Category: Lent

God’s garments

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Two poems this Sunday by two different poets who were both inspired by pondering God’s garments. And both stemming from a felt need to frantically reach out to grab them. We can all feel that way at times, especially during Lent. I’ll just leave them here with the encouragement to try to place yourselves in each poem.

God the Father, Cristoforo Roncalli (Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedication)

Suspended

I had grasped God’s garments in the void
but my hand slipped on the rich silk of it.

The ‘everlasting arms’ my sister loved to remember
must have upheld my leaden weight from falling, even so,

for though I claw at empty air and feel nothing, no embrace,
I have not plummeted.

Denise Levertov

The Garments of God

God sits on a chair of darkness in my soul.
He is God alone, supreme in His majesty.
I sit at His feet, a child in the dark beside Him;
my joy is aware of His glance and my sorrow is tempted
to nest on the thought that His face is turned from me.
He is clothed in the robes of His mercy, voluminous garments–
not velvet or silk and affable to the touch,
but fabric strong for a frantic hand to clutch,
and I hold to it fast with the fingers of my will.
Here is my cry of faith, my deep avowal
to the Divinity that I am but dust.
Here is the loud profession of my trust.
I need not go abroad
to the hills of speech or the hinterlands of music
for a crier to walk in my soul where all is still.
I have this potent prayer through good or ill:
here in the dark I clutch the garments of God.

Jessica Powers

Father!

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

I’m struck this morning, in reading the second reading from the Office of Readings for Ash Wednesday, by this verse: “Tell the sons of my people: If their sins should reach from earth to heaven, if they are brighter than scarlet and blacker than sackcloth, you need only turn to me with your whole heart and say, ‘Father,’ and I will listen to you as a holy people.”

God, first and foremost, wants relationship with us. That’s why he said to Adam and Eve immediately after they had sinned, “Where are you?” He felt the loss of relationship. He didn’t want any separation from them. And he feels it with us as well. He wants union and intimacy with us. That is what drives all that he does with each of us personally. His desire to have full and complete intimacy with us.

And he makes it so easy. We need only turn to him with our whole heart and say “Father!” He wants each of us to know him as Father, not taskmaster, not even master, but Father. A tender Father of mercies.

This is the point of Lent. This is the point of making space in our lives, of putting aside things, of fasting. It’s all to help our hearts, to quiet our hearts in order to turn to him and say “Father.”

Our prayers do not need to be long. He’s just asking one word of us said with our whole heart: “Father.”

How to prepare for Lent

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

If I could write up something to sum up my thoughts about how to approach Lent, it would be this.

“If Lent is a battlefield, the goal is victory. If it is a self-improvement cycle, the goal is progress. But if the wilderness is courtship, the goal is intimacy. The stripping is not about proving discipline; it is about clearing space.”

Do read the whole piece by clicking on the image below.

Pray with us

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

This is absolutely beautiful and so powerful.

In collaboration on a first-of-its-kind project for Holy Week, Wintershall Theatre Company and @christianart have joined forces on The Stations of the Cross: Pray with us, a short film depicting the fourteen scenes from Christ’s Passion. Filmed at Wintershall Estate against a striking 20-foot cinematic backdrop, each scene from the Stations of the Cross was carefully arranged, lit, and filmed to create the effect of a tableau vivant—a living painting.

“The tradition of tableaux vivants, or “living pictures,” dates back to the Middle Ages and gained popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries as a theatrical artform. In these staged scenes, actors would pose silently and motionlessly to recreate famous artworks or dramatic moments, often with elaborate costumes, lighting, and minimal movement. The tableau vivant artform has found new life in video, where the boundary between stillness and motion can be artfully explored, inviting the viewer to contemplation and often emotive experience.

“Written by Presented by Fr. Patrick van der Vorst”

The Bridegroom’s wedding feast

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A beautiful commentary from Leiva-Merikakis on the Bridegroom’s love for us in his Passion: “The arrival of this Passover has on Jesus the same effect as would the arrival of his wedding date on a bridegroom who is madly in love. The leaders say, ‘Not during the feast!’ But Jesus insists: ‘Yes! During the feast! For this Passover is my wedding feast with my Bride, mankind, a union to be consummated in my blood.'”

Christ the Bridegroom

The yearning such a fragrance brings

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This passage has always held great significance for me, especially because of Christ’s invitation to me to live a consecrated life for him. But we, each in his or her own way, are invited by him to pour out what is most precious to us upon his feet, to enter into that intimacy with him, and this week is a most important time for us to do just that.

The Anointing at Bethany

Come close with Mary, Martha ,  Lazarus
So close the candles stir with their soft breath
And kindle heart and soul to flame within us
Lit by these mysteries of life and death.
For beauty now begins the final movement
In quietness and  intimate encounter
The alabaster jar of precious ointment
Is broken open for the world’s true lover,

The whole room richly fills to feast the senses
With all the  yearning such a fragrance brings,
The heart is mourning but the spirit dances,
Here at the very centre of all things,
Here at the meeting place of love and loss
We all foresee, and see beyond the cross.

Malcolm Guite

Royalty

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A blessed Palm Sunday and Holy Week.  One of my favorite poems by Luci Shaw. 

Royalty

He was a plain man
and learned no latin.

Having left all gold behind
he dealt out peace
to all us wild ones
and the weather.

He ate fish, bread,
country wine and God’s will.

Dust sandaled his feet.

He wore purple only once
and that was an irony.

~Luci Shaw

Lent is meant to be about love

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Sarah Clarkson for the win every single time.

Lent is the season in which I rediscover love.

But when I first began to attempt the ‘practise’ of Lent, I mostly equated Lent with law. With repentance, yes, and under grace, I know. After all, Lent ends with Easter and a feast to mark salvation. But since discovering this season of the church, I’ve often seen ‘the penitential season’ as a time in which I made laws of discipline to express my true contrition, to prove to God that my sorrow over all the ways I sin and fail is real.

Lent dawned bright this year in England, bright as my good intentions. On the day when much of the church begins a season of repentance, the sun blinked and gleamed in a stark blue sky and birds whistled as if it were May and the daffodils in the vase on my desk finally bloomed.

But that evening, after a long day, after a service in which the ashes of repentance were crossed into my forehead and those of my children, I looked down the long trail of the coming days, and all I saw was grey. I was weary and afraid, doubtful that I could keep strict laws or great fasts. Part of me so yearned for spiritual renewal that I felt willing to attempt a great effort in order to gain a deeper sense of spiritual life. But my body, my heart felt too busy and sleep-deprived to keep up the strictures of dawn devotion or the renunciation of chocolate. (You know?)

You can read the rest here. 

“The Washing of His Feet”, Dean Cornwell

Beloved is where we begin

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This has to be one of my most favorite poems of Jan Richardson’s. We are always, always beloved to God.

Beloved Is Where We Begin

If you would enter
into the wilderness,
do not begin
without a blessing.

Do not leave
without hearing
who you are:
Beloved,
named by the One
who has traveled this path
before you.

Do not go
without letting it echo
in your ears,
and if you find
it is hard
to let it into your heart,
do not despair.
That is what
this journey is for.

I cannot promise
this blessing will free you
from danger,
from fear,
from hunger
or thirst,
from the scorching
of sun
or the fall
of the night.

But I can tell you
that on this path
there will be help.

I can tell you
that on this way
there will be rest.

I can tell you
that you will know
the strange graces
that come to our aid
only on a road
such as this,
that fly to meet us
bearing comfort
and strength,
that come alongside us
for no other cause
than to lean themselves
toward our ear
and with their
curious insistence
whisper our name:

Beloved.
Beloved.
Beloved.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace