It has been a frustrating week. On Wednesday we uploaded the second episode of The Liturgical Rebels podcast, a fantastic interview with poet Drew Jackson that I was hoping everyone would discover and enjoy. Facebook took exception to my post. Don’t they like rebels I wonder? Then over the weekend we tried doing some site updates and the whole site crashed and I realize no one has been able to access the posts or the podcast over the weekend. Maybe it shows how important the podcast episode is!!! I hope you wont miss it! or if you are afraid this “subversive post” will get you in deep water, check out this second post What’s Wrong with my Podcast: which Facebook did accept.
At the end of our interview Drew comments: “I think that what we need right now in the church is much more an invitation into the mystery of it all. And I think poetry is a doorway to that. So yeah, if you’re listening, my plea is sit with some poetry and see where it takes you and see how it leads you into the mystery.” Since then I have read and written quite a bit of poetry, part of the reason I did not look at the website. When I immerse myself in poetry and in the beauty of the world around me which stirs me to write many of my verses, my priorities change. The mystery and beauty of God’s world becomes much more of a priority. That is why I took time Saturday morning to put some of my poems together into the short meditation video I posted that day. It was a fun and refreshing exercise.
It’s pretty obvious that my podcast held much of my attention this week. However I still had time to contemplate my Lenten theme “For Love of the World God Did Foolish Things” this week my Meditation Monday: Foolish Witnesses focuses on the very ordinary and marginalized “foolish witnesses” that God uses to tell the good news. This always heartens me as I often feel that I too am a very foolish witness to the gospel story.
One of the other delights of Saturday was planting tomato seeds. This early springtime ritual is one of the highlights of the season for me. I usually start about 100 seeds, 35 of which will find their way into our garden. The delight of watching seeds germinate and grow into plants that then provide an abundant harvest of delicious fruit is incredible. I learn so much from my tomato plants. Tomato theology I call it. It is one of the things I will talk about in my May webinar Spirituality of Gardening. I hope you will join us for this fun and informative contemplative retreat time. It is not just for gardeners either, but for anyone who feels drawn to the presence of the divine in this created world.
Lilly Lewin’s Freerange Friday: Cleansing the Wilderness is another “don’t miss” post. I love her comment “Lent is a time for cleansing and clearing out the wilderness of our lives” and the question that follows: “What is in the wilderness of your regular life like at the moment? The stuff that is getting in the way of your relationship with Jesus?” We all have wilderness areas in our lives that prevent us developing a full relationship to Jesus. Her contemplative exercise is very helpful.
Rodney Marsh continued his posts on Garden Friends which delighted my heart because I grew up with blue tongue lizards in the garden. We used to feed them bananas and snails. They were very spoiled. Most of all I appreciate the way he likens the lizard’s blue tongue to James’ discourse on the tongue in James 3:3-12
Bill Borror shared another compelling post Do You Want to Be Well, in which he encourages us to use Lent as a time to recalibrate our hearts and minds.
As part of that recalibration I pray you will take time to look around you and enter into the beauty of God’s world. Maybe you would like to write your own poem in response.
Are we ready
To receive the beauty
Of God’s world?
Will we take time
To stop and allow
The wonder of it all
To seep into our souls?
Are we prepared
To pause in the busyness of life,
To stand in awe
At the markings on a tree,
As beautiful as any woven carving?
Are we afraid
To sit and bask
In the warmth
Of the sun on our faces,
For no other purpose
Then the delight
Of it all?
Creation sings and dances,
To the rhythm of God
Let us notice
And enter the joy.
(C) Christine Sine 2024
Catch the second episode of Liturgical Rebels!