY GETS A CHANCE TO START FRESH.

The Israelites in the wilderness,
the psalmist and his wasting bones,
the person who comes to Jesus for newness,
the younger brother,
the elder brother.

That father is something else, man. He is just something else.

Filed Under: biblical reflection, church year, Lent, Lenten Journey, Sermons/Homilies

Signs of Spring — A Photo Essay

March 5, 2013 By Diana

A winter heat wave gave way this weekend to the beginnings of a spring storm.
Somehow, this change in the sky, in the texture of the air around me,
matched a move in my spirit.
We are midway through Lent, winding our way through the wilderness,
heading now for the Promised Land.
And the edge of it is in sight.
Can you see it, just there?
There is an undercurrent of hope amidst the sober reflectiveness of this season,
there is a sense of movement, forward movement, Spirit movement.

Ten minutes at my beachside office before church on Sunday,
about 50 deep breaths of tangy sea air.
Then onto worship, first-Sunday-of-the-month worship,
which means communion with the community.
The table was inviting, with four stations for intinction,
with its tearing of the bread, its dipping in the cup.
Myriad candles were lit, the worship team took their place,
two high school students adding keyboard and violin skills to this Sunday’s mix.
A strong, good sermon on a tough passage,
a passage that ended with the parable of the fig tree.
I like that fig tree, because I so often feel unfruitful.
I find it heartening to think that God is the gracious and patient gardener,
willing to cultivate and fertilize the reluctant tree,
hoping for fruit in the year ahead.

I wonder what that cultivation and fertilization looks like in my life just now. . .

Communion was a bit chaotic, and I liked it that way.
It reminded me of meals shared in our home when our kids were growing up:
everybody wants to join in,
but no one is exactly certain where to go or what to do.
The spirit is lively, open, a little uncertain,
and that seems a good thing to me.
Eventually, a rhythm is found, everyone relaxes into this different way
of sharing the bread and cup.
Personal words are offered to those who partake,
the elements are both taken and received,
and sometimes that needs to happen –
we need to tear off a chunk AND we need to have someone else hold it for us.

An afternoon walk around our yard served to underscore this new reality,
the truth that the season is shifting.

Later on, we enjoyed our monthly Taizé service in the early evening,
a quiet, candlelit time with lovely prayer songs, softly sung.

Somehow, these Sunday things – morning communion, afternoon walk,
evening music by candlelight —
they all felt like harbingers of hope,
reminders that fallow times yield rich harvests,
that Lent takes us to Easter Sunday.

We’re not there yet – there is walking still to do,
there is more sober reflection to come.
There is Holy Week before there is Resurrection Day.

But the blossoms are out! The light is cracking through, the colors begin to unfurl.

Summer plums, rich and dripping with deep,
dark goodness are now bright white flowers,
spreading their way along old limbs, reaching toward the sun.
The remnants of last fall’s apples make rich fertilizer for next summer’s crop.

And shrubs of unknown name, planted by a long ago landscape architect,
are flush with brilliance this year.
Deep magenta spikes, covering different areas of the yard.

The late afternoon sun catches just a glimpse of their glory, bouncing here, there, everywhere.

This has been a hard winter in some ways.
My mom’s move, illness and surgery for other close relatives,
more writing deadlines than I’m used to,
a return to work for a few months.
For all these reasons and more,
I’m glad to see signs of change,
to observe promises of the future.
In the middle of Lent, I appreciate reminders that this journey
has a magnificent end point,
and it is coming soon!

I’ll have my monthly post at A Deeper Family this week and I’m trying to write three other deadline essays (welcomed by friends at other sites – my thanks to each and all!) in order to dig into my first sermon in over two years, to be preached on the 17th of this month. So I will not be writing much in this space for a while. I’ll put a link up on Thursday to ADF and I’ll join this one with some of my friends around the blogosphere tonight.
I am hoping that more frequent posting will come again soon!

Filed Under: biblical reflection, Church, church year, community, God's gifts, Just Write, Lent, Lenten Journey, personal journey, Photo Essay, photography, Santa Barbara, Taize, The Church

Entering into Lent – a Beautiful Download for You

February 12, 2013 By Diana

Today we are the brink of Lent 2013.
It seems to have come quickly this year,
dependent as we are on the shifting calendar for Easter Sunday.
Yet, here we are!!

Are you ready?

If you’re not quite there, that is just fine,
because Lent itself is a time of preparation,
a set-apart time, for reflection, repentance, refreshment.
So come as you are, ready or not —
the season welcomes you, Jesus welcomes you.

Sometimes people ‘give something up’ for Lent –
like particular foods, treats, habits.
And sometimes, people add things for Lent,
like new patterns for scripture reading,
prayer, generosity, penitence.

The Foundations for Laity Renewal have brought us a gift for this season.
It’s a beautiful devotional booklet,
free for the asking,
with contributions from a wide variety of writers
connected with the Foundations and their subsidiaries,
most particularly, The High Calling and Laity Lodge.

Many of the names will be familiar to you, I’m sure,
and I was privileged to contribute one day’s meditation, too.
I encourage you to head over to this site,
fill in your name and then open the link they send.

It will be a rich addition to your Lenten experience this year, I promise.

If you’d like to read through the introduction and opening thoughts
you can click here, and go directly to The High Calling to read
Mark Roberts’ good words.

Filed Under: biblical reflection, church year, daily devo, Laity Lodge, Lent, Lenten Journey

EASTER! Day One

April 8, 2012 By Diana

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed!

A Prayer for Easter Sunday Morning

As we whoop and holler and celebrate the end of our journey together in Lent 2012, we will greet this magnificent morning with the beautiful words of a very special and ancient prayer called the Exsultet. It was the prayer offered by the lowest member of the clergy, in the early church, the deacon, and it was prayed when the Christ candle was re-lit following its extinguishing on Good Friday. Its origins can be traced to the lamp lighting in the synagogue and you can hear the echoes of our Jewish heritage in its language. That synagogue prayer was adapted by the early church for special times of celebration, most particularly for the annual celebration of the resurrection. On Saturday night, Christians would gather outside their places of worship to observe the Easter Vigil – that time of waiting for the hour of Christ’s rising from the dead. Then, in the very early morning, as they lit the Easter fire, the Christ candle was re-lit and the deacon would lead the congregation in this prayer as they re-entered their sanctuaries. As the people followed the candle, they would chant:

“Christ our light! Thanks be to God!”

Let us pray:

Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels!
Exult, all creation around God’s throne!
Jesus Christ, our King, is risen!
Sound the trumpet of salvation!