Category Archives: Lent

Lent 5: Purple

27 Monday Mar 2023

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“God of seeing and resurrection, give us the us the strength to mourn and the courage to hope.” (SALT Lenten Project)

On this penultimate week of Lent, the SALT reflection emphasizes, from Matisse, the color purple, a more familiar color that the Church has connected to Lent. In liturgical settings the color is a reminder of penitence, sorrow, loss and darkness. Surely those emotions and locations are part and parcel of our human experience, which I attend to mindfully during my Lenten journey.

I am aware of how some of my Lenten palette needs to include the sad and grieving, the losses that are never-ending, the state of the world–both relationally and systemically. I am leaving space this week to lament the painful, frail and broken pieces of the worlds in which I live.

  • I grieve for the created world–its choked oceans, its volatile air currents, its vanishing species.
  • I grieve for the peoples of this world who suffer–in war, in natural disaster, in oppression, in tyranny.
  • I grieve for my native land so torn apart by hostility, mistrust, misinformation, hatred and cruelty.
  • I grieve for the fragility of communities of faith who are in states of liminality after the advent of COVID-19, wondering how to reimagine who and how they are to be Church.
  • My heart aches for the suffering ones I know personally–the mourning ones, the hurting ones, the frustrated ones, the lonely ones, the ones who have fallen into the Slough of Despond that has crept insistently into our collective life.
  • And I mourn the ways in which I have and done that which is not loving, not helpful, not kind, not compassionate–missed opportunities, ignored signals and neglected openings.

The Light that shine in this important season of Lament is that, grieving is not the last word. Sacred text tells us that “we may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” (T hess. 4:13.), The theologian Walter Brueggemann has written that the sacred practice of Lament prepares us for the Hope that is to come; for this in the Christian community, the promise of Resurrection, Life after death. It is a clearing out, a cleansing, a truth telling, that paves the way to be surprised by Joy. I am walking gently, gingerly, honestly through this darkness, trusting that there is Light to come on the other side.

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Lent 4: Yellow

22 Wednesday Mar 2023

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“Open our eyes to the vision of color“

In this week of Lent the SALT reflection, following Matisse as a mentor, chooses yellow, a color of Light, as the color of reflection, pointing to the spaces where the Light gets in.

In my heart, that joins this past Sunday which was Rejoicing, or Laetare Sunday, and the first day of Spring, a day when despite the pouring rain in our area, we changed our seasonal plate hanging on the wall, watched our yellow fledgling hummingbirds fly from their nest at last, and in preparation, had Irish coffee to remember St. Patrick and St. Gertrude. It has prompted me to look for points of Light as a spiritual practice, even in the cracks in the dark.

Yesterday in a hiatus in the rain came a rainbow in the east, arcing across a dark neighborhood. In the early morning came two texts from two separate grandchildren sharing love and hoping I was fine. In the newspaper I was heartened to notice that in spite of the civic turmoil of a strike, someone who had the power remembered that students and families still needed to eat, and is providing breakfast and lunch for those who want them. Into my Inbox came a Word from two different preachers, women who at one time would have had no access to pulpits, each with a Word both prophetic and inspiring, bringing hope.

As the day progressed I realized that in neither of the two rooms where we have glass doors to the outside world had I opened the drapes to let the Light in. When I did, Light of various hues came pouring in, even in the varying weather. I could see more clearly, the textures, the tones, the intensity of the shades of the color wheel inside and outside–including the yellows that were illuminated: the stripes in the blankets in the den, the beeswax candles that we keep at the ready for worship and company, the yarrow keeping watch over the front yard. I want to keep looking for the Light wherever it is to be found, reminding me that Holy Light can never be extinguished.

I was given a gift of a prism, created for an infant but so apt as a reminder of this part of my Lenten journey, It is affixed to my sliding door, and when I open the drapes, the colors of the rainbow begin to dance and ricochet around my room, pointing me to the other lights, shades and tints that are present to me, even when the sky is gray. The SALT reflection states that “Jesus says, ‘I am the light of the world.’ and ‘You are the light of the world” I am pondering this week how to open the curtains of my heart to let the Light in, and then how to be the Light to those whom I given to meet and greet! I want to let the Light shine!

