Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-speak

speak

Sometimes a picture speaks a thousand words.

Pablo Picasso said this about pictures, “Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.” 

The same can be said about photographs.

Like this one: 

So much is communicated in this photo.

What do you see?

What do you feel?

This image has become the image of the church for me. This is what we are to be about. This is how we are to live and be in the world. This is our mission.

While there are some of us complaining about making cakes and others about what is or isn’t love, this is happening.

A visible display of God’s love, Christ’s trust, and the Spirit’s presence captured in a simple moment between 2 people.

Beautiful.

And I want you to know this:

You

                  Yes you.

                                             Stop what you’re doing for a moment.

Listen.

                  Be still.

                                             You are loved like this.

Welcome.

                  Home.

                                             Child of God, you are enough.

Christ waits for you with arms open and with a tenderness to calm your fears.

You belong.

You are loved.

You are wanted.

You are not alone.

God loves you, exactly as you are.

Look again at the photo.

If you are hurting, let us hold you.

If you are not feeling well, let us heal you.

If you are down, lets us help you up.

If you are lost, let us walk you home.

You are not alone.

You

         Are

                  Loved.

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Sandburg

Water, water, everywhere.

Water under here and over there!

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy remembering my baptism and giving thanks….

But 2 weeks of it in the form of rain is about enough. If I wanted to live in such an environment I'd move to the Bayou! 

It would be one thing if it was a steady rain but these storms, they are a bit much.

Especially for my sweet Chloe who has become an expert in the army crawl. You see, anytime it begins to rain, she takes her position…under the bed. Even if it is at 3 in the morning and I’m sound asleep, on her belly she goes and squirms and squeezes until only the tip of her tail sticks out!

Even now as I sit typing this at By the Bean, someone commented, “How about this weather?” Which was quickly followed up with, “But we shouldn’t complain. We could live in California where water is scarce.”

As we lament the back-to back-to-back days without the sun, we also pray for our brothers and sisters near and far who are enduring a difficult drought. We pray that water will find the dry lands where seeds have been planted and fruit will spring forth. May God pour out Her mercy upon those who’s lips are parched and long to have their thirst quenched.

“Life in us is like the water in a river.” 
― Henry David Thoreau

As for us, as we listen to the rain fall and watch the water gather in puddles, as we groan at the report more rain is on the way, may we take the time to be renewed, refreshed, and cleansed by God’s healing rain. May the opportunities to sit and ponder the showers of the summer lead us to a better understanding of God’s graces poured out upon our lives. May we remember the words from scripture, as a deer longs for living streams, as a weary traveler longs for the waters of life, so our souls long for God. May God pour out God’s Spirit upon all creation so that justice might roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Sure, while rain may dampen our plans, it is also a good thing that leads to life.

It also slows us down. It reminds us of our belovedness. It is an invitation to payer, not only to give thanks and to pray for neighbors.

But also rain gives us time and space to care for our selves. 

Rain is a time to tell stories and sing songs, to reminisce and to play.

What is your favorite rainy day memory? What is something you like to do during stormy days?!

Have a good weekend, everybody. Don’t forget your umbrellas!

I’m including a poem by Carl Sandburg. You can find this poem among others in our library!

What is the name you called me?--

And why did you go so soon?

The crows lift their caws on the wind,

And the wind changed and was lonely.

The warblers cry their sleepy-songs

Across the valley gloaming,

Across the cattle-horns of early stars.

Feathers and people in the crotch of a treetop

Throw an evening waterfall of sleepy-songs.

What is the name you called me?--

And why did you go so soon?

~Evening Waterfall by Carl Sandburg

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Solomon

Solomon

Before the daffodil petals disappear.

Before the bright colors of the tulips turn to green.

Before the maple trees burst into fits of green.

Before the whites and yellows, purples and pinks are gone take time to enjoy them.

Luke 12.27

²⁷Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.

Take time to be still today. Take time to watch the robin hop from limb to limb. Take time to watch a squirrel struggle to get every bit of that bird seed from your feeder.

Thoreau said, and I think suggested, “Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher’s desk.”

Do what you need to do today.

Work a solid 8 hours. Accomplish all that is on your to do list. Go grocery shopping. Mow the lawn or weed the garden. Grade papers or bake goodies.

Whatever it is you need to do, do it and do it well.

Then, be still.

Take in the season of spring. Take a stroll around the block and notice the plants you haven’t before. Take a drive to the park and walk a trail.

Whatever it is you need to do, take time to do it and be still.

Be still.

Stop. Don’t argue. Don’t make excuses.

Be still.

Your spirit will thank you. The earth will too.

