The Friday that is Good!

"He is the still point of the turning world."

T.S. Eliot 

I am haunted by Dali's Christ on the Cross.  I look down from this point to the Galilean Sea, into all ages, and can see God planting that cross in heart of life--giving Life away to all who would come to him.  Is there a greater good? 

The Key to All Doors

“Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see, including and perhaps most of all, the door into one's own secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self.” 

May Sarton, author and poet

 May Sarton was a prestigious Radcliff professor until it was revealed that she was lesbian.  She left the faculty to live in a New Hampshire home in the woods before moving to an Oceanside cottage in York, Maine.  Her novels, journals and poems were countless; she won occasional poetry prizes.  Most of all what impressed me about her was the series of journals, one in particular—“The Journal of Solitude”—in which she comes face to face with her loneliness, personal wounds and they become a source of inspiration for her.  Isaiah declares—“by his wounds we are healed”—which the New Testament understands as the work of Jesus on the cross.  The love given away comes from the One who authored our lives in the beginning—each individual, and it is May Sarton who stepped through that forbidden world and leads others through it as well. 

 

 

 

 

 

Carrying Your own Life in Lent

Lenten Poem

by Ann Weems

Lent is a time to take time to let the power
of our faith story take hold of us,
a time to let the events get up
and walk around in us,
a time to intensify our living unto Christ,
a time to hover over the thoughts of our hearts,
a time to place our feet in the streets of
Jerusalem or to walk along the sea and
listen to his Word,
a time to touch his robe
and feel the healing surge through us,
a time to ponder and a time to wonder….
Lent is a time to allow
a fresh new taste of God!
Perhaps we’re afraid to have time to think,
for thoughts come unbidden.
Perhaps we’re afraid to face our future
knowing our past.
Give us courage, O God,
to hear your Word
and to read our living into it.
Give us the trust to know we’re forgiven
and give us the faith
to take up our lives and walk.

Lent turns Boomer Esaison on his own Paternity Criticism

What in the world was Boomer Esaison thinking when he openly criticized the major league baseball player for missing a game when his son was born?  Of course, Daniel Murphy did not want anything to come between him and the birth of his son--but Easiason the announcer set the new standard that a big league player ought to hire a nurse.  The firestorm of rebuke proved him dead wrong and wrung from him the apology for creating such havoc right around the birth of their son.  Where do announcers get off setting such standards for others when the paternity leave is a given for big league players?  It certainly is not the first time!

But that's the modern world for us--so caught up in it that once again they miss the birth...and in the same way God still sneaks into our world.  If Lent is anything, it should change our routine and open our eyes to see God coming into the world in human flesh.  Then again, we did miss him the first time around in Bethlehem, didn't we! 

Holy Saturday's Silence

 Holy Saturday Silence 2015

In silence he lies,

God's Silence upholds his Son,

until morning of mornings dawns,

when no tomb holds him,

now the womb of the world,

for new birth.

Waterfall of Life!

I love the image of a waterfall--even more so, its smell of algae, and oxygen and life!  As the water falls, it aerates and carries the life giving oxygen into the water.  Life falls into more life--the heart of the Lenten pilgrimage, this falling into life. 

But who could have guessed that Jesus was pierced on the cross to let loose the flow, the shower of life for all.  It goes against all we are--the very instinct of flight or flight to preserve ourselves.  I wonder, do you suppose that maybe life is just one of those ways that we loose life to find it?  A rehearsal for the final dying and rising? 

Ivan Lopez--Who Was this Shooter?

So now we are left with 4 dead, including Ivan Lopez the shooter.  Are we wondering, really asking who he is?  I wonder...don't we know but are afraid to say it out loud?  There is a point of view from John Donne and his classic poem, "No Man Is An Island"--we are all connected and each person's loss diminishes each one of us.  Easier to say with a poem?  Perhaps the truth is a bit much to bear that he was a victim also of circumstances that in the end he could not control.  PTSD, Iraq and the military is no place for me to be....  There is also the other point of view that others go through similar circumstances without taking the lives of others.  Nevertheless--he did. 

There is always one commandment we never think we could break--the one about killing.  Yet, as one commentator said, Lopez was dead before he pulled the trigger.  There is the third point of view--what does this matter to those who died and were critically wounded?  What response and obligation comes out of this event?