Easter Sunday

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blessings, Easter, give thanks, God, liturgy, livestream, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

It’s mid-afternoon by now, as I finally sit to reflect on this very different Easter Sunday. What I find as I think about it, though, is that it doesn’t really seem so different from all the other Easters that I have known. Susan is always prepared so we have sweet little bunnies (oh yes, stuffed ones) and other treasures for each of us. The livestream from my favorite Church in our area offered a lovely liturgy and I saw on the livestream that there were 397 people attending in addition to me and Liz. Dinner was a grand gesture from Omaha Steaks, provided by a very safety-conscious and delightful new acquaintance who has blessed our lives over the last month.! All that’s left is to clean the grill which is soaking away all the remnants of the yummy steaks. Now come the naps or other quiet occupations, likely to be kindly interrupted once or twice by well-wishers and others calling to make sure we’re okay.

We are okay. We are actually better than okay. We have a home and food and people who love us enough to forego visiting this time, and a God in whose image we and all others have been created and today we give thanks for all those who shine as examples to us of that beneficence. Happy Easter!

The season is well-begun!

Small Things

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do small things with great love, Easter, Lent, Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

A good reminder today in this early stage of Lent comes from today’s “Saint of the Day” page of the franciscanmedia.org website. Like St. Theresa of Lisieux, known as “the Little Flower,” St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows contracted tuberculosis and died at the young age of 24 years. Like her, he had a burning desire to enter a religious community from childhood and, as Mother Teresa would say, “to do small things with great love.” Rather than planning a rigorous program of Lenten practices – and perhaps falling short in the long run – we might do better to follow the wise counsel of these saints.

Blessings on your conscious effort as we walk this path toward Easter.

Breakfast on the Beach

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breakfast on the beach with Jesus, Easter, Jesus, John, Peter, simple joy of being, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today we read my favorite post-Easter gospel (JN 21: 1-14).

Seven of the disciples are together and probably still asking one another, “What do we do now?” The three brilliant years are over and they probably don’t see any sense in going on without Jesus around. Reports differ about sightings of Him and nothing seems to be happening to prove anything miraculous, so Peter decides to do the only thing he knows how to do. “I’m going fishing,” he says. They all decide to go with him but even that doesn’t seem worthwhile as they fish all night without any success. It’s only when the dawn comes and Jesus gives them a new way to fish that everything changes. “Cast your nets over the right side of the boat and you will find something.”

(Have you ever been prompted to try a new way to do something and realize that in the willingness to do so you have success? It’s all about letting go of the habitual to find the prize sometimes, isn’t it?)

Peter, ever the impulsive one, jumps into the lake as soon as he hears that it is Jesus who gave the advice that caused the reversal. I love that. (Have you ever seen the commercials or news clips of a soldier surprising family members by returning home without their knowledge? Everyone is trying to “hug the stuffing out” of the returnee amidst tears and cries of joy and relief.) That’s Peter, of course. Everything changes for him in that moment.

And Jesus…what a tender soul! He does such a simple, elemental service for his friends. He cooks them breakfast. I think of all the “old days,” – Sunday mornings when I was working in a parish – when all the religious education classes were over. I would steal a little time to drive the 3 or 4 minutes to my friend’s house for a visit. She always acted as if I were a great dignitary (or even Jesus himself) with her joyful exclamations of welcome and her command to “Come and eat!”

Sometimes it’s not the monumental moments in life but rather the simple things that we do for each other that mean the most and stay in our memory. I would wager that until his dying day Peter could still see that fire on the beach and taste the fish that Jesus cooked for him that morning that made everything worthwhile again and gave him the confidence to say, “Yes, Lord. You know all things. You know that I love you.”

Tending the Fire

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Celtic Benediction, Easter, fire, healing, John Philip Newell, Octave of Easter, soul, strength, sun, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

“Wednesday within the Octave of Easter” That’s what today is called in Church circles. It feels very much like “Ordinary Time” to me today. There is my list of tasks to accomplish, sitting on the right arm of my chair to assure my attention to their completion. How is it that we keep the fire of Easter alive through each hour? I think of all sorts of adages that speak of that effort: Steady as she goes! One step at a time. Fake it till you make it. (I always hope it won’t come to that one!)

What about this short prayer from John Philip Newell?

O Sun behind all suns, O Soul within all souls, grant me the grace of the dawn’s glory. Grant me the strength of the sun’s rays, that I may be well in my own soul and part of the world’s healing this day…that I may be well in my own soul and part of the world’s healing this day. (Celtic Benediction, p.41)

No Longer Strangers

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Alleluia, Bill Redfield, chanting, common experience, Easter, morning prayer, movement prayer, presence, silence, strangers, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, virtual retreat

“Today is a day for a new hymn!”