April Prayer

by Stuart Kestenbaum

Just before the green begins there is the hint of green

a blush of color, and the red buds thicken

the ends of the maple’s branches and everything

is poised before the start of a new world,

which is really the same world

just moving forward from bud

to flower to blossom to fruit

to harvest to sweet sleep, and the roots

await the next signal, every signal

every call a miracle and the switchboard

is lighting up and the operators are

standing by in the pledge drive we’ve

all been listening to: Go make the call.

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Shouts of 'sanna

Shouts of 'sanna

We are just days away from Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem. The palm branches have been ordered, the children have practiced waving said palm branches, and the faithful church sexton has done a wonderful job preparing the church so it is fit for a king...or queen :) .

A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just.
~Pope Francis

Soon our silent walks in the wilderness will yield to shouts of hosannas, and the rustling of branches will replace the sound of silence. Finally, we can smile! We can celebrate! We can hope! We can believe we again we have been rescued!

Lent is almost over. Our journey is almost complete. We've come this far. Do not lose heart, friends. As Christ called James and John, Peter and Andrew, Philip and Matthew, so Christ calls us now. We, like them, will have to make a decision soon. As the cross draws near, as the crowds press in on us, and as the rooster begins to crow, we may be tempted with a lie, a lie that we don't have enough to finish.

We aren't worthy enough to follow.

If you get to that point...WHEN you get to that point, remember this:

Love walks before and beside you. Love surrounds you when your awake and when you lie down. Love has been shaping you this Lent, beginning way back on Ash Wednesday.

The Face of Love goes with you even to the gallows of death.

Remember, our Lenten journey is not simply about keeping our chocolate urges at bay or how many cups of caffeine we didn't drink or how many hours we did or didn't sit in silence. These last 40 days were not about proving our worth by engaging in spiritual practices or avoiding something like the plague.

Rather, Lent has been about how even now we are worthy, we are desired by God. Pope Francis said it best when he said, "(W)henever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. God’s voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades.” He continues that, “We end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own.”

Over the last 40 days we've journeyed on what may have appeared as individual roads. But the larger picture is that we've been pilgrims together on the way to Jerusalem, traveling not alone but with each other...

with Christ.

Lent has come to awaken us. We still have plenty of time to sit at the feet of our Christ. Let's not rush the procession.

There is still time to realize that though the life of a person is in a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. We have to trust God.

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Sunday Rose

I have a confession:

                                                                        I am a liturginerd.

What does that mean you ask?

Essentially it means this:  someone who is extra enthusiastic about something to do with their church life, whether that’s theology, the liturgy, or just being an exuberant Presbyterian.

One of the reasons I love being Presbyterian is that we follow the liturgical calendar. This calendar begins on the first Sunday of Advent, which normally begins in late November. A major reason why the church follows the liturgical calendar/year can be simplified down to this point:  many periods of time shape us, and most of them do not begin or end at the same time.

The civic new year is, at best, a calendrical device designed to regulate the daily affairs of people. Meanwhile, the liturgical year is the year that sets out to attune the life of the Christian to the life of Jesus, the Christ. Feminist Christian mystic Joan Chittister says, “[The liturgical year] proposes, year after year, to immerse us over and over again into the sense and substance of the Christian life until, eventually, we become what we say we are—followers of Jesus all the way to the heart of God.” The liturgical year is an adventure in human growth, an exercise in spiritual ripening.

Currently the church is smack in the middle of Lent.

Did you know this upcoming Sunday, has a different name and color to it?

The Fourth Sunday of Lent (March 18th) is called Laetare Sunday, when the church (specifically speaking the Roman Church) takes a bit of breather from Lenten practice and opens worship with the Entrance Antiphon, “Rejoice, Jerusalem … Be joyful, all who were in mourning!” – taken from Isaiah chapter 66.

Like the third Sunday of Advent ("Gaudete Sunday"), the fourth Sunday of Lent is a break in an otherwise penitential season.  The day is a day of relaxation from normal Lenten rigors; a day of hope with Easter being at last within sight. One way the church has marked this hope is by changing the paraments from purple to pink. The rose colored cloth on Laetare Sunday is a custom originating as a symbol of joy and hope in the middle of this somber season.

This Sunday could not come at more perfect time. Robins have been spotted under your feeder and I bet, if you look close enough, you can see the earth come alive again.

Resurrection is coming.

Easter is near.

That is good news.

Rejoice, friends. You’re doing good work where you are, exactly as you are.

Here is one last bit of liturginerd information for ya.

Laetare Sunday is also called “Rose Sunday” because of the papal blessing of the golden rose, a floral spray blessed by the pope and given to a notable person or institution.

I’m not the pope.

But I give you this rose because your life,

your story,

your presence

is a gift to us all.

Be well. Be rose-y. Above all, be you!

No matter what the world preaches
spring unfolds in its appointed time,
the violets open and the roses,
snow in its hour builds its shining curves,
there's the laughter of children at play,
and the wholesome sweetness of rhyme.
~Mary Oliver, No Matter What