Palm Sunday 2022
Welcome: We stand at the precipice of Lent and Holy Week. This day moves from shouting and praising to a time of crying and lament.
Laity Sunday
Hope does not just spring from the fact that there is light at the end of life’s tunnels, but from the fact that we do not have to crawl through. Ant Clemons
We Often Believe We Are The Problem
Each week of this Lent Season, we are focusing on ways that we can practice a counter-cultural theology that emphasizes the beauty and grace of the reality of life-right-now rather than waiting with increasing judgment to reach some vision of a perfected existence. Our ladder -climbing efforts sometimes end up taking us down a rung or two as things don’t turn out just right. And so let us continue to nurture our souls and embrace our holy “good enough” lives.
Many Things Can Be Medicine
As we continue our look at what it means to release oppressive expectations about perfection in our lives and in our faith, this week we turn to a harmful idea that the prescription for our fear of failure is to simply work harder. This Lent, we are taking some time to slow down, to tend our souls gently and lovingly, tilling the soil and fertilizer, and embracing our holy, “good enough,” lives.
So Much Is Out of Our Control
Focus: “Beloved remember that you are dust and to dust you will return. You will die; this is true. And this is true too: God breathed life into you, imagined goodness for you, and remains with you amid every joy and every sorrow. Beauty is written into your being, grace in every breath, gift in every heartbeat.” (Unknown)
First Sunday of Lent
“Of all the things he could’ve chosen to be done “in remembrance” of him, Jesus chose a meal.
The Transfiguration
Focus: “God places us in the world as his fellow workers-agents of transfiguration. We work with God so that injustice is transfigured into justice, so there will be more compassion and caring, that there will be more laughter and joy, that there will be more togetherness in God’s world.”
-Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Ordinary Time for Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times
Prayer is not just spending time with God. It is partly that – but if it ends there, it is fruitless. No, prayer is dynamic. Authentic prayer changes us – unmasks us, strips us, indicates where growth is needed. Authentic prayer never leads us to complacency but needles us, makes us uneasy at times. It leads us to true self-knowledge, to true humility.” St Teresa of Avila
Love in the Hardest Times
“We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever-widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”
Dorothy Day, “Love Is the Measure,” Catholic Worker, June 2, 1946.
Going Fishing
Open us this day to feeling and knowing your presence deep in our hearts so that we might show forth love with the same confidence, offering your reign of right relationship on earth as it is in heaven. We praise you for your close attention, holding our lives together in care. Amen.