Lent 3: Basic Black

16 Thursday Mar 2023

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“God of simplicity and grace, help us get back to basics…”

The SALT project’s Lenten reflection on Matisse this week focuses on basic black, the color that the artist uses to outline the simplest shapes, with clarity. It pairs the color with the gospel story of the Woman at the Well, providing, across many boundary lines, some basic simple needs, with clarity.

This has prompted me to reflect this Lent on what are my basic spiritual practices every day in this season, things without which my sacred journey will be impoverished:

I start my day with my intention to care for those I love, feeding my dog early in the morning when we both awaken. Neither my spirit. nor Max’s, is disembodied. My body provides the platform for the way the Spirit will meet me, and from which I can be of use. Jesus needed water, the woman needed a face to face encounter. The Spirit journey is lodged in the body.

I connect in prayer and love with my wider world through social media and checking in with hopes to affirm, comfort, celebrate and weep with those given to me to love. I practice being a member of community.

I take up various quotidian tasks in front of me in kitchen, bathroom and living area, mindful that these are offerings of caring, of grace. of love.

I read widely–both the sketches of the news of the day, but also sacred text and writers who challenge and teach me, push me more toward the Presence of the Holy One. This is a practice I share with my husband, and we marvel, roll our eyes, shake our heads and celebrate with the discoveries that we make about the people and places of the world, creation, the way that differences give us a new perspectives on a reality much wider than we have ever known for all our years of education and wisdom.

I aspire each day to stretch, either physically or socially, to make sure that I am using my being to move, touch, interact with a bigger purpose. So I have at the ready my piano, my labyrinth, my stationary bike, my phone, my computer, my checkbook, hoping to use what I have to connect what I am called to be and to do.

I keep a journal of gratefulness, reminding myself of the goodness of the Holy One and the world in which I live.

At the end of the day I make the transition to sleep with a mindfulness exercise that helps me attend to breathing and coming into the rest God has promised.

The fashion industry has long told us that we need to have basic black dress in our wardrobes, the fundamental need for every occasion. So I need the basic charcoal black practices for my life of Spirit, represented in my black dog and the simple straight forward practices of each day, the basics I need.

Lent 2: Blue and White

07 Tuesday Mar 2023

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Lent continues! The guide I am following from SALT which uses the art of Matisse has assigned this week to the colors Blue and White– Jesus is transforming our hearts…where do you feel the ‘blues’ of sorrow? the dazzling white of transfiguration? This underlines for me that my spiritual journey contains both joy and sorrow, peace and panic, order and chaos, and that the Holy One is present in all and through all.

A hymn I have come to know in recent years lets me know of the paradoxical nature of the Holy–“peacemaker and sword bringer,…both gift and cost…” and “You the everlasting instant; you who are our pilgrim guide.” It is easy when my mood swings or spanners appear in the works or it seems that the world as gone off its axis in yet another dimension, that the Holy disappears. After a week glorious connection and truth telling and warmth comes a week of pouring rains, even snow here in Southern California, and missed appointments, broken appliances and rugs flying out from underneath. Where is the Holy then? My Lenten practice is to ground myself in the truth that even there, then, now the Holy is present in me, to me, for me.

All of that variety, change, unpredictability is at work in my transformation–the “blues” of conflict, brokenness and grief, and the dazzle of reconciliation, healing and consolation. Therefore, I need to put myself in the places of Grace, where I know I can be met, fed, comforted and made steady, as I have so many times before. Today as I go out meet the sun, to breath freshly washed air, to stretch my halting steps, to listen to the birds and breathe in the scents of the budding spring, I will remember that in the Blue and the White, God is there, and will never let me go.

LENT: Grace is Enough

12 Saturday Mar 2022

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Grace is enough…

This Lent, on overload once again, I have chosen as my Lenten practice to notice and be grateful for the ways and times that Grace gets in and is enough for me to give thanks and bear the freight of the day. Certainly the world is giving us too much to bear it seems, when war has broken our with grim prognostications, the governmental systems are not only frayed but mired in standoffs, the environment has gone beyond groaning to wailing as it suffers, our institutions seem be coming apart at the seams, and the specter of COVID still looms over all.