That’s a line from a long ago poem that I read somewhere and liked the sentiment enough to pen my own feeble attempt at poetry as response. A lot of life has passed since then. I have changed, of course, as there is no life without that reality, but the quote seems apt for this Easter morning. One could say that it might fit each day if we were paying attention.

The run-up to the Easter feast has been more than just a calendar notation this year, to be sure. I was more or less able to be present to a “virtual retreat” all week, a genius idea and amazingly successful creation of my friend and colleague, Bill Redfield. There were morning prayer services each day that included silence, chanting, movement prayer to stirring music and short readings, in addition to a reflective session for the evening. There was a “conference” for the day with probing questions as well. All of this had been recorded ahead of time and added to the whole each day on the internet, enabling participants to come to prayer as their schedule allowed, knowing that there were others around the country and the world who were adding to the communal consciousness. It was a different, quite effective way of participation.

The most amazing part of this experience, however, came at 4:00 EDT every afternoon when as many of us as were able clicked onto a ZOOM call where Bill introduced a topic and then sent us to a virtual “breakout room” to share with one or two other participants. The common experience was instant comfort and generally deep sharing with people who will never again be strangers to us. In 15-20 minutes each time we touched into deep topics and feelings about the Holy Week and Easter experience from a Wisdom perspective. There were only 30 to 50 people each day – of the many more participants – whose schedules allowed this miracle, but the sharing was extraordinary and seemed to shout that each of the days was a time for “a new hymn.” The technology is there and as a person who sits on the fringe of the technological age it was a glorious turn-around that I fully embraced.

Last night I worshiped in a church where I sat in the midst of over 100 people I could not name and a few cherished friends but the experience of my retreat created in me the recognition that in that prayer together there were no strangers because of the enthusiasm of our corporate prayer. We were all there for the same purpose and offered our energy and our voices to the conviction that Jesus had risen not only 2000 years ago in a place far away but also in Endicott, NY in our very present experience. If we stay awake, we might just continue to live into that presence each day with our sisters and brothers near and far.

So I shout “Alleluia!” to a world brought closer kinder this Easter Day. Blessings to all!

Remembering Easter

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Acts of the Apostles, Barnabas, christians, Easter, faith, garden, grace, hope, Jesus, joy, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

This morning as I clicked on my usual first source for inspiration, the US Catholic Bishops’ listing of lectionary readings for the day, I read April 24, 2018 – Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter. I needed to go no further with that as a prompt. I thought of how quickly this year seems to be passing and was grateful that the daffodils have finally bloomed along the side of our house. It’s impossible to go by them without smiling; their bright yellow faces sing “Hello!” with such enthusiasm. At the same time I wondered how conscious I am each day of still celebrating the Easter feast. The readings from the Acts of the Apostles help, of course, as they are full of the vibrant stories of the first disciples and the remarkable happenings as they traveled around spreading the good news of Jesus. Today, in chapter 11, there is word of Barnabas, “a good man, filled with the Spirit and faith,” who was sent to Antioch where “a large number of people was added to the Lord.” As sort of a postscript to all the recounting there, the text ends with the monumental statement that “it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.”

All of that brought me to a place of gratitude for tradition and the richness of faith. I saw it clearly yesterday in a glorious ritual of passage, the funeral of a 92-year-old mother of a very musical family. There was a choir that enhanced the rich congregational singing, a eulogy at the beginning that brought us all into this wonderful lady’s life and a beautiful reflection at the end by two sons and two granddaughters on French horns, guitar and double base. It was truly a celebration of life from beginning to end and emphasizes for me that Easter continues to this day and beyond.

Joyce Rupp says it best for me as she prays: Risen Christ, we turn to you with full reliance on your resurrected presence here and now. We renew our trust in your grace to restore our joy when it lies hidden in our entombed self. Turn us again and again toward hope. Open our hearts to recognize you in the garden of our everyday lives. Amen. (Prayer Seeds, p.77)

 

 

 

 

 

This Day

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declaration, Easter, glad, message, psalm 118, rejoice, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

It has not escaped my notice that each day since the vigil of Easter the gospel acclamation has been the same verse. From Psalm 118:24 we hear or read, This is the day the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice in it. This morning I think I finally got the intended message.

What if, upon rising from sleep, as soon as consciousness kicks in, we took as a practice to repeat – preferably aloud and with conviction – THIS IS the day the Lord has made! Let us be GLAD and REJOICE in it!!! (Emphasis mine, of course.) Maybe, even if we didn’t change the world by that declaration, it might come to have a positive effect on our personal day – every day.

 

 

 

 

 

Easter…and Beyond

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aloneness, Easter, faith journey, hear, Holy Week, light, Matthew, prayer, Seder, silence, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

We have arrived. “It is the first day”, the saying goes, “of the rest of our lives.” It is the first day of April, the month when we expect great flowerings – in our weather, our gardens and, hopefully, our life. We have survived the winter, some with great stress and destruction, and though it seems to be hanging on, we need to remember that the resistance of Mother Earth can be as strong as our own when it comes to change.

