The mood is oddly chipper considering we are about to play for a funeral. This is what we do at our church: when someone dies, a call goes out to all our regular musicians to play at the funeral. We don’t have praise teams, but I suppose, this afternoon, we are the lament team.
Notes from the Lament Team Read More »
liturgical year, spirituality
Come, Savior.
Come amid the salt-crusted cars lined up at the light,
amid the clamor and bustle of commerce,
the grocery store cash drawer rings,
the have-a-nice-days.
A Prayer for Christmas Eve Read More »
liturgical year, spirituality
INT. KIDS THESE DAYS CAFÉ, HEAVEN – ETERNAL DAY
Small clusters of saints in white robes, vaguely glowing, chatter convivially around heavy wood tables in a cozy bistro. The bright robes contrast with the dark wood paneling, rough ceiling timbers, and flagstone floors. Though everyone is drinking, no one is drunk.
MARTIN LUTHER, JOHN WESLEY, and CHARLES WESLEY sit in leather-clad chairs around a table, drinking excellent beer.
Reformation Day at the Kids-These-Days Cafe Read More »
liturgical year, silly
Dear Jesus,
Just thought I’d send a quick note and let you know how things are going this Lent. Actually, not so good tbh. I don’t know. I just wasn’t feeling it this year, you know?
I didn’t give up chocolate or carbs or anything. I didn’t even set a scripture text to memorize so that I could earn my chocolate by reciting my text before popping a Dove into my mouth. I guess at my age, I’ve been through Lent so many times, it all seems kind of same-old same-old. Trying to manufacture repentance, and the fake little deprivations: meh. And I know you don’t really care about chocolate anyway, amirite? : )
It must begin with Zechariah’s silence. Nothing against poor old Zechariah. Who can blame him for asking a decent question? The text tells us that both he and Elizabeth were upright and blameless before the Lord. So even if Gabriel comes off as a little testy and indignant, slapping Zechariah with silence for a tiny slip-up of doubt, maybe the silence isn’t about making Zechariah look stupid. Maybe it’s only about getting him out of the way.
Holy Week demands that we dwell in-between. We have been trying since Palm Sunday to place ourselves in the familiar stories of this week, imagining ourselves with Jesus at the supper or in the garden or at the foot of the cross, setting aside our daily business briefly for an imagined role in the drama. We do this, however, as simultaneously self-conscious participants in ecclesiastical tradition, aware, even amid our devotional immersion, that these are all rituals: we know the palm branches will lead to the bread and wine, then to the Good Friday tenebrae candles, then to the processionals of Easter Sunday. We know what’s coming.
Saturday of the Harrowed Hearts Read More »
liturgical year, spirituality
It’s time once again to consult with our guest columnist Pious Petunia, seeking her wisdom to console and guide us through the rough spots on the journey from Ash Wednesday penitence to Easter rejoicing.
Dear Miss Petunia: I usually give up sweets for Lent, and I’m never sure how to say no when people offer something sugary to me. What is the best way to avoid a big explanation?
PP: Miss P commends you for your desire to keep your Lenten observance quiet. Back in ye olden tymes, there was more cultural agreement on Lenten practices, and no awkward explanations were necessary. No one would be so rude as to offer you a slab of round steak on fish-only Fridays. These days, however, we consumerist postmoderns personalize our religious observances—rather the way we personalize our iphones—so that we enter a welter of confusion navigating around one another.
Pious Petunia Strolls Gracefully Down the Via Dolorosa Read More »
liturgical year, Pious Petunia
During Lent, I expect to hear about sin and suffering, but I’m starting to get tired of the word “broken.” Also “brokenness,” “broken world,” “broken people,” and “messy, broken world/people.”
Overused words descend into cliché, and I think we might be approaching that territory here.
To support my case, I present evidence.
I’m Done with Broken Read More »
liturgical year, spirituality
When I was a child, my family usually attended church on New Year’s Eve, and during the service the pastor or an elder would read the “necrology”—the list of those from the congregation who had died in the last year. It was a way of taking stock, marking the passage of time, meditating on the reality that “Hours and days and years and ages swift as moving shadows flee,” to quote a somber hymn we would sometimes sing. I also seem to recall that babies baptized that year were duly accounted for, although their names seemed to weigh feather-light when read against the gravity of the saints departed.
Communio Sanctorum Read More »
liturgical year, spirituality, theology
Joseph of Arimathea appears in all four gospels, but I am particularly drawn to the account in John, which includes some details beyond what the synoptics provide. Here Joseph is accompanied in his ministrations by Nicodemus—that other recorded member of the Secret Disciple Club. Nicodemus shows up with seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloes, and the two of them together get the job done. We can imagine them, grim and hurried, managing the mangled body, one spreading the spices while the other pulls a fold of linen over and around. Perhaps on another occasion they would have had their own servants or a hired expert do this work, but I like to think of them glancing at the rapidly setting pre-Sabbath sun and agreeing, “Let’s just do it ourselves.”
Look for the Helpers Read More »
liturgical year, spirituality