So my attention has been pulled back to a favorite grounding text, in which the apostle Paul recounts his own misery, and then concludes that “God’s Grace is sufficient for me.” (2 Corinthians 12: 9).My intention this Lent is to look for, take note, savor and give thanks each day for the way the Grace has been sufficient. It has been more challenging than I imagined, not because the Grace is absent or hiding, but because my own perception, imagination and attentiveness are often underdeveloped. Nevertheless, in this first full week of Lent this is where Grace has appeared:

  • a first rose has blossomed in my garden
  • a Mother Hummingbird has reoccupied a nest tucked up under the eaves, and tends her eggs vigilantly
  • a grandchild moved into real adolescence, with a good bill of health and much joie de vivre
  • plans changed on a dime, and Spirit brought to me a peaceable flexibility and welcome
  • my prayer for deep listening and patience to understand another’s point of view were delivered when I needed them
  • a loved one came though a surgery with ease
  • a Zoom gathering brought celebration and laughter across both Pacific and Atlantic Ocean
  • my imagination was sparked as I filled bags of books for those who need them, while letting go of things which once gave me joy and I no longer need

My list could go on for ages. And I was reminded by so many Wise Ones of the ways that my faith continues to hold me in the arms of the Holy One of Grace, whose love never ceases, as I am taught how to love with Grace. Professor Kate Bowler brought me this reminder in her new book Good Enough with Jessica Richie; she quotes Thomas Merton here:

To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us–and he has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes the difference.

Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

I am choosing to notice, to name, to savor Grace this Lent–and to be grateful!

Clouds (Crowds) of Sorrow

24 Tuesday Mar 2020

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“give your sorrow all of its due…Elly Hillesum

In taught a class at church in preparation for Lent, I suggested, after Walter Brueggemann, that one path of practice was to take up the ancient practice of lament, of grieving for that which was lost, broken or dead, as a prophetic statement on the way to hope. Little did I know how deeply that is being called for in me in this Lent. Bruggemann says that the practice of grief is counter to denial, and it “summons the city to be fully, deeply and knowingly engaged in its actual life experience.” (Reality, Grief, Hope, p, 57)

Even with that conviction I have not been prepared for the onslaught of sorrows that keep pouring forth in this season: the deaths of people from my past lives–a former student, a seminary companion, a member of my congregation. And there has been what seem like daily losses of the familiar avenues of routine–access to groceries, freedom to move about the city, gathering for worship, the natural friendly embraces on which I rely. Overlying those changes, which range from inconvenience to outright loss, is the loss of trust in what is being said in the media and from “expert” sources. What is true? on whom can I rely? for what?

The presence of the Covid-19 virus among us has exacerbated all those losses with its threat of contagion, contamination and death, I find myself in a group called “elderly,” at risk, and therefore, the loss of the cultural prize of “youth” and its privilege of place. And the threat of disease is real and unknown, hence a loss of a sense of protection and safety for myself, for those I love, for those for whom I pray.

As much as I am enculturated to glide over grief, to “just get over it,” I find myself this fourth week of Lent called to enter into this cloud, or as Rumi puts it, this “crowd of sorrows.” Rumi asks that I welcome them, even as they “violently sweep the house/empty of its furniture.” I am finding again that the Psalmist also lifts a voice, inviting lament to deep and concrete grieving. Both of these teachers demonstrate that this grieving is clearing the path to the Hope that is the final Word.

It is not lost to me that Lenten practice in some communities has often focused on penitence, on personal confession and recognition of brokenness, sorrow for sin, “things done and undone.” And in this crisis of our life and times, I am woefully aware of the ways in which I am more critical, more fearful, more selfish than what I am called to be by living in Grace. That makes me sad. I would have hoped that by my age and stage, I would be more compassionate, more trusting, more full of Grace.

So I grieve! And with the grieving, I stand in solidarity with our world, and its many particular people who suffer in so many profound ways, Rabbi Earl Grollman writes, “The only cure for grief is to grieve…there is no way to predict what you will feel.” I pray my grief–with the Psalms, with poetry, with music, with walking the labyrinth. And I am sure that grief is not the last Word.

I am free to grieve, because I grieve with Hope in mind. Actually that is the endgame of this entire cloudy Lent–there is Resurrection at the end! There are no final defeats! God keeps my tears in a bottle, as I cleanse the way for the Light to arise! I am giving my grief its due, but only its due!

Clouds of Lent

01 Sunday Mar 2020

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clouds of unknowing

Lent is frequently depicted in linear fashion, one day, one Sunday after another. However, this year I am feeling more as if I have entered a cloud of a season, unclear, unpredictable, with poor visibility. I have taught a class on preparing for Lent, with particular attention to the ways we observe it in my tradition. I have considered and decided practices that I want to follow during these “40 days,” minus Sundays. I have considered the external signs that signify Lent in the Church: purple paraments, special services for Ash Wednesday and Holy Week, a purple candle alight where I sit for sacred conversations, a cross in the sanctuary for prayerful intentions to be tied with ribbons. But somehow in these days in none of those things are giving shape and order to my days, my musing, my habits.

