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Posts from the ‘Easter’ Category

Apr 8

Breathing Resurrection Air

“Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.” ― Wendell Berry

“True restfulness, though, is a form of awareness, a way of being in life. It is living ordinary life with a sense of ease, gratitude, appreciation, peace and prayer. We are restful when ordinary life is enough.”― Ronald Rolheiser, The Shattered Lantern

We’re good at “lent”-ing, lamenting, foreboding.
Not short on reasons.
And yet.
Easter, spring, bloom arrive.
Never skipping their turn.
Renewal, refreshment, restoration.
Showing up.
Right in the middle of the mess.
Where it will always be.
Calling us to breath resurrection air.
To succumb to joy.
In our ordinary, imperfect, abundant, overflowing, limited days.
Fresh eyes, light heart, trusting soul required.
Make tracks, practice resurrection.

“The resurrection tells us it is never too late. Every so often we will be surprised. We must believe that the stone will be rolled back, and we must be ready to poke out our timid heads, take off the linen bindings of death, and walk free for a time, breathing resurrection air.”― Ronald Rolheiser, Prayer: Our Deepest Longing

Apr 6

A Little More String

“You will find truth more quickly through delight than gravity. Let out a little more string on your kite.” – Alan Cohen

“Let’s go fly a kite
Up to the highest height!
Let’s go fly a kite and send it soaring
Up through the atmosphere
Up where the air is clear
Oh, let’s go fly a kite!” – Song lyrics by David Tomlinson and Dick Van Dyke, Mary Poppins

Like Christmas, Easter is a season not a day, a mere occurrence
A way to live, love, be
A daily choice
To begin again
To hope, imagine, delight
Still tethered and held
And soaring with fresh joy.
Let out a little more string.

“The great gift of Easter is hope.” — Basil C. Hume

Apr 5

1 Comment

Gardener of Souls, Lilies Spring to New Life

And the Glory by Ann Weems
“The silence breaks into morning.
That One Star lights the world.
The lily springs to life and
not even Solomon …
Let it begin with singing
and never end!
Oh, angels, quit your lamenting!
Oh, pilgrims,
upon your knees in tearful prayer,
rise up
and take your hearts
and run!
We who were no people
are named anew
God’s eople,
for he who was no more
is forevermore.”

“To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”― G.K. Chesterton

Desert to garden.
Good Friday Cross to Sunday empty tomb.
The Gardener meets Mary, a woman, who walked all the way through.
Saved by love.
To this very day.
To receive and give.
With grace and joy.
To pass it on.
As it was given.
Unconditionally and overflowing.
Again and again.
Love prevails, carries through, on, forward.
Happy Easter.
Cast light.

“This is an invitation,
a choice,
a threshold, a gate.

This is your life
calling to you
from a place
you could never
have dreamed,
but now that you
have glimpsed its edge,
you cannot imagine
choosing any other way.

So let the tears come
as anointing,
as consecration,
and then
let them go.

Let this blessing
gather itself around you.

Let it give you
what you will need
for this journey.

You will not remember
the words—
they do not matter.

All you need to remember
is how it sounded
when you stood
in the place of death
and heard the living
call your name.”
—Jan Richardson, Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

Apr 4

Grace. Love. Light

“As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings, may your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills. When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance, may your imagination continue to evoke horizons.” – John O’Donohue

“Grace doesn’t add up
it sits with betrayers,
washes the feet of backstabbers,
breaks bread with the disloyal,
and shares a cup with double-dealers.

Blessed are you when guarantees slip,
as love shows becomes costly,
asking for everything and promising nothing.

May you see beauty in this sacrifice,
love that begs us to keep loving,
even as hearts are broken.

Blessed are you, remembering,
when forgetting feels easier,
that in this undoing,
the world is being remade.” – Kate Bowler

Hope. Grace. Love.
Horizons. Tomorrow. Light.
Redemption. Resurrection. Easter.

“In vain we search the heavens high above, The God of love is kneeling at our feet. Though we betray him, though it is the night, He meets us here and loves us into light.”― Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons

Apr 20

THE Gardener

“The resurrection tells us it is never too late. Every so often we will be surprised. We must believe that the stone will be rolled back, and we must be ready to poke out our timid heads, take off the linen bindings of death, and walk free for a time, breathing resurrection air.”― Ronald Rolheiser, Prayer: Our Deepest Longing

“Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept, she bent over to look inside. Then she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and the other at the feet. They asked her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She replied, ‘They have taken my Lord away, and I don’t know where they have put him.’ As she said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there. But she did not realize it was Jesus. Jesus asked her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Who is it you are looking for?’ She thought he was the gardener and said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means, ‘Teacher’).” – John 20:15-16

Ashes to Resurrection
Third Day
He is Risen
Is, not was
Now, this moment, each day
For each and all
No one left behind, excluded, othered
For each and all
Love
Resurrection air
Breathe it in