I just went back and read each of my posts for the past week. It was a different kind of Holy Week for me. I wait each year to dive into the meaningful rituals that put me in touch with the life and death of Jesus like no other moment in the year has the power to achieve. I have done that at home this year, having spent much of the winter in respiratory distress and not willing to give or bring home the germs so universally prevalent in the crowds of worshippers during this season. Oh yes, and by Palm Sunday, I had contracted a serious cold and sinus infection that sealed my decision to walk the way of the week at home. It was a surrender that was difficult but, in the end, meaningful.

Going to one’s room and closing the door is a well-known directive offered by Jesus in the gospel of Matthew (6:6) as a significant way to pray. He promised that the God to whom we “pray in secret” in that silence and aloneness will hear and reward the prayer. I can say that this has happened in flashes of insight during the week, coming to a deeper sense of what it must have been like for Jesus and how the events can influence my willingness to live more directly in the manner of Jesus. The most significant learning from the week, however, has been the recognition of the importance of community for spiritual support.

Each year on Holy Thursday, my local community celebrates a Seder meal, commemorating the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples and in solidarity with the worldwide Jewish community celebrating the Passover. We eat the ritual foods and recount the history of the Hebrews in the same manner as our Jewish neighbors. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem and give thanks for the providence of God that has kept us safe in the past year.

As we concluded the Seder this year, and as I have reflected today on the entire week, I recognize the significance to my faith journey of the presence of companions. While I am able to meditate in private on the articles of faith and the events that inform our practice, it is the energy shared in the rituals as well as the experience of the rituals themselves by the gathered community that is at the heart of it all. I can sing alone and hear my voice proclaim a gospel text alone, but the light of the Easter candle burns brightly only as the light is passed from person to person so that it illuminates the whole room.

I will carry my portion of the light, hopefully as it has been made brighter by this insight, back into the community of the faithful in the coming days. Writing that, I remember a quote from long ago that seems apropos for my metaphor and a good image of possibility. Simple but profound, it declares: Easter people everywhere, shining Jesus love!

Happy, blessed Easter to all of us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clinging to Hope

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alive, beginnings, Celtic Treasure, Christ, Easter, faith, Holy Week, hope, Jesus, John Philip Newell, Lent, love, new life, promise, solace, sorrow, stay the course, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, turmoil

For so many people I have encountered in so many places recently, life seems to be a continual walk in the dark. For Christians who are following the path of Lent, walking with Jesus ever closer to the events of what we call Holy Week, the heaviness of these days can be an opportunity even as we find our energy sapped by news of a world in deep turmoil. Another school shooting yesterday, panic in Austin, Texas over serial bomb explosions, wildly destructive coastal storms and personal tragedies or disappointments leave us wondering when and how it will all end. Will Easter bring us solace and the promise of new life?

Today it is a prayer from John Philip Newell’s book, Celtic Treasure, that calls me to consciousness. May it be a reminder and an encouragement for us to “stay the course” in hope, clinging to the transformative power of faith and love.

You are within and among us, O Christ, as the one who is alive for ever. In the sorrows and sufferings of our lives you are with us as the one who holds the keys of new beginnings. There is no ending in the world, there is no fear in our lives, there is no despair in our hearts, that your living presence cannot unlock. You are within and among us, O Christ, as the one who is alive for ever. (p. 214)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let Us All Rejoice!

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christians, disciples, Divine Law, Easter, Fr. Dwight Longenecker, grace, Hebrews, Holy Spirit, mosaic law, Moses, Pentecost, respect, Shavuot, spirit, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, understanding

Today Christians celebrate the great feast of Pentecost (from the Greek for “the fiftieth day”), the commemoration of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that enlivened the disciples of Jesus to spread the message of God’s love for the world. Lest we think that Christians are the only ones who celebrate faith at this time – 50 days after Easter, we need to look further back to recognize that there is a linkage to the Jewish festival of Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks, which falls fifty days after Passover. In speaking of this connection, Fr. Dwight Longenecker writes from the Christian viewpoint: This [feast] was kept as a commemoration of Moses receiving the Divine Law on Sinai. The Christians understood that as the law came down from heaven to Moses for the people of God, so the Holy Spirit came down on the church. The age of the Mosaic Law was therefore fulfilled and completed by the new age of Spirit and Grace. (CRUX, June 3, 2017)

This morning, then, as I give thanks for the workings of the Spirit in my own life and throughout the centuries of the life of Christianity – amazed often that we have endured – I remember also the fidelity of the Hebrew people who carried their tradition from the days of Mosaic Law to the hearts of faithful Jews today. My prayer is that the Spirit will be instrumental in drawing us and all the peoples of the world into deeper respect and understanding that in essence our humanity makes us all one. May it be so!