Instead I am needing to continue to travel each day as it arises, some days not knowing where I am going or where I will end up. Some of this is shaped by the ongoing recovery of my husband after surgery. Some is shaped by deadlines set by agencies and “powers that be.” Sometimes the calendar for this year demands attention to occasion that are counter in spirit to Lenten solemnity. And sometimes “things fall apart,” according to Chinua Achebe, “the best laid plans go oft agley,” as Robert Burns tells us. Lent is not so much a journey as it is an ambiance, a backdrop, a cloud of mist which covers my intentional forward vision. This week alone, I have encountered tears and laughter, memory and forgetting, beauty and ugliness, health and healing. And I haven’t known what will arrive until is does! No guarantee that what I plan will be what I can or will do!

So am thrown back on the many times in sacred text where the promise is that clarity will emerge, where resources will be provided, and where Grace will abound. I love the early Christian hymn which names that state of unknowing: Now we see in a mirror dimly…Now I know only in part…” (1 Cor, 13: 12). Then the hymn writer points us back to the daily practices, Lent or not: And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (v.13) So in the midst of this cloud, I can find some place to practice paying attention to the Jesus journey, by asking myself as each new event or demand arises: does this help me be Faithful–to the Holy? to the ones I love? to those given to me to serve? And/or does this help me be Hopeful, sharing that hope with those I encounter? And most importantly, will this be something to which I can be bring Love, which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things. endures all things?

Joni Mitchell taught me long ago that clouds have many sides to them, that I really don’t know clouds at all, but I don’t need to know what the clouds have in store. I can, with Spirit tenderness and presence, show up for the cloud of each day with Faith, Hope and Love, on this Lenten journey, even as Jesus whom I follow did!

Into Holy Week: Taking Delight in Love

12 Friday Apr 2019

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Lent is coming to an end, and I turn into Holy Week, and I have just celebrated another wedding anniversary. In my practice of Taking Delight this Lent, I am aware of how many ways Love has shown up and continues to show up, around me and in the events we commemorate next week, enough to fill an alphabet:

Love is Ample. Love is Blessed. Love is Caring. Love is Delightful. Love is Elegant. Love is Forgiving. Love is Graceful. Love is Holy. Love is Imaginative. Love is Joyful. Love is Kind. Love is Lavish. Love is Mysterious. Love is Nuanced. Love is Observant. Love is Pliable. Love is Quintessential. Love is Redemptive. Love is Splendid. Love is Thoughtful. Love is Useful. Love is Volatile. Love is Wrestling. Love is eXtraordinary! Love is Yearning. Love is Zesty.

And Love is all around–in creation, in children, in old folks, in longtime enemies–now reconciled, in congregations and gatherings, in memories, in animals and birds, in friends and lovers. And in the Presence of the Holy.

During this coming week I will be seeing where Love appears still–in sacred texts, in worshiping groups, in conversations, in halls of governance and political encounter (!), and even in moments of solitude and silence. My prayer is not just that I can take delight in the Love I find, but that I will learn to practice and share Love more deeply in the Easter season to come, awash in the gifts given me through the Holy One–compassion, self-giving, and New Life! I will take Delight in the Love!


Lent 5: Taking Delight in Grace

04 Thursday Apr 2019

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photo taken in Trois-Rievieres Quebec

I found myself in a very large gathering of people I had not seen for a long time. Each of them had a personal history and a history with me that was checkered and some of which included a great deal of brokenness and pain. While the main text of the gathering was going on, a deeper part of me was reliving and evaluating those narratives, listening to my own judgements and critiques of past events. Mercifully, (and I do mean that literally), as the day wore on, I began to relax into what Denise Levertov describes this way: into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,/knowing that no effort earns/that all-surrounding grace. It wasn’t necessary for me to carry the darkness of the past: in Grace I could let go, and take delight in what Grace had brought into those stories that meant healing, freedom and redemption for everyone involved.