God’s Love – “Who breathes where You will, breathe into me and draw me to Yourself. Invest the nature You have shaped, with gifts so flowing with honey that, from intense joy in Your sweetness this clay might turn from lesser things, that it may accept (as You give them) spiritual gifts, and through pleasing jubilation, it may melt, entirely, in holy love, reaching finally out to touch the Uncreated Light.” – Scott Cairns

Apr 1

1 Comment

The Case for Hope

“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”― Nicolas Chamfort

“The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

When cynicism, criticism and incivility grow loud and try to rule.
Do not partake.
Do not succumb.
We fight the good fight for those who come after.
Planting trees we’ll never see.
Five energetic, bright-eyed happy boys, overflowing with joy and laughter.
The case for hope.
Children on Easter Sunday morning.
The reason to keep planting.
Fight the good fight of optimism, joy, hope, peace, laughter, light and love.
Bountiful and beautiful harvest.

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”― Emily Dickinson

Mar 31

1 Comment

Third Day

“When we pray for guidance, perhaps God’s answer is every way he hems us in, like a river.”― Christie Purifoy, Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace

EASTER BLESSING

“On this Easter morning, let us look again at the lives we have been so generously given and let us let fall away the useless baggage that we carry — old pains, old habits, old ways of seeing and feeling — and let us have the courage to begin again. Life is very short, and we are no sooner here than it is time to depart again, and we should use to the full the time that we still have.

We don’t realize all the good we can do. A kind, encouraging word or helping hand can bring many a person through dark valleys in their lives. We weren’t put here to make money or to acquire status or reputation. We were sent here to search for the light of Easter in our hearts, and when we find it we are meant to give it away generously. The dawn that is rising this Easter morning is a gift to our hearts and we are meant to celebrate it and to carry away from this holy, ancient place the gifts of healing and light and the courage of a new beginning.” – John O’Donohue, Dawn Mass Reflections at Corcomroe Abbey

Death to life.
Redemption.
Resurrection.
The third day.
Hallelujah.
Called to be Easter people.
Joy. Hope. Light. Triumph.
Not a day, a way to live.

“The sorrow of Good Friday’s sacrifice to the joy of Easter’s dawn of victory is a timeless testament to life’s journey from despair to hope, from darkness to light, from trial to triumph.”― Aloo Denish Obiero

Apr 17

Eastertide

“The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created spring.”— Bernard Williams

“The very first Easter taught us this: that life never ends and love never dies.” – Kate McGahan

Easter is the culmination and completion of the Lenten season and the beginning of Eastertide, the seven Sundays following referred to the “Season of the Spirit.” Beginnings and endings and all that resides in between, where we live daily, often looking backward and forward, missing the extraordinary in ordinary days.

The transition from winter to spring, with winter windchills returning yesterday to remind us that she’s not done yet. Transition and transformation are not done in one day but in a series of days held together, in seasons. The cusp of ending falling into beginning. Again and again.

Thresholds, waiting, hoping, dawn, resurrection. May you remain present and senses ablaze through each day of each season, passing through the doors to newness of life.

“Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.”— Victor Hugo

Apr 10

Carry Easter Forward

“Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.” – Martin Luther

“Here is the amazing thing about Easter; the Resurrection Sunday for Christians is this, that Christ in the dying moments on the cross gives us the greatest illustration of forgiveness possible.” – T. D. Jakes

The Lenten journey is complete.
Culminating in Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday.
Completed on Easter Sunday.
The third day.
On the fourth day, Monday, we are called to be Easter people.
And to continue on Tuesday, Wednesday…and each day before us.
As Father Malone advised at Sunday Easter mass, “leave the bandages.”
Jesus resurrected, left the burial dressing, the bandages behind in the empty tomb.
Calling us each to leave our bandages behind to become Easter people.
Our bandages of hurt, pain, offenses-both given and received, anger, unforgiveness, wounds, remorse, resentment, the past.
Put it all down.
Carry Easter forward.
Resurrection requires us to leave the old to become fully new.
May you accept the daily invitation to a peace that passes understanding, a hope unending, and love without limits.

“We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace.” – Pope Francis

Apr 9

About Love, Real Love

“A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”― Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła)

Easter morning.
New life.
About love beyond comprehension.
No boundaries, walls, only windows open wide.
A love without condition, denial, unforgiveness, resentment, demands, boasting, anger, fear.
Redemption.
Forgiveness.
Spring.
Resurrection.
Unfamiliar, unbelievable, incomprehensible.
Yet offered to each and all, no exceptions, exclusions, no small print rules and regulations.
Say “Yes!” to this offer of love.
Be renewed and freed from chains of the past and fear of the future.
Today, the tomb is empty.
Love, pure love is risen.
Happy, happy Easter.

“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” – Saint Augustine

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