My journey has been revolutionized by coming to recognize Grace, and to continue to learn over the course of my years, “even into old age,” the depths and heights of that Grace. I seldom have had as graphic and audible an encounter as the one I just described, but Grace abounds in daily and dramatic of my life, if I am awake and taking delight in it. I think of this week alone–an accident averted, a garden in bud and about to bloom, the poetry of Lucy Shaw, cards and notes of friendship, acts of kindness by the clerk when I was confronted with automatic checkout at the grocery store. Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat in their wonderful book of reflection called Spiritual Rx call those things “gracelets” this signs of God’s presence that indeed feel like gifts.

I am half way through Lent now, remembering to take delight is becoming a little more intrinsic in my daily routine. However, training my senses to discover Grace is a little more challenging. The banner lines and news shouts emphasize “gotcha” moments, bleat out dire predictions, and revise history in a way that frightens, demoralizes and leads the ways to despair. So I need to be vigilant in seeking with grace-filled eyes where Grace is happening. As I sat down to compose this blog entry, a tiny article, clipped long ago by me, surfaced from under the stacks of paper on my desk. The author is Bryan Doyle, and it was included in The Best Spiritual Writing of 2001. Here is is:

First rule of grace: grace rules. Grace lifts, it brings to joy. And what, as we age, do we cherish and savor more than joy? Pleasure, power, fame, lust, money, they eventually lose their fastballs, or should. At our best and wisest we just want joy, and when we are filled with grace we see rich, thick joy in the simplest of things. Joy everywhere.

Notice how many saints–whom we assume were and are crammed to the eyeballs with grace–are celebrated for their childlike simplicity, their capacity to sense divine joy in everything: the daily resurrection of light, the dust of sparrows.

Grace indeed! I am delighted!

Lent 3: Taking Delight in Beauty

28 Thursday Mar 2019

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Seeds of Love by Charles White

Beauty was suspect in the circles in which I grew up. The suspicion was anchored in Proverbs 31:30 which is its description of a virtuous women declares that “Beauty is vain…“ Somehow that became expanded to the encouragement of ignoring, even judging, human beauty when one encountered it. Mercifully I have discovered wider concentric circles of understanding, in writers like Belden Lane in his book, Ravished by Beauty, that my traditions of origin actually encouraged a love of the Beauty of God, in creation certainly, in worship always, and this Lent I am taking delight in the beauty of human beings!

Facebook has plenty of reasons to call for discernment about its use and its business dealings, but today I celebrate the beauty of the Faces that Facebook gives me. This week it has showed me the face of a saint, just gone home to glory, whom I loved for many years; there was the beauty of age, of wisdom, along with the whimsy and compassion that always lived in the lines of that familiar countenance. I delight in the face, even as I grieve.

I also was able to take great joy in the purely unformed face of a brand new baby, unfocused, vulnerable, with no thought for what is ahead, just trying to get comfortable in this brand new world. And Facebook shows me almost daily the beauty of my family–from their beginnings, through their growing into who they are becoming. My heart is full of joy and praise for the unique creature each one is–the eyes of the imp, the stature of the leader, the dance of the friend, the grace of the scholar, the look of concern of the openhearted, the laughing companionship of the friendly. Sometimes when in the presence of these beloved ones, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for who I see, that I have a part in each life, however great or small, and I take deep delight.

However, I do not need to rely on Facebook to delight in the faces of God’s creation. I sit with people each week, and I marvel at the uniqueness of each one. Recently I witnessed the animation in the face of one who was newly energized by a new word that came, and the whole face was transformed. I sat with one in deep sorrow, and through the tears and wordlessness, there was a poignant beauty that was fully human and hope-filled. Another face was a study in hope fulfilled, as when there seemed not to be a way forward, a way opened up.

The variety is infinite! I have new neighbors, from a faraway land. The beauty takes such a different shape than my round blue-eyed blonds. But what dimensions of beauty are revealed. I meet an old friend, and the beauty that is theirs has taken a new shape–less spry, more white hair (or less hair!), but wisdom is now embedded in gaze and in expression and demeanor! How lovely!

I become more and more appreciative of visual artists like Charles White, who in his artistry help me see beauty in those who suffer, in those who take risks, in those who struggle, in those who are faithful over a long road. I am invited to take delight in the creature that each one was made to be, and am challenged to let my delight morph into acting for justice for those to whom it is denied!

Taking delight in the faces of those who are made in the image of God–that is my practice this week, and that is my challenge! God, be in my eyes and in my seeing!